Fed will cut interest rates deeply this spring, new estimate says - The Federal Reserve is likely to make significant cuts to interest rates next year beginning as early as March, according to a new estimate from UBS Investment Bank.Slowing inflation could enable a 2.75 percent decrease in the interest rate over the course of the year, nearly halving the current rate of almost 5.5 percent, UBS said.The firm predicts that the U.S. economy will fall into a recession by the second quarter of next year, enabling a rate cut. Rates will fall as low as 1.25 percent by 2025, the market experts predict.Other predictors, however, are anticipating just a 0.75 percent drop starting in the summer, a much more conservative forecast. Wall Street has been split on predicting the Fed’s movements.UBS Chief Strategist Bhanu Baweja told Bloomberg that the firm sees all the signs of a standard rate-cutting cycle on the horizon.“We don’t see the conditions for why this time is so different,” he said. “Inflation is normalizing quickly and by the time we get to March, the Fed will be looking at real rates which are very high.”The Fed left the interest rate unchanged this month, the first time in about two years it has done so in two consecutive meetings. It is expected to leave rates the same again in December.Annual inflation fell to 3.7 percent in September from its 9 percent peak last June, even as consumer spending, economic growth and the job market remain strong.The core consumer price index rose by just 0.2 percent month-to-month in October, the Fed announced Tuesday, beating economist expectations. The annual inflation rate was 3.2 percent in October.Interest rates are higher than they’ve been at any point over the past two decades, ballooningborrowing costs for homebuyers and car owners, crunching balance-carrying credit card holders and making it harder for Americans to repay their debts.
Could it Be the Fed’s Mega-QE Created so Much Liquidity that Tightening Doesn’t Work until this Excess Gets Burned Up? by Wolf Richter -- One of the big surprises this year is that the Fed’s 5.5% policy rates and $1.1 trillion in QT have neither meaningfully tightened financial conditions nor slowed the economy. The Fed has been “tightening” since early 2022 in order to “tighten” the financial conditions, and these tighter financial conditions are then supposed to make it harder and more expensive to borrow which is supposed to slow economic growth and remove the fuel that drives inflation. “Financial conditions,” which are tracked by various indices, got a little less loose, and then they re-loosened all over again. It’s almost funny. The Chicago Fed’s National Financial Conditions Index (NFCI) loosened further, dipping to -0.36 in the latest reporting week, the loosest since May 2022, when the Fed just started its tightening cycle. The index is constructed to have an average value of zero going back to 1971. Negative values show that financial conditions are looser than average, and they have been loosening since April 2023, after a brief tightening episode during the bank panic (chart via Chicago Fed): You can see in the chart above how financial conditions tightened in March 2020, but not for long – by May 2020, as the Fed was dousing the land with trillions in QE, they were already loose again. So, despite the rate hikes and QT by the Fed, financial conditions are as loose as they were when the Fed had just started tightening in May 2022, and they are far looser than the long-term average, though they have become somewhat less loosey-goosey than during the free-money era starting in mid-2020 through early 2022. The long-term chart below of the NFCI shows what happens when financial conditions tighten so much that they strangle the economy, as they did during the Financial Crisis. The March-2020 spike barely registers in comparison. The St. Louis Fed’s Financial Stress Index takes a similar approach and measures financial stress in the credit markets. The zero line denotes average financial stress. Negative values denote less than average financial stress. In the current week, it dropped to -0.56. The green line shows this current value across time and denotes that credit markets are still in la-la-land. The BB-rated junk-bond spreads are another measure of financial conditions. Corporate bond yields should rise or fall with Treasury yields. But a wider spread between those corporate bond yields and Treasury yields indicates tighter financial conditions; a narrower spread indicates looser financial conditions. The average spread of BB-rated bonds, the less risky end of high-yield (my cheat sheet for corporate bond rating scales) narrowed further yesterday to 2.57 percentage points. So this is going in the wrong direction, in terms of what the Fed wants to accomplish. Sure, some sectors are stressed and financial conditions tightened in those sectors, such as the office sector of commercial real estate, but the troubles in the office sector have structural causes, including working from home and the corporate realization that they don’t need all this vacant office space that they have been hogging for years, and will never grow into.And home sales have plunged because potential sellers don’t want to give up the 40% to 60% price spike they got over the period of pandemic QE; and buyers just laugh at those prices and go blow their down-payment on all kinds of stuff and services, including travels and cars – new vehicle sales surged 20% year-over-year in Q3 – contributing to consumer spending.And subprime lending has tightened all around. In terms of auto sales, selling and lending to subprime-rated customers is focused on older used vehicles, often by specialized dealers and lenders — often owned by PE firms — some of which have now collapsed. Securitizing subprime auto loans has become difficult as investors are now taking losses. And the subprime segment, a small portion of the auto business, has tightened up, but with essentially no impact for new vehicle sales, where subprime loans are just a tiny portion.
Fed's Barr flags rising hedge fund leverage in Treasuries — The Federal Reserve's top regulator is keeping an eye on hedge fund engagement with U.S. Treasuries markets and wants more data about this activity. Fed Vice Chair for Supervision Michael Barr delivered a speech Thursday morning flagging several areas of concern related to hedge funds and their so-called basis trading activities — in which groups buy and sell securities to take advantage of disparities between spot prices and futures contract values. "Their highly leveraged positions in Treasury markets are facilitated by very low — or even zero — haircuts on their repo financing," Barr said, adding that demand for this leverage is highly concentrated among a handful of large hedge funds." Recent months have seen an uptick in hedge funds using repurchase agreements, or repos, to sell cash futures in exchange for short positions on cash. Fed researchers have issued two notes since this summer warning that such activities create vulnerabilities in the financial system. Barr, who delivered his remarks during the Federal Reserve Bank of New York's ninth annual Treasury Market Conference, said basis trades play an important role in improving market efficiency and the connection between cash and futures prices. He noted that leverage can "arbitrage away" pricing discrepancies and help Treasuries values be better reflected in related instruments and markets. Still, he said, leverage brings risk, many of which came to a head in March 2020 during the so-called "dash for cash" episode. Many hedge funds moved to liquidate these leveraged positions uniformly, resulting in broad disruption of Treasuries markets. The Fed has windows into Treasuries trading activities through its oversight of Bank of New York Mellon — a leading provider of clearing services — and through data collected by the other entities, including the Treasury Department's Office of Financial Research. Also, 22 depositories that are supervised by the Fed submit data daily on Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities trades to the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority's Trade Reporting and Compliance Engine, or TRACE. But Barr said even regulators are inhibited by significant blind spots, including activity in the non-centrally cleared bilateral repo market, in which traders transact directly with one another rather than through a central counterparty or tri-party custodian. "All of us need to better understand this activity," Barr said.
10-year Treasury yield tumbles below 4.5% on cool October inflation report - U.S. Treasury yields tumbled Tuesday as the latest inflation figures showed a dramatically slower pace of price increases last month. The 10-year Treasury yield fell more than 18 basis points to about 4.45%. The 2-year Treasury yield slid 21 basis points to 4.8%. Yields and prices move in opposite directions and one basis point equals 0.01%. The October consumer price index was unchanged month over month, and up 0.2% when excluding food and energy, the Labor Department said Tuesday. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones were expecting a 0.1% monthly rise in CPI, and 0.3% in core CPI. Core CPI was up 4.0% year over year, the slowest 12-month inflation rate since September 2021, according to the report, a positive sign in the Federal Reserve's campaign to bring price increases back to its 2% target without causing a recession. The report is a key data point for what could be on the horizon for interest rates. Questions around whether the central bank will hike rates further or prepare to cut them, and when that could happen have grown louder in recent weeks. "We don't want to see the wheels fall off the economy, but when all was said and done the Fed needs the economy to temper down here a little bit to take the inflation edge off," said Gregory Faranello, head of U.S. rates strategy at AmeriVet Securities. After the report, the options market implied a 0% chance of a rate hike in December, and a negligible 4.1% chance for a January hike, according to the CME FedWatch Tool. "As long as the direction remains lower ... unless the wheels come off the economy, I think markets are going to like it," Faranello added. When the central bank met earlier this month, policymakers decided to leave rates unchanged, but did not take the option for further hikes off the table. Just last week, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell reiterated the Fed's 2% inflation target.
Why Biden Is in Trouble About the Economy - A big focus of political discourse in the past two weeks has been about why Biden seems to be polling so poorly against Trump, and in particular has not consolidated support among younger voters. Since the economy is always a very important component of voter intentions, unless there is a major superseding event like 9/11, economic performance has historically been a good predictor of Presidential election outcomes. So let’s take a detailed look. First of all, remember that the election is between two people, Biden and Trump. And the economy was actually doing pretty good during Trump’s mal-administration before COVID. Here’s what real hourly wages and the unemployment rate looked like: Real wages for non-supervisory workers, increased 3.3% between January 2017 and the end of 2019. Meanwhile the unemployment rate fell from 4.7% to 3.5%. And that wasn’t just something ho-hum. In the case of real wages, they were the highest since the end of the 1970s. The unemployment rate was the lowest since the end of the 1960s. So people remembering that the economy was good while Trump was in office, before the pandemic, is not a fluke. It’s the truth, even though it is virtually 100% certain that he had nothing to do with it. Now let’s take a look at how some important economic sectors have performed under Biden. The unemployment rate has varied between 3.4% and 3.9% in the past year, about even with Trump’s best year – but not better. More importantly, while real wages for non-supervisory workers are up 2.2% since right before the pandemic hit, measured from when Biden came into office they are actually *down* -1.5%: [Although I won’t bother with the graphs, other measures like the employment cost index and real personal income give similar results]. Some of this is compositional. That is, a lot of low-paid workers in sectors like restaurants and hotels were out of work during 2020 and have returned since. So their lot has improved. But this changes the averages, because more lower paid workers are in the mix. However the fact is, in the aggregate, real average hourly wages are down. But perhaps more important is to compare the costs for some of the most important items with those wages. Let’s start with housing, which has gotten a lot of good and insightful attention from commenters. Below is a graph in which I compare average hourly earnings (nominal, not real) for non-supervisory workers (in red) vs. house prices (dark blue) and mortgage payments (light blue). All of these values are set to 100 as of January 2021 so you can see what has happened during Biden’s Administration. All of these are nominal, not “real,” so that we compare apples to apples: Nominal average wages have increased 16%. But existing house prices have increased 32%, and monthly mortgage payments for new buyers have increased 279% (!!!), i.e., from roughly 3% to roughly 8%. Is it any wonder younger workers who would like to buy their first home, or upgrade to a bigger home, would be upset? A similar phenomenon is in place as to cars: New car prices have increased 20%, and used car prices 23%, compared to 16% for wages (at least used car prices are down from their 40% increase 18 months ago). And new car loan payments have increased almost 70% (from about 5% to 8.3%). Houses and cars are the two biggest purchases that most people ever make. and affording them has gotten much harder since Biden took office. How about a couple of items the prices of which that people see almost every day, namely groceries and gas? Grocery prices are up 29% since January 2021 (again, vs. 16% for average wages): And gas prices, even after coming back down recently, are still up 55% since January 2021: Now let me ask you: if you knew nothing about the personal qualities of the two Presidential candidates, i.e., if they were generic Candidate A vs. generic Candidate B, and you saw the two economic records shown above, who would you be most likely to favor? That’s the problem Biden has. Because I don’t like being a Doomer, let me point out that much of this is the doing of the Fed, which has raised rates at the most aggressive pace since Volcker over 40 years ago. And part of that is that the Fed fell behind the curve. Without going into all the gruesome detail, the Fed could started raising interest rates sooner but much more gradually, likely never reaching the level they are now. Since the Fed will not want to lower rates right before an election, Biden should use whatever soft or hard clout he has to cajole the Fed into lowering rates at least some in the next 4 to 6 months. Additionally, he should explore regulatory actions, which won’t need Congress, to help out especially younger people trapped by higher loan rates. He can also propose actions to Congress, which will allow him to run against them when the GOP predictably yells that such actions are Commie Soshulist! Also, because house prices all but stopped increasing about a year ago, housing inflation as measured in the CPI should continue to retreat. If Saudi Arabia and Russia are not successful in causing gas prices to skyrocket next year to hurt Biden, CPI on the whole should continue to moderate or at least not re-accelerate. And as supply chains continue to un-kink, we may see sellers actually lower prices on some things like groceries and yes, even cars. Finally, and maybe most importantly, history shows that voters generally focus on the economy for the last 6 to 9 months before the election. In 2012, the economy improved a lot, and when the unemployment rate finally fell below 8% one month before the election, I knew Obama was in good shape. Contrarily, the economy was weakening close to recession in 2016. If we get better news on inflation and interest rates next year, Biden will be in much better shape.
Congress barrels toward shutdown with House GOP divided - Congress is barreling toward a government shutdown this week as Friday’s funding deadline inches closer, with House Republicans at odds over Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) pitch to keep the lights on in Washington. Johnson unveiled an unconventional two-step stopgap bill over the weekend, which would extend funding at current levels for some agencies until mid-January and the rest through early February. That proposal, however, is already dividing the fractious House GOP conference, with some hard-line conservatives voicing opposition to the legislation because of the lack of spending cuts. Top Democrats, meanwhile, have criticized Johnson’s plan, taking aim at the “laddered” approach and denouncing the lack of aid for Israel or Ukraine in the legislation. Congress has just five days to avert a shutdown. Across the Capitol, the Senate will hold a procedural vote for its own legislation to avert a shutdown this week, moving a legislative vehicle that will be used for an eventual stopgap bill. Aside from funding the government, the House this week will weigh in on a resolution to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, after Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) moved to force a vote on the legislation last week. And lawmakers are bracing for an update regarding the House Ethics Committee’s investigation into Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.), which will likely lead to a third effort to expel him from office. The House is slated to take up Johnson’s “laddered” continuing resolution this week, marking the newly minted Speaker’s first attempt at averting a shutdown days out from the funding deadline. The effort to fund the government marks a big test for Johnson, who assumed the Speakership less than one month ago, after eight Republicans joined with Democrats to oust former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) from the top job in part because of his handling of the government funding process. Johnson’s proposal would extend funding at current levels until Jan. 19 for government programs and agencies under appropriations bills pertaining to agriculture, rural development and the Food and Drug Administration; energy and water development; military construction and Veterans Affairs; and Transportation, Housing and Urban Development. Funding for the other agencies and programs would be extended to Feb. 2. A number of conservatives had initially endorsed the “laddered” continuing resolution approach, which is seen by many as a way to avoid an end-of-year omnibus funding bill and encourage Congress to work through the regular appropriations process. But despite Johnson using that framework, some members of the right flank are coming out against his proposal because it does not include spending cuts and instead funds the government at current levels. Reps. Chip Roy (R-Texas), Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) and Greene have already said they will not support the plan, making matters more difficult for Johnson as he looks to avert a shutdown. “My opposition to the clean CR just announced by the Speaker to the @HouseGOP cannot be overstated. Funding Pelosi level spending & policies for 75 days – for future ‘promises,’” Roy wrote Saturday on X, formerly known as Twitter. Top Democrats, meanwhile, have also criticized the legislation. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the ranking member of the Appropriations Committee, slammed Johnson’s plan in a fiery statement, arguing that his approach “is setting up a system that will double the number of shutdown showdowns.” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called the proposal “extreme.” It remains unclear, however, how the entire Democratic caucus is viewing the laddered continuing resolution. Depending on how many Republicans oppose the legislation, a handful of Democratic votes could help get it over the finish line.
A Few Comments on a Possible Government Shutdown - First, shutdowns are expensive, and many government employees continue to work (like the military), but don't get paid. In addition to the closings of National Parks, and many services, we will all be flying mostly blind without reports on employment, inflation, housing starts and more. However, there will be some private data to fill the gap. The employment data for November has already been gathered since the BLS reference week was November 5th through 11th this year (one of the exceptions for when the reference week doesn't include the 12th). If there is a shutdown, the first key missing reports will be New Home Sales, GDP and Personal Income & Outlays during the week of November 26th. For housing, depending on the length of the shutdown, there might be an impact on existing home closings in November. If the shutdown lasts through the end of the month, I'd expect some decline in seasonally adjusted sales in November. If the shutdown only lasts a week or so, there would probably be little impact. Some issues could be Tax transcripts, Flood Certs, and SS# Authorization. Also, a shutdown increases uncertainty, and that might push up mortgage rates (investors hate uncertainty). Hopefully a shutdown will be avoided.
Schumer delays Senate vote on spending stopgap, waits for House to move first - Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Monday postponed a procedural vote to advance Senate legislation to fund the government beyond Nov. 17 in order to give Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) a chance to move first with a two-step stopgap that would fund federal departments until Jan. 19 and Feb. 2. By delaying the vote, Schumer indicated that he is willing to give Johnson the time and space to pass a House GOP-drafted continuing resolution that would fund the government at current levels. It would fund military construction and the Departments of Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, Transportation, and Housing and Urban Development and energy and water programs until Jan. 19. It would fund all other federal programs, including the Department of Defense, until Feb. 2. Schumer praised Johnson’s proposal for not including the steep spending cuts demanded by some House conservatives and said it would prevent a harmful government shutdown. “We are pausing on our plans to move forward on a Senate vehicle to allow the House to move first with their proposal. I’ve said since the very beginning that bipartisanship is the only way to avoid a government shutdown,” he said. “I’m heartened that the bill Speaker Johnson is advancing omits the devastating cuts that are nonstarters for Democrats. The Speaker’s proposal is far from perfect, but the most important thing is that it refrains from making steep cuts while avoiding a costly government shutdown,” he added.
GOP leaders aim to pass funding bill with help from Democrats amid conservative opposition -- House Republican leaders are moving to pass a two-step stopgap government funding bill under a fast-track process that will require support from Democrats, an attempt to work around GOP opposition that threatened to tank the bill on a procedural vote. It is one of the first major decisions of Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) tenure — and the same move that helped trigger a motion to oust former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.). It is also sure to enrage the Republican conference’s right flank. A scheduling notice from House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) sent late Monday night announced that the continuing resolution (CR) would be brought up Tuesday under suspension of the rules — a procedure that requires support from two-thirds of the House in order to pass and avoid a government shutdown after Friday. Such a move avoids a procedural “rule” vote teeing up the bill, which typically passes as a party-line vote and serves as a test of party unity, regardless of whether members of the minority party vote for the underlying legislation. But some Republicans had threatened to vote against the rule out of frustration that the bill did not include spending cuts or key conservative policy reforms — which would have prevented a vote on final passage of the legislation. In the House GOP’s slim majority, GOP leaders can afford to lose just three Republican votes on any party-line measure, assuming full attendance. Far more than that have signaled opposition to the CR. Under the continuing resolution, part of government funding would run out Jan. 19, with the rest running out Feb. 2. Johnson has argued that the two-step plan is the best way to avert a massive omnibus funding package pushed by the Senate, and allows Congress more time to negotiate on fiscal 2024 funding. On the other side of the aisle, Democratic leaders have not yet said whether they will support the bill, but have given signals that they could. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said Monday, however, that Democrats had “zero intention to vote for the rule,” leaving Republican leadership the options of either trying to convince the GOP holdouts to support the rule or aim for wide cooperation from Democrats. A “Dear Colleague” letter from Jeffries, Minority Whip Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) and Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) on Monday said they found the two-step proposal “troublesome” but did not fully oppose it and were “carefully evaluating” the bill. While Democrats are skeptical of the two-step approach, there is little in the bill for them to oppose, even if it omits some provisions they wanted, such as aid to Ukraine and Israel. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) also said Monday that he was “pleased” Johnson was advancing a stopgap without spending cuts. With the House GOP’s slim 221-213 majority, it will take dozens of Democrats — likely upward of 80 when accounting for GOP defections — to achieve the two-thirds threshold and pass the bill under suspension. The tactic is already getting fierce pushback from hard-line conservatives. “If my vote is ignored by the Speaker when he doesn’t need it, when he comes and he needs it, it may not be there,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) said earlier Monday evening when asked about the prospects of GOP leaders moving to pass the bill under suspension. Roy was one of the Republican members who indicated he would vote against the rule on the stopgap. McCarthy was ousted from his post in October right after he brought up a “clean” CR for passage with help from Democrats on the last government funding deadline day in September. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) made the motion to vacate McCarthy from the Speakership, and seven other Republicans joined with him and all Democrats to take away McCarthy’s gavel.
House Democrats lining up to support the CR, diminishing chances of a shutdown -House Democrats are lining up behind the GOP’s short-term proposal to fund the government, predicting there will be plenty of bipartisan support to pass the legislation through the lower chamber this week and send it to the Senate. Emerging from a closed-door caucus meeting in the Capitol basement Tuesday morning, a host of Democrats, representing a wide cross-section of ideologies, said they intend to vote for the measure when it hits the floor later in the day. “There’s gonna be a lot of Democratic votes,” Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) said. “I’m inclined to be [among them]. I can’t really think of a compelling reason not to.” The Democrats emphasized that they’re wary of the Republicans’ “laddered” approach, which splits the agencies into two different buckets and attaches different funding timelines to each one. But those concerns are minor, the lawmakers said, relative to their other priorities: Keeping spending at fiscal year 2023 levels and avoiding contentious policy provisions on conservative wish-list items like abortion and border security. “I’m not sure it’ll be unanimous. But it looks to me like it addressed our major concerns,” Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) said. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) has not yet endorsed the proposal publicly, but leaving Tuesday’s meeting, he acknowledged that there are no “poison pill” provisions, nor spending cuts, that would act to dissolve Democratic support. And other lawmakers went much further, saying all indications are that Democratic leaders will ultimately support the legislation, joined by much of the caucus. “They didn’t say that specifically,” Rep. Juan Vargas (D-Calif.) said. “But I don’t see anything that would [scare Democrats away]. The two big things are: There are no big cuts, and there’s no poison pill. What else do you want?” Democratic votes will be crucial to the success of the short-term funding package, known as a continuing resolution (CR), because a number of conservative Republicans are vowing to oppose it to protest the absence of steep spending cuts. With just a slim majority, GOP leaders can afford few defections. And, complicating the equation for newly installed Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), some of those GOP opponents are also vowing to oppose the rule preceding the CR, which could keep the final bill off the floor altogether.
Freedom Caucus announces opposition to Speaker Johnson stopgap plan -The House Freedom Caucus took an official position against House Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) plan to avert a government shutdown, which he will aim to pass with support from Democrats on Tuesday.“The House Freedom Caucus opposes the proposed ‘clean’ Continuing Resolution as it contains no spending reductions, no border security, and not a single meaningful win for the American People,” the group said in its position statement, released Tuesday morning. “Republicans must stop negotiating against ourselves over fears of what the Senate may do with the promise ‘roll over today and we’ll fight tomorrow.'”“While we remain committed to working with Speaker Johnson, we need bold change,” the Freedom Caucus added.The position was unveiled after Johnson reportedly met with the House Freedom Caucus on Monday night, a highly unusual move for a Republican Speaker or party leader. But many of its members publicly expressed opposition to the bill, disappointed that it does not include spending cuts or attempt to extract conservative policy concessions from Democrats and the White House.It also comes after GOP leaders announced Monday night that they will seek to fast-track the bill through a floor vote in order to avoid being torpedoed based on Republican opposition. But that will require support from two-thirds of the whole House, meaning relying on support from dozens of Democrats. An official position from the Freedom Caucus requires support from 80 percent of the group, which has around three dozen members. But the caucus is not unified in opposition to the continuing resolution plan. Freedom Caucus member Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.) is an architect of the two-tiered stopgap funding plan. Under the bill, part of government funding would run out Jan. 19, with the rest running out Feb. 2. Harris, like Johnson, has argued that the two-step plan is the best way to avert a massive omnibus funding package pushed by the Senate, and allows Congress more time to negotiate on fiscal 2024 funding. “The two-step CR is a way to get the broken appropriations process back on track without resulting in a massive omnibus spending bill,” Harris said over the weekend in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.
House passes bill to avoid government shutdown, Senate to vote next— The House approved a bill Tuesday that would avert a government shutdown, sending the measure next to the Senate, where it is expected to pass. The "laddered" continuing resolution, or CR, will fund parts of the government until Jan. 19 and others until Feb. 2. Once it is approved by the Senate, the bill goes to President Joe Biden, who has signaled he is open to signing it. Without a funding bill in place that has been passed by both chambers and signed by the president, the government will shut down at 11:59 p.m. ET Friday. The CR passed in the House with broad bipartisan support, which it needed, after Republican leaders decided to bring it to the floor under a procedural move that required a two-thirds majority, and not a simple majority, in order to pass. The final tally was 336 in favor and 95 opposed, with 127 Republicans joining 209 Democrats to pass the bill. But the most surprising figure was how many Republicans broke with party leaders and voted against it: 93, vs. just 2 Democratic "nays." For newly elected House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., the bipartisan vote sends an early signal to the Senate and the White House that he is willing to reach across the aisle to pass pragmatic legislation when it's necessary. But it could also spell trouble for Johnson within his own caucus. It was just over a month ago that a group of ultra conservatives helped to oust Johnson's predecessor, former Speaker Kevin McCarthy. One of their chief frustrations with McCarthy, they said, was that he didn't take a harder line on spending bills. Under Johnson's two stage funding expiration plan, certain federal programs like the Food and Drug Administration, military construction, veterans benefits, transportation, housing, urban development, agriculture, energy and water programs would be funded through Jan. 19. For everything else, Feb. 2 would the cutoff date. Johnson said his novel plan would give the House the time it needs to move full-year agency funding bills through the regular appropriations process. Despite initial reservations, Democrats publicly backed the bill on Tuesday in an effort to avert a shutdown. The conservative House Freedom Caucus on Tuesday released a statement opposing the resolution "as it contains no spending reductions, no border security, and not a single meaningful win for the American people." Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said if the bill passed the House, he and Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., would move it swiftly through the Senate. "Senate Leader [Mitch] McConnell and I will figure out the best way to get this done quickly," said Schumer.
Congress approves temporary funding and pushes the fight over the federal budget into the new year -(AP) — Ending the threat of a government shutdown until after the holidays, Congress gave final approval to a temporary government funding package that pushes a confrontation over the federal budget into the new year.The Senate met into Wednesday night to pass the bill with an 87-11 tally and send it to President Joe Biden for his signature one day after it passed the House on anoverwhelming bipartisan vote. It provides a funding patch into next year, when the House and Senate will be forced to confront — and somehow overcome — their considerable differences over what funding levels should be.In the meantime, the bill removes the threat of a government shutdown days before funding would have expired.“This year, there will be no government shutdown,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said at a news conference after the bill’s passage.The spending package keeps government funding at current levels for roughly two more months while a long-term package is negotiated. It splits the deadlines for passing full-year appropriations bills into two dates: Jan. 19 for some federal agencies and Feb. 2 for others, creating two deadlines where there will be a risk of a partial government shutdown.“Everybody is really kind of ready to vote and fight another day,” Republican Whip John Thune, the No. 2 Republican, said earlier Wednesday.
Senate votes to pass funding bill and avoid government shutdown. Here's the final vote tally. - The Senate easily passed a stopgap funding bill late Wednesday night, averting a government shutdown and punting a spending fight in Congress until early next year. The bill heads to President Biden's desk after it passed the Senate in an 87-11 vote. Only one Democratic senator voted against the measure, Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado. The House passed the bill, known as a continuing resolution, Tuesday night, sending it to the Senate ahead of a Friday deadline. Without a funding extension, the government was set to shutdown Saturday. House Speaker Mike Johnson unveiled the measure less than a week before funding from a short-term bill passed in September was set to expire. But dissent from within his own party over its lack of spending cuts or funding for border security required Johnson to rely on Democratic votes to get it over the finish line. The two-step bill extends appropriations dealing with veterans programs, transportation, housing, agriculture and energy until Jan. 19. Funding for eight other appropriations bills, including defense, would be extended until Feb. 2. It does not include supplemental funding for Israel or Ukraine. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries originally called the two-step plan a nonstarter, but later said Democrats would support it given its exclusion of spending cuts and "extreme right-wing policy riders." All but two Democrats voted to pass the measure, while dozens of Republicans opposed it. In the Senate, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said he hoped there would be a strong bipartisan vote for the House bill. "Neither [Senate Minority Leader Mitch] McConnell nor I want a shutdown," Schumer said Tuesday. Mr. Biden is expected to sign the bill.
Senate averts shutdown, votes to launch NDAA talks - The Senate passed a short-term spending measure late Wednesday night, extending Congress’ deadline to fund the government by more than two months. President Joe Biden is expected to sign the measure.The continuing resolution, which passed 87-11, is Congress’ second funding patch since late September and will keep spending at fiscal 2023 levels. It represents another lifeline for lawmakers who have been unable to agree on a fiscal 2024 spending plan. The stopgap passed the House on Tuesday with overwhelming bipartisan support but not without objections from conservatives, many of whom voted against it.The so-called laddered CR would extend current spending for the Military Construction-Veterans Affairs, Agriculture-Rural Development, Energy-Water and Transportation-Housing and Urban Development bills through Jan. 19. It continues current spending for the eight remaining bills — including Interior-Environment — through Feb. 2. It also extends farm bill programs through September 2024. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has said he would not support any more stopgaps, even as House Republicans continue to insist on funding cuts that have no chance of passing the Senate. Senators sent the CR to Biden’s desk after rejecting an amendment from Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) that would cut spending by about 1 percent. The amendment language, however, would cut spending for all programs by 15 percent, with exceptions for military and veterans spending and clawbacks to IRS spending. Biden will sign the CR, according to a White House official. Wednesday’s vote was delayed for much of the day, as Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), ranking member on the Armed Services Committee, held out his support to force a vote on instructing conferees for the fiscal 2024 National Defense Authorization Act.The House and Senate passed their respective versions of the defense policy bill in July, and the House moved to go to conference in September. Numerous energy and environment policy items hang in the balance, including nuclear legislation and a climate rulemaking riders. Senate leaders had not put the motion to instruct conferees — a largely symbolic step — on the floor, frustrating Wicker, even though Armed Services staffers have been “pre-conferencing” for weeks. “I’m very disappointed in [Senate Majority Leader Chuck] Schumer [D-N.Y.] for not bringing the motion to go to conference and the motion to instruct to the floor,” Wicker told E&E News last week. “This has been delayed for weeks now, and the time constraints are now critical.” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said Wednesday that House and Senate leaders need to “immediately begin” discussions to decide top-line spending levels for fiscal 2024 bills. Jeffries said the bills should be written to the levels prescribed by the debt ceiling agreement that congressional leaders and Biden agreed to in June, avoiding the steep cuts that some conservatives have been demanding.“The only path forward is a bipartisan one where we proceed with the appropriations discussions amongst House Democrats, House Republicans, Senate Democrats and Senate Republicans in a manner consistent with the bipartisan Fiscal Responsibility Act,” Jeffries said, referring to the debt limit deal. “It’s time for action.”
Biden signs stopgap spending bill, averting government shutdown | CNN Politics — President Joe Biden on Thursday signed the stopgap spending bill into law, averting a shutdown for now and setting up a contentious fight over funding in the new year.The measure, which passed both chambers with bipartisan support in a major victory for House Speaker Mike Johnson, is an unusual two-step plan that sets up two new shutdown deadlines in January and February.The plan is not a full-year spending bill and only extends funding until January 19 for priorities including military construction, veterans’ affairs, transportation, housing and the Energy Department. The rest of the government – anything not covered by the first step – will be funded until February 2.Democrats have once again conceded aid for Ukraine after additional military assistance wasn’t included in the stopgap bill that passed in September. The measure also doesn’t include military support for Israel.While conservatives had initially pushed for a two-step approach, they ultimately opposed the plan as it did not include the deep spending cuts they had demanded. Instead, it extends funding at current levels, which allowed Johnson to get Democrats on board. The measure passed with a vote of 336 to 95 in the House on Tuesday with more Democrats than Republicans voting in support. The Senate passed the bill 87 to 11 on Wednesday.
Biden signs a bill averting a government shutdown for now, with Israel and Ukraine aid still stalled - President Joe Biden signed a temporary spending bill a day before a potential government shutdown, pushing a fight with congressional Republicans over the federal budget into the new year, as wartime aid for Ukraine and Israel remains stalled. The measure passed the House and Senate by wide bipartisan margins this week, ensuring the government remains open until after the holiday season, and potentially giving lawmakers more time to sort out their considerable differences over government spending levels for the current budget year. Biden signed the bill Thursday in San Francisco, where he was hosting the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. News of the signing came late at night. The president signed the bill at the Legion of Honor Museum, where he held a dinner for APEC members. The spending package keeps government funding at current levels for roughly two more months while a long-term package is negotiated. It splits the deadlines for passing full-year appropriations bills into two dates: Jan. 19 for some federal agencies and Feb. 2 for others, creating two dates when there will be a risk of a partial government shutdown. The two-step approach was championed by new House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican, and was not favored by many in the Senate, though all but one Democrat and 10 Republicans supported it because it ensured the government would not shut down for now. Johnson has vowed that he will not support any further stopgap funding measures, known as continuing resolutions. He portrayed the temporary funding bill as setting the ground for a spending "fight" with the Senate next year. The spending bill does not include the White House's nearly $106 billion request for wartime aid for Israel and Ukraine. Nor does it provide humanitarian funding for Palestinians and other supplemental requests, including money for border security. Lawmakers are likely to turn their attention more fully to that request after the Thanksgiving holiday in hopes of negotiating a deal.
Senate blocks House bill to help Israel, cut IRS - The Senate voted along party lines Tuesday to table a motion to proceed on the House-passed bill that would provide $14.3 billion in emergency aid to Israel and pay for it by cutting the Internal Revenue Service’s budget. The vote came after a group of Senate conservatives ambushed Democrats by offering a surprise motion to proceed on the House bill, which Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) had previously called “a total nonstarter.”President Biden also threatened to veto the House bill. The Tuesday afternoon vote ended a tense standoff on the Senate floor during which Democrats suspended business to block Republicans from proceeding to the measure on the same day that tens of thousands of people gathered on the National Mall in Washington to rally for Israel. Senate conservatives including Sens. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) repeatedly requested consent to end a quorum call to move to the bill. Each time, they were met with an objection from Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Patty Murray (D-Wash.). “The quorum call is right now just freezing the floor of the Senate. My assumption is that Chuck Schumer and Democratic leadership is in their office panicking and trying to figure out what to do next. Their objective is to prevent a vote,” Cruz said during the standoff. Murray, however, put an end to it by calling for a vote to table the motion to proceed to the House-passed Israel bill. The Senate then voted 51 to 48 to table it. Democrats would have had to vote on the bill sooner or later because Senate conservatives had collected 16 signatures on a cloture petition to end debate. A Democratic aide said the group of GOP senators had attempted to “usurp” the majority leader’s “prerogative” to control the floor schedule but noted the tactic has been used before. Schumer, a staunch ally of Israel, dismissed the House bill earlier this month as “unserious and woefully inadequate,” pointing out that the Congressional Budget Office estimated it would add $12 billion to the budget deficit.
Biden and Xi will sign a deal to keep AI out of control systems for nuclear weapons: report -- US President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping are set to sign a deal limiting the use of artificial intelligence in nuclear weapon control systems, according to The South China Morning Post. The leaders are due to meet Wednesday at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in San Francisco against a backdrop of increasing tensions between the superpowers. Among the top items on the agenda is the proliferation of AI in military technologies, two sources familiar with the planned discussions told The South China Morning Post.Biden and Xi will pledge a deal limiting the use of AI in autonomous weaponry, such as drones, as well as the systems used for the control and deployment of nuclear warheads, the report said.In recent months tensions between the US and China have increased, with the US military closing down communications with the Chinese military after a spy balloon was shot down off the US coast in February.The powers have also taken opposing sides in the Ukraine conflict, with Xi providing economic and diplomatic support to Russian President Vladimir Putin and the US providing military aid to Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelenskyy.In the war between Israel and Hamas, Beijing has criticized Israel's military campaign in Gaza while the White House has backed it.But at the meeting Wednesday, Biden and Xi are expected to attempt to reduce tensions, with AI use in weapons among the issues where they have common ground.Both countries were signatories of an agreement in the Hague in February endorsing the responsible use of AI in the military, while at a summit in Bletchley Park, UK, earlier in November the nations were among those who agreed to work together to manage the threat posed by the technology.The US and China have been seeking to integrate AI into their militaries for several years, but concern is growing about its use in autonomous weapons systems that can select and engage their own targets.
Biden Has ‘Productive Discussion’ with Xi, Then Slams Chinese Leader as 'Dictator' - Joe Biden met with Chinese President Xi Jinping for talks in San Francisco. Beijing and Washington described the conversation between the leaders as “productive” and important. After the summit, Biden called his Chinese counterpart a “dictator.”During the summit between Biden and Xi, the leaders agreed to resume military-to-military communications once China appoints a new defense minister. The former Chinese defense minister had not spoken with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin because as he was under sanctions by Washington. The leaders also agreed to attempt to curb fentanyl trafficking.Biden described the talks as “some of the most constructive and productive discussions we’ve had.” He added that Xi will be “willing to pick up the phone” in the future. A press release from the Chinese Foreign Ministrysaid the summit was “positive, comprehensive and constructive. It has charted the course for improving and developing China-US relations.” It added, “San Francisco should be a new starting point for stabilizing China-US relations.”Xi told Biden that there are two paths forward for the Washington-Beijing relationship. According to the Foreign Ministry, “Xi noted that China and the US are faced with two options in the era of global transformations unseen in a century:” The press release continues, “One is to enhance solidarity and cooperation and join hands to meet global challenges and promote global security and prosperity; and the other is to cling to the zero-sum mentality, provoke rivalry and confrontation, and drive the world toward turmoil and division.”The release added, “The two choices point to two different directions that will decide the future of humanity and Planet Earth.” Both Biden and Xi acknowledged that the US-Chinese relationship is the most important on the planet.While Biden focused on increasing communications and curbing fentanyl trafficking, Xi stressed to the American president the importance of the Taiwan issue. In the Foreign Ministry release, Xi explained “China’s principled position on the Taiwan question. [Xi] pointed out that the Taiwan question remains the most important and most sensitive issue in China-US relations. The US side should take real actions to honor its commitment of not supporting ‘Taiwan independence’, stop arming Taiwan, and support China’s peaceful reunification. China will realize reunification, and this is unstoppable.”Since taking office, Biden has increased US ties with Taiwan. Biden has deployed US soldiers to the island and increased weapons sales to Taipei. In an overture to show Beijing’s commitment to a new relationship moving forward, Xi said China would send more pandas to the US. Beijing views the Giant Panda as China’s national symbol and works to ensure Pandas in captivity are healthy. Xi said the Pandas will “deepen the friendly ties between our two peoples.” In a press conference after the summit, Biden slammed the Chinese president as a “dictator.” In response to a reporter asking the president if he thought his Chinese counterpart was a dictator, Biden said of Xi, “I mean, he’s a dictator in the sense that he is a guy who runs a country that is a communist country that is based on a form of government totally different than ours.” He continued, “Anyway, we made progress.” Video of Secretary of State Antony Blinken shows America’s top diplomat wincing as Biden made the blunder. Beijing said that the description of Xi as a dictator was incorrect, but attempted to downplay the incident. Mao Ning, a Chinese government spokeswoman, said China “strongly opposes” the “dictator” accusation. She added, “It should be pointed out that there will always be some people with ulterior motives who attempt to incite and damage US-China relations, they are doomed to fail.”
DeSantis accuses executives of ’empowering an adversary’ by meeting with Xi -- Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) went after tech executives on Friday, saying they were “empowering an adversary” by attending a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping during his San Francisco visit this week.“You have this meeting where American CEOs are just basically groveling in front of this dictator,” DeSantis said at a campaign event Friday. “Those guys make money on Wall Street and stuff, but they are empowering an adversary at the expense of the wellbeing of the American people.” Xi also met with President Biden and Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) during the visit.The meeting with tech leaders Thursday featured a standing ovation from the San Francisco crowd, with Xi’s speech appearing to open the door to more economic cooperation with the U.S.“China has no intention to challenge the United States or unseat it,” he said, according to The Associated Press translation. “Likewise, the United States should not bet against China, or interfere in China’s internal affairs.”Attending executives included Apple CEO Tim Cook, Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman and leaders from Pfizer, FedEx, Boeing and KKR, according to The Wall Street Journal. Tesla owner Elon Musk was at the VIP reception but did not stay for the dinner, according to CNBC, citing event organizers. The event also brought Silicon Valley under fire from Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) as well as The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board on Friday.The Journal said the business leaders were “kowtowing” to Xi at a meeting which “delivered China a propaganda coup and the CEOs an embarrassment.”“It’s a safe bet Mr. Xi hoped to create an appearance that American business is on his side lobbying against a firmer line on China policy in Washington,” the board said.“All of this will hurt their image in the U.S., especially among those on the political right who are increasingly skeptical of big business but whom business needs to fend off regulatory and tax assaults from the political left,” they continued. “Shareholders might ask whether cozying up to Mr. Xi really serves their interests.”
Biden, Mexican president engage in broad discussion - President Biden and Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador met as scheduled Friday on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit. The two leaders had a wide-ranging discussion, including on bilateral commerce, the illicit drug trade, migration and North American economic cooperation. Biden highlighted unity between the two North American countries, which have the largest country-to-country trade relationship in the world, but also share a complex and politicized border. But the two presidents engaged in serious discussions, particularly on migration and fentanyl, two issues that will affect presidential races in both countries in 2024. According to senior administration officials, the two also discussed democratic backsliding in Guatemala, where the sitting attorney general is aggressively persecuting allies of President-elect Bernardo Arévalo, due to take office early next year. “They talked about the concerning signals coming out of Guatemala with efforts to really undermine the ability of President-elect Arévalo to be inaugurated next year due to some of the attacks that the public ministry and the corrupt attorney general of Guatemala has been undertaking to try to subvert the will of the Guatemalan people,” said the official. They also discussed Venezuela and Cuba, a priority for López Obrador, who has expressed willingness to serve as an intermediary between the U.S. government and the communist island. The focus on regional and global affairs belies Biden’s need to keep López Obrador as an ally, as Mexico’s collaboration on fentanyl trafficking and migration could make or break Biden’s reelection chances. López Obrador is not facing reelection, but he has a strong interest in his governing party keeping power in next June’s elections. While Biden and López Obrador talked about upholding democratic norms in third countries, Biden did not address democratic concerns about Mexico, instead commenting on the need to combat corruption, according to a senior administration official
Hamas Didn’t Attack Israelis Because They Are Jewish - I had just returned from a Jewish gathering calling for a ceasefire in Gaza when I received a startling text from a dear friend, Elena: it has taken much disciplined work as an adult to open my eyes to the oppressive colonial reality that Israel inflicts on Palestinians. But October 7 activated my lizard brain and all my disciplined analysis was cut short by a primal fear. I think I’m coming back around. In all my urgency, I’d neglected the core thing that needed tending to in my Jewish community: the assumption that Hamas’ attacks on October 7 were an expression of antisemitism, and thus, a threat to all of us. Much of my family was killed in the Holocaust. On my grandparents’ wedding night, Hitler invaded their home country of Belgium. I grew up hearing my grandmother’s stories of narrowly escaping death at every turn, the wails of Jewish mothers over their dead children, fields of lifeless bodies. My grandparents arrived at Ellis Island traumatized by the unfathomable murder of their families in the gas chambers of Auschwitz while the world let it happen. So I can understand why many of my fellow Jewish Americans’ limbic systems were triggered on October 7, especially in a world where antisemitism still very much exists, particularly in the context of white nationalism. A world where we are told the same story that Elena was, and where Palestinians are demonized to legitimize that story. Let me be clear: Hamas’ killings of Israeli civilians were wrong, in clear violation of international law. But they weren’t about antisemitism. The key thing to understand is that, in Israel/Palestine, unlike anywhere else in the world, Jewish people—specifically white Ashkenazi Jews—are the ones in power. Jewish Israelis are the occupiers and Palestinians are the occupied. When I spent eight months in the West Bank documenting human rights abuses, I saw the way Israel controls every aspect of Palestinian life, separating Palestinians from their schools and hospitals; torching their olive groves; demolishing their homes;imprisoning them without trial; discriminating against Palestinian citizens of Israel; and bringing about the slow, sometimes quick, death of Palestinians in Gaza by cutting them off from the outside world, putting them on a collective “diet,” and periodically bombing civilian infrastructure, homes, and families.Palestinians, of course, do not care what religion their occupiers are. Like all occupied people, they will resist whoever is occupying them. My mother’s cousin Marc, in the Belgian Resistance, did not stab a German soldier because the soldier was Christian. The very idea is ludicrous. We need a basic analysis of power and history to understand that Hamas’ attacks on Israeli civilians, while egregious, had nothing to do with those Israelis’ religion and everything to do with occupation and settler colonialism.Hamas says as much in their perennially misquoted 2017 charter, which mentions Jews in one section: Hamas affirms that its conflict is with the Zionist project not with the Jews because of their religion. Hamas does not wage a struggle against the Jews because they are Jewish but wages a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine. Yet, it is the Zionists who constantly identify Judaism and the Jews with their own colonial project and illegal entity.Hamas rejects the persecution of any human being or the undermining of his or her rights on nationalist, religious, or sectarian grounds… antisemitism and the persecution of the Jews are phenomena fundamentally linked to European history and not to the history of the Arabs and the Muslims or to their heritage...Today, President Biden’s refrain, “[October 7] was the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust,” while numerically true, is being promoted in a way that implies that the Jews killed on October 7 were killed because they were Jewish. This distortion serves a specific political agenda with disastrous consequences. I do not believe that U.S. support for Israel is driven by concern for Jewish safety; it is driven by U.S. imperial interests. Antisemitism is real, anti-Arab racism is real, and right now, two historically oppressed groups are being pitted against each other in service of white supremacy and colonialism. And misrepresentations of antisemitism are performing the central function of stopping well-intentioned people—Jews and non-Jews alike—from rising to the immense urgency of this moment to stop genocide and resist U.S. imperialism.There is no time for confusion. We must get clear that Israel’s wiping out of entire families in Gaza is not simply revenge for October 7; Israel is continuing its long-existing practice of forcing Palestinians out of Palestine and closing the door behind them. Today’s events have given Israel the green light to accelerate its 75-year campaign of securing maximum land with minimum Palestinians. Top Israeli officials have long asserted Jewish people’s exclusive claim to all of historic Palestine, some calling for the erasure and wiping out of all Palestinians, with little Western outcry.
Jake Sullivan Says Israel Should Follow 'Rules of War' But Won't Judge If They Are - National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said Sunday that Israel should follow the “rules of war” in Gaza but would not say if he believed the Israeli military is doing so.Sullivan made the comments on CNN’s “State of the Union” when he was asked if Israel needed to do more to limit civilian casualties.He said Israel has a responsibility to “operate according to the rules of war, and we have continued to make that point both publicly and privately, and we will continue to do so as we go forward.”But when asked if Israel is following the rules of war, Sullivan replied, “I’m not going to sit here and play judge or jury on that question.”Sullivan and other Biden administration officials have paid lip service to the idea of pressuring Israel to limit civilian casualties, but the US is still providing unconditional military aid and other types of support for Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza, which has killed at least over 11,000 Palestinians, including over 4,500 children.Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Friday that “far too many”Palestinians have been killed in the war but did not signal any changes to the US policy of full-throated support for the Israeli operation.According to a recent report from The Washington Post, the US is not conditioning military aid or using other leverage it has over Israel because it “would be so politically unpopular in any administration and partly because, aides say, Biden himself has a personal attachment to Israel.”
Internal State Department Memo Says US Is Supporting Israeli War Crimes - A State Department dissent memo obtained by Axios slams President Biden’s support for Israel’s war in Gaza, saying the US is backing Israeli “war crimes.” The memo says Israel’s actions “all constitute war crimes and/or crimes against humanity under international law” and criticizes the US for doubling “down on our unwavering military assistance to the (Israeli government) without clear or actionable redlines.” President Biden was targeted in the memo for “spreading misinformation” and “questioning the number of deaths” coming from Gaza’s Health Ministry. Since Biden accused the Palestinians of lying about the death toll, a senior State Department official said the number is actually likely higher than what’s being reported. “Members of the White House and (the National Security Council) displayed a clear disregard for the lives of Palestinians, a documented unwillingness to de-escalate, and, even prior to October 7, a reckless lack of strategic foresight,” the memo reads. The memo was submitted to the State Department on November 3 through the dissent channel that was established during the Vietnam War to give diplomats a way to criticize policy. It’s the latest sign of the significant opposition to Biden’s full-throated support for Israel within the State Department. Last week, POLITICO reported on a separate dissent memo that called for the US to push for a ceasefire and for Biden administration officials to publicly criticize Israel’s tactics. HuffPost reported earlier that a “mutiny” was brewing within the State Department.
Aid Groups Urge Pentagon Not to Supply Israel With 155mm Artillery Rounds - A group of US-based aid, advocacy, and religious groups sent a letter to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin urging the Pentagon to scrap plans to provide Israel with 155mm artillery rounds due to the massive civilian casualty rate in Israel’s war on Gaza.The Pentagon plans to give the Israeli military access to 155mm artillery shells the US has in a special stockpile located in Israel. The US has recently dipped into the stash to support its proxy war in Ukraine, and according to a recent report from Axios, the US is now diverting shells initially bound for Ukraine to replenish the stockpile.“Under the current circumstances, granting the government of Israel access to these munitions would undermine the protection of civilians, respect for international humanitarian law [IHL], and the credibility of the Biden administration,” the groups wrote in the letter, which was obtained by The Washington Post. “Simply put, it is difficult to imagine a scenario in which high explosive 155mm artillery shells could be used in Gaza in compliance with IHL.”Since the October 7 H amas attack on southern Israel, the US has been rushing weapons shipments to Israel to back its assault on Gaza. The Pentagon has said it’s sending arms on a near-daily basis, but the US won’t detail what it’s providing Israel.NBC News reported last month that the weapons shipments have included interceptors for the Iron Dome air defense, JDAM conversion kits to turn “dumb” bombs into precision-guided munitions, other types of munitions, and cluster bombs, which are notorious for killing civilians.The NBC report said the cluster bombs the US was providing were dual-purpose improved conventional munitions (DPICM), which have a 155mm artillery shell variant. The US has shipped 155mm DPICM cluster bombs to Ukraine despite the massive risk to civilians.Cluster bombs are so hazardous to civilians because they spread small submunitions over large areas, and many don’t explode on impact, leaving them to be found years or even decades later by civilians. Because of their indiscriminate nature, cluster munitions have been banned by over 100 nations, but the US is not a signatory to the treaty.
Report Details Arms the US Has Shipped to Israel to Support Gaza Onslaught - A report from Bloomberg published on Tuesday detailed some of the weapons the US has shipped to Israel to support its onslaught in Gaza.The Pentagon has refused to detail the arms it has been providing Israel since October 7. The only weapons shipments that have been publicized were interceptors for the Iron Dome air defense system and small-diameter bombs.According to the Bloomberg report, other weapons the US has been delivering include Hellfire missiles and 30mm ammunitions for Apache helicopters, M141 shoulder-fired bunker-busting bombs, 155mm artillery shells, army vehicles, and night vision equipment.NBC News reported last month that the US sent cluster bombs, which are notorious for killing civilians. The report said the US provided dual-purpose improved conventional munitions (DPICM) cluster bombs, which have a 155mm variant, although there have been no reports of Israel using cluster munitions in Gaza.A Pentagon spokesman declined to discuss details with Bloomberg about the weapons shipments but said the US was “leveraging several avenues — from internal stocks to US industry channels – to ensure Israel has the means to defend itself.”The spokesman added that the “security assistance continues to arrive on a near-daily basis.” It’s unclear where the funds for the daily weapons deliveries are coming from as Congress has yet to authorize the additional $14 billion for Israel that President Biden is seeking. The military support for Israel comes with no conditions or limits despite the brutality of Israel’s campaign in Gaza, which even the White House acknowledged has killed “many, many thousands of innocent people.”
US Tries to Deflect Blame for Israel's Raid of al-Shifa Hospital - The White House on Wednesday said it did not “OK” Israel’s military raid of al-Shifa hospital in northern Gaza in an attempt to deflect responsibility for the attack.Just hours before Israel launched the raid, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby backed Israel’s claim that Hamas had a command center under the hospital without providing any evidence.Hamas released a statement that said President Biden was “fully responsible” for the Israeli raid on the hospital, pointing to the intelligence claim. “The White House and the Pentagon’s adoption of the false narrative, claiming that the resistance is using al-Shifa medical complex for military purposes, was a green light for the occupation to commit more massacres against civilians,” Hamas said.Despite the unconditional military support for Israel’s war, which includes near-daily weapons shipments, Kirby denied that the US was responsible for the raid. “My delivery of some downgraded information yesterday, that, the timing of that really came after work by the intelligence community to prepare that information for downgrade. It has nothing to do with any operational timing or any decision-making by the Israeli Defense Forces,” Kirby said. “We did not give an OK to the military operations around the hospital in similar fashion to the fact that we didn’t, you know, we don’t give OKs to their other tactical operations. These are Israeli military operations that they plan and they execute on, you know, in accordance with their own established procedures that the United States is not, was not involved in,” he added. Kirby claimed that the hospital attack was “not a focus” of a call President Biden held with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday night. He again backed the Israeli narrative about the hospital, saying the US was “comfortable with our own intelligence assessment about the degree to which Hamas was and is using Al Shifa Hospital as a commanding control node, as a storage facility underneath.”There is a significant underground basement underneath al-Shifa that was actually built by Israel as part of an expansion project in the 1980s when it ruled the Gaza Strip. Israeli media reports have previously claimed that Hamas connected its tunnels to the bunker. So far, Israel has failed to produce evidence to back its claim that Hamas has a command center under the hospital. The Israeli military presented a photo of weapons it claimed to have found at the hospital, which showed only 10 rifles, a few magazines, and military vests, nothing indicating a significant command center. The IDF also published a video on X showing a spokesman walking through part of the hospital and showing guns and other equipment. The video was later deleted, and a new edited version was then posted.Al-Shifa is still full of hundreds of patients who doctors are warning will continue to die due to the lack of power and other desperately needed resources. Among the patients are dozens of newborn and premature babies who were removed from incubators when the power went out over the weekend. At least three of the babies have died.
Ilhan Omar to Introduce Bill to Block Weapons Transfer to Israel - Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) is expected this week to introduce a bill to block an arms transfer to Israel, which will mark the first piece of legislation aimed at reining in President Biden’s strong support of Israel’s brutal war on Gaza.The bill will target a planned $320 million transfer of Spice Family Gliding Bomb Assemblies, kits that turn unguided bombs into precision-guided munitions. The Biden administration notified congressional leaders on October 31 that it intended to go through with the transfer amid Israel’s onslaught on Gaza.Omar’s plans were first reported by HuffPost, which said the bill will likely be introduced by Wednesday. A source told HuffPost that the legislation will likely be co-sponsored by a group of Democrats.The bill will be a “resolution of disapproval” that would block the transfer if approved by both the House and the Senate, but it’s not expected to pass due to strong bipartisan support for Israel’s war. The legislation also needs to make it through the Republican-led House Foreign Affairs Committee before being brought to the floor of the House for a vote.According to CNN, the $320 million transfer of the bomb kits, known as Spice Family Gliding Bomb Assemblies, is part of an arms sale that was previously approved. It’s unclear if the kits were purchased by Israel using military aid that the US provides each year.Israel receives $3.8 billion from the US in military aid annually, including$3.3 billion in the form of Foreign Military Financing, a State Department program that gives foreign governments money to buy US arms. The Biden administration is looking for another $14 billion in spending to support the Israeli onslaught on Gaza.
Poll: Majority of Americans Support a Ceasefire in Gaza - A new poll from Reuters/Ipsos found that the majority of Americans support the idea of a ceasefire in Gaza, a position that has been rejected by the Biden administration.About 68% of respondents agreed with the statement “Israel should call a ceasefire and try to negotiate,” including three-quarters of Democrats and half of Republicans.The poll is the second in recent weeks to show the majority of Americans support a Gaza ceasefire. A poll published by Data for Progress on October 20 found that 66% of respondents agreed with the idea of the US calling for a ceasefire and using its leverage to prevent further violence.The Biden administration has called for “pauses” in the fighting but has refused to use the term ceasefire as it’s determined to continue backing Israel’s brutal assault, which is currently focused on Gaza’s biggest hospital.The Reuters/Ipsos poll also showed a general decline in US public support for Israel. Just 31% of poll respondents said they supported sending Israel weapons, while 43% opposed the idea.Only 32% of respondents said the US should support Israel, compared with 41% in a poll that was conducted in October. The plurality of Americans, 39%, support the idea of the US being a neutral mediator in the conflict.
Report: US Concerned Israel Is Trying to Provoke Wider Lebanon War -Some members of the Biden administration are concerned that Israel is looking to provoke Hezbollah as a pretext for a wider war in Lebanon that could draw in the US, Axios reported on Sunday.Since the October 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel, Hezbollah and Israel have been fighting across the Lebanon-Israel border, including a November 5 Israeli airstrike that killed a woman and three children. The skirmishes have killed over 60 Hezbollah fighters, several Lebanese civilians, and about 10 Israeli soldiers and civilians.The Axios report said Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin “expressed concern” about the fighting on the border in a Saturday call with his Israeli counterpart, Yoav Gallant. The White House requested Austin relay the message due to “growing anxiety” that Israel’s military action is exacerbating tensions on the border.The Pentagon’s readout of the call said Austin “emphasized the need to contain the conflict to Gaza and avoid regional escalation,” but it did not specifically mention Lebanon. Sources told Axios Austin asked for clarification about Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon and asked what steps would be taken to avoid a regional war.While expressing concern about escalation, the US has emboldened Israel to be aggressive by deploying an enormous amount of firepower to the region in the name of protecting Israel. The US also intervened directly to intercept missiles and drones in the Red Sea that were fired toward Israel by the Houthis in Yemen.The US has issued warnings to Hezbollah, the implied threat being that the US could intervene directly against them if the situation escalates into a full-blown war. According to Axios, President Biden’s energy envoy, Amos Hochstein, delivered a “strong warning” to Hezbollah through the speaker of Lebanon’s parliament when he visited the country last week.
US Carries Out Another Round of Airstrikes in Eastern Syria - The Pentagon announced on Sunday night that it launched another round of airstrikes in eastern Syria, targeting facilities “used by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Iran-affiliated groups,” referring to the Shia militias that operate in the region.The strikes mark the third known round of US airstrikes in eastern Syria since US troops in the region have come under a spate of attacks due to President Biden’s full-throated support of Israel’s onslaught on Gaza. The Pentagon said Saturday that US bases have been targeted 48 times since October 17, leaving 56 American troops injured.Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said the airstrikes launched on Sunday specifically targeted “a training facility and a safe house near the cities of Abu Kamal and Mayadin,” which are both located in eastern Syria’s Deir Ezzor province.The last round of US airstrikes in eastern Syria took place on November 8, and before that was October 27. One purpose of the strikes was to “deter” further attacks, but US officials have acknowledged that strategy has failed, as the Shia militias are not backing down.An umbrella group known as the Islamic Resistance of Iraq has taken credit for many of the attacks on US troops, and leaders of some of the Shia militias have vowed they won’t stop until there’s a durable ceasefire in Gaza. The US airstrikes on alleged IRGC sites also risk a major escalation with Iran if any Iranian personnel are killed. Iran has denied it is involved in the attacks on US forces in the region. The US says Tehran bears ultimate responsibility since it supports many of the Shia militias, but the Pentagon has previously acknowledged it has no evidence Iran is directing the operations.
US Official Says Up To Seven Killed in Latest US Airstrike in Eastern Syria - A US official told Reuters on Tuesday that up to seven people were killed in the US airstrikes in eastern Syria on Sunday that targeted Shia militias.If confirmed, the casualties are the first known deaths since the Biden administration began launching airstrikes in eastern Syria as US troops in the region have come under a spate of attacks due to US support of Israel’s onslaught on Gaza.The Pentagon said Tuesday that it’s still assessing the aftermath of the airstrikes. “We are aware that there were IRGC-affiliated members in the proximity of the facilities that were struck by our aircraft. But I don’t have more on casualty numbers or anything else to read out,” said Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh.Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said the strikes targeted facilities “used by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Iran-affiliated groups” at two sites in eastern Syria’s Deir Ezzor province.The US official speaking to Reuters did not share any details about the people who were killed. The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights previously said that eight people were killed in the strikes and described them as “pro-Iran fighters,” including at least one Syrian and Iraqi nationals, but the SOHR report has not been confirmed.Attacks on US bases in Iraq and Syria have continued since the airstrikes were launched on Sunday, as Shia militia leaders have warned they’re not backing down until there’s a durable ceasefire in Gaza.The Pentagon said on Tuesday that the total number of attacks on US bases in Syria and Iraq since October 17 has climbed to 56. At least 59 US troops have been injured, including 32 listed with “non-serious” injuries and 27 suffering from traumatic brain injuries.
At Least Four More Attacks on US Forces Since Latest US Airstrikes in Syria - US troops based in Syria have come under attack at least four times since the latest US airstrikes in eastern Syria were launched on Sunday, Task & Purpose reported on Monday.The Pentagon announced Sunday that it launched strikes against facilities “used by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Iran-affiliated groups” in eastern Syria’s Deir Ezzor province. It marked the third round of US airstrikes since US troops in Iraq and Syria have come under a spate of attacks in response to President Biden’s backing of Israel’s war in Gaza.A Pentagon official told Task & Purpose that US forces in Syria came under attack three times on Sunday after the US airstrikes and one time on Monday. The White House has said one purpose of its airstrikes is to “deter” further attacks on US troops, but it’s clear the strategy has failed.The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it recorded six attacks on US forces on Monday alone, but the report is not confirmed. The four incidents confirmed by the US official brings the total number of attacks on US bases in Iraq and Syria since October 17 to 52. The Pentagon has said at least 56 US troops have been wounded.An umbrella group of Shia militias known as the Islamic Resistance of Iraq has taken credit for most attacks on US forces. Militia leaders have said they won’t back down unless Israel’s onslaught on Gaza comes to an end. Iran supports the Shia militias that operate in the region but denies any role in the attacks on US forces.The US has about 2,500 troops in Iraq and 900 in Syria, where it backs the Kurdish-led SDF. The occupation of eastern Syria is opposed by the government in Damascus, and the continued US military presence in Iraq is opposed by many elements in Iraqi politics.After the US launched a drone strike in January 2020 that killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani and Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis in Baghdad, Iraq’s parliament voted to expel US troops, but the US refused to leave. In an effort to placate anti-US factions, the US formally changed its presence in Iraq from a combat role to an advisory role in December 2021 but did not withdraw any troops.
US To Sanction Shippers of Russian Oil Over Price Cap Violations - On Thursday, the US Treasury Department imposed a set of new sanctions on ships and companies accused of using American service providers to ship Russian crude oil above the $60 price cap. The cap, imposed by the US and the Group of Seven (G7) nations in late 2022, was meant to deprive the Kremlin of funds for its war effort, but that strategy has failed.Three firms based in the United Arab Emirates and three ships wereblacklisted from transferring oil and other products with US service providers. Last month, the Treasury issued its first sanctions over violations of the Russian oil price cap and notified shipping management firms in more than 30 countries that Washington is seeking information regarding 100 vessels it believes are dodging sanctions.“We are committed to maintaining market stability in spite of Russia’s war against Ukraine, while cutting into the profits the Kremlin is using to fund its illegal war and remaining unyielding in our pursuit of those facilitating evasion of the price cap,” boasted Wally Adeymo, the deputy secretary of the Treasury. It’s been almost a year since the price cap was implemented and Moscow has seen an “almost complete export volume recovery” in oil, Chris Weafer, the chief executive officer of strategic consultants Marco-Advisory Ltd,told Newsweek.He continued, highlighting that Russia shipped 3.5 million barrels of crude per day last month via tankers, along with 1.2 million barrels through the East Siberia pipeline. In August, Russia was selling oil at an average price of $74 per barrel. Weafer also notes Russia has seen further gains as a result of the Brent crude price increasing from $70 to $95 per barrel between July and September.In response to the sanctions and the price cap, the Kremlin continued looking east and selling its oil to non-sanctioning countries. Last year, Moscow became the top crude supplier to India and China. Russia has also been using a “shadow fleet” of vessels to circumvent the Western economic penalties.Weafer says Washington and the G7 expected to be dealing with the “old tanker market structure… [assuming Russia would be using a] few very big tanker operators with large fleets that would have been easy to monitor and enforce.”However, he says, “what has emerged is a greatly dispersed fleet ownership with the flexibility to disappear and reappear with a new name faster than the G7/EU can catch them.”At any rate, Washington and NATO’s proxy war with Russia in Ukraine has been a disaster. As EUROCOM chief General Christopher Cavoli explained to Congress earlier this year, Russia’s navy and air force have taken negligible losses and its ground forces are “bigger today” than when the war began. The Pentagon is depleting its own weapons stocks to support Kyiv’s failing war effort, while Russia’s capacity to produce armor and ammo hasoutstripped the entire NATO alliance.Ukraine has lost 20% of its country, the Kremlin gained more territory than Kyiv this year, and Ukrainian forces are estimated to have suffered tens of thousands of casualties during recent months. Despite all this, the White House is still seeking roughly $60 billion from Congress to continue funding the war through next year’s presidential election. In September Russia’s Finance Ministry published a document explaining that Moscow will ramp up defense spending by 68% to 10.8 trillion rubles ($111.15 billion) next year.
The Pentagon Proclaims Failure in its War on Terror in Africa - The U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq opened to military successes in 2001and 2003 that quickly devolved into sputtering occupations. In both countries, Washington’s plans hinged on its ability to create national armies that could assist and eventually take over the fight against enemy forces. Both U.S.-created militaries would, in the end, crumble. In Africa, the U.S. launched a parallel campaign in the early 2000s, supporting and training African troops from Mali in the west to Somalia in the east and creating proxy forces that would fight alongside American commandos. To carry out its missions, the U.S. military set up a network of outposts across the northern tier of the continent, including significant drone bases – from Camp Lemonnier and its satellite outpost Chabelley Airfield in the sun-bleached nation of Djibouti to Air Base 201 in Agadez, Niger – and tiny facilities with small contingents of American special operations troops in nations ranging from Libya and Niger to the Central African Republic and South Sudan.For almost a decade, Washington’s war in Africa stayed largely under wraps. Then came a decision that sent Libya and the vast Sahel region into a tailspin from which they have never recovered. “We came, we saw, he died,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton joked after a U.S.-led NATO air campaign helped overthrow Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi, the longtime Libyan dictator, in 2011. President Barack Obama hailed the intervention as a success, but Libya slipped into near-failed-state status. Obama would later admit that “failing to plan for the day after” Qaddafi’s defeat was the “worst mistake” of his presidency.As the Libyan leader fell, Tuareg fighters in his service looted his regime’s weapons caches, returned to their native Mali, and began to take over the northern part of that nation. Anger in Mali’s armed forces over the government’s ineffective response resulted in a 2012 military coup. It was led by Amadou Sanogo, an officer who learned English in Texas and underwent infantry-officer basic training in Georgia, military-intelligence instruction in Arizona, and was mentored by U.S. Marines in Virginia.Having overthrown Mali’s democratic government, Sanogo and his junta proved hapless in battling terrorists. With the country in turmoil, those Tuareg fighters declared an independent state, only to be muscled aside by heavily armed Islamists who instituted a harsh brand of Shariah law, causing a humanitarian crisis. A joint Franco-American-African mission prevented Mali’s complete collapse but pushed the militants into areas near the borders of both Burkina Faso and Niger.Since then, those nations of the West African Sahel have been plagued by terrorist groups that have evolved, splintered, and reconstituted themselves. Under the black banners of jihadist militancy, men on motorcycles – two to a bike, wearing sunglasses and turbans, and armed with Kalashnikovs – regularly roar into villages to impose zakat (an Islamic tax); steal animals; and terrorize, assault, and kill civilians. Such relentless attacks have destabilized Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger and are now affecting their southern neighbors along the Gulf of Guinea. Violence in Togo and Benin has, for example, jumped 633% and 718% over the last year, according to the Pentagon.U.S.-trained militaries in the region have been unable to stop the onslaught and civilians have suffered horrifically. During 2002 and 2003, terrorists caused just 23 casualties in Africa. This year, according to the Pentagon, terrorist attacks in the Sahel region alone have resulted in 9,818 deaths – a 42,500% increase.At the same time, during their counterterrorism campaigns, America’s military partners in the region have committed gross atrocities of their own, including extrajudicial killings. In 2020, for example, a top political leader in Burkina Faso admitted that his country’s security forces were carrying out targeted executions. “We’re doing this, but we’re not shouting it from the rooftops,” he told me, noting that such murders were good for military morale. American-mentored military personnel in that region have had only one type of demonstrable “success”: overthrowing governments the United States trained them to protect. At least 15 officers who benefited from such assistance have been involved in 12 coups in West Africa and the greater Sahel during the war on terror. The list includes officers from Burkina Faso (2014, 2015, and twice in 2022); Chad (2021); Gambia (2014); Guinea (2021); Mali (2012, 2020, and 2021); Mauritania (2008); and Niger (2023). At leastfive leaders of a July coup in Niger, for example, received American assistance, according to a U.S. official. They, in turn, appointed five U.S.-trained members of the Nigerien security forces to serve as that country’s governors.Military coups of that sort have even super-charged atrocities while undermining American aims, yet the United States continues to provide such regimes with counterterrorism support. Take Colonel Assimi Goïta, who worked with U.S. Special Operations forces, participated in U.S. training exercises, and attended the Joint Special Operations University in Florida before overthrowing Mali’s government in 2020. Goïta then took the job of vice president in a transitional government officially charged with returning the country to civilian rule, only to seize power again in 2021.That same year, his junta reportedly authorized the deployment of the Russia-linked Wagner mercenary forces to fight Islamist militants after close to two decades of failed Western-backed counterterrorism efforts. Since then, Wagner – a paramilitary group founded by the late Yevgeny Prigozhin, a former hot-dog vendor turned warlord – has been implicated in hundreds of human rights abuses alongside the longtime U.S.-backed Malian military, including a 2022 massacre that killed 500 civilians.Despite all of this, American military aid for Mali has never ended. While Goïta’s 2020 and 2021 coups triggered prohibitions on some forms of U.S. security assistance, American tax dollars have continued to fund his forces.According to the State Department, the U.S. provided more than $16 million in security aid to Mali in 2020 and almost $5 million in 2021. As of July, the department’s Bureau of Counterterrorism was waiting on congressional approval to transfer an additional $2 million to Mali. (The State Department did not reply to TomDispatch’s request for an update on the status of that funding.)
Pentagon fails sixth audit in a row -The Pentagon has failed its annual audit for the sixth year in a row, according to the Defense Department’s chief financial officer. Out of 29 individual sub-audits of the department, only seven passed this year, the same as the year prior, Comptroller Mike McCord told reporters Wednesday. One other received a “qualified” rating — a step down from passing — while three are ongoing and 18 were given failing grades, with no fraud found, he said. All sub-audits are required to pass for the overall audit to be approved. McCord said that while “things are showing progress,” overall “it’s not enough.” Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin “feels we need to be doing better at this and moving faster,” but a successful audit is still years away, he added. Federal law since the early 1990s requires mandatory audits for all government agencies. The Pentagon didn’t begin auditing itself until 2018 and has only had incremental improvement yearly. This time around, 1,600 auditors combed through DOD’s $3.8 trillion in assets and $4 trillion in liabilities, conducting some 700 site visits. They found that half of DOD’s assets can’t be accounted for. The auditing process is difficult for the Pentagon due to the sheer size and scope of the department. The Department of Defense makes up for more than half of the U.S. discretionary spending and its assets range vastly, covering personnel, supplies, bases and weapons. McCord last year admitted that each audit “is getting a little harder” due to “much of the lower hanging fruit having been picked,” meaning simpler issues have already been fixed. Lawmakers have taken note of the trend of failed audits, and earlier this year a bipartisan group of senators introduced legislation to ensure DOD passes a clean audit next year. The bill follows repeated concerns from Congress about fraud, waste and abuse in the Pentagon.
Senate panel will move resolution Tuesday to break Tuberville’s hold on military nominees - Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) announced Monday that the Senate Rules Committee will mark up a resolution Tuesday to confirm more than 350 nonpolitical military promotions at once, circumventing a hold that Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R) has had in place for nine months to protest the Pentagon’s abortion policy. The Democratic leader said once the Rules Committee approves the measure, he will bring it to the Senate floor for a vote “as soon as possible.” “I know some Republicans have been trying to work with Sen. Tuberville over the past week to find some last-ditch solution but he seems to remain ironclad in his stubbornness. So tomorrow the Senate Rules Committee, led by Sen. [Amy] Klobuchar [D-Minn.], will mark up a resolution allowing the Senate to quickly confirm the promotions currently blocked by Tuberville,” Schumer told colleagues. He thanked Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Jack Reed (D-R.I.) for working on the resolution and expressed hope that it will pick up the nine Republican votes needed to pass the Senate. “If Sen. Tuberville continues his blanket holds on military nominations, if he won’t even listen to members of his own side of the aisle, I will bring Sen. Reed’s resolution to the floor for a vote as soon as possible. That way, we can end Sen. Tuberville’s farce and quickly confirm the over 350 military promotions,” Schumer said. “We can finally move them to their rightful promotions,” he said. It remains an open question, however, whether Schumer will get enough Republican support for the standing order resolution, which would change Senate procedure for confirming nonpolitical military promotions for the rest of the 118th Congress. Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) last week called on Senate GOP leaders to support Tuberville and warned it would be a “mistake” to support the Democratic resolution to allow more than 300 promotions to be confirmed in one batch. The standing order resolution, if passed, would not apply to top-level commanders such as members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff or candidates nominated to lead a combatant command.
White House blasts Elon Musk’s ‘unacceptable’ antisemitic tweet -- The White House on Friday criticized tech billionaire Elon Musk for engaging with an antisemitic social media post this week and calling it the “absolute truth.” “It is unacceptable to repeat the hideous lie behind the most fatal act of Antisemitism in American history at any time, let alone one month after the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement. The antisemitic post Musk appeared to endorse came in response to a user on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, who expressed concern about rising antisemitism. The user posted, “To the cowards hiding behind the anonymity of the internet and posting ‘Hitler was right’: You got something you want to say?” Another user responded, “Okay. Jewish [communities] have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them.” Musk replied to that post: “You have said the actual truth.” Bates said the White House will continue to condemn antisemitism, which has been on the rise since the war between Israel and Hamas that was spawned in the wake of the surprise Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
9/11 families call out TikTok over Osama bin Laden trend - A 9/11 families group called out TikTok on Friday over a letter by Osama bin Laden that has recently gone viral. “No American should ever not know Osama bin Laden was a terrorist who helped mastermind the murder of nearly 3,000 innocent Americans on September 11, 2001,” Terry Strada, National Chair of 9/11 Families United, said in a statement. “These Americans were our husbands, wives, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, sons, and daughters,” the statement continued. “It is appalling to witness younger Americans voicing sympathy for bin Laden’s dangerous and antisemitic worldview 22 years after our nation was horrifically attacked and our loved ones were callously murdered by Islamists who were financially supported by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and at Osama bin Laden’s direction.” The group, 9/11 Families United, says it is “a coalition of families and survivors of the worst-ever terrorist attacks on American soil” on its website. Bin Laden’s 2002 “Letter to America,” which was published nearly a year after the 9/11 attacks, has recently made its rounds online. The letter attempted to justify the killing and targeting of American civilians. Bin Laden was killed in 2011 by U.S. Special Forces. Many videos showed support for the al Qaeda leader’s argument and suggested to others that they read the letter in light of the U.S.’s backing of Israel in its war against the militant Palestinian group Hamas. “Content promoting this letter clearly violates our rules on supporting any form of terrorism,” TikTok Policy posted on X, formerly known as Twitter. “We are proactively and aggressively removing this content and investigating how it got onto our platform.”
Guardian Removes bin Laden Letter to America After Viral Resurgence --The Guardian has removed Osama bin Laden's "Letter to the American People," which had been on its website for more than 20 years, after it went viral on TikTok and other social media sites."This page previously displayed a document containing, in translation, the full text of Osama bin Laden's 'Letter to the American People,' asreported in The Observer on Sunday 24 November 2002," the page previously hosting the letter now reads. "The document, which was published here on the same day, was removed on 15 November 2023."In the letter, which is still available via web archive, bin Laden outlineshis grievances against the United States, including its support for Israel, its placement of military bases in Islamic countries, and its participation in or support of other military actions or economic sanctions against people in the Islamic world. He justifies his attacks on U.S. civilians by arguing that they have the power to vote for governments that support different policies. Bin Laden also makes homophobic and antisemitic remarks, including blaming Jews as a group for the excesses of U.S. capitalism."The transcript published on our website 20 years ago has been widely shared on social media without the full context."The letter saw a surprising resurgence on TikTok over the past two days, as posters documented their responses to reading it for the first time."The TikToks are from people of all ages, races, ethnicities, and backgrounds," journalist Yashar Ali wrote on social media. "Many of them say that reading the letter has opened their eyes, and they'll never see geopolitical matters the same way again. Many of them—and I have watched a lot—say it has made them reevaluate their perspective on how what is often labeled as terrorism can be a legitimate form of resistance to a hostile power."The Wrapsourced the trend to a video posted by Lynnette Adkins that TikTok says is currently unavailable."I need everyone to stop doing what they're doing right now and go read 'Letter to America,' I feel like I'm going through an existential crisis right now," Adkins reportedly said.Ali said he saw thousands of similar videos on TikTok and more on other social media platforms. 404 Mediareported Wednesday that searching for "Letter to America" on TikTok brought up a few dozen results, some with as many as hundreds of thousands of views. Videos using the hashtag #LettertoAmerica have together generated 1.3 million views. However, the outlet noted that some of the videos were "not particularly viral by TikTok standards." The top-liked video had 75,000 likes, but true TikTok phenomenons can bee seen hundreds of millions of times. It also noted that not all of the videos expressed support for bin Laden's views: Some simply explained the letter, the trend, or the 9/11 attacks.The Guardian confirmed to both The Wrap and 404 Media that it had removed the letter because of its surge in online popularity."The transcript published on our website 20 years ago has been widely shared on social media without the full context," the paper said in the statement. "Therefore we have decided to take it down and direct readers to the news article that originally contextualized it instead."
Biden administration uses wartime authority to bolster energy efficient manufacturing - The Biden administration said Friday that it used wartime authority to bolster manufacturing of energy efficient heating and cooling technology. It said it was utilizing the Defense Production Act to mobilize the production of heat pumps — technology used to heat or cool someone’s home that is more efficient than traditional heating and air conditioning systems. The Defense Production Act gives the president the authority to mobilize a certain industry to advance national security, which the administration argues applies to producing more climate-friendly energy. Giulia Siccardo, director of the Energy Department’s Office of manufacturing and energy supply chains, told The Hill in an interview that the $169 million in funding the department announced Friday would allow companies to construct factories to build heat pumps. The funds come from the Inflation Reduction Act — the Democrats’ climate, tax and health care law. “Most of the companies that we announced today, seven out of the nine, are actually not yet manufacturing heat pumps here in the U.S., or heat pump components, in the U.S.Amer at scale” Siccardo said. She said that going through the Defense Production Act allows the administration “to quickly deploy funding to be able to add or convert manufacturing capacity.” The department’s actions are expected to produce pumps “to meet the needs of over 300,000 homes,” she said. Administration officials touted the action as good for both consumer electric bills and mitigating climate change.
Biden Administration’s Limit on Drug Industry Middlemen Backfires, Pharmacists Say - - The Biden administration’s first major step toward imposing limits on the pharmacy benefit managers who act as the drug industry’s price negotiators is backfiring, pharmacists say. Instead, it’s adding to the woes of the independent drugstores it was partly designed to help.The so-called PBMs have long clawed back a fee from pharmacies weeks or months after they dispense a drug. A new rule, which governs Medicare’s drug program, is set to take effect Jan. 1 and requires PBMs to take most of their “performance fees” at the time prescriptions are filled.The clawbacks have ballooned from about $9 million in 2010 to $12.6 billion in 2021, according to the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, an agency created to advise Congress on the program for people who are 65 and older or have disabilities.Performance fees have also boosted Medicare patients’ prescription costs at the pharmacy counter by hundreds of millions of dollars, although insurers assert that the fees enable them to charge lower premiums.Pharmacist groups supported the Medicare rule change, but they didn’t anticipate the PBMs’ response, which has been to demand they accept new contracts with draconian cuts to their payments for dispensing medicines, said Ronna Hauser, vice president of the National Community Pharmacists Association, which represents independent drugstores. If pharmacies refuse the contracts, they risk losing Medicare customers — likely to the same giant PBM conglomerates, which have absorbed a growing share of the pharmacy business in recent years.PBMs sit at the center of the U.S. supply chain for drugs, where they say they negotiate lower prices for insurers — including Medicare — and for employers and their workers. But the organizations are loathed by independent drugstores, drugmakers, and patients alike, who accuse them of siphoning money from what is already the world’s most expensive health care system without providing additional value.PBM practices even put the squeeze on national chains like Rite Aid, Kroger, and Walgreens, which aren’t part of the conglomerates. Even CVS Health, which owns one of the three leading PBMs, has closed stores or trimmed staff as it pushes consumers to mail-order pharmacy services.The pressure on in-store pharmacists and technicians has led to a series of walkouts this fall by CVS and Walgreens employees who say tight staffing has caused burnout and threatened patients’ safety. Under the current system, when a pharmacy fills a prescription, the PBM tells it what the patient owes and what the PBM will pay the pharmacy. The PBM aggregates these payments and sends a check later. Often, however, the PBM will deduct a performance fee from the pharmacy, said Doug Hoey, CEO of the National Community Pharmacists Association.“When you’re filling the prescription, the PBM tells you the patient pays $20 for this drug, we’ll pay you $100,” Hoey said. “As the pharmacist, I say, OK, I get a total of $120 for a drug that cost me $110 from the wholesaler. Then three months later, the PBM says, ‘Actually, I’m only going to pay you $83.’ So I lost $17 on the sale and I have no ability to object.”One performance measure is patient adherence. If patients don’t take all their drugs, pharmacists can be slapped with a fee for poor performance, although they have no control over the patient’s actions. Sometimes pharmacists are dinged for the prescribing physician’s mistakes, Hoey said.
Senate Democrats demand answers from manufacturers over RSV drug shortage -- A group of Senate Democrats are demanding answers about a shortage of a new drug that prevents respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) in infants. In a letter led by Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) sent Friday, the lawmakers asked manufacturers AstraZeneca and Sanofi for more information about the current supply of nirsevimab, when the companies first became aware of the shortage, and why they were so unprepared for the demand. “As our nation braces for the 2023-2024 RSV season, we are concerned that health care providers and families are having difficulty accessing this new immunization product that can be used to prevent severe RSV infections in infants,” the senators wrote. The letter was co-signed by Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), and Jon Ossoff (D-Georgia). Nirsevimab, marketed as Beyfortus, is a monoclonal antibody rather than a traditional vaccine, meaning babies will be able to directly receive antibodies to prevent severe RSV disease, rather than prompting the immune system to develop them. The drug is one of two available treatments in the U.S. that can protect infants from RSV, which is the leading cause of hospitalization among babies nationwide. It cuts the risk of hospitalizations in infants by about 80 percent and was hailed as a game changer. Unlike the older treatment called palivizumab, Beyfortus was approved for use in all infants up to 8 months old, not just those at highest risk. And it’s given as a single shot, whereas palivizumab is administered once a month during RSV season. But shortages of Beyfortus have been plaguing the country since it was approved in August. Pediatricians and hospitals have been struggling to stock the immunization due to what Sanofi said was “unprecedented” demand. A representative from Sanofi told the American Academy of Pediatrics earlier this month that demand for the 100-milligram (mg) doses, for infants who weigh more than 11 lbs, exceeded the supply meant for the entire season within weeks of shipping. Existing doses will continue to be allocated and shipped to providers throughout the season, but there won’t be any new products manufactured. As a result, the CDC last month called for providers to ration doses. CDC recommended prioritizing available 100mg doses for infants at the highest risk for severe RSV disease: young infants under six months old, and infants with underlying conditions that place them at highest risk for severe RSV disease. In addition, the CDC’s Vaccines for Children (VFC) program, which covers the cost of the shots for uninsured and underinsured kids, instituted a temporary pause on ordering. Soon after, Sanofi said it was no longer taking orders for the 100 mg doses and could only fulfill orders that had already been placed.
Senate Republicans fail to stop Biden’s new student loan income-driven repayment plan --Senate Republicans failed in their efforts to pass a resolution to overturn President Biden’s new student loans income-driven repayment (IDR) plan Wednesday. All present Republicans and Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin (W.Va.) voted in support of a Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution that would have halted the Saving on Valuable Education (SAVE) IDR plan, ultimately falling one vote short of the 50 needed to overturn the plan. The CRA makes it so only 50 votes would have been needed to pass the resolution instead of the 60 that is typically needed to beat a filibuster. The final tally of Wednesday’s vote was 50-49 against the effort, with Republican Tim Scott (S.C.) the lone senator not voting. “This is irresponsible. This is deeply unfair,” Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, said of Biden’s plan before the vote. The SAVE plan is being implemented in two parts. This fall, borrowers are seeing a rise in income exemption for student loan payments from 150 percent to 225 percent above the federal poverty guidelines. Borrowers will also not see their unpaid interest grow. Next year, borrowers will receive other benefits such as monthly payments getting cut from 10 percent of discretionary income to 5 percent. Republicans highlighted that the plan will cost taxpayers $559 billion, saying individuals who never went to school or already paid off their student loans would wind up paying for others. Previously, opponents in both the Senate and House were able to pass a CRA measure against Biden’s broader student debt relief program before the plan was struck down by the Supreme Court over the summer, but that resolution was ultimately vetoed by the president. Democratic Sens. Manchin and Jon Tester (Mont.) and Independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.) all voted in support of the resolution to stop the student debt relief plan back in June.
Speaker Johnson: Separation of church, state ‘a misnomer’ - Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) pushed back Tuesday on the belief that there should be separation between church and state on the U.S., arguing that the founding fathers wanted faith to be a “big part” of government. “Separation of church and state … is a misnomer. People misunderstand it,” Johnson said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” when asked about him praying on the House floor. “Of course, it comes from a phrase that was in a letter that Jefferson wrote is not in the Constitution.” “And what he was explaining is they did not want the government to encroach upon the church, not that they didn’t want principles of faith to have influence on our public life. It’s exactly the opposite,” the Speaker added. The letter that Johnson referred to is Thomas Jefferson’s 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists Association of Connecticut, who had expressed concerns about religious liberty. In his reply, Jefferson said that the First Amendment, which bars Congress from prohibiting free exercise of a religion, built “a wall of separation between Church & State.” Johnson argued that “faith, our deep religious heritage and tradition is a big part of what it means to be an American” in his comments Tuesday. He further argued that “morality” must be kept among Americans “so that we have accountability.” “That’s why I think we need more of that,” he said. “Not an establishment of any national religion, but we need everybody’s vibrant expression of faith, because it’s such an important part of who we are as a nation.” He is not the only member of Congress who has who has suggested that faith should influence the government. Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) faced backlash last year after she said she believes “the church is supposed to direct the government.” “I’m tired of this separation of church and state junk — that’s not in the Constitution,” Boebert said at the Cornerstone Christian Center in Basalt, Colo. “It was in a stinking letter and it means nothing like they say it does.” The latest in politics and policy. Direct to your inbox. Sign up for the Evening Report newsletter Johnson, who was elected as Speaker last month, faced criticism of his Christian faith. An op-ed in The New York Times published earlier this month claimed the Louisiana Republican’s election as Speaker “reflects the strength of white evangelical voters’ influence in the House Republican caucus.” Before taking the oath of office last month, Johnson brought his Bible to the rostrum, saying, “The Bible is very clear that God is the one that raises up those in authority … each of you, all of us,” according to The Associated Press. Before serving in Congress, Johnson served as a professor at the government school of Liberty University in Virginia, a Christian school, according to AP. From 2004-12, Johnson also served on the board of the policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention.
House shelves Greene’s resolution to impeach Mayorkas - The House shelved a resolution to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Monday, punting on Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-Ga.) effort to boot the Biden administration official from his post for his handling of the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border. Eight Republicans joined Democrats in supporting a motion to refer the impeachment resolution to the Homeland Security Committee, blocking it from coming to the floor for a vote and shielding lawmakers from having to weigh in on the matter directly. The final vote was 209-201. Those eight Republicans were: Reps. Patrick Mchenry (N.C.), Tom McClintock (Calif.), John Duarte (Calif.), Virginia Foxx (N.C.), Darrell Issa (Calif.), Cliff Bentz (Ore.), Ken Buck (Colo.) and Mike Turner (Ohio). The final tally is a blow to Greene, who moved to force a vote on her resolution to impeach Mayorkas last week, accusing the Homeland Security secretary of “willful admittance of border crossers” and of violating the Secure Fence Act — a 2006 law that demands perfection at the border by declaring the border operationally secure only if no people or contraband improperly enter the country. She introduced her impeachment resolution targeting Mayorkas in May. Greene slammed the 8 Republicans who opted to table her resolution following the vote. “I cannot believe this, I’m outraged,” Greene said, later adding, “I can assure you that Republican voters will be extremely angry that they’ve done this.” The Congresswoman also said she may force another vote on her impeachment resolution, telling reporters: “I may reintroduce them, maybe I introduce them again privileged and give them the opportunity, do they really want to do that? I’ll give ‘em some time to get phone calls in their office and talk to their constituents.” Greene’s resolution, if successful, would have undercut the ongoing process led by House Homeland Security Committee Chair Mark Green (R-Tenn.), who has accused Mayorkas of “dereliction of duty” and is overseeing a multipart plan to analyze the secretary’s work. Green ultimately plans to hand over that body of work to the House Judiciary Committee, which is in charge of the impeachment process. Republicans on the Homeland Security Committee released their interim report on the fourth phase of the investigation Monday. Greene slammed the Homeland Security Committee on Monday, arguing that the body was slow-walking her impeachment effort. “We have been waiting for regular order for six months, and the committee of jurisdiction in Congress has failed to act,” Greene said on the House floor. “My articles of impeachment sit collecting dust with the others while Americans die every single day.”
Greene calls GOP colleague a pussy - Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.) called fellow GOP Rep. Darrell Issa (Calif.) a pussy Tuesday after he attacked her for lacking the “maturity and experience” to understand the proper way to bring an impeachment vote against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. In a post on X, formerly Twitter, Greene included a meme of former President Trump saying, “She said he’s a p‑‑‑‑.” The meme was a response to another post from her official House X account, which also attacked Issa. “Darrell Issa is right, I am a hardworking member of Congress who puts the American people first. But we all know what Darrell Issa lacks…,” Greene posted, before including emojis of five different sports balls. Issa had defended himself Tuesday morning against criticism — especially from Greene — for his vote to punt the impeachment measure on Mayorkas back to committee. He had joined seven other Republicans and Democrats in voting against the measure Monday. Asked what he, as a seasoned member of Congress, thinks of Greene’s plan to bring a privileged resolution on a Mayorkas impeachment, Issa attacked her “maturity and experience.” “The history of privileged resolutions is that they’re brought by the majority leader or the minority leader. Privileged resolutions are not — have not historically been — brought by one member. And when they do come from one member, they’re most often referred to committee, as it was yesterday,” he said. “You know, look, Marjorie Taylor Greene is a hardworking member of Congress. But she, I believe, she lacks the maturity and the experience to understand what she was asking for, and how ill prepared we would have been to do it on short notice on the floor,” he continued.
Moskowitz, Comer get into tense exchange at hearing: ‘You look like a Smurf here’ - Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) and chair of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee James Comer (R-Ky.) got into a heated exchange Tuesday. During a hearing focused on oversight of the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), Moskowitz referenced a loan that President Biden made to his brother, which the committeehas been looking into as part of the probe into Biden’s family finances. He said Comer has “gone on Fox News and told people that, while the president was out of office, he had a loan with his brother, and in a way, they were evading taxes.” “It has come out in the public, that you also do business with your brother with potential loans,” Moskowitz continued. “And so, since you have framed that and manipulated that with the American people, that Joe Biden did something wrong when he wasn’t in office, I just would like to know if you would like to use some of my time—” “I would love — I would love it,” Comer retorted. “You retweeted that story, completely false. I’ve never loaned my brother one penny. My father, who was a dentist, had some farmland. He died, and my brother couldn’t afford — he wanted to sell it, but he wanted to keep it in the family. So, I bought it from my brother. That story that you tweeted, also said I had a shell company. That is bullshit.” The Florida Democrat later tried to reclaim his time, which then was followed by the two congressmen going back and forth in a fiery exchange. “You look like a Smurf, here, just going around and all this stuff,” Comer at one point said to Moskowitz, seemingly referencing his blue suit and tie. “Gargamel was very angry today,” Moskowitz later quipped on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, referencing the main villain of the Smurfs universe. Last week, Moskowitz made a video, posted to X, in which he signed a prop “subpoena” for Comer, saying he had given his brother a loan just like Biden. It appeared to mock a video by the Oversight Committee from the day before, in which Comer signed subpoenas for Hunter Biden, the president’s brother, James Biden, and their business partner, Rob Walker, part of the impeachment probe into the president. “It has been reported that Comer also loaned his brother $200k. We fully expect James to comply, just like the Trumps,” Moskowitz said on X.
GOP Sen. Mullin challenges Teamsters boss to fight at Senate hearing: ‘Stand your butt up’ - A Republican senator and the president of the Teamsters union nearly got into a fistfight Tuesday in the middle of a Senate committee hearing, until Sen. Bernie Sanders stepped in and broke it up. The exchange began when Sen. Markwayne Mullin, of Oklahoma, read a tweet that Teamsters President Sean O’Brien had posted in June. “You want to run your mouth? We can be two consenting adults, we can finish it here,” Mullin said to O’Brien, who was testifying at a hearing on labor unions in America. “OK, that’s fine, perfect,” O’Brien replied. “I’d love to do it right now.” “Then stand your butt up then,” Mullin shot back. “You stand your butt up,” O’Brien said. Mullin, dressed in a white shirt and no jacket, then stood up and began to move toward O’Brien. “No, no, sit down! Sit down! You’re a United States senator!” shouted Sanders, the Vermont independent and chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. Mullin and O’Brien continued to trash-talk each other in the hearing room. The feud between the senator and the union boss began months earlier. Mullin told O’Brien to “shut your mouth” in a heated exchange during a prior hearing in March. In a social media post later, in June, O’Brien ragged on Mullin as a “clown and a fraud.” “Quit the tough guy act in these senate hearings. You know where to find me. Anyplace, Anytime cowboy,” O’Brien wrote on X.
Burchett accuses McCarthy of elbowing him in Capitol hallway - Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) accused former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) of elbowing him in a Capitol hallway Tuesday and chased after the former House leader to confront him. The incident began as Republicans were leaving a conference meeting early Tuesday and Burchett stopped to talked to reporters in the hall. Not long after, McCarthy walked down the same hallway and appeared to bump into Burchett as he passed. Burchett says it was deliberate. Burchett called after McCarthy at the time, while McCarthy kept walking. Burchett acknowledged he chased after McCarthy. “I was like, ‘What the heck, you know, why did you do that?'” he said. In remarks to reporters later, McCarthy denied elbowing the congressman. “I guess our elbows hit as I walked by,” McCarthy later told reporters, including CNN. “If I would hit somebody, they would I know hit them.” But Burchett is not backing down. “I was standing there and McCarthy elbowed me in the back,” Burchett told reporters after the encounter. “I said, ‘Hey, what the heck would you do that for?’ And he acted like, ‘Oh, I didn’t do anything, you know, and he’s just, he needs to go home back to Southern California,” Burchett said. Burchett is one of the eight GOP lawmakers who voted to oust McCarthy from the Speakership.
Gaetz makes ethics complaint against McCarthy over Burchett elbowing accusation -- Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) filed a formal ethics complaint against former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) after Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) accused the ex-House leader of elbowing him in a hallway Tuesday. “This incident deserves immediate and swift investigation by the Ethics committee,” Gaetz wrote in a letter to House Ethics Committee Chair Michael Guest (R-Miss.) and ranking member Susan Wild (D-Pa.). “Congress has seen a substantial increase in breaches of decorum unlike anything we have ever seen since the pre-Civil War era.” McCarthy appeared to bump into Burchett as he passed in a Capitol hallway Tuesday, which Burchett said was a deliberate elbow to his back. McCarthy later told reporters the interaction was not deliberate, and that he was simply moving past Burchett in a small hallway. “I guess our elbows hit as I walked by,” McCarthy later told reporters, including CNN. “If I would hit somebody, they would I know hit them.” Gaetz took Burchett’s side. “I myself have been a victim of outrageous conduct on the House floor as well,” Gaetz wrote, an apparent reference to when House Armed Services Committee Chair Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) lunged at Gaetz during the 15-ballot election of McCarthy as Speaker in January, “but nothing like an open and public assault on a Member, committed by another Member. The rot starts at the top.” Neither Gaetz’s ethics complaint nor Burchett’s accusation can be separated from both men being among the eight Republicans who joined with Democrats to oust the former Speaker last month. McCarthy has long maintained that the motion to vacate led by Gaetz was personal, noting the Florida congressman, whom the Justice Department declined to charge after a lengthy sex-trafficking investigation, is facing another investigation by the House Ethics Committee. McCarthy accused Gaetz of retaliating against him for not quashing the investigation. Told about Gaetz making an ethics complaint against him, McCarthy said: “Oh, good.” “I think Ethics is a good place for Gaetz to be,” McCarthy said. McCarthy also recently told CNN that Burchett and Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), who also voted to oust McCarthy, “care a lot about press, not about policy.”
Rising tensions bring GOP to brink of fight club -- Rising tensions among GOP lawmakers in the House and Senate peaked Tuesday, with a former Speaker allegedly taking a kidney shot at another lawmaker, while a senator invited the Teamsters president to fight him during a hearing. The embarrassing spectacle came as House lawmakers spent their 10th consecutive week in Washington — with a Republican conference again unable to unify around a spending measure. It began with an accusation that former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) had elbowed Rep. Tim Burchett in the back as the Tennessee Republican, one of eight GOP members who voted to end McCarthy’s Speakership a little more than a month ago, was conducting an interview with a reporter from NPR. Moments later, Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.), a burly former mixed martial arts fighter, was was challenging Sean O’Brien, president of the Teamsters, to a fight during a hearing before the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee. As Mullin stood up to challenge O’Brien to meet him inside, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the HELP chair, pleaded with the GOP lawmaker to sit down, reminding him he was a U.S. senator. Lawmakers were part dismayed and part bemused by the double shot of problems, which comes days before they are set to decamp for their states and districts for the Thanksgiving recess. “Yeah, there’s a little tension in the air, I suppose, understandably. But you also have personalities,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.). “When Bernie Sanders is the guy trying to bring order to chaos, you know things are chaotic because, quite honestly, he’s usually the entertainer and not the referee.” “Ever since we got rid of the powder wigs, this place has been devolving,” Cramer continued. “It’s time to pass a [continuing resolution] and get the hell out of here for a bit.” Both troubles stemmed from personal bad blood that has spilled into public. Burchett was among the eight House Republicans who voted to boot McCarthy from the Speakership last month, prompting three weeks of House GOP tumult to pick his replacement, leaving fractures that remain unhealed. McCarthy maintained later Tuesday that the contact was incidental. “If I would hit somebody, they would know I hit them,” the ex-Speaker told reporters. As for Mullin, he repeatedly defended his actions. The former MMA fighter and a member of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame panned O’Brien to reporters as a “thug,” said he’s been “running his mouth forever” and “probably should have [his] butt whupped.” “He’s the president of a union. I’m still a guy from Oklahoma. If you’re going to say something stupid like that, then back it up,” Mullin said. News of the Burchett-McCarthy dust-up brought an interesting connection to light. When asked if he’d seen what happened between Burchett and McCarthy, Mullin told The Hill that he wouldn’t take the Tennessee congressman’s word for what happened and noted that he had kicked Burchett out of his long-established daily workout group last week. Mullin, a longtime McCarthy ally, pointed to a “lack of character on his part” and said that he doesn’t “trust” Burchett. He noted that he’s had lawmakers of different stripes take part in the workouts, even at contentious times, including Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) and former Sen. Martha McSally (R-Ariz.) when they ran against each other in 2018, Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.) when he was a manager for former President Trump’s first impeachment trial, and Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) when he ran for president.
McConnell: Not my ‘responsibility’ to police aggressive behavior of other Republicans -Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Tuesday said he doesn’t view it as his “responsibility” to police the behavior of other Republicans, especially aggressive physical behavior, acknowledging it’s “very difficult to control the behavior of everybody who’s in the building.” McConnell said he was not aware of two incidents from earlier in the day in which Republican lawmakers made headlines for acting aggressively. Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) had to be verbally restrained by Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) from getting into a fight with the president of the Teamsters during a heated committee hearing. And Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) accused former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) of giving him a kidney shot by elbowing him in the back while he was talking to reporters. “It’s very difficult to control the behavior of everybody who’s in the building. I don’t view that as my responsibility. That’s something the Capitol Police will have to deal with,” McConnell told reporters. Top Stories from The Hill Burchett accuses McCarthy of elbowing him in Capitol hallway Trump hits New York AG for ‘smirking all day long’ amid fraud trial GOP senator challenges Teamsters president to fight during hearing Rising tensions bring GOP to brink of fight club Mullin sprang up out of his chair at the Health Committee hearing earlier on Tuesday and invited Sean O’Brien, the general president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, to turn their social media spat into fisticuffs. “You want to do it now? Stand your butt up then,” Mullin, challenging the labor leader. O’Brien didn’t shy away from the challenge, telling the Oklahoma senator: “You stand your butt up.” Sanders, in breaking up the battle, reminded Mullin that he is a U.S. senator. On the House side, Burchett, who joined seven Republican colleagues in voting to oust McCarthy from the Speakership last month, accused the former Speaker of getting physical with him. “I was standing there and McCarthy elbowed me in the back,” Burchett told reporters after the encounter. “I said, ‘Hey, what the heck would you do that for?’ And he acted like, ‘Oh, I didn’t do anything, you know, and he’s just, he needs to go home back to Southern California,” Burchett said.
Kinzinger reiterates claims that McCarthy ‘shoulder-checked’ him twice - Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) again accused former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) of “shoulder-checking” him twice in the Capitol, reinforcing claims from Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) that McCarthy elbowed him in the hallway this week.Kinzinger discussed his relationship with McCarthy in his book “Renegade” and spoke about the incidents again Friday in an interview with CNN.“Wham! I get shoulder-checked. Never had that happen on the floor of the House,” Kinzinger said. “I turn, and Kevin McCarthy is already walking past me.”“What a child?!” Kinzinger said of the former Speaker after a second incident weeks later.Burchett, one of the eight GOP members to vote McCarthy out of the Speakership last month, said McCarthy elbowed him in a Capitol hallway Tuesday. Burchett, who was talking to reporters at the time, chased down the former Speaker and questioned the move.McCarthy denied intentionally hitting Burchett, to the Tennessee congressman’s ire.“I was standing there, and McCarthy elbowed me in the back,” Burchett told reporters after the encounter. “I said, ‘Hey, what the heck would you do that for?’ And he acted like, ‘Oh, I didn’t do anything,’ you know, and he’s just — he needs to go home back to Southern California,” Burchett said.Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), an outspoken rival of McCarthy who filed the motion to oust him from the leadership role, filed a complaint with the House Ethics Committee after the incident.When told about the complaint, McCarthy quipped “Oh, good,” adding, “I think Ethics is a good place for Gaetz to be.”
House Republicans are jumping off the sinking ship - Have you noticed the rush of House Republicans calling it quits in the last few weeks? Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) announced his exit Nov. 1. He explained that to be a member of the Republican House majority means putting up with the “many Republican leaders [who] are lying to America, claiming that the 2020 election was stolen.” Buck is predicting that even more House Republicans will leave “in the near future.” The day before Buck said good-bye, House Appropriations Chair Kay Granger (R-Texas) also quit. Granger had been a leader among House Republicans who prevented the far-right, election-denying Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) from becoming Speaker of the House. Also in October, Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz.) said she was quitting. “Right now, Washington, D.C. is broken,” she said. “It is hard to get anything done.” In late September, Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.) took the exit game to a new level of drama bythreatening to leave immediately instead of waiting on a previously announced retirement. “The Republican House is failing the American people again,” she said in February, explaining that the House is now “like a theater full of actors in the circus.” She summed up her distaste by saying “our children will be ashamed of another worthless Congress.”This rush of Republicans abandoning the House is tied to former president Trump’s large lead in the GOP presidential primary race.Every Republican still in the House next year will be forced to run for reelection while possibly supporting a convicted felon at the head the GOP ticket. They will also have to say they believe the lie that the 2020 election was stolen. The scary depth of this trap awaiting House Republicans next year was evident in the bloody fight that led them to shut down the House for three weeks before they could agree on a replacement for ousted Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Despite the majority of the caucus expressing disgust with the extremist Republicans who pushed out McCarthy, they replaced McCarthy with another election-denier, Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.). Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) recently described the House Republican caucus as wanting former President Trump as speaker. In Johnson, she said, “they got their man.” In fact, Trump sent signals that he did not want a more pragmatic conservative, Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), to become Speaker for one reason: Emmer had said that President Biden defeated Trump in a fair election. Trump’s hypnotic hold on Republicans in the House was evident when Rep. Steve Scalise (R- La.) was recently asked if Trump lost the 2020 election. “Can you say unequivocally the 2020 election was not stolen,” asked ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. Scalise refused to answer even when Stephanopoulos cited several court rulings that confirmed there is no evidence of widespread vote fraud.
The DC establishment thinks RFK could win, and they’re panicking - Making the rounds of opinion-influencer social media and politically oriented podcasts over the last week to gauge the current state of the presidential race, one could be excused for believing that no great shake-up had occurred.In Trump World, all the discussion was about the former president’s highly politicized civil fraud trial in New York and how it would backfire by making Trump a more formidable candidate. Meanwhile, left-leaning outlets were hyping GOP dysfunction in the House and the Republican losses in the off-year elections as an early indicator that Biden will fare better than expected next November.But one development that sent shock waves through the entire class of paid political consultants inside the Beltway went almost unmentioned publicly. A topic of constant discussion and not a little bit of anxiety on both sides was the extraordinarily strong showing of third-party candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in two recent national polls. Both of the pollsshowed Kennedy leading both President Biden and former President Trump among the key electoral demographics of independent voters and voters under 45 years of age.Just how disturbing is this development for the uni-party establishment in Washington? Disturbing enough that the New York Times ran a brief story essentially dismissing its own poll results under the interpretive headline, “What’s Behind Kennedy’s Poll Numbers? Voters Dread a Trump-Biden Rematch.”The piece reads almost as a parody of a damage-control exercise. It included the remarkable disclaimer that the poll of six key presidential battleground states, which found RFK the choice of nearly a quarter of those polled in a three-way matchup with Biden and Trump, “almost surely inflates the support of Mr. Kennedy.” But the argument does not bear scrutiny that Kennedy’s remarkably strong showing is merely a function of dissatisfaction with the prospect of a Biden-Trump rematch. His fundraising haul for the third quarter, $8.7 million, demonstrates robust support for his candidacy, not just dissatisfaction with other choices. Significantly, Kennedy raised millions of dollars from people who didn’t donate at all in the last two presidential elections, a sign that he’s activating new voters. Remarkably, he maintains a 19 percent favorability lead with voters over both Biden and Trump — this despite a concerted effort by almost every mainstream media outlet to dismiss him as a conspiracy theorist and crank.The truth is that Kennedy is connecting on the issues. With an exploding debt and a faltering economy, the U.S. is now being dragged into enormous, open-ended military commitments in two major world conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, while our own borders and our citizens experience unprecedented levels of insecurity.In this tumultuous environment, RFK Jr. has effectively positioned himself as the peace candidate, even over Trump, since Kennedy’s critique of the military-industrial complex driving U.S. forever wars is much more cogent and comprehensive. Alone among the candidates, he has outlined policies to address the cost-of-living and affordable housing crises that are wrecking opportunity for Gen Z and younger Millennials. In fact, this probably helps explain his significant lead among that crucial demographic.And his positions on the environment, legalization of marijuana and abortion are much more practical and in sync with post-Regan era political realities than those of his major party opponents, constrained as they are by antiquated party orthodoxies.
Jill Stein adds to Biden’s 2024 problems -President Biden, already facing dismal approval numbers and multiple liberals looking to replace him, got more unwelcome news this week with the entry of Jill Stein into the 2024 presidential race. Stein, who announced Thursday that she would seek the Green Party nomination for the second time, is considered a fringe and intrusive figure to many Democrats who think she played the part of spoiler to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s White House campaign against former President Trump. Her third-party candidacy is now one of a half dozen bids from the left, center and independent spectrum that could damage Biden in the race, bringing attention to the president’s limitations as the Republican primary field shrinks. And it came the same day Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) announced he is not seeking reelection, raising speculation that he could also seek the Oval Office next year.Stein’s case for her candidacy, as she tells it, is to “offer a choice for the people outside the failed two-party system,” an increasingly dominant theme in an election with two unpopular front-runners that’s now less than a year away. “The political system is broken. The two Wall Street parties are bought and paid for. Over 60 percent of us now say the bipartisan establishment has failed us, and we need a party that serves the people,” she said in a video unveiling her campaign this week.. Stein evokes a particularly strong reaction from Democrats still reeling over the Clinton loss. But her argument for a systematic political change is not so unique. As Biden aides and allies swat off criticisms that the president is too old or disliked among voters to win another general election, other contenders have worked around those issues with their bids. Most of that push has involved challenging not only Biden, but the country’s predominant two-party electoral system. Stein’s abrupt relaunch into presidential politics comes weeks after Cornel West, a leading academic and progressive activist, decided to run as an independent after formerly campaigning with the Green Party. His departure created an opening for another choice on the far-left ticket, where Stein stepped in this week with little fanfare. While some of Biden’s rivals, such as long-shot Democratic primary challenger Rep. Dean Phillips (Minn.), are tying their candidacies to his age, Stein and West — who are both in their 70s — are instead focusing on pitching a change to how the U.S. conducts elections. Both progressives have called for a rejiggering of the structure that they believe forces Americans to choose the lesser of two imperfect party options.
Haley calls for social media reforms targeting user accountability --Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) called for social media reforms targeting user accountability Tuesday. “When I get into office, the first thing we have to do, social media accounts, social media companies, they have to show America their algorithms,” said Haley, a 2024 GOP presidential primary candidate, in a Fox News clip posted to X, formerly known as Twitter. “Let us see why they’re pushing what they’re pushing,” Haley continued. “The second thing is, every person on social media should be verified, by their name. That’s, first of all, it’s a national security threat. When you do that, all of a sudden, people have to stand by what they say.”The clip comes just less than a week after Haley took a swing at fellow 2024 GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy for talking about her daughter’s social media usage at the third GOP presidential debate.“In the last debate, she made fun of me for actually joining TikTok while her own daughter was actually using the app for a long time. So you might want to take care of your family first,” Ramaswamy said, as the candidates clashed over the video-sharing app, which is owned by Beijing-based parent company ByteDance. “Leave my daughter out of your voice,” Haley said. “You’re just scum.”In the Tuesday clip, Haley said her plan to have people verified by name would get rid of bot accounts from U.S. rivals.“And it gets rid of the Russian bots, the Iranian bots and the Chinese bots,” Haley said. “And then you’re gonna get some civility, when people know their name is next to what they say.”
YouTube requires users to disclose AI-created content -YouTube said it will now require users to disclose when their videos feature content created using artificial intelligence (AI), as part of a larger announcement by the platform about its approach to responsible AI innovation. © Pavlo Gonchar/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images The new policies require creators to disclose when they’ve created or incorporated AI content into their posts, including content that “realistically depicts an event that never happened” or shows “someone saying or doing something they didn’t actually do.” “Creators who consistently choose not to disclose this information may be subject to content removal, suspension from the YouTube Partner Program, or other penalties,” YouTube said in a news release on Tuesday. “We’ll work with creators before this rolls out to make sure they understand these new requirements,” it added. Viewers will also be allowed to submit a request form for YouTube to remove AI content “that simulates an identifiable individual, including their face or voice,” our colleague Olafimihan Oshin reported. The company noted that not all requests will be honored, and they’ll “consider a variety of factors when evaluating these requests.” “This could include whether the content is parody or satire, whether the person making the request can be uniquely identified, or whether it features a public official or well-known individual, in which case there may be a higher bar,” the release said. YouTube also said it plans to introduce a process where its music industry partners can request for AI content to be removed from the site if it “mimics an artist’s unique singing or rapping voice.” The release comes after Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, announced last week that it would require political advertisers on its platforms to disclose when they use AI or other digital methods.
Congress needs to protect kids, not Big Tech -- Social media is a threat to our children. A bipartisan Congress is now stepping up to make Big Tech products safe for our children; but the social media companies are putting their incredible lobbying power behind efforts to break the momentum. U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy’s May 2023 advisory warning found “ample” evidence that social media use presents “a profound risk of harm to the mental health and well-being of children and adolescents.” And a recent paper by the Institute for Family Studies and Gallup shows that access to social media has led to higher suicide rates for teenagers. “Teens who spend more than 5 hours a day on social media,” the report found, “were 2.5 times more likely to express suicidal thoughts or harm themselves, 2.4 times more likely to hold a negative view of their body, and 40% more likely to report a lot of sadness the day before.”Social media not only impacts teens’ mental health but their physical health, as well. A recent study in the Journal of Family Medicine and Primary Care found kids experience “anxiety, respiratory alterations, trembling, perspiration, agitation, disorientation and tachycardia” when they are not near their phones, their portals to social media and the internet.Do these symptoms sound familiar? They should, because they are the same symptoms of an addict withdrawing from nicotine or hard drugs. But unlike other addictive substances, social media platforms are completely unregulated by the government.Moms and dads have thus been left on their own to try to fend off this tech-induced health crisis, contending against the allure of products engineered by the most powerful corporations in history to be maximally addictive to their kids. Big Tech is not only indifferent to the harms children are suffering from its products, but, as made evident in recent lawsuits, there is strong evidence that they intentionally perpetuate the problem. In October, a bipartisan group of 42 state attorneys general sued Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, for targeting young users with features designed to secure “compulsive and extended use” in order to “maximize profit.”
Christie says he’s met donor requirement to qualify for 4th GOP debate - Chris Christie’s campaign said Monday that the former New Jersey governor had hit the donor requirement to qualify for the GOP’s fourth presidential debate next month, as candidates work to meet the Republican National Committee (RNC) thresholds to get on the Tuscaloosa, Ala., stage. “Coming off the heels of Christie’s strong performance at the third debate last week, we’ve seen the best fundraising week of the campaign since he announced, bringing in thousands of new donors in just the five days since. The campaign now has well over 80,000 donors and meets all the criteria needed for the next debate,” a spokesperson for the campaign said in a memo. The RNC required candidates to have 70,000 unique donors to get on the Miami debate stage last week and raised it to 80,000 for the next event. The party also raised polling criteria to require candidates to reach at least 6 percent in two national polls — or 6 percent in one national poll and 6 percent in one early-state poll “from two separate ‘carve out’ states (Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina) recognized by the RNC.” The polls must also meet a few other benchmarks, including some related to how many voters are surveyed and who conducts the poll. The Christie campaign contended Monday that it’s met the RNC’s polling criteria, too, though the RNC hasn’t confirmed whether the polls it highlighted meet the requirements.
Speaker Mike Johnson endorses Trump, defends false election claims --House Speaker Mike Johnson on Tuesday endorsed Donald Trump for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, while defending the former president's efforts to reverse his 2020 election loss to President Joe Biden. "I'm all in for President Trump," Johnson said on CNBC's "Squawk Box." "I expect he'll be our nominee, and we have to make Biden a one-term president." Johnson suggested he had already thrown his weight behind Trump, saying, "I have endorsed him wholeheartedly." But it was unclear when the Louisiana Republican had previously given Trump his official backing. Trump had not officially endorsed Johnson when he became the Republican Party's fourth nominee for speaker last month, amid a drawn-out scramble to replace ousted Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif. But Trump gave what he called a "strong suggestion" to "go with the leading candidate, Mike Johnson, & get it done, fast!" Trump has dominated the 2024 Republican presidential field, but it is unusual for a party's leader in Congress to publicly endorse a candidate this early in the race, before the first primary vote has been cast. Johnson endorsed Trump in 2020, and he backed Trump's efforts to overturn his Electoral College loss to Biden. Johnson led a Supreme Court brief signed by more than 100 other House Republicans in support of a Texas lawsuit that aimed to discount the election results in key states that Trump lost.
Judge rules Trump ‘incited’ Jan. 6 riots, but can remain on Colorado primary ballot -- A Colorado judge has rejected an attempt to bar former President Trump from the state’s primary ballot over 14th Amendment claims, according to court documents filed Friday. District Judge Sarah Wallace agreed with plaintiffs that Trump “incited” the Jan. 6, 2021, riots on the Capitol and could be disqualified using the 14th Amendment, but that the law’s wording means it does not apply specifically to the office of president.The activist group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), four Republicans and two independent Colorado voters filed a suit in September pushing for Trump’s removal. The lawsuit claims the former president’s actions related to the insurrection were in violation of the amendment, which stipulates that those who engage in acts of insurrection are no longer eligible to run for elected offices.The plaintiffs argued Trump “incited a violent mob” in an attempt “to stop the peaceful transfer of power under our Constitution.” The trial in the case centered on two factors: whether Trump’s actions as president qualified as engaging in acts of insurrection per the 14th Amendment clause, and if the presidency counts as an “office” in the meaning of the text, making it eligible for disqualification.For the first factor, plaintiffs called on both academic witnesses to argue that Trump was responsible for the Jan. 6 riots, and victims of violence including Capitol Police officers and Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.).Attorneys for Trump argued that the former president had nothing to do with the attacks, and that his speeches — which appeared to encourage violence — were also protected by the First Amendment.But Wallace agreed with the plaintiffs, the first time a court has ruled that Trump was responsible for the violence of Jan. 6.“The Court concludes, based on its findings of fact and the applicable law detailed above, that Trump incited an insurrection on January 6, 2021 and therefore ‘engaged’ in insurrection within the meaning of Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment,” Wallace wrote. “Trump has consistently endorsed violence and intimidation as not only legitimate means of political expression, but as necessary, even virtuous,” Wallace wrote in the ruling. “Further, the Court has found that Trump was aware that his supporters were willing to engage in political violence and that they would respond to his calls for them to do so.” On the second factor — whether the 14th Amendment applies to the presidency — plaintiffs argued for a broad interpretation of “office,” relying on a catch-all clause at the end of the text. They said that the presidency was understood at the time to mean an “office” in a general sense, even though it was not explicitly listed in the text of the amendment.But Trump’s attorneys countered that if the authors of the 14th Amendment wanted it to apply to the presidency, they would have specified.Wallace agreed with the argument about the less-broad definition of “office.”“The Court holds there is scant direct evidence regarding whether the Presidency is one of the positions subject to disqualification,” Wallace wrote. “The Court holds that it is unpersuaded that the drafters intended to include the highest office in the Country in the catchall phrase “office . . . under the United States.’”An earlier draft of the 14th Amendment included the presidency and vice presidency explicitly in the list of disqualified offices, but it was later removed. Trump’s attorneys argued that the authors’ intent was clear with the omission.
Republicans begin posting Jan. 6 footage online -House Republicans have begun releasing thousands of hours of footage from inside the Capitol from Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob of Trump supporters stormed the building. “This decision will provide millions of Americans, criminal defendants, public interest organizations, and the media an ability to see for themselves what happened that day, rather than having to rely upon the interpretation of a small group of government officials,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said in announcing the website, where videos will be posted throughout the weekend. According to Johnson, faces of private citizens will be blurred on any unreleased tapes and about 5 percent of the footage from the day will be redacted for building security concerns. About 90 hours of the 44,000 hours of footage appeared online Friday, through the committee’s website. The full release is expected to be complete by Monday. More than 1,100 people have been charged in the Capitol riot. In the months since then-President Trump directed his followers to go to the Capitol to stop the certification of President Biden’s win in the 2020 election, a divide has grown over opinions of how severe the attack was and what actually happened inside the halls of the Capitol, where lawmakers and Vice President Pence had to be whisked to secure areas to hide from the mob. Capitol Police engaged in direct conflicts with protestors, who used bear spray, bike racks, flag poles and other items to bust through barricades that had been erected around the building.
Trump’s battle in New York turns increasingly personal - Former President Trump’s civil trial over his business practices in New York City, where he built his business brand and won international fame, seems to have struck a nerve. Trump, the front-runner for the GOP’s presidential nomination next year, is facing charges in Washington, D.C., for his attempts to remain in power after losing the 2020 election; in Georgia for attempting to overturn the state’s 2020 election results; in New York for an alleged hush money scheme to keep an affair quiet; and in Florida for his retention and handling of classified materials after leaving the White House. But it is the New York fraud case, where prosecutors are alleging decades of fraud by Trump and his businesses, that the former president by all accounts is taking especially personally. The case strikes at the heart of Trump’s reputation as a savvy deal-maker and wealthy businessman, which helped propel him into a successful run for the White House in 2016. The case has pitted him against his longtime fixer, Michael Cohen, and it has ensnared his children, who have testified about the family company’s practices. “It’s pretty obvious that it’s a much more personal case, because it has to do with his business and his family and his brand,” said Sean Spicer, who served a stint as Trump’s White House press secretary. Trump is the subject of a sweeping civil case in New York alleging decades of fraud by him and his businesses. Judge Arthur Engoron already found Trump liable for fraud, ruling that New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) proved the crux of her case. But the attorney general’s office is asking for $250 million in financial penalties and a ban on Trump and his children from serving as officers or directors of New York companies as part of the trial. Although the case may not pose as significant a legal threat as the ones scheduled to go to trial in 2024, it is more personal in certain ways. It’s taking place in New York City, where Trump grew up and built his brand in the real estate business. And he is facing significant ramifications for his business, which bears his family name and helped propel him to fame. The case may also be particularly personal for Trump because of who is testifying against him. Cohen — Trump’s longtime fixer turned antagonist — took to the stand in a high-profile appearance that put the two in the same room for the first time in years. Trump testified Monday in a highly combative session, and three of his adult children — Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and Ivanka Trump — have also testified. Trump took to social media throughout the trial, complaining that his sons were being “PERSECUTED in a political Witch Hunt” and at one point told the judge to “leave my children alone.” Trump on Wednesday complained that his “wonderful and beautiful daughter” was being brought in to testify after an unsuccessful attempt to avoid taking the stand. And the Trump campaign issued a fundraising solicitation Wednesday with the subject line: “They’re going after my family.” “No one wants to see their children go through that, and it was tough, but he’s very defiant and took over the whole courtroom,” senior Trump campaign adviser Chris LaCivita told CBS News after a Wednesday rally in Florida.
House Republicans issue criminal referral against Michael Cohen over NY fraud trial testimony - Two Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee have recommended the Justice Department look at pursuing charges against former Trump attorney Michael Cohen for contradictory testimony he gave last month in former President Trump’s fraud trial in New York. The criminal referral letter — sent by House Intelligence Chair Mike Turner (R-Ohio) and committee member Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) — accuses Cohen of committing perjury and having “knowingly made false statements” before the congressional panel four years ago. “That Mr. Cohen was willing to openly and brazenly state at trial that he lied to Congress on this specific issue is startling,” the referral letter reads. “His willingness to make such a statement alone should necessitate an investigation.” While it urges prosecutors to take action, a criminal referral is largely symbolic and does not hold any legal weight. Cohen’s lawyer, Jeffrey K. Levine, called the referral “meritless” and based only on an “out-of-context, cherry picked, answer from a 2019 Intelligence Committee deposition transcript” in a statement to The Hill. Amid cross-examination by Trump’s legal team late last month, Cohen testified that he lied under oath to the House Intelligence Committee in February 2019 when asked about the former president’s personal financial statements during a deposition. In that 2019 testimony, the former president’s longtime lawyer and fixer said Trump did not ask him to inflate the numbers detailed in his statements of financial condition — documents that detail the value of the Trump Organization’s various assets. But in New York last month, Cohen told state lawyers that Trump did direct him and former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg to “reverse engineer” the former president’s assets “in order to achieve the number that Trump had tasked us with.”\
Trump will file for mistrial in NY fraud case ‘very soon,’ attorney says - Former President Trump’s attorney Alina Habba said Sunday that she will be filing for a mistrial in the former president’s fraud cause in New York “soon,” while raising concerns that it will be the same trial judge deciding on the motion. Trump has repeatedly expressed concerns on both social media and in court about the judge presiding over the case, along with the judge’s principal clerk, claiming they are biased and motivated by politics. Judge Arthur Engoron issued a gag order last month barring Trump and other parties in the case from posting or speaking publicly about members of his staff. Last month, Engoron fined Trump $10,000 for violating the gag order. Asked on Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures” about Trump’s concerns over the judge and clerk, Habba said the gag order prevented her from responding. “I can tell you that we will be filing papers to address all of those issues,” Habba said. When asked if she will file for a mistrial, Habba said “soon,” and then “very soon.” “The problem is, with all of these things, such as filing a motion for recusal, which we have done twice, is that the judge has to be the one that decides: Is he going to recuse himself? Does he feel that there was a mistrial,” Habba said. “It’s a bench trial. We have one judge. And it’s the same judge that issued the gag order that has to make those determinations. So, at this point, I don’t have any reason to believe he shouldn’t after what we have learned, if it’s true,” Habba continued. Trump’s defense is slated to begin presenting its case Monday in New York, where Trump faces a $250 million lawsuit from New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) over more than a decade of alleged fraud. The lawsuit — against Trump, the Trump organization and Trump’s two adult sons — alleges the former president’s company sought lower taxes and better insurance coverage by falsely inflating and deflating the value of its assets. Trump and his sons have denied the claims.
Trump hits New York AG for ‘smirking all day long’ amid fraud trial - Former President Trump lashed out at New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) on Tuesday for “smirking all day long” from across the courtroom as his legal team mounts its defense in the civil fraud case targeting his business empire. “Racist A.G. Letitia James is smirking all day long from her seat in Court,” Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social. “You have a (Trump Hating!) Attorney General who’s seeking hundreds of millions of dollars in damages when not a single penny was lost by these banks, and that’s part of this (Unconstitutional!) Law,” he said, adding, “You can see from the reaction of A.G. James, every morning from that seat, that she is enjoying this, enjoying it a bit too much.” During the trial, Trump has reportedly appeared visibly irked at James, who rested her case Wednesday. Trump has long attacked James for what he has described as unfairly targeting him for politically motivated purposes. An uphill battle faces Trump’s lawyers as they take their turn making a case; Judge Arthur Engoron found the Trump Organization and its executives liable for fraud before the trial even began. A New York appeals court paused the decision to strip Trump’s business licenses until after Trump’s case is heard. The civil trial is separate from Trump’s four other criminal indictments he faces, two of which are related to his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Another centers on his alleged mishandling of classified documents after leaving the White House, and another relates to his alleged efforts to conceal hush money payments ahead of the 2016 presidential election.
Ellis told Georgia prosecutors Trump planned ‘to stay in power’: ABC News -Former Trump campaign attorney Jenna Ellis told Georgia prosecutors that then-President Trump did not plan to leave the White House “under any circumstances” after losing the 2020 election, according to video obtained and published by ABC News.The video shows part of an interview Ellis conducted with prosecutors in Georgia investigating Trump’s efforts to overturn the state’s election results in 2020. Ellis last month reached a plea agreement in the case.In the video, Ellis describes a conversation she had with former senior Trump White House official Dan Scavino around Dec. 19, 2020. She tells prosecutors she “emphasized to him I thought the claims and the ability to challenge the election results was essentially over,” and Scavino responded that Trump and his team didn’t care.“He said, ‘The boss is not going to leave under any circumstances. We are just going to stay in power,'” Ellis said. “And I said to him, ‘Well, it doesn’t quite work that way, you realize.’ And he said, ‘We don’t care.'” The video provides insight into the types of information Ellis and others who are cooperating with prosecutors may be providing into what was happening in Trump’s orbit following the 2020 election, when the former president constantly made false allegations that the results were fraudulent, even as his own campaign’s court challenges were rejected and debunked.Ellis, who once described herself as part of an “elite strike force team” of attorneys pursuing unfounded claims of election fraud, pleaded guilty last month to one count of aiding and abetting false statements and writings.Like the two other former Trump campaign attorneys who took plea deals, Ellis agreed to testify truthfully against her co-defendants, including the former president.Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis (D) charged Ellis, the former president and 17 others in August in a sprawling racketeering indictment that accused all of them of entering an unlawful conspiracy to keep Trump in power following the 2020 election.
Georgia prosecutors propose starting Trump’s criminal trial in August 2024 -Fulton County prosecutors asked a Georgia judge to set former President Trump’s criminal trial to begin Aug. 5, 2024, a timeline that could put Trump on trial through Election Day. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis (D) had previously proposed a March trial start, but her new request acknowledges Trump’s other trials that are already scheduled to take place throughout the spring. Willis in the new filing also reiterated her desire to try Trump alongside his more than dozen co-defendants. “This proposed trial date balances potential delays from Defendant Trump’s other criminal trials in sister sovereigns and the other Defendants’ constitutional speedy trial rights,” prosecutors wrote. If accepted by Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee, Willis’s proposal would have Trump’s trial begin weeks after the Republican National Convention and raise the possibility it would extend through Election Day.
Judge denies Trump’s mistrial motion in NY fraud case - A New York judge has denied former President Trump’s motion for a mistrial in his civil fraud case, rejecting the claim that the judge and his principal law clerk had “tainted” the trial with bias. Judge Arthur Engoron issued a scathing rebuke of Trump’s mistrial motion Friday afternoon, describing it as “utterly without merit.” He defended the political donations of his clerk and his own extrajudicial posts online to a school alumni website that came under fire by the former president’s defense. “I stand by each and every ruling, and they speak for themselves,” Engoron wrote in the six-page decision. The judge accused Trump’s counsel of cherry-picking purported evidence of misconduct without showing the full picture. The mistrial motion cited a comment made by Engoron during Trump’s testimony that the judge was “not here to hear what [Donald Trump] has to say,” but excluded his next sentence which contextualized the comment. “Such argument is disingenuous and made in bad faith, as defendants omitted what I said immediately after that sentence, which is ‘I’m here to hear him answer questions,'” Engoron wrote. “Indeed, those are precisely the roles of the witness and the finder of fact.” That the judge had shared links about the case on his school alumni website also drew the ire of Trump’s counsel, which Engoron objected to by asserting that “none of this has anything to do with, much less does it interfere with, my presiding fairly, impartially, and professionally over the instant dispute.” His clerk — who has become an unwitting main character in the fraud trial — was also targeted in the mistrial motion, which suggested that she has been given “unprecedented and inappropriate latitude” to act as a “co-judge” in the case. The clerk frequently confers with Engoron via whispers and written notes, frequently before orders are issued. “There is absolutely no ‘co-judging’ at play,” Engoron wrote. Trump’s counsel also accused the clerk of making “partisan political contributions in excess of strict limits,” including to groups that oppose Trump and support New York Attorney General Letitia James (D).
Trump claims New York fraud trial imploded with Cohen’s testimony - Former President Trump pointed to the testimony of his former fixer and personal attorney, Michael Cohen, as the catalyst to the supposed “implosion” of the civil fraud case brought against him by New York Attorney General Letitia James (D). Trump specifically called out Cohen’s testimony, calling the case “rigged” and making unsubstantiated allegations that Judge Arthur Engoron and James were committing fraud. “Why doesn’t the implosion of the A.G. of New York State’s Star Witness end this Witch Hunt,” Trump wrote Thursday in a post on Truth Social, referring to Cohen’s testimony. “He admitted on the stand that he lied, and that I NEVER TOLD HIM, OR ANYONE ELSE, TO INFLATE THE NUMBERS.” “In fact, the numbers are low, or very conservative, the exact opposite of what this ridiculous RIGGED case is all about. THE FRAUD IS BY THE JUDGE & A.G. (Mar-a-Lago & more!),” the former president added. “NOT BY ME!!!” Trump’s legal team last month sought to undermine the former attorney’s credibility during the cross-examination, showing Cohen a transcript from 2019 when he said Trump did not direct him to inflate his net worth. Earlier that week, Cohen said Trump had done so. Cohen — whom Trump has called James’s “star witness” in the case — explained the discrepancy by saying the attorneys were “cherry-picking” words in his testimony and noting the former president “speaks like a mob boss” and can “tell you without specifically telling you” what to do. Top Stories from The Hill House Ethics Committee releases scathing report on George Santos Paul Pelosi attacker found guilty of federal kidnapping, assault charges Trump signals he’s out for revenge in second term Trump gag order in NY fraud case temporarily lifted by appeals court Nonetheless, Trump has fixated on Cohen’s statements, suggesting they undermine James’s case. Engoron has already ruled the evidence James presented was sufficient in proving the crux of her case before the case was brought to trial. The attorney general’s lawsuit alleged Trump’s company sought lower taxes and better insurance coverage by falsely inflating and deflating the value of its assets. James’s office is seeking $250 million in financial penalties and to bar Trump and his adult children from operating in New York.
Trump power grab comes into focus in leaked Georgia videos - Leaked videos showing four Georgia defendants speaking to prosecutors in the racketeering case involving former President Trump are bringing into focus the ex-president’s desperate grab for power after losing the 2020 presidential race. “The boss is not going to leave under any circumstances,” then-White House deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino told ex-Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis, according to Ellis’s testimony to Fulton County prosecutors a day before she entered her guilty plea. “We are just going to stay in power,” he said. The videos, first reported by ABC News, place Trump at the top of the chain of command of efforts to subvert the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia in his favor. The defendants’ proffer statements bolster the narrative Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis laid out in her 98-page indictment charging Trump and 18 co-defendants with joining a criminal enterprise bent on keeping Trump in the White House. “The entire idea behind the indictment is that Donald Trump was driving the bus and doing so in a way that was only intended to secure power,” said Anthony Michael Kreis, a law professor at Georgia State University. “To the extent that this kind of evidence supports that theory, I think it’s really damning to the good-faith justifications that have been put out by his allies and his attorneys.” ABC News on Monday afternoon published videos of Ellis and another former Trump lawyer, Sidney Powell, giving confidential interviews to prosecutors. Later that evening, The Washington Post published additional details of the interviews, which also described interviews with another Trump lawyer, Kenneth Chesebro, and Georgia bail bondsman Scott Hall. All four defendants pleaded guilty to lesser charges as part of agreements with state prosecutors. The videos revealed new details about what information the defendants have provided to law enforcement since agreeing to cooperate in the state’s case. In another excerpt of her interview, Ellis told prosecutors that she believed the alternate electors plot, in which Trump and his allies allegedly sought to produce a different slate of pro-Trump electors to be certified in key swing states, was intentionally kept a secret. “My belief, essentially, [is] that was shielded from me specifically, but also from the general public, as far as what was actually going on,” Ellis said, according to ABC News. Chesebro told the Georgia prosecutors about a meeting with Trump in which the lawyer summarized a Nov. 18, 2020, memo to the campaign calling Jan. 6, 2021, “the real deadline” for finalizing Arizona’s electoral votes — another state Trump lost that was involved in the alternate electors plan. Chesebro also distanced himself from Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman, two other defendants in the case, and described the Capitol attack — at which he was present — as the “worst possible thing that could happen,” according to the Post. And Powell described a Christmas Eve 2020 call with Trump in which she may have apologized for the lack of success in his post-election legal efforts. She told the prosecutors that Trump contacted her repeatedly because he “always wanted to know where things were in terms of finding fraud that would change the results of the election,” according to the Post. The videos lend insight into what each defendant might say on the witness stand during a jury trial — and the types of questions prosecutors might ask them.
Trump Issues Sinister Threat to 'Root Out' Leftists If Elected in 2024 - Former U.S. President Donald Trump pledged during a Veterans Day speech on Saturday to "root out" those he described as "radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country" if he's elected in 2024, an openly fascistic threat that drew comparisons to Nazi rhetoric."We are a failing nation. We are a nation in serious decline," Trump, the current Republican presidential front-runner, told the crowd gathered in Claremont, New Hampshire. "2024 is our final battle."The former president vowed to target communists and Marxists—ideological groups that he described as "radical left lunatics"—and "rout the fake news media until they become real.""The real threat is not from the radical right. The real threat is from the radical left, and it's growing every day—every single day," Trump claimed. "The threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous, and grave than the threat from within." David DeWitt, editor-in-chief of the Ohio Capital Journal, characterized Trump's remarks as "rhetoric literally out of the Nazi playbook" and joined others in criticizing The New York Times for initially headliningits coverage of the speech, "Trump Takes Veterans Day Speech in a Very Different Direction."The former president also said Saturday that his administration would launch the "largest domestic deportation operation in American history," institute "strong and ideological screenings for all immigrants," revive the Muslim ban, further slash taxes, gut regulations, and prioritize the approval of fossil fuel pipelines.Trump's speech heightened alarm over his authoritarian intentions should he win another term in the White House four years after attempting to overturn the election that removed him from power. The former president is currently facing more than 90 felony charges, many of them stemming from his election subversion efforts and the January 6, 2021 insurrection that he provoked.
Warnings Grow That US Media Again Failing to Accurately Cover Trump's Fascist Threat --Former U.S. President Donald Trump is the GOP front-runner for 2024, setting up an expected rematch with Democratic President Joe Biden, but American media coverage of the Republican's campaign is already showing that many journalists didn't learn important lessons about how to report on his extremism, according to recent analyses.During a Saturday rally, Trump pledged to "root out the communist, Marxist, fascist, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country, that lie and steal and cheat on elections and will do anything possible—they'll do anything, whether legally or illegally—to destroy America and to destroy the American dream.""The real threat is not from the radical right; the real threat is from the radical left, and it's growing every day, every single day. The threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous, and grave than the threat from within," added Trump—who currently faces four criminal cases, two of which relate to his efforts to overturn his 2020 loss.As Common Dreams reported, Trump's openly fascistic comments on Saturday quickly drew comparisons to Nazi rhetoric, particularly the use of the word "vermin.""The press must get across to American citizens the crucial importance of this election and the dangers of a Trump win.""This is straight-up Nazi talk, in a way he's never done quite before. To announce that the real enemy is domestic and then to speak of that enemy in subhuman terms is Fascism 101. Especially that particular word," The New Republic editor Michael Tomasky wrote Sunday, referencing some antisemitic content from the 1930s and '40s."Trump's rats are a much broader category," Tomasky continued, "and in that sense an even more dangerous one—he means whoever manages to offend him while exercising their constitutionally guaranteed right to register dissent and to criticize him." And yet, as Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch emphasized Sunday, "in one of the most perilous moments of crisis the world has seen in 75 years, and with the basic notions of free speech under assault, most newsrooms aren't fighting back. They are, instead, pulling their punches in a defensive, 'rope-a-dope' crouch, and thus failing to truly inform—when democracy itself is at risk."
Trump rails against reports Biden won’t be charged over classified documents --Former President Trump railed against reports President Biden won’t be charged in the special counsel probe into his handling of classified documents, taking to social media Friday morning to complain of what he considers “prosecutorial misconduct.”Special counsel Robert Hur is expected to put together a critical report of Biden’s conduct but its not likely to result in criminal charges, the Wall Street Journal first reported Thursday.Trump, who faces criminal charges in Florida in a classified documents case, fumed on Truth Social against what he called “selective prosecution.”“Wow! Fake news CNN, through a leak from the Department of Injustice, has just reported that no charges will be filed in the (much bigger than mine!!!) Crooked Joe Biden documents case,” Trump said in one post. “We are living in a very corrupt country!”CNN cited “two sources close to investigation” in its report on Hur’s plans.Hur was appointed in January to investigate Biden’s case after documents from his time as vice president were found at his former office in Washington, D.C., and his home in Wilmington, Del.Hur’s team has told officials in the Justice Department that it hopes to have the report completed by the end of the year, but that timeline could change, CNN reported.Biden was interviewed by Hur in early October after documents were found by officials clearing out his old office last November. Biden has maintained he did nothing wrong and his team has repeatedly noted that his lawyers quickly notified the Justice Department and cooperated with it after discovering the documents.And Biden’s supporters argue his proactive response paints a crucial contrast with Trump’s conduct, which has drawn criminal charges from special counsel Jack Smith.Trump and co-conspirators are accused of misleading investigators and withholding documents from various government agencies.The National Archives reportedly alerted the Justice Department that Trump possessed more than 300 classified documents after leaving office, which eventually led to the FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago property last August. Trump’s trial in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case is set to go to trial in May 2024, though Judge Aileen Cannon appears to be considering postponing the trial until after the presidential elections.
CNN analyst: Report on California grand jury ‘bad news’ for Hunter Biden -CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig suggested it doesn’t bode well for Hunter Biden that a California grand jury is being used in a special counsel’s investigation into the president’s son.“It’s bad news for Hunter Biden any way you slice this,” Honig said during an interview on “Anderson Cooper 360″ on Thursday evening. “Let’s remember, he already has a pending indictment in the federal district court in Delaware for the firearms-related charges.”Honig was responding to a CNN report published Thursday that said special counsel David Weiss will be using a California grand jury to obtain documents and testimony from possible witnesses in the ongoing federal investigation into Biden’s business.The Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation appears to be focused on Biden’s alleged failure to pay taxes by IRS deadlines. It’s not clear if any witnesses have appeared in person or if investigators are looking at anything beyond tax matters at this time, CNN reported.CNN said the move by Weiss indicates he may be seeking new charges against Biden after previously bringing gun charges against him in Delaware. Honig said Biden may be looking at a second indictment out of California.“If we think about the potential tax charges here, it’s important to keep in mind, when Hunter Biden went into court a few months ago with DOJ, they had a deal that he was going to plead guilty to misdemeanor tax offenses, and they agreed — DOJ and Hunter Biden agreed — that he was going, that he had failed to pay over $1 million in income taxes that he owed,” Honig said.“So, assuming, which I think is a fair assumption, that DOJ has evidence of that, that feels like the minimum charges he may face,” Honig continued.Biden was set to take a plea deal to tax charges and settle a gun charge during a July 26 hearing in Delaware, but the judge in the case questioned the parameters of the deal and whether he fully understood what he was agreeing to. The deal unraveled.The president’s son pleaded not guilty in early October to charges relating to concealing drug use when buying a weapon. The plea kicked off a battle to beat an indictment from the DOJ, as House Republicans have zeroed in on Hunter Biden and his father.Weiss has previously used a federal grand jury in the Delaware investigation. Prosecutors brought forward multiple witnesses to testify in Wilmington last year before the deal fell apart. According to the CNN report, the special counsel may use previously collected evidence by the grand jury in Delaware in a different federal court.
IRS takes aim at environmental write-offs in tax evasion crackdown - The IRS put out new guidance on Friday to stymie a well-worn tax evasion scheme that allows write-offs for land left undeveloped in order to promote environmental conservation. Landowners can claim a credit for what they would have earned on their properties had they put them to industrial or commercial use, and such would-be developers have been claiming unjustified sums on these what-if scenarios. Known as “syndicated conservation easements,” the scheme has been on the IRS’s ‘Dirty Dozen’ list of tax scams for years. The abuse is so established, in fact, that it’s been shopped around by lawyers and accounting firms as a kind of business product in its own right.“The regulations issued today will stem the tide of certain syndicated conservation easements that are nothing more than retail tax shelters, while protecting the integrity of legitimate conservation easements and helping law-abiding taxpayers more easily meet their obligations,” the IRS said Friday. The IRS says it has observed tax scheme promoters take outsized deductions on these easements.“We have seen taxpayers, often encouraged by promoters and armed with questionable appraisals, take inappropriately large deductions for easements,” the agency said in a recent statement.The new IRS guidance pertains to a rule in a major piece of retirement legislation passed last year known as SECURE 2.0 that nixes the tax deductibility of “charitable contributions” worth more than two-and-a-half times what their investment in the property actually amounts to.The rule pertains to companies classified as partnerships and S-corporations, which are now under the IRS’s microscope as engaging disproportionately in abusive tax avoidance.“The IRS issued the conservation regulations to implement Congress’s 2022 limits on deductions for syndicated easements. [It’s] a good, bi-partisan initiative to offset some of the revenue loss to expand retirement benefits in SECURE 2.0,” tax expert Steve Rosenthal with the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, a Washington think tank, told The Hill. Despite the offset, SECURE 2.0 contained major perks for wealthy taxpayers that will add to the deficit outside of the 10-year budget window, in which the impact of laws on the national budget are required to be neutral. As such, tax experts have said the legislation includes an “accounting trick.”
Sam Bankman-Fried's Folly Is A Tale As Old As Time -- The image below is going around the internet as an “I told you so” moment for supporters of a liberal arts education — i.e., one that actually values reading books. On the poster is FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, his hair and dress as unruly as his organization’s account books. Surrounding Bankman-Fried is his take on the value of reading: “I’m very sceptical of books. I don’t want to say no book is ever worth reading but I actually do believe something very close to that.” At the bottom of the image reads, “The future of investing is FTX. You in?” (SBF also hated Shakespeare for his predictable plots.) No one is “in” anymore — not after FTX’s customers lost their savings in the biggest fraud case, post-Covid. On Nov. 2, Bankman-Fried was found guilty on two counts of fraud and five counts of conspiracy by a jury that took only four hours to decide his fate. For a time, Bankman-Fried was the world’s wealthiest individualunder 30 until interest rates started rising. As investors tried to pull their money from FTX, they realized their savings had disappeared, either lent to FTX’s sister firm Alameda to cover losses or to fuel a wild shopping spree where multimillion-dollar expenditures wereapproved via text with emojis. Bankman-Fried’s fall proves Theodore Roosevelt’s old maxim true: “A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car, but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad.”The fact that Bankman-Fried, former crypto darling and the face behind effective altruism (the use of data and statistics to maximize profits to then maximize donations to the causes likely to do the most good), was convicted of defrauding customers upwards of $8 billion shows how an education founded on practical utility but lacking timeless wisdom results in nothing but a terrifying fall. After all, the wonderboy who dismissed the value of books now faces decades in prison. Such folly is a textbook example of hubris, a kind of extreme arrogance directed toward the gods. This arrogance serves as an object lesson for things the reader should not do found in the works of Homer, Sophocles, and Milton. Yet lessons on hubris work both ways: directed to the individual who has displayed the character trait and suffered the fall and to those who watch the fall as a warning not to make the same mistakes. Chief among the classic flaws is assuming the rules and norms regarding human nature do not apply to you. The tale of Oedipus the King is most relevant to the fall of Bankman-Fried. In that great play, the title character Oedipus pridefully assumes he may dodge his fate, which no human being can do, and save Thebes from a devastating plague. Oedipus’ great error in judgment, his hamartia, was not knowing himself. In the play, written by the Athenian playwright Sophocles, Oedipus becomes king by saving the city from the Sphinx, a monster who poses a riddle to passersby and devours them if they do not answer it. The riddle: “What walks on four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon, and three legs in the evening?” The answer is man, man in his stages of life from infancy (four legs) to his prime (two legs) and into old age (the third leg being a cane). The sad irony is that Oedipus knows some truths about mankind — the answer to a riddle — without recognizing what is in man and what man himself is capable of doing. After all, Oedipus is the one ultimately responsible for the plague and for the misfortune that befalls him, which he tragically could not avoid. Likewise, Bankman-Fried inspired investors and politicians alike to buy into a future facilitated by crypto. Yet, either he did not recognize what he was capable of under the right circumstances, or — knowing what he was doing to be wrong — he believed he could escape the fate reserved for white-collar criminals running Ponzi schemes. He provided no safeguards for a system into which tens of millions of dollars poured every day — no chief financial officer and no human resources department. Nor did he envision a day when the good times would stop rolling and FTX’s cash flow dry up. Bankman-Fried knew certain things about man but not what was inhimself, for man is a creature capable of doing anything under the right circumstances — a creature who should be on guard against such temptations. The same reasoning applies to the other movement Bankman-Fried represented: effective altruism. As opposed to just normal altruism, effective altruism focuses on maximizing profits to support certain causes (notably environmental causes) with maximum donations. The movement is another iteration of the same prideful themes — with enough data and the progressive, forward-thinking mindset of men like Bankman-Fried before his demise, we can solve the problems that have plagued humanity since the biblical fall of man.
Why Did America’s Elite Keep Falling for Crypto Frauds? Sam Bankman-Fried's Crypto Fraud Conned the U.S. Establishment -- It only took a jury four hours to decide that former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried had committed large-scale fraud—and that included their lunch break. Leading politicians, investors, and observers, not to mention a number of high-profile journalists, in contrast, managed to stay oblivious to it for years. Two recent books illustrate how and why he got away with it, at least for a while.
LEVER TIME: What The Sam Bankman-Fried Verdict Means For Crypto (podcast) On this week’s episode of Lever Time, producer Frank Cappello is joined by researcher, software engineer, and cryptocurrency critic Molly White, who helps break down everything you need to know about the trial of former crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried. A transcript of this episode is available here. On Nov. 2, a New York federal jury found Bankman-Fried guilty of seven counts of fraud and conspiracy related to the Nov. 2022 collapse of his cryptocurrency exchange FTX. Bankman-Fried stole as much as $10 billion from its customers and investors, according to prosecutors. One prominent cryptocurrency proponent described the verdict as a “new beginning” for the industry — though critics are skeptical that anything has fundamentally changed. In today’s interview, Molly unpacks Sam Bankman-Fried’s trial and verdict, as well as the implications for the broader crypto industry. Molly also explains how the crypto market, despite being decentralized, is more or less tethered to traditional financial markets, and why regulating the “Wild West” of cryptocurrency is more crucial than ever.
SBF's Trial May Be Over, but The Bahamas Is Living Its Own Trial -Many decisions that led to "one of the biggest financial frauds in American history" took place outside the U.S., in The Bahamas, where FTX's leadership set up shop in 2021."There was a wave, an excitement about FTX in the air," a nostalgic Austin told CoinDesk. "Businesses got a boost from their existence here. Employees were paid well and there was a lot of excitement around crypto and then suddenly, everyone was trying to figure out what the hell happened."In October 2023, as Bankman-Fried fought for his innocence in a Manhattan courthouse, downtown Nassau, the capital city of The Bahamas, appeared to be "a ghost town," though that wasn't entirely reflective of its economy."There's no Bahamas without tourism. It's the slow season. No cruise ship today. On Wednesday we had six (so it was different). Things pick back up around December," said Mike Larry, a taxi driver. On days when cruise ships don't arrive, shopkeepers often shut shops to enjoy a day off, in the "laid back" spirit of the Caribbean nation.Economic activity, primarily tourism, has suffered in The Bahamas since the double whammy ofHurricane Dorian in 2019 and the COVID-19 pandemic, costing the nation a loss of $9.5 billion. Together with construction and manufacturing, tourism accounts for 60% of the developing nation's GDP, which was $12.9 billion in 2022.But when FTX made The Bahamas its base in September 2021, moving from the uncertainty of Hong Kong to the warmer shores of the archipelago, a funky cocktail of hope and skepticism hit the stands."If you came here last year everyone was talking about crypto. That ain't make no sense," said Larry as he drove through Nassau. "I don't know about cryptocurrency. They say, 'Put money you are willing to lose,' but the only thing I am willing to lose is my girlfriend."CoinDesk spoke to more than a dozen locals to gauge their interest in cryptocurrency or FTX before its collapse. Around half of them said they had little knowledge about crypto or showed a lack of risk-taking appetite. But almost all of the individuals holding white-collar jobs who spoke to CoinDesk invested in crypto in some form or the other."People here don't trust crypto because we love to feel the money," said Mario Young, technology manager at ST Global Markets, a crypto broker registered in The Bahamas. "But FTX invested a lot in the economy, donating to schools and the main shelter. So it seemed legitimate, as the government seemed to be on board with everything."
SEC charges Lindsay Lohan, Jake Paul with crypto violations -The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged Lindsay Lohan, Jake Paul and six other celebrities for violating investor-protection laws by promoting cryptocurrencies without disclosing they were being compensated for doing so. The SEC announced Wednesday a number of charges against crypto asset entrepreneur Justin Sun and three of his companies, including “orchestrating a scheme to pay celebrities” to tout his crypto asset securities Tronix and BitTorrent without disclosing their compensation. The commission charged the eight celebrities for being part of that scheme. Lohan and Paul were charged along with singers Austin Mahone and Akon, rappers Soulja Boy and Lil Yachty, singer-songwriter Ne-Yo, and adult film actress Kendra Lust, according to the SEC release. Six of the celebrities, excluding Soulja Boy and Mahone, agreed to pay more than $400,000 total to settle without admitting or denying the charges, the SEC said. “This case demonstrates again the high risk investors face when crypto asset securities are offered and sold without proper disclosure,” SEC Chair Gary Gensler said. As alleged, Sun, who owns Tron Foundation Limited, BitTorrent Foundation Ltd. and Rainberry Inc., “induced investors to purchase TRX and BTT by orchestrating a promotional campaign in which he and his celebrity promoters hid the fact that the celebrities were paid for their tweets,” Gensler said. The SEC complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, also alleges that Sun specifically directed the celebrities not to disclose their compensation. The SEC has long urged celebrities and social media figures to use caution when promoting investments to their fans and followers without disclosing their compensation for doing so. The SEC last year announced a $1.26 million settlement with Kim Kardashian for touting EthereumMax’s “Emax tokens” without disclosing she was paid $250,000 for the promotional Instagram post.
FBI Arrests Trio Accused of Bilking U.S. Banks Out of $10M, Converting Funds to Crypto -- Three men duped New York-area banks into shelling out more than $10 million and tried to make off with the money by converting it to crypto, U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said Thursday in a statement.Zhong Shi Gao, Naifeng Xu and Fei Jiang allegedly stole millions of dollars from nearly a dozen financial institutions throughout the New York metropolitan area between 2018 and 2022, law enforcement officials said. The trio bilked banks out of the funds by posing as victims of fraudulent money transfers, prompting institutions to credit them in the amount of the supposed unauthorized transfers and "effectively doubling their money," according to an indictment."These charges should serve as a warning to fraudsters and cybercriminals who think they can turn to cryptocurrency to hide their identities – together with our partner agencies, we will find you and hold you accountable for your crimes," Williams said in the statement.Each of the accused men has been arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and faces four criminal charges in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York: bank fraud conspiracy, conspiracy to commit wire fraud affecting a financial institution, money laundering conspiracy and aggravated identity theft. The maximum sentence for all the charges combined could amount to nearly 100 years, the release shows.Authorities said the men enlisted foreign nationals from China and Taiwan to open U.S. bank accounts that the trio could use to manage the transfers that they'd pretend were unwanted.
Alex Murdaugh pleads guilty in financial crimes case days before trial - Convicted murderer Alex Murdaugh struck a plea deal Friday in a financial crimes case, just days before a trial was set to begin in South Carolina. Murdaugh, 55, has agreed to plead guilty in Beaufort County Court to more than a dozen counts including money laundering, breach of trust and financial fraud in exchange for a 27-year sentence, The Associated Press reported. The deal will add more prison time to Murdaugh’s life sentence after he was convicted earlier this year of killing his wife and son in 2021. Murdaugh pleaded guilty in September in federal court to 22 counts of financial fraud and money laundering. Judge Clifton Newman said he intends to accept the plea deal and set a sentencing hearing on Nov. 28. The deal means Murdaugh will avoid a state trial that was set to begin on Nov. 27. Murdaugh, a longtime lawyer, was accused of stealing millions in legal settlements from injured clients or families of those killed on the job. He has also been accused of stealing millions from his law firm and getting out of hundreds of thousands in state income taxes.
Bitcoin wallets made before 2016 are facing new attack risks - Bitcoin wallets made before 2016 could be facing new attack risks due to a recently discovered software flaw, according to a new report from cryptocurrency startup Unciphered. Unciphered on Tuesday said the flaw, dubbed “Randstorm,” includes a collection of bugs, design choices and API (Application Programming Interface) changes that increased the vulnerability of Bitcoin wallets created between 2011 and 2015.That flaw may have impacted an estimated 1.4 million Bitcoin and if about 3 to 5 percent of wallets were impacted, the value of the coins at risk of being stolen is about $1.2 to $2.1 billion, according to the startup.The issue was discovered last year after the startup was working with a customer who was locked out of a Bitcoin wallet made on the site now known as Blockchain.com. While investigating how to recover the wallet, Unciphered discovered an issue in wallets made by BitcoinJS from 2011-2015.The startup said this flaw also was found in some Dogecoin wallets made in that same period on Dogecoin.info.Unciphered first shared their findings with the Washington Post, which reported BitcoinJS was supposed to make wallets with random cryptographic keys, but the flaw created keys that were not random enough.Unciphered pointed out that the discovery of the flaw does not mean Bitcoin or technology is not broken, but rather a series of programming mistakes that spread across several technologies between 2011-2015.Those who believe their wallet may be vulnerable were advised to move their assets to a new or more recently created wallet.
The CFPB Wants To Regulate Crypto Payments –= It seems each U.S. regulator wants their piece of the crypto oversight pie. Last week, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureauproposed to carve out examination authority over the country’s largest payments companies. Their proposal, if it goes unchanged, will give the Bureau enhanced authority over crypto companies, even those companies already regulated as money transmitters. Large companies dabbling in crypto must already deal with regulatory inquiries from a veritable alphabet soup of agencies. Now, the Bureau has shown its hand. Its proposal begins with the assumption some payments companies are too big to ignore. The proposal expects 17 of the largest digital consumer payments companies will be subject to the rule, covering 88% of known consumer transactions in the nonbank market. Importantly, the proposal references six “tech giants” with payments services: Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, PayPal, and Square. The proposal also revealed the Bureau looked long and hard at crypto-specific “transaction and revenue data” from Elliptic Enterprises Limited. They left no hints as to which crypto companies could be affected. With the new proposal in place, federal examiners would gain unprecedented access to the books, records, and chat logs of nonbank financial institutions, including money transmitters that accept and transmit digital assets. The feds would be free to dig deep and search for instances of consumer harm. Yet while the proposal seeks new examination powers, it does not seek much else. It makes no request for neither new prescriptive rules nor new enforcement authority. If enforcement occurs after an exam, it would only be because the examiner discovered a violation of an existing rule. While this may seem like a silver lining, the rulemaking suggests the Bureau has taken a fresh look at existing rules and decided anew how they should touch crypto transactions. Historically, Regulation E (which applies to electronic funds transfers) has not been a topic of discussion among compliance officers at crypto companies. The Bureau’s proposal gives the first ever indication that “funds” under Regulation E should include “digital assets that have monetary value and are readily useable for financial purposes, including as a medium of exchange.” This entirely brand new position could make virtual currency transactions subject to Regulation E. The Bureau also noted its enforcement authority to prevent unfair, deceptive, or abusive acts or practices may be invoked after an examination. This authority, broad and expansive as it is, gives the Bureau latitude to punish a range of business practices it finds unpalatable for consumers. The Bureau’s view would cause tremors in the compliance departments of the largest crypto exchanges. Fortunately, regulators cannot make new rules without first seeking, reading, and responding to public input. Anyone wishing to limit the rule has until January 8, 2024, to submit their comments.
Global securities body IOSCO unveils crypto regulatory framework proposals - The International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) — an international regulatory body overseeing global securities markets — has released its conclusive report containing policy suggestions for crypto and digital asset (CDA) markets. The suggestions within the report play a crucial role in formulating a unified global regulatory approach to address the substantial risks to investor protection and market integrity posed by centralized crypto asset intermediaries known as crypto asset service providers (CASPs). IOSCO’s specific and focused recommendations provide a thorough explanation of regulatory expectations. According to the report, these expectations can be addressed by applying existing rules or creating new ones, depending on the jurisdiction. The aim is to tackle the identified critical areas of harm in these markets. Screenshot of the policy recommendations. Source: IOSCO According to the report, the CDA recommendations establish a distinct and robust global regulatory foundation, ensuring CASPs adhere to the business conduct standards applicable in conventional financial markets. The suggestions address crucial domains, aligning with IOSCO’s goals and principles for securities regulation and pertinent supporting standards, recommendations and best practices. The report identifies several critical domains: conflicts of interest from vertical integration, market manipulation, insider trading, fraud, custody, client asset protection, cross-border risks, regulatory cooperation, operational and technological risk and retail distribution. The IOSCO’s board comprises 35 regulators and top executives, such as the heads of the United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the United Kingdom’s Financial Conduct Authority — among others. Previously, in 2022, the organization published reports on DeFi, stablecoins and influencers. The supervisory capacities that the IOSCO recommends national regulators acquire include regulatory channels to report consumer complaints for misleading and illegal promotions and evidence-tracking processes to cope with online information’s fast pace and changing nature.
New Policy Recommendations Aim To Provide Clarity On Crypto Regulatory Challenges - A leading global standard-setter for securities market regulators, has released its highly anticipated Final Report with Policy Recommendations for Crypto and Digital Asset (CDA) Markets.This development marks a significant step in providing a coordinated global regulatory response to the evolving landscape of crypto-assets.The 18 policy recommendations issued by International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) aim to address significant investor protection and market integrity risks posed by crypto-asset activities, particularly those involving centralized crypto-asset intermediaries, known as crypto-asset service providers (CASPs).These recommendations are aligned with IOSCO's widely accepted global standards for securities markets regulation and follow a lifecycle approach, encompassing activities from offering admission to trading to ongoing trading, settlement, market surveillance, custody, and retail distribution.A key focus of these recommendations is to enhance cooperation among regulators, providing a crucial benchmark for IOSCO members to coordinate and respond to challenges across borders, particularly those arising from global crypto-asset activities conducted by CASPs.This is especially pertinent as CASPs often provide their services remotely into multiple jurisdictions, which raises concerns about regulatory arbitrage.The recommendations are structured around six core areas, consistent with IOSCO Standards:
- Addressing conflicts of interest arising from vertical integration of activities and functions.
- Tackling market manipulation, insider trading, and fraud.
- Managing cross-border risks and enhancing regulatory cooperation.
- Ensuring custody and protection of client assets.
- Addressing operational and technological risks.
- Regulating retail access, suitability, and distribution.
IOSCO's approach is to assist its members in applying its Objectives and Principles for Securities Regulation and relevant supporting standards, recommendations, and good practices to crypto-asset activities within their jurisdictions.This move is in response to widespread concerns about market integrity and investor protection in the crypto-asset markets.The release of these recommendations is a critical step towards creating a more secure and regulated environment for the trading and handling of crypto and digital assets, offering a level of investor protection and market integrity similar to that in traditional financial markets.This initiative by IOSCO is expected to pave the way for a more robust and harmonized global regulatory framework for crypto-assets, addressing the dynamic and often complex nature of these emerging markets.
New York Department of Financial Services issues 'heightened' crypto listing and delisting guidance - The New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) issued updated regulations regarding the listing and delisting of virtual currency on Nov. 15.The department said that the new guidance builds on rules that it issued on Sept. 18. It said that it received input from various entities in a later comment period and is now setting out “new heightened standards.” In addition to identifying various concerns, it said that the updated guidance contains clearer definitions of certain terms.In practical terms, the guidance states that companies that previously had an approved cryptocurrency listing policy cannot self-certify any listings until they have both listing and delisting policies approved by the regulator under the new guidance.The guidance also states that companies with an approved listing policy must notify NYDFS in writing of any self-certified listings and maintain records.The guidance allows companies that do not have an approved listing policy to list cryptocurrencies that are included on the NYDFS greenlist. That greenlist includes Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and six stablecoins, including PayPal USD (PYUSD).Finally, companies must be able to safely end support for any coin when an elevated risk is identified. Therefore, all affected companies must have a coin delisting policy even if they do not have a listing policy. Companies creating delisting policies must meet a draft deadline on Dec. 8, 2023, and a final deadline on Jan. 31, 2024.
Proposed Crypto Regs Go Too Far, Industry Reps Tell IRS -At a public rulemaking hearing, the IRS heard reoccurring themes in testimony from tax practitioners and stakeholders from the digital asset community that the agency’s proposed crypto tax and reporting framework overreaches and imposes undue burdens on those considered brokers.The hearing saw comments from over a dozen presenters on the IRS’ proposed digital asset regs issued in August. During the comment period, the IRS received over 44,000 correspondences on how to best implement digital asset provisions of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act two years after the bill’s enactment. Those provisions, which set forth reporting requirements and applicable definitions for digital asset brokers, were delayed until reg finalization.In the proposed regs, the IRS sought to clarify the definition of a digital asset broker, applying it to centralized exchanges, digital asset payment processors, and certain decentralized protocols providing a “facilitative service” that would or be in a position to know identifying information about sellers and the nature of transactions.Several commenters took issue with the regs’ interpretation of the statutory term “effectuate” and argue reporting obligations as currently written would capture those indirectly involved in digital asset transactions. “The proposed regulations far exceed congressional authorization,” testified Lawrence Zlatkin of CoinBase.“The rules inappropriately assign” broker status “for reporting purposes to certain industry participants based on the theory that they indirectly effectuate transfers of digital assets,” he continued. “The rules improperly grant” intermediary status “to certain industry players for reporting purposes on the theory that they indirectly influence the transfer of digital assets. This overly broad definition of an intermediary includes persons who may participate in or lead to a transaction even if they do not perform it.”Several commenters raised concerns over the regs’ effect on decentralized finance, or “DeFi,” with some claiming the government is showing technological preference toward centralized exchanges, or in other words, picking winners and losers. There is not a one-size-fits-all approach for the IRS to obtain customer identifying information and transactional data, the agency was told. Sean McElroy of Fenwick & West LLP suggested there be different regimes for centralized and decentralized exchanges and embrace a “principle of technology neutrality” and the regs be redrafted with a better understanding of DeFi. A centralized broker system cannot be applied to DeFi, he said, which would create an “impossible to meet burden.” Thus, DeFi software engineers and creators of autonomous protocols acting as indirect middlemen should not be subject to the same broker rules akin to a 20th Century financial system, McElroy argued.
Dubai Crypto Chief Stepping Down Amid Regulatory Push - The head of Dubai’s cryptocurrency authority is reportedly resigning after 11 months on the job. Henson Orser, who became CEO of the Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA) in January, is stepping down as regulators are set to impose broad-scale fines against non-compliant crypto companies doing business in Dubai, Bloomberg News reported Thursday (Nov. 16).“It was a great experience and I’m fully vested in a consultative capacity to support VARA,” Orser said. “I’m leaving to pursue other interests.”Orser will be replaced by Matthew White, a partner at PwC who has consulted for VARA, the agency said in a statement to Bloomberg. The transition will happen “over the coming months,” said VARA.VARA announced earlier this month that it was set to issue fines against crypto companies that hadn’t filed applications or registered to operate in Dubai by Nov. 17.Sources told Bloomberg that VARA was preparing to fine more than a dozen firms that hadn’t complied with its guidelines. According to Bloomberg’s sources, crypto exchanges such as Binance, Bybit and OKX are not among those facing fines.The report notes that Orser, formerly of Nomura, guided VARA as the authority adopted its crypto regime in the wake of last year’s FTX collapse, which rocked the digital asset world.Since then, companies like Coinbase have looked to Dubai’s home country of the United Arab Emirates as a more welcoming environment as the U.S. ramps up regulatory pressure against their industry.
Public needs to know blockchain use cases, AI needs regulation now — Andrew Yang - Andrew Yang, a former candidate for United States president and New York City mayor as well as founder of the Forward Party, had sobering observations about the uses of blockchain, or its lack of use, in the United States and U.S. regulation of artificial intelligence (AI) when he spoke Nov. 16 at the North American Blockchain Summit (NABS) in Fort Worth, Texas.Yang, who described himself as an “enormous believer in smart money, smart currencies,” said he saw blockchain and Web3 technology in a sorry state, especially in the United States, which creates the risk of firms fleeing overseas. Part of the problem is public perception, Yang said:“The way to avoid this fate is to have positive use cases for blockchain in solving problems for the American people. […] Unfortunately, what they see in the news is just Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX.”“We have not scratched the surface of what these tools can do to combat poverty,” Yang said. He saw other potential applications of blockchain technology in civic life as well. “Something I’m super passionate about, why is it that we can't vote on our mobile phones?” he asked.Yang raised concerns about AI, too, saying U.S. policy on AI is “fairly limited, maybe even incoherent.” Yang was among the 2,600 tech leaders and researchers who signed an open letter calling for a moratorium on training AI systems more powerful than GPT-4. He reiterated at NABS, “We may be getting ahead of ourselves with the development of these generative models.”AI is intimately tied to politics, Yang said, because of the effect it could have on campaigning and public life in general. He said:“You saw a deep fake of the Pentagon on fire, and the markets moved on that.”The U.S. regulatory approach — “Let’s wait until the fiasco happens, and then we’ll have hearings about it afterwards,” Yang called it — and the “winner-take-all” economy is part of the problem, according to Yang. In that atmosphere, the benefits of technological advances will be divided highly unevenly, making the existing divisions in U.S. political life worse, he said.
Blue Ridge Bank begins offboarding at least a dozen fintech partners Blue Ridge Bank has begun offboarding at least a dozen fintech partners, with more separations to come, after its once fast-growing banking-as-a-service business put the bank in regulatory hot water last year.The Virginia-based bank said Thursday in an investor presentation that it planned to reduce its nearly 50 BaaS relationships to a "limited number" with a commercial focus or "strong consumer traction" and that it will roll off the rest in the next year. Blue Ridge has been recalibrating its BaaS strategy since the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency flagged the bank for its weak anti-money-laundering controls in a public agreement last August. CEO Billy Beale, who took the reins this summer, told American Banker last monththat the $3.3-billion-asset bank had jumped into the business "up to its clavicles.""There's still a lot of just blocking and tackling that we've got to do to get the bank to work the way it's supposed to," Beale said in the interview. Beale added in the October interview that achieving profitability in BaaS was difficult due to the related compliance costs. The business currently produces up $721 million of deposits, about one-quarter of the bank's total deposits, and $50 million of loans. Blue Ridge noted in its recent presentation that it would curb partnerships with fintechs that had high account volume or low deposit volume per account to "reduce significant compliance oversight." The bank will continue providing lending and deposit services to fintechs, including partners like Unit, Upgrade and Flex. Blue Ridge added in the presentation that it was still working to bring its fintech policies and procedures in line with the OCC's enforcement action but has "developed a strategic road map" for BaaS business. The bank also incurred $7.3 million in remediation costs year to date.
'You're responsible. Period.' Banks take fire for fintech partnerships --Banks should prepare for increasing regulatory scrutiny of fintech relationships by proactively taking responsibility for their partners' practices, said Arlen Gelbard, general counsel at Cross River Bank. Gelbard should know. Cross River entered a consent order with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation this spring over allegations that the Teaneck, New Jersey-based bank engaged in unsafe or unsound banking related to fair lending laws and regulations. The consent order can be seen as a blueprint of the FDIC's expectations for financial institutions and their fintech partners, Gelbard said on a panel at the American Fintech Council's Policy Summit on Tuesday. Cross River, which has more than $8 billion in assets, is a powerhouse in the banking-as-a-service (BaaS) sector, offering lending, cards and payments services through partners like Upstart, Affirm and Upgrade."Our regulators look at the lending that we do and say, 'They're your loans. You're responsible. Period. Full stop,'" Gelbard said. "I think everybody should look at [the consent order] and say, 'This is the expectation.' Even if it's not what you expected before, wake up."Gelbard said Cross River's consent order shows the importance of the bank's access to data, even if it's collected and analyzed by fintech partners. If the FDIC requests information, Cross River has to be able to provide it, he added. Regulatory attention on BaaS has been mounting for more than a year. Last August, Virginia-based Blue Ridge Bank, another heavy hitter in the space, entered a public agreement with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to improve its money laundering prevention protocols. In June, the FDIC, the OCC and the Federal Reserve released guidance for how banks should assess and monitor third-party relationships. Jelena McWilliams, who served as FDIC chairman from 2018 to 2022, said that BaaS is here to stay, but will likely be in "dire straits for the next couple of years." She thinks regulators are trying to limit the growth of bank-fintech partnerships by raising the bar for risk management and compliance."The message that is being sent is that 'Your every step is being watched,'" McWilliams said. "And it's not going to take a lot to get dinged on the Bank Secrecy Act and anti-money-laundering."The former regulator and current lawyer at Cravath, Swaine and Moore said on a panel that the recent guidance doesn't provide enough clarity for banks to feel comfortable partnering with fintechs."When you read the guidance, it says a lot, but it doesn't say anything to really help you understand if you crossed the line," she said. "Banks need to know how to comply. And if you don't give them the road lines to stay within the lanes, they will be hesitant to engage in partnerships."
While pervasive, the 'big banks v. fintech' narrative misses the point -There have been many think pieces in recent months pitting traditional institutions against disruptors. They make for juicy reading, but do they actually capture the news of this moment? I don't think so. It's true that it's been an eventful year. Amid chatter of a looming recession, we saw the fall of several midsize banks like Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank and First Republic Bank, while the country's biggest banks continued to post massive earnings. At the same time, some have been claiming it might be better to break away from traditional financial institutions and build entirely new, decentralized and digitally native financial systems. The spectacular implosion of several major crypto and stablecoin platforms, culminating in the trial of Sam Bankman-Fried (again, juicy reading), cast fresh doubt on crypto's ability to displace the status quo. As opposed to getting lost in a debate between adopting fintech's buzziest trends or falling in line with what "big banks" are doing, let's not lose the plot. Ultimately, what should dictate the finance industry's future is customer preference and benefit. Simply: How do customers — be they business owners or consumers — want to pay and get paid? Modern customers have fundamentally different needs than they did in years past. For one, businesses are under increasing pressure to operate globally. Workforces are becoming globally dispersed by default. At the same time, 57% of online shoppers around the world reported having made at least one online purchase from a company in another country during COVID-19. Companies need financial tools that help them operate at a global scale, including the ability to accept payments from anywhere and pay employees and suppliers all over the world.Modern business customers also want efficiency. Technology has trained us all to expect fast and seamless experiences, meaning people are less and less tolerant of things like tedious bank queues, financial paperwork and international transfers that take days to go through. And with a shaky economy and ongoing threats of recession, business leaders demand cost efficiency as well, and are keen to avoid hidden banking fees and high conversion costs.Finally, with mounting compliance concerns and the backdrop of high-profile financial-related court cases, businesses want trust, regulation and stability from their financial providers.
Bank, credit union advocates seek regulatory clarity in wake of AI order --President Biden's effort to build a stronger governance framework for artificial intelligence has banks and credit unions wondering how regulators will incorporate the recommendations into current and future rules. But industry advocates say operating in an already highly regulated environment makes additional rules easier to manage.The executive order doesn't single out any specified industry. Instead, it directs the Secretary of Commerce, acting through the director of the Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards and Technology, to coordinate with the heads of other government agencies such as the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Department of Homeland Security on guidelines "for developing and deploying safe, secure and trustworthy AI systems."The order requires developers of generative AI models to follow agreed-upon procedures for testing the cybersecurity resiliency of the programs. These include ethical hacking drills known as "red team tests," which launch targeted cyberattacks on systems to identify vulnerabilities.Cybersecurity has been a core supervisory priority among regulators at the National Credit Union Administration for years, as AI grows in popularity. Todd Harper, chairman of the NCUA, recently joined with "federal financial regulators to issue proposed rules for automated valuation models that incorporated fair lending principles," according to his statements at theDefense Credit Union Council's annual conference in August."So, while AI can allow credit unions to smartly automate certain functions, like member communication and loan underwriting, it must be harnessed in a responsible way to ensure fairness, transparency and consumer protection," Harper said.But credit union advocates say that the calls for increased transparency should extend to the regulators as well.Given how agencies like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau are employing AI tools, and the lack of communication around their specific uses, increased clarity can help institutions better understand compliance standards, said Andrew Morris, senior counsel for research and policy at the National Association of Federally-Insured Credit Unions."Some of the principles around procurement and government transparency around use of AI can be helpful in that regard, and that may shine a light on how an agency like the CFPB is prioritizing its work in the absence of human decision making at every level, which I think is important from a fairness perspective," Morris said.
OpenAI ousts Sam Altman; Chase discloses carbon emissions | American Banker ==This week, OpenAI's board of directors ousted founder Sam Altman, a convicted ex-Goldman Sachs executive asked a court to lower his legal fees and JPMorgan Chase issued a report on its carbon emissions, several bank executives made career moves, and more in the weekly banking news roundup.
- Convicted Goldman exec asks judge to slash legal bill owed to bank: A former Goldman Sachs vice president convicted of insider trading asked a judge to reduce the restitution he owes the bank for legal expenses to $123,924 from $393,149. Brijesh Goel, who passed confidential deal information to a close friend and squash partner, was sentenced to three years in prison this month. U.S. District Judge Kevin Castel also fined Goel $75,000 and ordered him to forfeit $85,000, which was Goel's cut of some $280,000 in profits from the trades.Goldman Sachs, which produced supporting documents for prosecutors and for a parallel investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, submitted the $393,149 bill to the government as part of a request for restitution from Goel. In a court filing Wednesday, Goel's lawyers argued their client shouldn't be responsible for legal costs incurred by Goldman for cooperating with both the SEC and the Justice Department. Further, Goel's lawyers argued, he shouldn't have to pay Goldman's legal fees to prepare its witnesses for meetings with the prosecution. The case is US v. Goel, 22-cr-00396, US District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).
- Sam Altman ousted as CEO of OpenAI OpenAI, the artificial intelligence company whose ChatGPT chatbot has popularized large language models in the past year, said its CEO and founder Sam Altman has left the company.Chief technology officer Mira Murati has been appointed interim CEO. The company said a search process is underway to identify a permanent successor.In a blog post, OpenAI said Altman's departure "follows a deliberative review process by the board, which concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities. The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI." In a statement, the board of directors said: "We are grateful for Sam's many contributions to the founding and growth of OpenAI. At the same time, we believe new leadership is necessary as we move forward."
- JPMorgan Chase discloses carbon emissions, commits to tougher targets. JPMorgan Chase expanded its disclosure of greenhouse gas emissions and committed to new targets in the bank's annual climate report published this week. The report details new disclosures of the bank's absolute financed emissions, including Scope 3 supply-chain emissions for the oil and natural gas sectors. The bank also set new targets for reducing emissions intensity for the shipping and aluminum sectors by 2030. Absolute emissions disclosures quantify the volume of emissions a company produces, or in the case of Scope 3 emissions, how much carbon dioxide its clients and partners are producing along a supply chain. Emissions intensity measures the efficiency of the process that generates pollutants. Jamie Dimon, the bank's CEO, noted in the report that financial institutions face challenges in meeting goals to reduce emissions by 2050 while also ensuring that secure, reliable and affordable energy needs are met. "We can — and must — do both," Dimon wrote in the report
Fed's Barr says FedNow will complement the private RTP network --— Federal Reserve Vice Chair for Supervision Michael Barr said the central bank is not intent on dominating the instant payment space.Speaking on stage at an event hosted by The Clearing House — the large bank-owned payment processor that owns the Real-Time Payments network — Barr said he expects the Fed'srecently launched FedNow system to complement its private-sector competitor."We actually have a very long history in this country of having both public rails and private rails, that's the way most of our payments technology has evolved over time," Barr said. "And most of our payment systems today have both public aspects and private aspects. We really think of these things as complementary. We work closely together."Barr's remarks were part of a wide ranging conversation with Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway, hosts of the Bloomberg podcast "Odd Lots." The discussion touched on other payments innovations, digital assets, Treasury market function, regulatory and supervisory developments, and Barr's views on monetary policy. The hour-long event kicked off the second day of The Clearing House's annual conference and wrapped up a busy week for the Fed's top regulator, who testified in front of Congress twiceand delivered a speech on Treasury market oversight at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York last week.On the topic of FedNow — the subject most relevant to the payments-oriented event — Barr noted that uptake of the system would take several years and largely be driven by the evolution of use cases and customer demand. He added that he anticipates banks, by and large, will adopt both FedNow and RTP.He also explained why the Fed trailed so far behind its central banking peers in developing an instant payment system. The U.K. rolled out its version in 2007."The Federal Reserve is a conservative institution, and I think that's appropriate," Barr said. "People expect us to be able to provide trustworthy reliable services, and we earn that trust by being very, very careful about everything we do. And that's true for FedNow."Barr said he hopes banks will implement faster payment technologies in ways that gives customers quicker access to their funds, which he called "a wonderful thing for society.""We might end up in a situation where we can have a significant effect reducing overdraft fees, insufficient funds, fees, a situation where a small business can get paid right away for the work they've done. It would be a huge benefit for American society," he said. "One of the potential upside benefits of FedNow is the ability to actually deliver, for households and businesses, the kinds of banking services that they want, and that would reduce risk to them."Barr noted that many banks are already moving away from a reliance on such fees. He s
Last Year 12,000 Lobbyists Were Whispering in the Ear of Congress with a Bankroll of $4.1 Billion; Five Senators Are Demanding Transparency by Pam and Russ Martens: ~Yesterday, five U.S. Senators who are members of the Senate Banking Committee issued a letter to Gary Gensler, the Chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), demanding that he issue a rule that would force publicly-traded companies to disclose the dollar amount of their lobbying expenditures as well as the issues they are lobbying for or against.The authors of the letter were: U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren, (D-Mass.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Jon Tester (D-Mont.), Tina Smith (D-Minn.), and John Fetterman (D-Pa.).Publicly-traded companies are already forced to disclose in SEC filings matters that are deemed material to the financial health of the company or that may be a source of reputational risk. It makes good sense that the investing public should also know if a public company is lobbying for an issue that is contrary to the values of the investor. The Senators explained as follows:“In the absence of strong lobbying disclosure rules, investors are largely kept in the dark regarding the policy campaigns they are indirectly funding. This raises concerns that investors may be funding lobbying activities that are counter to the stated missions of the companies they have invested in, that are counter to their own beliefs, or that may even erode the value of their investment. Indeed, research shows that companies and executives may lobby for policies that advance their own self-interests, including with respect to executive pay, even when these policies are at odds with investors’ interests. A company’s lobbying activity can also be a signal of the company’s overall health, with studies showing that firms with weak governance are more likely to engage in lobbying activity.” According to data from OpenSecrets.org, the nonprofit watchdog of campaign finance and lobbying, in 2001, the year that Enron collapsed and filed bankruptcy, it had more than doubled its lobbying expenditures over the previous year to $5.14 million. Enron was a publicly-traded company. Its collapse impacted 58,920 shareholders. At the beginning of 2001, Enron’s market value stood at $70 billion. On the date of its bankruptcy filing on December 2, 2001, its shares were trading at $0.26 cents.According to government records, in the year of Enron’s bankruptcy filing in 2001 it had the following registered lobbyists working for it (among numerous others): Ed Bethune, a former Congressman from Arkansas; Jim Chapman, a former Congressman from Texas; Charles Ingebretson, a former General Counsel of the House Commerce Committee; and Marc Racicot, a former Governor of Montana.As the chart above indicates, last year there were 12,000 registered lobbyists whispering in the ears of members of Congress and federal agencies to obtain the desires of their corporate masters. The five Senators explain the real cost of this lobbying as follows:“In 2022, total federal lobbying expenditures reached $4.1 billion – the highest since 2010. Amazon and Meta spent almost $20 million each to influence decision-making in Congress and across government agencies, while the U.S. Chamber of Commerce – which counts companies like JPMorgan Chase, Alphabet, and Chevron among its members – spent $79.4 million. While these figures are staggering, they provide little insight into the interests that companies spend millions each year to advance. This lack of transparency erodes the ability of everyday investors to make informed decisions about where to invest their money – and where their money goes once they have invested. We, therefore, urge the Commission to implement new rules that require companies to disclose relevant details regarding their lobbying expenditures.”The five Senators also note that there is a strong fundamental basis for the SEC to get busy on this rule, writing as follows:“Since 2011, a coalition of investors have filed approximately 500 shareholder proposals asking companies to disclose their federal and state lobbying expenditures, and trade association and social welfare organization payments used to lobby. The proposals have achieved notable majorities or settlements at companies including Exxon and Travelers, and have led hundreds of companies to improve their disclosure, including shareholder proposal settlements at more than 110 companies. Despite these increased disclosures, the lack of uniform reporting remains a challenge for investors.”The Senators gave SEC Chair Gensler until November 29 to provide them with “details regarding the Commission’s plan to develop and issue rules requiring the disclosure of corporate lobbyist expenditures to shareholders.”Read the full letter here.For how lobbyists and their bankrollers have corrupted the U.S. banking industry, see our September 21 report: Meet the Banking Cartel that Is Planting the Seeds for the Next Banking Panic and Bailout.
Basel endgame will drive up costs for American farmers and consumers - by Senator Jerry Moran, Kansas - Commodity producers know all too well that their businesses and livelihoods often depend on forces they can't control. Droughts, floods, interest rates and even geopolitical events can change the market for their products overnight. For that reason, end users — like farmers and ranchers — have used derivatives to hedge against price volatility for decades. Hedging common risks like volatility in gas prices, interest rate fluctuations and livestock cost increases is crucial to maintaining stable prices for consumers. When end users enter into futures or other derivatives contracts to mitigate the risk they face from fluctuating commodity prices, they often do so through a bank registered with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission as a Futures Commission Merchant (FCM). FCMs, the vast majority of which are large banks, provide market access to their clients through their memberships at regulated exchanges and clearinghouses. These markets are historically safe, a major reason Congress exempted them from certain regulations in the Dodd-Frank Act. Now, new bank capital requirements from the Federal Reserve's Basel III endgame and global systemically important banks surcharge proposals threaten access to these critical risk management tools for the agriculture and energy industries. As federal regulators move toward implementing these proposals, they must keep in mind how important these markets are to communities all across America. Unfortunately, there has been minimal, if any, economic analysis done on the downstream effect these requirements will have on end users. The need for prudent risk management is more important than ever. But both proposals make it costlier for banks to centrally clear derivatives, leaving commodity producers with higher prices or less ability to hedge their risks. The use of futures and options to hedge against market swings and minimize risk allows agricultural and energy producers more predictability in their day-to-day businesses. Ultimately this benefits consumers at the grocery store and in their energy bills. Simply put, when banks face new capital hikes, farmers' cooperatives and municipal utilities pay more to hedge risk. The past three years have taught us that the world is unpredictable. Markets for oil, wheat, lumber and metals were rattled by global health crises, violent conflicts around the world and soaring interest rates. Yet American producers worked every day to provide energy for businesses to keep the lights on and food for our families to eat. With record-high interest rates and geopolitical instability, the need for easily accessible hedging tools is crucial for maintaining American jobs and level prices for consumers. From a Kansas soybean farmer to some of the world's largest airlines, end users of derivatives will all be impacted by these proposed capital requirements. The proposals inadvertently harm both producers and consumers by raising the cost to responsibly hedge against risk. Ultimately, the use of these critical risk management tools should be made more accessible, not more expensive.
Senate moderates voice concerns with Basel endgame — Senate Moderates and even some Democrats raised fresh concerns Tuesday about the potential that new bank regulations could have unintended consequences like restricting minorities' and small businesses' access to bank provided capital.Senate Banking Committee members like Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., pressed the regulators — including Federal Reserve Vice Chair for Supervision Michael Barr, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chair Martin Gruenberg, National Credit Union Administration Chair Todd Harper and acting Comptroller of Currency Michael Hsu about the potential impact of coming proposals. Tester said that despite the fact that the rules apply only to banks with at least $100 billion in assets — roughly 1% of all banks in the nation — he wanted to make sure the rules don't disincentivize banks' lending in ways that could hurt the broader economy. "These rules don't affect any banks in Montana, but they do affect the big guys that affect Montana," he noted. "From a small-business standpoint, if this rule doesn't work, it's gonna raise hell with the economy of my state."Bank regulators last testified in May of this year, as the fallout from three bank failures was still fresh. But in Tuesday's appearance on Capitol Hill — their first since proposing the Basel III endgame rule — members from both parties in the Democrat-led Senate were calling for revisions to the rule.Federal Reserve Vice Chair for Supervision Michael Barr indicated regulators are poised to consider changes to the rule given bipartisan uneasiness, noting throughout the hearing he welcomed comments and critiques that inform any edits regulators make."The proposal makes our capital system more consistent, more transparent and more sensitive," Barr said. "That said, we recognize that the rule may not appropriately capture all risks, we welcome all comments on all aspects of the rule and will take these comments seriously to improve the rule going forward."Other moderates, like Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., cited a recent study by the Urban Institute that suggested higher capital requirements could discourage banks from continuing to originate higher loan-to-value mortgages — loans that are key to helping minorities become first-time homeowners."What do you say to Black and Hispanic communities who are concerned that your proposal could make the dream of homeownership even more difficult to achieve?" he asked regulators. "I appreciate your desire to maintain the safety and soundness of the financial system [and] I would encourage you to also ensure that we keep enough capital flowing so hardworking borrowers can become homeowners."
Senate Republicans ask regulators to withdraw Basel III proposal — Senate Republicans, led by Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., the ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee, wrote to the banking regulators that proposed the Basel III capital rules, asking them to withdraw their proposal and begin a new process. Republicans and banking trade groups have lobbied hard against the Basel III endgame proposal, largely seen to be spearheaded by Federal Reserve Vice Chair for Supervision Michael Barr, because of the additional capital requirements the proposal would impose. So far, that charge has been led in Congress by House Republicans, specifically Rep. Andy Barr, R-Ky., who leads the House subcommittee on financial services, who has repeatedly asked the Fed to release the economic cost-benefit analysis related to the proposal. Scott, who recently announced that he is suspending his bid for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, sent the letter a day before Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Martin Gruenberg, acting Comptroller of the Currency Michael Hsu and Vice Chair Barr are set to testify in Congress for their regular oversight. All Republicans on the Senate Banking Committee signed the letter, which echoes the criticisms of Rep. Barr. "Ultimately, these large increases in capital have not been shown to be evidentially based as the Federal Reserve, FDIC, and OCC have failed to provide proper analysis or data to justify their merits, particularly around the costs they will impose throughout all sectors of the economy," the Republicans said in the letter. "In fact, we have heard widespread concerns regarding the negative impacts that Basel III could have not only on affordable housing but on mortgage lending writ large, small business lending, and consumer lending."The lawmakers said that regulators extending the comment period for the proposal wasn't enough. "While we appreciate that the Federal Reserve, FDIC, and OCC have extended the initial comment period and are now conducting a data collection, it is too little, too late," they said. "A thorough cost-benefit analysis is critical to ensuring that our regulatory regime is based on sound quantitative analysis and should have been conducted well before releasing the Basel III proposal." The phrasing of the Republicans' complaints suggests that lawmakers are prepared to challenge the rulemaking, should they have the votes to do so after the next election. While congressional challenges to rulemaking processes in the bank regulation space are rare, they do happen, and often require building a case that the regulators violated congressional intent, didn't give stakeholders enough time to comment or didn't follow procedure in some other way. In the case of the Basel III rulemaking, Republicans have taken issue with what they describe as a lack of a transparent process, and not receiving any economic analysis that the Fed may have performed on the impact of the rule. "It is disappointing to see a rule proposed that is over 1,000 pages long, lacking any quantitative analysis to suggest that the rule is even necessary," the lawmakers said in the letter. "While we heard for many months from Vice Chair Barr that the Federal Reserve was engaged in a holistic review of capital standards, the results of that review have never been publicly disclosed outside of a speech by the Vice Chair summarizing the results."
FDIC thrown into turmoil amid push for biggest US banking rules overhaul since 2008 - The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) is facing its most important regulatory moment since the 2008 financial crisis, pushing for a sweeping overhaul of how banks are regulated in the wake of last spring's regional bank crisis.But a Wall Street Journal report detailing a toxic work environment at the Washington agency has thrown the regulator into turmoil.FDIC Chair Martin Gruenberg found himself in the hot seat this week, fielding multiple questions about his organization's culture from members of the Senate Banking Committee and House Financial Services Committee, derailing what was supposed to be a wide-ranging discussion about proper oversight of the banking industry.This scrutiny of the FDIC comes as the agency tries, along with the Federal Reserve and OCC, to make the case for the bigger bank capital buffers they first proposed last July. In July, US banking regulators proposed raising capital requirements for banks by an aggregate 16%, widening the scope of the new rules to include banks with as low as $100 billion in assets.Officials argued the changes were needed to make banks stronger and better prepared for shocks like the crisis of this spring, when the failures of Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank, and First Republic triggered deposit withdrawals. Banks, their lobbyists, and some Republican lawmakers argue the proposal would curb lending and hurt the economy.Even Fed Chair Jay Powell has hinted at reservations about the capital proposal and its impact. Powell said initially when the proposal came out in July that the Fed must consider the costs of higher capital and the risk of pushing activity into the shadow-banking system.More recently, on Oct. 19, Powell said, "I do think [the regional banks'] business model is under pressure and I would not like to see us add to that by treating them exactly like G-SIBs [Global Systemically Important Banks] … They don't need exactly the same attention that G-SIBs gets."Regulators recently extended a period of public comment to Jan. 16 so that all parties would have enough time to provide feedback. During his testimony on Wednesday, Gruenberg told lawmakers that he was "personally disturbed and deeply troubled" by the report in the Wall Street Journal, which detailed how sexual harassment forced a series of women to leave the agency. Gruenberg added that a third-party law firm would be conducting a review of the FDIC's culture.Several lawmakers were less than satisfied with his responses.Rep. Maxine Waters, the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, asked Gruenberg to provide the committee with steps the FDIC plans to take to address this issue in the next 15 days.Gruenberg also provided testimony he later had to correct.That moment came Wednesday, when the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), asked Gruenberg if he'd ever been investigated for inappropriate conduct during his two decades at the regulator. "No, Mr. Chairman," Gruenberg said. After a break, he told lawmakers that he wanted to say more on the subject for the record."In 2008, I was interviewed pursuant to a review done in response to a concern raised by an employee, and I’m not aware of anything that came out of that review," Gruenberg said. The Journal reported Wednesday that in 2008, when Gruenberg was vice chair of the FDIC, then-Chair Sheila Bair asked for an outside examination of an incident where he allegedly lost his temper with a female official. The Journal said the firm hired to do the review wrote a report, and that Bair spoke to Gruenberg about his conduct. Yahoo Finance reached out to Bair for comment but did not hear back.Gruenberg did not provide his own details of what transpired before the House committee Wednesday, but he did say that the report about the 2008 matter would be shared with the committee, adding that no settlement resulted from that review.
The Deposit Insurance Fund Has a Balance of $117 Billion to Protect Deposits at 4,622 Banks. But One of Those Banks Has $1.4 Trillion in Uninsured Deposits --By Pam and Russ Martens:Today, the U.S. Senate Banking Committee will call federal banking regulators before it to testify at a hearing at 10 a.m. The underlying theme will be why these regulators were caught napping when the second, third, and fourth largest bank failures in U.S. history occurred in a span of seven weeks this past Spring and hear about the new plans of action to restore confidence in the U.S. banking system.One of the regulators testifying will be the soft-spoken Martin Gruenberg, Chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the federal agency that insures the deposits at federally-insured U.S. banks up to $250,000 per depositor, per bank, as long as the branch is located on U.S. soil. (Deposits at foreign branches of U.S. banks are not insured by the FDIC.)In his written remarks for today’s hearing (which were released early), Gruenberg revealed that the biggest losses to the Deposit Insurance Fund (DIF) when Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and Signature Bank failed in March, did not come from bad loans or underwater debt instruments but from the FDIC having to make good on the banks uninsured deposits that were stampeding out the door. (The FDIC temporarily took the banks into receivership when they failed until they could be sold.) Gruenberg explains as follows: “As of June 30, 2023, the FDIC estimated the cost for the failures of SVB and Signature Bank to total $18.5 billion. Of that estimated total cost of $18.5 billion, the FDIC estimated that approximately $15.8 billion was attributable to the cost of covering uninsured deposits as a result of the systemic risk determination made on March 12, 2023, following the closures of SVB and Signature Bank.”To put those figures in sharper focus, 85 percent of the cost to the FDIC came from uninsured deposits.When Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank failed in March, the U.S. Treasury Secretary, the FDIC and the Federal Reserve announced that the FDIC would guarantee uninsured deposits at those banks under the statutory systemic risk exception. Ostensibly, that was to allow things to calm things down and prevent bank runs from occurring at other banks holding large amounts of uninsured deposits.When a federally-insured bank fails, it cannot enter the bankruptcy process like other businesses to resolve creditors’ claims. Instead, it is taken into receivership by the FDIC, which takes control of the bank and either winds it down or sells it to another bank. Costs to the FDIC associated with a bank resolution are funded by the FDIC’s Deposit Insurance Fund, which is funded through assessments on banks but ultimately guaranteed by the U.S. Treasury.A key driver of the failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank were their over reliance on uninsured deposits — meaning those in excess of $250,000 per account, per bank, or residing on foreign soil. In an earlier March report from the FDIC on the failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, it reported that “At year-end 2022, SVB reported uninsured deposits at 88 percent of total deposits versus 90 percent for Signature Bank.”Clearly, bank examiners did not scream loud enough at those insane levels of uninsured deposits.Uninsured deposits can and do accelerate bank runs as the FDIC found out the hard way this past Spring. But the three banks that failed in the Spring held miniscule amounts of deposits compared to the Wall Street mega bank, JPMorgan Chase.At the time of their failure, Silicon Valley Bank held approximately $175.4 billion in deposits; Signature Bank held $88.6 billion in deposits; and First Republic Bank held $103.9 billion in deposits. Compare those amounts to what is lurking at the largest bank in the United States – JPMorgan Chase. According to JPMorgan Chase’s most recent call report with its banking regulators for the quarter ending June 30, it had $1.04 trillion in uninsured deposits in its domestic branches and another $437.6 billion in deposits in foreign offices that lack FDIC insurance, bringing its total uninsured deposits to $1.48 trillion. JPMorgan Chase is a Frankenbank that is allowed by banking regulators to house under one roof and under the unwatchful eye of its Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon, a trading casino that had pled guilty to multiple felony counts and tens of trillions of dollars in derivatives that remain largely a black hole to regulators. (See JPMorgan’s Board Made Jamie Dimon a Billionaire as the Bank Rigged Markets, Laundered Money, and Admitted to Five Felony Counts.)One would think that a responsible Congress and/or responsible banking regulators would have broken up JPMorgan Chase in 2013 when the U.S. Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations released its 300-page report on how the bank had gambled with depositors’ money and lost $6.2 billion trading exotic derivatives in London.Or perhaps in 2014 when the bank admitted to money laundering for Ponzi mastermind Bernie Madoff for years without filing its legally mandated Suspicious Activity Reports with law enforcement.Or maybe in 2015 when it and other banks were charged with running a cartel to rig foreign exchange markets. Or how about in 2016 when the serial lawbreaking bank was handed a non-prosecution agreement by the U.S. Department of Justice in a Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) case where the bank effectively bribed Chinese government officials by giving jobs to their relatives in order to win banking deals. Or possibly in 2020 when the bank admitted to two felony counts brought by the U.S. Department of Justice for “tens of thousands of instances of unlawful trading in gold, silver, platinum, and palladium…as well as thousands of instances of unlawful trading in U.S. Treasury futures contracts and in U.S. Treasury notes and bonds….”Not only did Congress and banking regulators not break up JPMorgan Chase despite this unprecedented crime spree but they allowed the same Chairman and CEO, Jamie Dimon, to keep his post and receive lavish compensation awards from his deeply compromised Board of Directors.
Big banks will pay higher-than-expected deposit insurance fee — More than 100 large banks will have to pay a higher-than-expected special assessment to replenish the Deposit Insurance Fund. The fee, finalized late Thursday by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., slightly exceeds what the agency had proposed in the spring after regulators took aggressive steps to protect uninsured depositors in the failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank. Banking industry representatives for months have been raising concerns about the cost and fairness of the fee under consideration. After the final details were released, they again questioned the FDIC's decision to peg the assessment to banks' levels of uninsured deposits and complained that the largest banks are paying for a crisis caused by regional banks. Financial Services Forum President and CEO Kevin Fromer argued that large banks have provided stability to the financial system over the last year. "The largest U.S. banks generally experienced deposit inflows earlier this year and provided billions of dollars in unsecured deposits to a troubled bank amid the banking turmoil," he said in a news release. "Forum members again acted as sources of strength and support to the financial system and the broad economy, as they did during the COVID-19 pandemic." The FDIC says an estimated 114 banks will pay an annual rate of 13.4 basis points, or a quarterly rate of 3.36 basis points over eight quarterly assessment periods. The rate will be applied to each bank's assessment base, equal to its uninsured deposits over $5 billion. That's a slightly higher rate than the 12.5 basis points — or 3.13 quarterly — proposed in May. Banks with less than $5 billion of total assets will not be charged the special assessment. "Large banks and regional banks, and particularly those with large amounts of uninsured deposits, were the banks most vulnerable to uninsured deposit runs and benefited most from the stability provided under the systemic risk determination," the FDIC noted in its news release Thursday. In the final rule — as in the May proposal — the FDIC will use call reports submitted by banks for the quarter ending on Dec.31, 2022, to determine a bank's assessment base. The agency will begin collecting with the first quarterly assessment period of 2024, which will be Jan. 1 to March 31 of that year.
Lawmakers zero in on 'disturbing' cultural problems at the FDIC — In the aftermath of a report from The Wall Street Journal on Monday that described widespread problems at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., leading Republicans on the House Financial Services Committee are asking that the FDIC's inspector general hold a briefing later this month about the agency's culture. The article described "disturbing" problems at the FDIC which, the lawmakers said in a letter,"maintains a culture that perpetuates sexual harassment, misogyny, and other acts of misconduct." The article alleges that female examiners quit the agency after experiencing a heavy drinking culture and instances of sexual harassment or improper workplace conduct, notably at a hotel near Washington that hosts the agency's out-of-town employees. The article outlines incidents that include a supervisor inviting employees to a strip club, and male examiners sending nude photos to female colleagues. FDIC Chairman Martin Gruenberg, who testified in front of the Senate Banking Committee on Tuesday, said that the agency has hired a third-party law firm to conduct an independent review. The study is expected to be completed within 90 days, he said, and added that agency management would assure employees that they could raise complaints confidentiality. "I am personally disturbed and deeply troubled by this report," Gruenberg said in Tuesday's Senate Banking Committee hearing. He later continued: "Let me underscore, I have no higher priority than to ensure that all FDIC employees work in a safe environment where they feel valued and respected." On the House Financial Services Committee, which will hear from Gruenberg on Wednesday along with other financial regulators, top Republicans, including Chairman Rep. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina; Chairman of the Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Monetary Policy Bill Huizenga of Michigan; and Chairman of the Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Monetary Policy Andy Barr of Kentucky, invoked the panel's oversight authority over the FDIC in a letter to the agency's inspector general."The Committee on Financial Services takes these allegations very seriously, and any misconduct must be addressed," the lawmakers said in the letter. "This Committee not only has a duty to oversee the execution of the laws by the Administration, but we must also ensure that civil servants of our financial regulators are able to perform their duties without fear of harassment or retaliation." The lawmakers said that the Office of the Inspector General for the agency noted in a 2020 report that the FDIC had not established an adequate sexual harassment prevention program. That, according to McHenry and the other lawmakers, seems to confirm "the longstanding pattern of FDIC employees creating an unsafe work environment for their colleagues and a failure of the FDIC to take appropriate corrective action."
Republicans on FDIC board want full board to direct workplace investigation — Republicans on the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. board of directors are asking that an independent investigation into allegations of sexual harassment and other inappropriate workplace incidents be accountable to the full board, rather than just the chair and staff.FDIC Vice Chairman Travis Hill and Director Jonathan McKernan issued a statement saying they want to see the scope of an independent review of the allegations — announced by Chairman Martin Gruenberg earlier in the week — prescribed by the bipartisan FDIC board. They added that FDIC management, including Gruenberg and the agency's general counsel, should not be part of the investigation."The review must look at all conduct described in the recent news reports, in all parts of the organization, including that of the Chairman and General Counsel, and they need to fully recuse [themselves] from the process," they wrote in a release "The FDIC board, not FDIC management, should determine the scope of the investigation, the appropriate structure for day-to-day direction of the review, and who conducts the inquiry."The statement comes as a board meeting scheduled for Thursday morning was abruptly postponed. The FDIC had been slated to hold an open board meeting to finalize a rule to replenish the agency's deposit insurance fund, originally proposed in May, fresh off the heels of March's banking turmoil. Hill and McKernan released a statement Wednesday saying the board should be kept informed of the independent review. Thursday's statement indicates the Republican board members want to have an active hand in the independent investigation into the agency's workplace culture.The controversy could derail the various regulations pending at the agency. Industry expert Jaret Seiberg of TD Cowen, however, says that Chairman Gruenberg is not likely to vacate despite the turmoil. "We are dubious that Gruenberg will leave," he wrote in a note. "Democrats will want him to remain in place to ensure Team Biden can continue to advance its policy agenda through the election." While Gruenberg is likely to see through important regulation like capital hikes and long-term debt for big banks, the rules could be significantly moderated before they get a final vote.Statements by Federal Reserve Vice Chair for Supervision Michael Barr at this week's hearings suggest political pressure has the agencies considering significant changes to the rules as proposed. Seiberg thinks they might even go further. "Regulators may even withdraw the proposal and start over given how questions have been raised about its impact on lending and the economy," he said. The workplace allegations come as his agency is set to finalize major bank regulatory overhauls, including the Basel III endgame capital proposal, that have drawn fierce condemnation from banks. Bank trade groups have launched aggressive public relations campaigns opposing capital hikes aligned with Basel committee standards. Banking groups have raised their objections in multiple venues, hinting that they may even challenge the procedural soundness of certain rules in court.
House Republicans demand answers over alleged FDIC misconduct — A day after members of the Senate Banking Committee grilled federal bank regulators, members of the the House Financial Services Committee said they want to take a deeper look at alleged workplace misconduct at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. When FDIC Chairman Gruenberg was initially asked by Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., if he had ever been investigated for misconduct himself, he said he hadn't. But later on in the hearing, Gruenberg corrected the record by saying that he had in fact faced a single internal investigation 15 years ago that was subsequently dropped. Gruenberg is the longest serving member of the FDIC board. "In 2008 I was interviewed, pursuant to a review done in response to a concern raised by an employee, and I'm not aware of anything that came out of that review," he said. "I just wanted to respond clearly for the record, and we'd be glad to provide you any additional information related to that." Rep. Bill Huizenga, R-Mich., asked him for further explanation, and the FDIC official agreed he would be willing to share more information from their legal department and office of Inspector General. Huizenga said he intends to speak to the staff member who made the allegation. Top HFSC lawmakers penned a letter to the FDIC's inspector general Tuesday asking for a briefing on the state of workplace culture at the agency. Gruenberg has expressed serious concern with sexual harassment at the agency and hired an independent law firm to investigate it almost immediately after the allegations surfaced. "I have no higher priority than to ensure that all FDIC employees work in a safe environment where they feel valued and respected," he said in Tuesday's Senate hearing. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., asked Gruenberg, acting Comptroller of the Currency Michael Hsu and Federal Reserve Vice Chair for Supervision Michael Barr for written plans reviewing their agency's sexual harassment and workplace safety policies, and the regulators agreed to provide written responses within fifteen days. While workplace culture was a frequent theme, lawmakers also leveled a variety of concerns with the agencies' proposed capital hikes. As was the case in the Senate hearing a day earlier, lawmakers from both parties expressed concerns that regulators' proposed rule to force banks to increase their capital cushions could have harmful effects on the broader economy, particularly in lending. McHenry, who led a letter yesterday expressing discontent with what he called the "growing influence of global governance bodies on U.S. bank regulation," reiterated his concerns Wednesday that the capital reforms — as outlined by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision — will harm the economy. "You've ceded your authority over U.S. financial regulation to opaque, unelected and unaccountable global governance bodies and NGOs, allowing European counterparts to set the agenda and put our financial system at a competitive disadvantage," he said.
White House, Sherrod Brown weigh in on allegations against FDIC — — Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, has joined leading Republicans in calling for an independent investigation into the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. following allegations of deep problems in the agency's corporate culture and questions whether its chairman played a role in perpetuating those problems. FDIC Chairman Martin Gruenberg took heat from Republican lawmakers in two grueling days of congressional testimony this week over articles by The Wall Street Journal describing a sexist party culture at the agency that drove out female bank examiners and has long been ignored by management. On Thursday, the FDIC canceled a public board meeting on a special assessment fee for banks in the aftermath of this spring's banking crisis. The agency didn't give a reason for the decision, which was announced 15 minutes after that meeting was supposed to begin."The reports are extremely concerning," Brown, the Senate Banking Committee's chairman, said in a statement. "I am calling for the FDIC's Office of the Inspector General to conduct an independent and thorough investigation into the workplace culture at the agency."Brown is the first Democrat to officially call for an independent investigation, giving more credence to congressional pressure on the FDIC. The concerns about the FDIC as a workplace coincide with its push for the international Basel III standards, which would raise capital requirements for many large banks. A White House official echoed concerns about the allegations to American Banker, and urged the Senate to "swiftly confirm our FDIC Inspector General nominee, who is charged with critical oversight responsibilities." Because Republicans and the banking industry have pushed back so vehemently against the rule, the outrage over working conditions at the agency could be seen as an effort to undermine Gruenberg and his rulemaking effort. Brown's statement makes the FDIC sidestepping an independent investigation much more difficult. Gruenberg, earlier in the week, said that the FDIC has hired a third-party law firm to conduct an independent review. The study is expected to be completed within 90 days, he said, and he added that agency management would assure employees that they could raise complaints confidentiality. Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, earlier Thursday released a harsher statement on Gruenberg's time at the FDIC. "Under his leadership, the FDIC is at best preoccupied with this sideshow and at worst compromised," McHenry said. "Chair Gruenberg clearly bears responsibility as these allegations occurred during his tenure as either a board member or chairman. There is no excuse for this alleged behavior, which is why the Inspector General must brief the Committee as soon as possible."
BankThink: Heads must roll for the FDIC's sexual harassment culture. But whose? | American Banker -Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said it best: "I shouldn't have to say this in 2023: Sexual harassment is never all right — never. It's important that the FDIC gets to the bottom of this and holds harassers accountable." Those words were said this morning at a Senate Banking Committee hearing a day after amassive and damning investigation by The Wall Street Journal depicted a pervasive culture of sexual harassment, exclusion and belittlement of female bank examiners, unhinged partying and just pure toxicity at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., all of which goes back at least a decade and probably far longer. If you're reading this then there's a good chance you've already read the Journal story, and if you haven't, just imagine the most toxic workplace you've ever heard of and triple the toxicity — that might get you in the ballpark. And today in the hearing, FDIC Chair Martin Gruenberg — who has served as an FDIC board member since 2005 and a couple of tours as chair since being confirmed again as chair not quite a year ago — got what was coming to him. Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., called the behavior outlined in the article "skanky," and Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., not to be outdone, told Gruenberg that "you and your colleagues ought to have your heads in a bag. The FDIC is no country for creepy old men."I spent a lot of time the last day or so thinking about whether Gruenberg should resign. If the allegations outlined in the Journal report happened at any organization — be it a regulator, a bank or a gas station — the head of that organization shouldn't lead it anymore. If you knew this was happening and you did nothing, you are indifferent to suffering and therefore not suited to lead a federal agency that has power. If you had absolutely no idea any of this was happening, you are an ineffective and out-of-touch leader and therefore should not be trusted with the power that your office confers.But let's not pretend that these senators are purely motivated by a deep desire to protect and empower women or anyone else. If Gruenberg resigns, Vice Chair Travis Hill — a Republican, and an outspoken critic of the administration's regulatory agenda — will become acting chair until a replacement is confirmed. That would presumably stall the Biden administration's regulatory agenda, but it's far less obvious that it would necessarily make the agency a less toxic place to work. The incidents detailed in the report happened when Gruenberg was chair and also when other people — women and men, Democrats and Republicans — ran the show.If I were Gruenberg, I would take a long look in the mirror and decide whether I am capable of achieving that goal. Not Basel III, not Community Reinvestment Act reform, not replenishing the Deposit Insurance Fund. If I, as Gruenberg, decide that I am not going to resign, then for the remainder of my term I must decide that I have one and only one priority: turning this agency around. That means weeding out and firing all the skeezy weirdos in my organization — one strike and you're out. And if there's some technical reason why you can't do that, demand whatever power you don't have to do it. If that means moving into the FDIC hotel and serving as hall monitor to make sure no one is puking in the elevator or peeing off the roof as reported in the Journal, then that's what I should be willing to do. And if I'm not, I need to make way for someone who will, political implications be damned.
House Republicans open investigation into FDIC chairman -- Three top Republicans on the House Financial Services Committee said the panel will investigate Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Martin Gruenberg following allegations of workplace misconduct at the agency. The accusations came up repeatedly throughout a pair of congressional hearings this week with Gruenberg and other financial regulators, and criticism of the agency and its chairman havegrown throughout the week. The GOP lawmakers, led by committee Chairman Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., wrote in a letter to Gruenberg that the panel will use its "full arsenal" of investigative tools to examine Gruenberg and the agency. Reps. Bill Huizenga, R-Mich., the chairman of the subcommittee on oversight and investigations, and Rep. Andy Barr, R-Ky., chairman of the subcommittee on financial institutions and monetary policy, joined McHenry in the letter. "Chairman Gruenberg, the viability of your leadership is in question," the three lawmakers wrote.The panel has the ability to use compulsory measures, such as subpoenas, to compel the FDIC to cooperate with its investigation. "Our concern is underscored by your nearly 20-year tenure in all aspects of leadership and management at the FDIC, including serving twice as chairman," the lawmakers wrote. "It has failed to instill the confidence the public needs to know their banking system is and will be safe and secure in the future."The lawmakers drew a possible direct connection between the workplace culture described in aWall Street Journal investigation of a decadeslong toxic environment that led to the departure of female bank examiners, and a staffing shortage cited by the agency in its postmortem examination of the failure of Signature Bank. "Your report's limited discussion of staffing challenges related to bank examiners did not consider how the long-standing toxic FDIC culture inhibits employee retention," the lawmakers wrote. "By ignoring or choosing to remain silent about workplace misconduct at the FDIC, your leadership may have contributed to the financial instability and threats to financial security of Americans that were observed in March."
Do Biden's claims about 'junk fees' add up? Depends who you ask - President Joe Biden's administration is calling for tougher fiduciary standards in retirement savings and investment advice using statistics that are sure to get the industry's attention. In rolling out the "retirement security rule" proposal on Oct. 31, President Biden slammed "bad annuities" and "junk fees" that he said are shrinking Americans' retirement nest eggs, exploiting seniors and distorting the advice and wealth management marketplace for "many trustworthy financial advisors out there who are doing the right thing." The rare speech by a president discussing wealth management policy included estimates of the cost of conflicts of interest."All told, bad financial advice, peddled by unscrupulous financial advisors driven by their own self-interest, can cost a person — a retiree up to 1.2% per year in lost investment," Biden said. "That doesn't sound like much, but if you're living long, it's a lot of money. Over a lifetime, that can add up to 20% less money when they retire. For a middle-class household, that can amount to tens of thousands of dollars over time. Imagine the difference the money would make for retired families all across America if that wasn't the case. So, here's what my administration is doing to protect seniors from this kind of financial fraud. Today, the Department of Labor is proposing a new rule, meaning that when you pay someone for retirement advice, they must give you advice that's in your best interest, not whether it gets them the best payday." Those figures, as well as a Council of Economic Advisers finding that the conflicts in sales of fixed index annuities alone cost retirement savers as much as $5 billion a year, displayed the stakes of the looming debate about the rule and the inevitable industry pushback. For anyone recalling the Obama administration "fiduciary rule" vacated by a trade-group court challenge in 2018, the numbers likely sounded comparable to an earlier study by the council calculating the total annual cost of conflicted retirement advice at $17 billion. To Mark Egan, the author of the academic study cited by the White House in the stats about the new proposal, the Biden team's calculations correctly used the model suggested by his research paper accepted for publication in the Journal of Finance."I was surprised. I did not know about it," Egan said in an interview. An associate professor of business administration at the Harvard Business School who has also studied the impact of the prior fiduciary rule proposal on variable annuity sales, the extent of advisor misconduct andFINRA arbitrator selection, Egan was unaware the administration was going to base its numbers on his model. "It was a pleasant surprise when Biden was talking about those numbers," he said. "I was like, 'Oh, those numbers sound very familiar.'"The administration's stats came from the conclusion of Egan's paper: Investors' returns would jump by 95 to 120 basis points "if we were to align the incentives of brokers and consumers." The White House multiplied the low end of that range by the total of $559 billion held in fixed index annuities at the end of 2021 and rounded down from the result, $5.3 billion, to arrive at the figure tracking the cost of conflicts. The academic paper had studied the sales, expenses and returns of fixed-income products called reverse convertible bonds using the net present value of the fees, Egan noted. Biden's team used "quite conservative" assumptions from the model examining the bonds, where there could be "no debate" about whether one product provided greater returns after fees, he said.
CFPB, regulators boost thresholds for Truth in Lending standards by 4.5% - Federal Regulators raised the thresholds for certain lending rules for consumer credit, small-dollar loans and certain mortgages by more than 4.5% Monday.The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Federal Reserve announced the new cutoff amounts that determine eligibility for oversight under the Truth In Lending Act, or TILA, and Consumer Leasing Act, or CLA, which are governed by Regulation Z and Regulation M, respectively.The threshold for the TILA and CLA, which will go into effect next year, were both increased from $66,400 to $69,500 — an uptick of 4.6% — meaning most transactions below that figure are subject to enhanced disclosure requirements and consumer rescission rights. The CFPB, Fed and Office of the Comptroller of Currency also adjusted the threshold for so-called higher-priced mortgage loans, which require special appraisals, raising it from $31,000 to $32,400, a jump of a little more than 4.5%.Last year, the CFPB increased the thresholds on Regulations Z and M from $61,000 to $66,400, an 8.8% hike, while the regulators raised the bar for higher-priced loans from $28,500 to $31,000, an increase of 8.9%. The smaller increases for the 2024 thresholds come from the more modest rate of inflation seen this year.The CFPB, which was given authority over Regulations Z and M by the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010, adjusts the thresholds of TILA and CLA annually based on the changes to Bureau of Labor Statistics' Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers.
BankThink: The CFPB must turn off its fire hose of new regulations | American Banker --The mission of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is to "aim to make consumer financial markets work for consumers, responsible providers, and the economy as a whole." As its website further states, "we arm people with the information, steps, and tools that they need to make smart financial decisions." However, the agency consistently overlooks the actions of responsible providers, instead issuing one-size-fits-all regulations. Regulations that don't consider the unique benefits and challenges faced by smaller financial institutions, including not-for-profit credit unions. Regulations that make services harder to provide and, in turn, harder for consumers to access safe and affordable products and services. Enough is enough. Financial services organizations like the Credit Union National Association are fighting back against CFPB actions that actually harm consumers. This summer, a Texas court granted a preliminary injunction enjoining the implementation and enforcement of the 1071 final rule until the U.S. Supreme Court decides whether the CFPB is constitutionally structured, in a case brought by the Consumer Financial Services Association (CFSA). As part of the preliminary injunction, the court stayed all compliance deadlines under the final rule but limited the relief to only banks involved in the litigation instead of all financial institutions affected by the final rule. To address the inequity, a motion to intervene filed by CUNA, Rally Credit Union and the Cornerstone League argued that the same constitutional and statutory challenges to the final rule applied to credit unions. Just a few weeks later, the court in Texas granted a motion for preliminary injunction and expanded it to a nationwide injunction. The court stated, "In the event of a reversal in that (CFSA) case, Defendants are ORDERED to extend Plaintiffs and their members, Intervenors and their members, and all covered financial institutions' deadlines for compliance with the requirements of the final rule to compensate for the period stayed." This gives credit unions and banks alike much needed additional time to comply with a very complex final rule – approximately 11 additional months, depending on when the Supreme Court rules. This extra time is important due to widespread concerns that smaller financial institutions, such as credit unions and community banks, will disproportionately feel the complexity and significant costs of Section 1071. This could ultimately lead to fewer and less favorable outcomes for all small-business borrowers, as the overly broad scope of the CFPB's rule would substantially raise the cost of small-business borrowing and require covered financial institutions to collect data on businesses that are not "small businesses" by any traditional metric.
CFPB report examines causes of medical debt collection complaints --Fresh off a proposal to eliminate medical debt from credit reports, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued a report describing consumer complaints about the inaccuracies of their unpaid medical debts.The CFPB on Thursday released its annual report to Congress summarizing the agency's actions in addressing the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, which limits what collectors can do when pursuing certain types of debt. The CFPB has estimated that between 18% to 35% of consumers have unpaid medical bills on their credit reports. Roughly $88 billion of outstanding medical bills are currently in collections — impacting one in five Americans.In September, the CFPB proposed eliminating all medical debt from credit reports. The three major bureaus — Equifax, Experian and TransUnion — voluntarily removed medical debts of up to $500 from credit reports earlier this year. The CFPB's proposal would scrub the remaining 30% of medical debts that have not been removed.CFPB Director Rohit Chopra has said that unpaid medical bills are not a strong indicator of a consumer's ability to repay a debt. "Medical billing history has very limited predictive value in underwriting decisions on loans," Chopra said in announcing the proposal in September.Banks and the debt collection industry oppose taking medical debt off credit reports because they claim creditors would not have a full understanding of a consumer's debt load. The third-party debt collection market is a $17.9 billion industry with more than 6,300 collection agencies."The CFPB appears to have a predetermined outcome that it intends to move forward with the proposal, despite concerns raised by creditors, credit reporting agencies and the debt collection industry all providing evidence of significant disruptions in the market, as well as harm to consumers and small businesses if the CFPB moves forward," said Scott Purcell, CEO of ACA International, a trade group that represents third-party collection agencies, law firms and creditors. "The proposal could have a sweeping impact on the health care market, insurance coverage, and the larger economy."
CFPB fines Enova $15M for illegally withdrawing funds without consent The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has fined Enova International $15 million, banned the company from originating some payday loans and ordered the online lender to tie executive compensation to compliance with federal consumer financial protection laws. The CFPB said Thursday that it found Enova, a publicly traded company based in Chicago, continued to engage in "unfair acts or practices" after agreeing to a previous CFPB consent order. In 2019, Enova paid a $3.2 million fine but was not required under former CFPB Director Kathy Kraninger to provide redress to consumers. The CFPB said that in a follow-up investigation the bureau identified violations of federal consumer protection law by Enova that involved over 111,000 consumers. The violations included debiting consumers' bank accounts without permission, and failing to honor loan extensions it had promised to some payday borrowers. "Enova decided to keep flouting the law after it was caught taking advantage of its customers, and violated a law enforcement order," CFPB Director Rohit Chopra said in a press release. "Today's action imposes a $15 million penalty, bans the company from certain lines of business, and reforms executive compensation." Under the 53-page consent order, the CFPB said that it has prohibited Enova for a period of seven years from offering payday loans that must be repaid within 45 days. Last year, Enova stopped offering payday loans through its CashNetUSA brand, the bureau said. The CFPB also required that Enova prepare a report confirming that the company's board of directors review all executive compensation agreements and provide a copy of the report to the CFPB. Executive compensation must comply with "the provisions of the Consent Order and Federal consumer financial law relevant to that executive's area of responsibilities or department," the CFPB said.
Flood risk worries amplified by government shutdown threat - Industry groups urged Congress to once again avoid a spending bill deadlock ahead of an upcoming vote on the issue, citing concerns about flood risks and operational impairments. (Update: The House passed a stopgap bill to avert a government shutdown the evening of Nov.14. A new deadline for government funding of military construction, veterans' affairs, transportation, housing and the Energy Department was set for Jan.19, 2024 by newly elected House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La. The Senate subsequently approved the measure.)Eleven organizations, including the Community Home Lenders of America and the Mortgage Bankers Association, warned that 20,000 areas across the country could be jeopardized by a lack of flood coverage. The National Association of Realtors estimated that the absence of federal insurance for the risk, as part of a budget impasse, could disrupt 1,300 property sales."Averting a shutdown will prevent these disruptions to the real estate, home building, and mortgage lending sectors, which make up over 20% of the U.S. economy," said the coalition, which included the Housing Policy Council, Leading Builders of America, Manufactured Housing Institute, National Apartment Association, National Association of Home Builders, National Housing Conference, National Multifamily Housing Council and U.S. Mortgage Insurers.If federal flood insurance became unavailable due to a shutdown, some coverage could be obtained in the growing private market, but more than two-thirds of those needing it could have trouble with access.Even without a government shutdown — which could also interrupt housing programs and underwriting verifications, and raise rates — new studies suggest the flood risk, in line withassociated coverage, is growing increasingly expensive. The expected annual damage that flood risk poses to federally backed mortgages, based on experience dating back to 2020, is $9.4 billion, according to a Congressional Budget Office study released Monday. By 2050, the estimated EAD in 2020 dollars could be anywhere from $10.2 billion to $16.1 billion, based on the range of lower-than-anticipated and upper-end projections for disaster risk.
MBA: Mortgage Applications Increased in Weekly Survey --From the MBA: Mortgage Applications Increase in Latest MBA Weekly Survey Mortgage applications increased 2.8 percent from one week earlier, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending November 10, 2023. The Market Composite Index, a measure of mortgage loan application volume, increased 2.8 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from one week earlier. On an unadjusted basis, the Index increased 0.4 percent compared with the previous week. The Refinance Index increased 2 percent from the previous week and was 7 percent higher than the same week one year ago. The seasonally adjusted Purchase Index increased 3 percent from one week earlier. The unadjusted Purchase Index decreased 0.3 percent compared with the previous week and was 12 percent lower than the same week one year ago. “Although Treasury rates dipped midweek, mortgage rates were little changed on average through the week. The 30-year fixed mortgage rate remained at 7.61 percent, about 30 basis points lower than three weeks ago,” said Joel Kan, MBA’s Vice President and Deputy Chief Economist. “Both purchase and refinance applications increased to the highest weekly pace in five weeks but remain at very low levels. Despite the recent downward trend, mortgage rates at current levels are still challenging for many prospective homebuyers and current homeowners.” ... The average contract interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages with conforming loan balances ($726,200 or less) remained unchanged at 7.61 percent, with points decreasing to 0.67 from 0.69 (including the origination fee) for 80 percent loan-to-value ratio (LTV) loans. The first graph shows the MBA mortgage purchase index. According to the MBA, purchase activity is down 12% year-over-year unadjusted. Red is a four-week average (blue is weekly). Other than the four previous weeks, the purchase index was at the lowest level since 1995. The second graph shows the refinance index since 1990. With higher mortgage rates, the refinance index declined sharply in 2022 - and has mostly flat lined at a low level since then.
Housing November 13th Weekly Update: Inventory Mostly Flat Week-over-week - Altos reports that active single-family inventory was up slightly week-over-week. This is the latest in the year that inventory was still increasing in this series! Inventory will start decreasing seasonally soon (for Thanksgiving and Christmas). This inventory graph is courtesy of Altos Research. As of November 10th, inventory was at 567 thousand (7-day average), compared to 567 thousand the prior week. Year-to-date, inventory is up 15.5%. And inventory is up 39.6% from the seasonal bottom 30 weeks ago.The second graph shows the seasonal pattern for active single-family inventory since 2015.The red line is for 2023. The black line is for 2019. Note that inventory is up from the record low for the same week in 2021, but below last year and still well below normal levels.Inventory was down 0.9% compared to the same week in 2022 (last week it was down 1.5%), and down 36.5% compared to the same week in 2019 (last week down 37.9%). In 2022, inventory peaked at the end of October (the latest in the year inventory had peaked in this series until this year). I now expect inventory to be up YoY soon.Inventory is now solidly above the same week in 2020 levels (dark blue line).Mike Simonsen discusses this data regularly on Youtube.
Realtor.com Reports Active Inventory UP YoY --Realtor.com has monthly and weekly data on the existing home market. Here is their weekly report: Weekly Housing Trends View — Data Week Ending Nov 11, 2023 Active inventory increased slightly, with for-sale homes 0.6% above year ago levels.For 20 straight weeks, the number of homes available for sale registered below that of the previous year. However, active listings exceeded last year’s levels this week, reversing the recent trend. New listings–a measure of sellers putting homes up for sale–were up this week, by 6.4% from one year ago.Since mid-2022, new listings have registered lower than prior year levels, as the mortgage rate lock-in effect freezes homeowners with low-rate existing mortgages in place. Over the last three weeks, however, the trend has reversed as new listings during the week outpaced the same week in the previous year by 6.4%, a jump relative to the previous week.Here is a graph of the year-over-year change in inventory according to realtor.com. Inventory was up 0.6% year-over-year following 20 consecutive weeks with a YoY decrease in inventory. Inventory is still historically very low.New listings really collapsed a year ago, so the YoY comparison for new listings is easier now - and although new listings also remain historically very low, new listings are now up YoY.
Baby boomers are dominating the housing market, new data shows --The share of first-time buyers in the housing market ticked upward this year, but remained near record lows, according to a new report from the National Association of Realtors (NAR). First-time home buyers made up 32 percent of the market this year, up from 26 percent in 2022 but below an average of 38 percent, the report found. “First-time buyers tiptoed back into the market this year with less competition and fewer multiple-offer scenarios,” Jessica Lautz, NAR’s deputy chief economist and vice president of research, said in a statement. The typical age of both first-time and repeat home buyers also fell slightly in 2023, dropping from 36 years to 35 years for those purchasing their first homes and from 59 years to 58 years for those who have previously purchased homes. While both the average first-time home buyer and average repeat home buyer have gotten older over the last four decades, this change has been more prominent among repeat home buyers. In the early 1980s, first-time home buyers were typically in their late 20s, and repeat home buyers were typically in their mid 30s. Now, first-time buyers are in their mid 30s, and repeat buyers are in their late 50s. The annual household income of home buyers also rose 22 percent in the past year, jumping from $88,000 in 2022 to $107,000 in 2023, according to the report released on Monday. “Given the erosion of housing affordability due to higher home prices and mortgage rates, the household income for those who successfully purchased homes jumped by nearly $20,000 and topped six figures for only the second time in our records,” Lautz added.
Lawler: New Census Long-Term Population Projections Are MASSIVELY Lower Than Previous Projections -From housing economist Tom Lawler: Last Friday Census released new long-term projections of the US resident population, this time going out to 2100. The last time Census released long-term population projections was in 2017 (going out to 2060), and the 2023 projections for the “middle” scenario are massively lower than the 2017 projections. Here is a chart showing the “middle-case” projections for the US resident population for the 2017 release compared to the 2023 release. (Note: Census has not released updated population estimates for 2011 through 2019 that reflect Census 2020 results, but I have estimated what 2016 to 2019 would look like based on updated net international migration estimates for 2010 through 2019.) And here is a table showing the different projections for selected years. Needless to say, these differences are “massive.” […] The huge differences in the latest population projections from those in 2017 reflect (1) much lower projections for births; (2) higher projections for deaths; and (3) significantly lower projections for net international migration. Here is a table showing projections for each of the components of population change for five-year periods. I have been looking into these projections and have found some “issues” for the projections over the next few years, and I’ll be rewriting more about this topic soon. However, for those analysts who have kept using the 2017 population projections for analysis purposes even though it was obvious they were woefully out of date, these latest population projections have surely left them “dazed and confused.” CR Note: I’ll have more on the projected impact on housing from these new projections.
Cooler monthly inflation report pushes mortgage rates even lower --The average rate on the 30-year mortgage fell 18 basis points to 7.40% on Tuesday, according to Mortgage News Daily, as Wall Street lowered its expectations for future Federal Reserve hikes.The drop was due to a sharp bond market rally, after the government's monthly inflation report came in lower than analysts had predicted. As bond yields fell, so too did mortgage rates, which loosely follow the yield on the 10-year Treasury.Mortgage rates had already been declining from their recent highs. A one-two punch of the Fed holding rates steady at its last meeting and a weaker-than-expected monthly employment report pointed to the end of interest rate hikes.The 30-year fixed mortgage rate jumped over 8% on Oct. 19, the highest level in more than two decades. It then fell more than 25 basis points in the first week of November to 7.38%, coming back slightly last week and starting this week at 7.58%."Even though today's inflation data was extremely important in shaping the rate narrative, the bond market's reaction is nonetheless impressive," said Matthew Graham, chief operating officer at Mortgage News Daily. "Mortgage lenders have done a great job of keeping pace with market movement considering mortgage rates are often accused of taking the elevator up and the stairs down."While the recent mortgage rate increases were all within 1 percentage point, the comparison to two years ago, when rates were near record lows around 3%, has made today's homebuyers exceptionally sensitive to rates. Some can no longer either afford a home or qualify for a mortgage. Home sales have been falling for several months, with some calling the market frozen even before the start of winter. "The interest rate rises should be over, and the Fed will have to consider cutting interest rates seriously. In the meantime, the bond market is reacting as if the Fed will be cutting interest rates next year. Mortgage rates look to head towards 7% in a few months and into the 6% range by the spring of 2024," said Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the National Association of Realtors.
Housing Starts Increased to 1.372 Million Annual Rate in October - From the Census Bureau: Permits, Starts and Completions Privately‐owned housing starts in October were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,372,000. This is 1.9 percent above the revised September estimate of 1,346,000, but is 4.2 percent below the October 2022 rate of 1,432,000. Single‐family housing starts in October were at a rate of 970,000; this is 0.2 percent above the revised September figure of 968,000. The October rate for units in buildings with five units or more was 382,000. Privately‐owned housing units authorized by building permits in October were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,487,000. This is 1.1 percent above the revised September rate of 1,471,000, but is 4.4 percent below the October 2022 rate of 1,555,000. Single‐family authorizations in October were at a rate of 968,000; this is 0.5 percent above the revised September figure of 963,000. Authorizations of units in buildings with five units or more were at a rate of 469,000 in October. The first graph shows single and multi-family housing starts since 2000.Multi-family starts (blue, 2+ units) increased in October compared to September. Multi-family starts were down 30.0% year-over-year in October.Single-family starts (red) increased in October and were up 13.1% year-over-year. The second graph shows single and multi-family housing starts since 1968.This shows the huge collapse following the housing bubble, and then the eventual recovery - and the recent collapse in single-family starts. Total housing starts in October were above expectations and starts in August and September were revised up, combined.
AIA: "Continuing Decline in Architecture Billings"; Multi-family Billings Decline for 15th Consecutive Month Note: This index is a leading indicator primarily for new Commercial Real Estate (CRE) investment. From the AIA: Continuing Decline in Architecture Billings, AIA/Deltek Architecture Billings Index Reports The AIA/Deltek Architecture Billings Index (ABI) reports that business conditions at architecture firms continued to soften in October. For the third consecutive month, the ABI score was under 50, indicating that a significant share of firms is seeing a decline in billings. “This report indicates not only a decrease in billings at firms, but also a reduction in the number of clients exploring and committing to new projects, which could potentially impact future billings. The soft conditions were evident across the entire country as well as across all major nonresidential building sectors,” said Kermit Baker, PhD, AIA Chief Economist. The score of 44.3 for October dipped slightly below the score of 44.8 in September. Billings were universally soft across the entire country in October, with firms located in the West and Northeast continuing to report the softest conditions overall for the second month in a row. ...
• Regional averages: Northeast (42.1); South (48.5); Midwest (48.9); West (40.0)
• Sector index breakdown: commercial/industrial (43.7); institutional (49.1); mixed practice (firms that do not have at least half of their billings in any one other category) (44.0); multifamily residential (40.1)
This graph shows the Architecture Billings Index since 1996. The index was at 44.3 in October, down from 44.8 in September. Anything below 50 indicates a decrease in demand for architects' services. Note: This includes commercial and industrial facilities like hotels and office buildings, multi-family residential, as well as schools, hospitals and other institutions. This index usually leads CRE investment by 9 to 12 months, so this index suggests a slowdown in CRE investment in 2024. Note that multi-family billing turned down in August 2022 and has been negative for fifteen consecutive months (with revisions). This suggests we will see a further weakness in multi-family starts.
NAHB: Builder Confidence Decreased in November The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) reported the housing market index (HMI) was at 34, down from 40 last month. Any number below 50 indicates that more builders view sales conditions as poor than good.From the NAHB: Builder Sentiment Down Again, but Better Building Conditions are in View: High mortgage rates that approached 8% earlier this month continue to hammer builder confidence, but recent economic data suggest housing conditions may improve in the coming months.Builder confidence in the market for newly built single-family homes in November fell six points to 34 in November, according to the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB)/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index (HMI) released today. This is the fourth consecutive monthly drop in builder confidence, as sentiment levels have declined 22 points since July and are at their lowest level since December 2022. Also of note, nearly the entire HMI data for November was collected before the latest Consumer Price Index was released and showed that inflation is moderating.“The rise in interest rates since the end of August has dampened builder views of market conditions, as a large number of prospective buyers were priced out of the market,” “Moreover, higher short-term interest rates have increased the cost of financing for home builders and land developers, adding another headwind for housing supply in a market low on resale inventory. “While builder sentiment was down again in November, recent macroeconomic data point to improving conditions for home construction in the coming months,” “In particular, the 10-year Treasury rate moved back to the 4.5% range for the first time since late September, which will help bring mortgage rates close to or below 7.5%. Given the lack of existing home inventory, somewhat lower mortgage rates will price-in housing demand and likely set the stage for improved builder views of market conditions in December.” ...All three major HMI indices posted declines in November. The HMI index gauging current sales conditions fell six points to 40, the component charting sales expectations in the next six months dropped five points to 39 and the gauge measuring traffic of prospective buyers dipped five points to 21.This graph shows the NAHB index since Jan 1985.This was below the consensus forecast.
Consumer spending fell in October, according to new CNBC/NRF Retail Monitor tracking card transactions --The consumer took a spending break ahead of the holiday season, with October retail sales, excluding autos and gas, falling by 0.08%, and core retail, which also removes restaurants, declining by 0.03%, according to the new CNBC/NRF Retail Monitor.The new Retail Monitor, debuting Monday, is a joint product of CNBC and the National Retail Federation based on data from Affinity Solutions, a leading consumer purchase insights company. The data is sourced from more than 9 billion annual credit and debit card transactions collected and anonymized by Affinity and accounting for more than $500 billion in sales. The cards are issued by more than 1,400 financial institutions.The data differs from the Census Bureau’s retail sales report as it is the result of actual consumer purchases, while the Census relies on survey data. The government data is frequently revised as additional survey data becomes available. The CNBC/NRF Retail Monitor is not revised as it’s calculated from actual transactions during the month. It is, however, seasonally adjusted, using the same program employed by Census.“The CNBC/NRF Retail Monitor will modernize how retail sales are tracked and measured, and Affinity Solutions’ vast dataset of how, what and where the consumer is spending will identify how key demographics and channels are performing for the industry generally and for specific retail sectors,″ said NRF President and CEO Matthew Shay.“Our audience, investors and executives alike, will now be armed with dynamic insights that go beyond headline numbers to show emerging trends and critical detail,” CNBC Senior Vice President of Business News Dan Colarusso said.
Retail Sales Decreased 0.1% in October - On a monthly basis, retail sales were down 0.1% from September to October (seasonally adjusted), and sales were up 2.5 percent from October 2022. From the Census Bureau report:Advance estimates of U.S. retail and food services sales for October 2023, adjusted for seasonal variation and holiday and trading-day differences, but not for price changes, were $705.0 billion, down 0.1 percent from the previous month, and up 2.5 percent above October 2022. ... The August 2023 to September 2023 percent change was revised from up 0.7 percent to up 0.9 percent. This graph shows retail sales since 1992. This is monthly retail sales and food service, seasonally adjusted (total and ex-gasoline). Retail sales ex-gasoline was down 0.1% in October. The second graph shows the year-over-year change in retail sales and food service (ex-gasoline) since 1993. Retail and Food service sales, ex- gasoline, increased by 3.5% on a YoY basis. The decrease in sales in October was above expectations, and sales in August and September were revised up, combined.
BLS: CPI Unchanged in October; Core CPI increased 0.2% -- From the BLS: The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) was unchanged in October on a seasonally adjusted basis, after increasing 0.4 percent in September, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Over the last 12 months, the all items index increased 3.2 percent before seasonal adjustment. The index for shelter continued to rise in October, offsetting a decline in the gasoline index and resulting in the seasonally adjusted index being unchanged over the month. The energy index fell 2.5 percent over the month as a 5.0-percent decline in the gasoline index more than offset increases in other energy component indexes. The food index increased 0.3 percent in October, after rising 0.2 percent in September. The index for food at home increased 0.3 percent over the month while the index for food away from home rose 0.4 percent. The index for all items less food and energy rose 0.2 percent in October, after rising 0.3 percent in September. Indexes which increased in October include rent, owners' equivalent rent, motor vehicle insurance, medical care, recreation, and personal care. The indexes for lodging away from home, used cars and trucks, communication, and airline fares were among those that decreased over the month. The all items index rose 3.2 percent for the 12 months ending October, a smaller increase than the 3.7-percent increase for the 12 months ending September. The all items less food and energy index rose 4.0 percent over the last 12 months, its smallest 12-month change since the period ending in September 2021. The energy index decreased 4.5 percent for the 12 months ending October, and the food index increased 3.3 percent over the last year, CPI and core CPI were lower than expected. I'll post a graph later today after the Cleveland Fed releases the median and trimmed-mean CPI.
Cleveland Fed: Median CPI increased 0.3% and Trimmed-mean CPI increased 0.2% in October --The Cleveland Fed released the median CPI and the trimmed-mean CPI. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, the median Consumer Price Index rose 0.3% in October. The 16% trimmed-mean Consumer Price Index increased 0.2% in October. "The median CPI and 16% trimmed-mean CPI are measures of core inflation calculated by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland based on data released in the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) monthly CPI report". This graph shows the year-over-year change for these four key measures of inflation. On a year-over-year basis, the median CPI rose 5.3% (down from 5.5% in September), the trimmed-mean CPI rose 4.1% (down from 4.3%), and the CPI less food and energy rose 4.0% (down from 4.1%). Core PCE is for September was up 3.7% YoY, down from 3.8% in August. Note: The Cleveland Fed released the median CPI details. "Motor fuel" decreased at a 45% annualized rate in October. Rent and Owner's equivalent rent are still high, but decreasing.
Here’s the inflation breakdown for October 2023 — in one chart --Inflation declined in October, continuing a broad slowdown as gasoline prices retreated during the month. However, price pressures remain under the surface and it may take a while for them to return to their pre-Covid pandemic baseline, economists said. "The disinflationary trend is in place," said Sarah House, senior economist at Wells Fargo Economics. "But we're getting into a harder part of the cycle." In October, the consumer price index increased 3.2% from 12 months earlier, down from 3.7% in September, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics said Tuesday. The CPI is a key barometer of inflation, measuring how quickly the prices of anything from fruits and vegetables to haircuts and concert tickets are changing across the U.S. economy. The October reading is a significant improvement on the pandemic-era peak of 9.1% in June 2022 — the highest rate since November 1981. Prices are therefore rising much more slowly than they had been. "Inflation is slowly but steadily moderating, and all the trend lines look good," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics. "It feels like by this time next year inflation will be very close to the [Federal Reserve's] target, and something the American consumer will feel comfortable with." The Fed aims for a 2% annual inflation rate over the long term.
The Collapse of the Health Insurance CPI (How it Became Chickenshit) by Wolf Richter The BLS tweaked the methodology after letting it go haywire for two years. This whole fiasco should be a career-ender for the top of the BLS. October was the first month in the Consumer Price Index without the monthly mega-push-down adjustments to the health insurance CPI, which started with the October CPI in 2022 and went for 12 months through September this year, thereby ridiculing actual health insurance expenses that continued to soar. It downward-distorted CPI, core CPI, and most of all, core Services CPI to an ever-increasing extent month after month for 12 months through September. Conversely, in the 12 months through October 2022, the health insurance CPI increases had been overstated, but to a far smaller extent.So in today’s CPI data — my discussion: Beneath the Skin of CPI Inflation — the Bureau of Labor Statistics tweaked the odious health insurance CPI metric in a few ways, as expected, and on a month-to-month basis, the health insurance CPI jumped 1.1%. But this 1.1% jump came after 12 months in a row of month-to-month plunges of about 4% per month, ultimately a 37% collapse in the health insurance CPI in 12 months through September, that took the health insurance CPI back to where it had been in August 2018, even though health insurance expenses have skyrocketed. And it’s from this August 2018 basis that the health insurance CPI increased by 1.1%. The increases going forward may get larger, going from +1.1% for October to perhaps +2% in November and +3% in December because the tweaked version of the index now includes “smoothening” (via a moving average) which delays the impact of the positive values on the current index (more on this in a moment). The year-over-year change is still hugely distorted because the 1.1% increase in October was from the base that had been knocked back to August 2018 levels. So today’s 1.1% month-to-month increase reduced the year-over-year collapse from -37% in September to -34% in October. Each month going forward, the year-over-year collapse will get smaller. This chart shows the health insurance CPI as index values, which were knocked back to August 2018, and just ticked up a smidgen from there today – that little hook at the bottom, which was today’s 1.1% jump, after the 37% collapse. The BLS has turned the health insurance CPI into chickenshit:
YoY Measures of Inflation: Services, Goods and Shelter --Here are a few measures of inflation:The first graph is the one Fed Chair Powell had mentioned earlier when services less rent of shelter was up 7.6% year-over-year. This has fallen sharply and is now up 3.0% YoY.This graph shows the YoY price change for Services and Services less rent of shelter through September 2023. -- Services were up 5.1% YoY as of October 2023, down from 5.2% YoY in September. Services less rent of shelter was up 3.0% YoY in October, up from 2.8% YoY in September.Earlier this year, a key question was: Would services ex-shelter inflation be persistent, or would it follow a similar pattern as goods? This is a topic I discussed in Pandemic Economics, Housing and Monetary Policy: Part 2.The second graph shows that goods prices started to increase year-over-year (YoY) in 2020 and accelerated in 2021 due to both strong demand and supply chain disruptions.Durables were at -2.1% YoY as of October 2023, up from -2.2% YoY in September.Commodities less food and energy commodities were unchanged YoY in October, unchanged from 0.0% YoY in September.Goods inflation was transitory.Here is a graph of the year-over-year change in shelter from the CPI report (through October) and housing from the PCE report (through September 2023)Shelter was up 6.7% year-over-year in October, down from 7.1% in September. Housing (PCE) was up 7.2% YoY in September, down from 7.4% in August. The BLS noted this morning: "The index for shelter continued to rise in October" Core CPI ex-shelter was up 2.0% YoY in October, up from 1.9% in September.
Industrial Production Decreased 0.6% in October --From the Fed: Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization Industrial production declined 0.6 percent in October. Manufacturing output fell 0.7 percent. Much of this decline was due to a 10 percent drop in the output of motor vehicles and parts that was affected by strikes at several major manufacturers of motor vehicles—the index for manufacturing excluding motor vehicles and parts edged up 0.1 percent. The index for utilities decreased 1.6 percent, and the output of mines increased 0.4 percent. Total industrial production in October was 0.7 percent below its year-earlier level. Capacity utilization moved down 0.6 percentage point to 78.9 percent in October, a rate that is 0.8 percentage point below its long-run (1972–2022) average.This graph shows Capacity Utilization. This series is up from the record low set in April 2020, and above the level in February 2020 (pre-pandemic).Capacity utilization at 78.9% is 0.8% below the average from 1972 to 2022. This was below consensus expectations.The second graph shows industrial production since 1967.Industrial production decreased to 102.7 mostly due to the strikes. This is above the pre-pandemic level.Industrial production was below consensus expectations.
Weekly Initial Unemployment Claims Increase to 231,000 --The DOL reported:In the week ending November 11, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 231,000, an increase of 13,000 from the previous week's revised level. The previous week's level was revised up by 1,000 from 217,000 to 218,000. The 4-week moving average was 220,250, an increase of 7,750 from the previous week's revised average. The previous week's average was revised up by 250 from 212,250 to 212,500.The following graph shows the 4-week moving average of weekly claims since 1971.The dashed line on the graph is the current 4-week average. The four-week average of weekly unemployment claims increased to 220,250.The previous week was revised up.Weekly claims were higher than the consensus forecast.
Thanksgiving shutdown sets up nightmare scenario for travels -The government is days away from a Nov. 18 shutdown, which could force Transportation Security Administration (TSA) employees and federal air traffic controllers to work without pay just as the busy Thanksgiving travel season begins. Around 4.7 million people are expected to fly over the five-day period surrounding Thanksgiving, the highest projection in nearly two decades, according to a forecast released Monday by AAA.These are the busiest travel days of the year and could coincide with a government shutdown unless Congress comes together on a deal in the next few days. Absent some kind of new funding bill, the government would shut down Saturday. Travel industry officials and advocates are amping up their warnings, saying the nation risks a messy travel season if lawmakers are unable to reach a deal. “We are quickly approaching what is forecasted to be the busiest travel period since before the pandemic, and it’s critical that policymakers work together to avoid a shutdown and support continued, safe, and efficient airport operations,” Kevin M. Burke, president and CEO of the Airports Council International-North America (ACI-NA), told The Hill. More than 50,000 TSA officers and 13,000 Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) air traffic controllers would continue to work without pay until the government is funded. The TSA workers are among the lowest paid in the government, however, and during the last shutdown, in 2019, large numbers called in sick weeks into the shutdown, when they’d miss pay. That pressure was credited in part with ending that standoff in Congress. TSA workers are expected to get their next paycheck just as the shutdown begins, which could alleviate some stress in the near term over Thanksgiving, at least. The Biden administration warned ahead of the last near-shutdown, at the end of September, that it could cause delays and longer wait times at America’s airports. “Previous shutdowns have affected every function of aviation and air travel and have specifically harmed regional airports and put a strain on air traffic controllers nationwide,” Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), co-chair of Travel and Tourism Caucus and ranking member of the Commerce, Science and Transportation aviation safety subcommittee, told The Hill. Here’s how a shutdown could affect the nation’s airports.
Autoworkers ratify contract with Stellantis, on track to approve Ford deal -- Members of the United Auto Workers (UAW) union have ratified a contract with Stellantis and appear to be on track to approve a similar deal with Ford, the union’s vote tracker showed Friday. With workers narrowly approving an agreement with General Motors (GM) on Thursday, the months-long battle between the union and the three major automakers appears to be drawing to a close. Unionized workers at Stellantis facilities voted resoundingly in favor of a 54-month contract with the Jeep maker, with about 68 percent of some 26,000 workers voting to ratify the deal as of Friday morning. While the votes for several small facilities have yet to appear on UAW’s tracker, the remaining ballots would not be able to overcome the current 9,650-vote margin in favor of the contract, according to CNBC. The union’s contract with Ford also appears to be heading toward ratification, with 61.7 percent of workers voting in favor of the agreement thus far. The ease with which the Stellantis’s and Ford’s ratification votes have occurred stands in contrast to that of GM, where autoworkers at several major facilities in Michigan, Indiana, Missouri and Tennessee voted down the agreement in recent days. However, after one of the automaker’s largest facilities in Texas voted in favor of the deal, it passed Thursday with 54.7 percent support. The agreements reached with each of the three major U.S. automakers after six weeks of strikes feature a 25 percent general wage increase, including an 11 percent immediate pay raise after ratification. The union also won back several concessions made by autoworkers during the 2007-2008 financial crisis, such as cost-of-living adjustments and a more rapid progression to the top wage rate.
California scientists seek higher pay in 3-day strike drawing thousands of picketers -More than 1,000 state scientists in California took to the picket line Thursday on day two of a three-day strike, calling for higher wages for work they say often goes unrecognized in a state that sets environmental policy trends on the national and global stage.The California Association of Professional Scientists, a union representing about 5,200 scientists across more than 50 state departments, decided to strike after three years of stalled contract negotiations, said President Jacqueline Tkac. The push for a better contract began when state scientists were furloughed during the COVID-19 pandemic."We're not here to settle for anything less than the fair pay and respect that we deserve," Tkac said. "We hope that the state can recognize the opportunity that we have in front of us."The strike comes during a big year for labor, one in which health care professionals, Hollywood actors and writers, and auto workers picketed for better pay and working conditions. It also comes amid new California laws granting workers more paid sick leave and increased wages for health care and fast food workers.The scientists—whose work includes creating earthquake warning systems, protecting wildlife and reducing air pollution—picketed outside of the California Environmental Protection Agency building in downtown Sacramento. Most wore green shirts representing their union, and many held signs that read, "Scientists Strike Back" and "Defiance for Science." Drivers, including firefighters, honked in support as they drove by.Striking members of the California Association of Professional Scientists march in Sacramento, Calif., Wednesday, Nov. 15, 2023. Thousands of scientists who work for California have begun a three-day strike over lack of progress on contract talks. Credit: Paul Kitagaki Jr./The Sacramento Bee via APTkac accused Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom's administration of boasting about the state's leadership on climate policy without recognizing those who do the work."Nobody wants to be here, but we have to," Tkac said.The union says state scientists are paid 40% to 60% less than professionals in comparable positions doing similar work.The state says it has been working to reach a fair deal with the scientists. The California Department of Human Resources recently filed a complaint of unfair labor practices against the union in an attempt to prevent the strike.The department said Wednesday it was disappointed by the walkout and that the state continues to bargain "in good faith." Camille Travis, a department spokesperson, said the union sought mediation then called for the strike before that process concluded.
Pharmacists Refuse to Fill a Prescription for Disaster --Employees are staging walkouts at some of the biggest pharmacy retail chains in the country. A string of pharmacies closed at CVS in Kansas City. Later pharmacists held walkouts at Walgreens. More recently, an estimated 4,500 pharmacy workers from all three of the biggest chains,CVS, Walgreens and Rite Aid, announced participation.#Pharmageddon is trending in nationwide protest. Pharmacy Guild, a new worker empowerment project, announced its efforts to unionize. With the recent news of the SAG-AFTRA strike ending, and the United Auto Workers declaring victory in new contracts, there is hope agreements can be made for resolution.I worked as a community pharmacist early in my career more than 20 years ago. I dreaded times when I was alone in the pharmacy—every shift—haphazardly filling prescriptions while getting tied up on the phone adjudicating insurance claims, all the while running from one end of the pharmacy to another inputting, verifying, and dispensing prescriptions rapidly.Every voice is needed to see positive legislation and improved conditions for pharmacies and to also encourage reform.I was also answering doctor calls, attending to the drive-through, and hurriedly ringing up and counseling patients as fast as I could, without any help for half of my workday. Admittedly, I did not have the added stress of administering vaccinations while performing those duties at that time.Pharmacy walkout momentum has been on the rise since 2021. Chronic understaffing coupled with higher prescription volume and growing additional duties exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic, with vaccinations and rapid test appointments, have led to unsafe working conditions for both employees and patients.Additionally, abusive business practices by pharmacy benefit managers have not only resulted in thousands of pharmacy closures nationwide, but inflation in the amount paid for prescription drugs by seniors due to a loophole in Medicare regulations. According to Centers for Medicaid & Medicare Services, retroactive direct and indirect remuneration fees have increased by 107,400% between 2010-2020.To be sure, drugstore chains have been struggling over the years with rising competition from mail-order pharmacies and lower reimbursement rates for prescription drugs, leading to the elimination of multiple locations and bankruptcy filings.However, the pharmacy closures are now leaving gaps in communities for medicines and essentials. An assessment of pharmacy closures revealed one in eight pharmacies closed from 2009-2015, with pharmacies located in low-income, urban areas at greater risk of closing. The closures can create pharmacy deserts, further worsening the problem of disparities and access.Pharmacists are highly skilled and trained, obtaining six to eight years of formal education with an additional one to two more years for possible post-graduate training. They enter the workforce eager to use their expert drug knowledge and provide patient-centered care.For many, the excitement quickly dissipates in a highly volatile, pressurized environment. Inadequate staffing and burnout are truly a prescription for disaster.
Militarized Police 'Indiscriminately' Attack Nonviolent Stop Cop City March With Tear Gas --Militarized state and local police on Monday attacked a peaceful protest against the construction of the so-called "Cop City" training center outside Atlanta, Georgia with "less-lethal" weapons including tear gas, pepper balls, and flash-bang grenades, journalists and activists there said.Hundreds of #StopCopCity activists marched from a park toward the Weelaunee Forest in suburban DeKalb County early Monday morning. Some carried large and elaborate puppets, others had saplings to plant in woodlands bulldozed during construction, and a few carried banners reading "Block Cop City" and "Viva Tortuguita"—a reference to forest defender Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, aka "Tortuguita," who was fatallyshot 57 times with live ammunition by police during a January raid on a protest camp.A marching band and members of the Wanbli Ska Society—a South Dakota-based Indigenous advocacy group—hyped up the activists, who then started their two-mile march toward the Cop City construction site.Journalists and protesters said police blocked the road about half a mile from the march's planned destination."The police have effectively separated the press at the front of the march from the rest of the march," the group Defend the Atlanta Forest wrote on social media. "Police are preventing them from rejoining the march and threatening to tow their cars."
Study: Pandemic had varying effects on preschool kids --A new study in JAMA Network Open used data from the Ontario Birth Study collected between February 2018 and June 2022 to compare developmental outcomes and emotional and cognitive well-being among preschool-aged children exposed to the COVID-19 pandemic. Eligible participants were children aged 24 and 54 months during the prepandemic and pandemic period. Surprisingly, the pandemic had both positive and negative effects on kids, with kids exposed to the pandemic showing greater problem-solving skills but having a greater risk of personal-social difficulties. While most studies have looked at the pandemic’s impact on elementary school kids or teenagers, little attention has been paid to preschool-aged kids. But in Canada, that cohort was subject to at least four separate lockdown periods in the first 18 months of the pandemic and several daycare and preschool closures. "Few studies have examined the effects of the pandemic on children’s neurocognitive functioning," the authors wrote. "The current study addresses these limitations by combining assessments of socioemotional and neurocognitive development during the pandemic using both parent-report and performance-based measures with comparisons to a prepandemic cohort from the same study using matched methods and measures." The study was based on surveys given to parents any time before or after the pandemic, with child participants assessed at 24 and 54 months of age. At 24 months, the survey used the Ages and Stages Questionnaire, a screening tool measuring communication, gross motor, fine motor, problem-solving, and personal-social skills. At 54 months, children completed the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Toolbox Early Childhood Cognitive Battery on iPads in their homes, which assessed inhibitory control and attention, cognitive flexibility, visual episodic memory, and language skills. At 24 months, 258 children were assessed before the pandemic (April 17, 2018, to March 10, 2020), and 460 were assessed during the pandemic (March 17, 2020, to May 17, 2022), while at 54 months, 417 children were assessed before the pandemic (February 8, 2018, to March 10, 2020), and 286 were assessed during the pandemic (March 14, 2020, to June 6, 2022). At 24 months, the pandemic-exposed group had significantly higher problem-solving skills (3.93; 95% confidence interval [CI], 2.48 to 5.38) but lower personal-social skills (−1.70; 95% CI, −3.21 to −0.20) than the unexposed group. Pandemic-exposed children also had better fine motor skills than the control group. At 54 months, kids exposed to the pandemic had significantly higher vocabulary, picture sequence memory scores, and cognitive composite scores. "There were no significant differences in children’s socioemotional functioning between exposed and nonexposed groups," the authors said. The authors said children assessed at 24 months did show lower personal-social skills, which likely had to do with sibling school closures, parental work stress, and general social disruption rather than preschool or daycare closures.
Congress needs to protect kids, not Big Tech -- Social media is a threat to our children. A bipartisan Congress is now stepping up to make Big Tech products safe for our children; but the social media companies are putting their incredible lobbying power behind efforts to break the momentum. U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy’s May 2023 advisory warning found “ample” evidence that social media use presents “a profound risk of harm to the mental health and well-being of children and adolescents.” And a recent paper by the Institute for Family Studies and Gallup shows that access to social media has led to higher suicide rates for teenagers. “Teens who spend more than 5 hours a day on social media,” the report found, “were 2.5 times more likely to express suicidal thoughts or harm themselves, 2.4 times more likely to hold a negative view of their body, and 40% more likely to report a lot of sadness the day before.”Social media not only impacts teens’ mental health but their physical health, as well. A recent study in the Journal of Family Medicine and Primary Care found kids experience “anxiety, respiratory alterations, trembling, perspiration, agitation, disorientation and tachycardia” when they are not near their phones, their portals to social media and the internet.Do these symptoms sound familiar? They should, because they are the same symptoms of an addict withdrawing from nicotine or hard drugs. But unlike other addictive substances, social media platforms are completely unregulated by the government.Moms and dads have thus been left on their own to try to fend off this tech-induced health crisis, contending against the allure of products engineered by the most powerful corporations in history to be maximally addictive to their kids. Big Tech is not only indifferent to the harms children are suffering from its products, but, as made evident in recent lawsuits, there is strong evidence that they intentionally perpetuate the problem. In October, a bipartisan group of 42 state attorneys general sued Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, for targeting young users with features designed to secure “compulsive and extended use” in order to “maximize profit.”
Portland teachers enter second week of strike as Democratic politicians refuse to secure more funding for schools --PPS staff and educators, who are members of the Portland Association of Teachers (PAT), are demanding pay increases that keep up with the rate of inflation, smaller class sizes, increased instructional planning time and the necessary school staff, such as counselors and nurses, to keep up with the mounting social crisis. The Portland teachers strike is taking place as school workers launch strikes across the West Coast. It is also taking place as the union bureaucracy is seeking to shut down the strike by 4,000 Mack Trucks workers after ending the walkouts by Kaiser Permanente healthcare workers, actors and Detroit Three autoworkers.The strike is also occurring alongside massive global protests against the ongoing genocide of Palestinians by the Israeli government. The Biden administration and the Democratic Party have declared their full support for the ongoing massacre, exposing the barbarism of capitalist politics to tens of millions.The negotiations between the PAT union and the school district have made little progress since they began. On Wednesday afternoon, PPS shared its new bargaining proposal. None of the necessary cost-of-living increases, or any other of the teachers’ necessary demands, have been seriously addressed. The only negotiations “breakthrough,” as declared by PAT President Angela Bonilla on Wednesday, was the presence of PPS board members during the negotiations on Tuesday night. On Thursday, PPS Superintendent Guadalupe Guerrero commented that teacher planning time was the only topic being seriously discussed in negotiations between PAT and PPS. Additionally, Friday saw PAT officials lower their cost-of-living adjustment proposal. As the strike began, PAT offered an adjustment of 8.5 percent, 7 percent and 6 percent for each year of the contract. This proposal was reduced on Friday to an 8.5 percent increase for the first year, then increases of 5.5 percent and 5 percent in subsequent years. In a demonstration of solidarity with striking educators, construction workers walked off the job at Benson Polytechnic High School. One anonymous construction worker told the press on Thursday, “When we saw teachers picketing out front, many people picked up their stuff and left for the day. We’re trying to build solidarity there.” Workers across industries are striving for joint strike action, in spite of their union leaderships.PAT officials made their demands known at the start of the strike, including a cost-of-living adjustment that does not meet the rate of inflation. PPS has insisted that there is no money for pay increases or new staffing hires since the expiration of the last contract in June.The Democratic Party, which has dominated Portland politics for decades, has aggressively opposing demands by striking education workers for additional school funding. Democratic Governor Tina Kotek called on teachers to continue to work during negotiations before the strike began and has now helped the district secure a state financial mediator.
Texas Officials Reject Textbooks Over Climate Science --Seven of 12 proposed science textbooks for Texas 8th graders were rejected Friday by the Republican-controlled state Board of Education because they propose solutions to the climate emergency or were published by a company with an environmental, social, and governance policy. The Texas Tribune reported that the 15-member board, which for the first time was required to include climate education for 8th graders, approved five of 12 proposed science textbooks, but called on their publishers to remove content deemed false or presenting a negative portrayal of oil and gas in the nation's biggest fossil fuel producer."America's future generations don't need a leftist agenda brainwashing them in the classroom to hate oil and natural gas," said Republican state energy regulator Wayne Christian, who had urged the board to choose books that promote planet-heating fossil fuels.Some board members also objected to textbooks that did not include alternatives to the theory of evolution. One textbook was approved only after the removal of images highlighting that human beings—taxonomically classified as great apes—share ancestry with monkeys."Teaching creationism or any of its offshoots, such as intelligent design, in Texas' public schools is unlawful, because creationism is not based in fact," Chris Line, an attorney with the Freedom from Religion Foundation, said Friday. "Courts have routinely found that such teachings are religious, despite many new and imaginative labels given to the alternatives.""Federal courts consistently reject creationism and its ilk, as well as attempts to suppress the teaching of evolution, in the public schools," Line added.State standards approved by the board's conservative majority in 2021 do not include creationism as an alternative to evolution. The standards also acknowledge that human activities contribute to climate change.Despite an overwhelming scientific consensus that human activity—primarily, the burning of fossil fuels—drives global heating, Republican board Secretary Patricia Hardy argued before the vote that such a stance amounts to "taking a position that all of that is settled science, and that our extreme weather is caused by climate change."One textbook was rejected because its publisher has an environmental, social, and governance (ESG) policy. ESG frameworks account for workplace diversity, the treatment of employees, and preparedness for the climate crisis.Democratic board member Marisa Perez-Diaz said during debate on the textbooks that "my fear is that we will render ourselves irrelevant moving forward when it comes to what publishers want to work with us and will help us get proper materials in front of our young people, and for me that's heartbreaking."
Texas House committee advances its own proposal to create a school voucher-like program – A Texas House panel on Friday advanced the chamber's version of legislation creating education savings accounts, or ESAs.House Bill 1, which was approved in a 10-4 vote, would offer qualifying students $10,500 per year of public funds to put toward private-school tuition and other education-related expenses.Gov. Greg Abbott made ESAs one of his top priorities in the state's fourth special legislative session of the year, which kicked off Tuesday night.Friday's vote was no surprise, as versions of this bill, from Republican Rep. Brad Buckely, passed previously in earlier rounds of legislative overtime. But the House's latest proposal is far more comprehensive and includes other education items like a one-time teacher raise, increased per-student public school funding – which the legislature has not changed since 2019 – and more money for pre-K.The House's move Friday comes on the heels of quick action from the Senate on Thursday, which passed its version of an ESA bill.While both chambers aren't wasting any time advancing their respective proposals, there's still quite a ways to go before any ESA bill lands on Abbott's desk.The House and Senate were unable to reach an agreement in special session round three, despite pressure from Abbott and other Republican leaders.Proposals diverting public money to private schools have historically divided Texas lawmakers. In the past, no Democrats have voted for similar bills, arguing taxpayer money shouldn't be used for private schools, and rural Republicans have historically opposed ESAs, saying they could hurt the small school districts they represent.The House's current school voucher plan is also drastically different from the Senate's version. HB 1 provides students with $10,500, whereas the plan the Senate passed Thursday gives qualifying students $8,000 per year. Additionally, the House's voucher provision is part of the bigger omnibus bill that includes money to raise the state's per-pupil allotment and bolster school security.Because of these serious differences, lawmakers would have to negotiate again.The full Senate passed its voucher proposal in the regular session and third special session, but the House has not voted on a school voucher plan this year. Rep. Buckley said he hopes the latest version of HB 1 will finally persuade enough critics to gain approval in the House.
Why the vote on school vouchers is different for rural Republicans | The Texas Tribune“Our public school system is our town”: Why this rural Republican is voting against school vouchers— Gary VanDeaver is a hard no on school vouchers. Among his Republican peers in the Texas Legislature, it's an awkward position to take. He and a couple dozen other House Republicans representing rural districts are under intense political pressure within their party as they consider whether to join with Democrats to block the latest attempt to pass a voucher bill. Their opposition could lead to yet another special session by Gov. Greg Abbott who is hell-bent on passing such a program.VanDeaver and the other Republican holdouts will be attacked in their primaries for reelection over the issue.Regardless, it's a clear choice for VanDeaver. Because, as he and many education leaders in his district see it, vouchers pose a serious threat to the long-term financial health of his district’s school systems without providing a meaningful benefit to his constituents.Take, for example, the fact that there's only five accredited private schools in his district, which spans from Texarkana to Paris, and all but one are concentrated on the district’s eastern edge. At least one of those schools said they’re already at capacity.On Friday, the House is expected to take up House Bill 1, a school finance bill that also authorizes education savings accounts, a voucher proposal that would allocate $10,500 per year per student to be used for private school education and up to $1,000 for homeschoolers. It would become the first time in recent memory that the House, which has historically been against vouchers, will take a vote on the issue. Earlier this week, the bill was advanced out of committee with VanDeaver’s support. He said he believed the issue deserved to be debated by the entire House.But ultimately, VanDeaver told The Texas Tribune he wouldn’t support the bill as currently written because of the voucher provision.“I'm just philosophically not in favor of vouchers primarily because of the district I represent,” VanDeaver said.
Texas House votes to remove school vouchers from massive education bill --The Texas House on Friday voted to strip school vouchers from the chamber’s massive education funding bill, taking an ax to Gov. Greg Abbott’s top legislative priority of the year.The House voted 84-63 in favor of an amendment offered by Rep. John Raney, R-College Station, which removed the provision of the bill allowing some parents to use tax dollars to send their children to private and religious schools. Twenty-one Republicans, most of whom represent rural districts, joined all Democrats in support.They are: […] Voucher opponents said they feared the subsidy would divert money from their public school systems — either in the short term because students would leave for private schools, or in the long term because the state would have to commit more funding to the program that would otherwise fund public education. For many rural Republicans, they said they have few private schools in their districts where families could take advantage of vouchers.The outcome was an embarrassment to Abbott, who spent seven months lobbying two dozen Republicans who signaled opposition to vouchers in a test vote during the regular legislative session in April. His various strategies included holding school choice rallies at private schools in rural areas, tying vouchers to increased public school funding, calling two special sessions dedicated to education, threatening to support primary challengers to Republicans who opposed vouchers and announcing a breakthrough deal with the holdouts that did not appear to exist.None of it worked. Just four of the Republican holdouts from the April test vote changed their position to vote against the anti-voucher amendment on Friday: Trent Ashby of Lufkin,Brooks Landgraf of Odessa, Angelia Orr of Itasca and David Spiller of Jacksboro. But Thompson was a new anti-voucher vote, bringing the governor’s net gain to three.Even the barnstorming of rural districts failed to produce the desired effect. At a pro-voucher rally in Bryan last year, Abbott was joined by the local state representative — Raney, who led the push against vouchers Friday.“I believe in my heart that using taxpayer dollars to fund an entitlement program is not conservative, and it’s bad public policy,” Raney, who is not seeking reelection, said on the House floor. “Expanding government-defined choice programs for a few without accountability… undermines our constitutional and moral duty to educate the children of Texas.”Abbott, in a statement Friday evening, did not concede defeat.“Today’s vote is just another step on the path to provide school choice for parents and students across Texas,” the governor said. “I will continue advancing school choice in the Texas Legislature and at the ballot box… until all parents can choose the best education path for their child. I am in it to win it.” In his statement he took a dig at the “pro-union Republicans in the Texas House who voted with Democrats.”
Harvard University escalating anti-democratic attack on opponents of Israel’s genocide in Gaza - In the United States, university campuses have become the epicenter of the state-led campaign to intimidate, smear and outright ban opposition to Israel’s genocide in Gaza. At Harvard University, the month-long campaign against pro-Palestinian students has intensified following a protest organized by the Palestine Solidarity Committee (PSC) on October 18.After Israel’s bombing of the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital, which killed 500 people, hundreds of students marched from Harvard’s Cambridge campus to its Business School in Boston, where they staged a “die-in,” lying down in a symbolic act of solidarity with the two million Palestinians trapped in the Gaza strip.The students demanded that the university disclose investments in companies “complicit in genocide and human rights abuses toward Palestinians” and for university president Claudine Gay to “explicitly name, condemn, and reject the anti-Palestinian racism, doxxing, and harassment Harvard students and alumni are facing.”During the “die-in” portion of the protest, a Zionist student began walking over students as they lay on the ground, getting close to their faces to film them and, according to protesters, stepping on them. Footage aired on national news showed student protest “marshals” intervening to protect the safety of the protesters. They formed a circle around the Zionist student, holding up Keffiyes (Middle Eastern scarves) and attempting to guide him away from the protesters while chanting “shame.”This non-violent action was seized upon by right-wing figures both inside and outside the college, who cynically portrayed the actions of the student marshals as an antisemitic assault.Harvard Business School Dean Srikant Datar issued a letter days after the protest, condemning the supposedly antisemitic atmosphere on campus, and pledging that the school would undertake efforts to “understand the experience of antisemitism at Harvard Business School” while making assurances that “reports have been filed with HUPD and the FBI” about the events at the protest, implicitly threatening the pro-Palestinian protesters with arrest. Billionaire hedge fund manager and Harvard alum Bill Ackman, a central figure in the campaign against students, seized upon the encounter to demand that the university suspend students involved in the protest. In a public letter to university president Gay posted on X (formerly Twitter), he accused the college of being insufficiently aggressive in repressing protests and punishing those involved. Referring to the chant, “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Shall Be Free,” he accused protesters of using “eliminationist language seeking the destruction of the State of Israel and the Jewish people.” Ackman demanded that “students involved in harassing and allegedly physically assaulting the HBS student on October 18th should be immediately suspended,” arguing that waiting for the police department to review the die-in incident “makes no sense.” Following the public letter issued by the PSC and other student groups on October 7, correctly holding “the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence,” Ackman was a leading instigator in the blacklisting and far-right doxxing of students, calling for the university to release the names of students associated with the statement. Shortly afterwards, a billboard truck sent by the far-right Accuracy in Media (AIM) group drove around Harvard Square displaying the names and photos of students supposedly associated with the PSC statement, under the header “Harvard’s Leading Antisemites.” Additional pressure came from a letter authored by Joseph C. Shenker, senior chair of the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell, on November 1 that was signed by two dozen top US law firms and addressed to deans of the top 14 law schools in the US. The letter slandered protesters as antisemitic and demanded that the universities take an “unequivocal stance” against pro-Palestinian students. The letter implicitly threatened to cease recruiting graduates unless dissent was stamped out on campuses nationwide. President Gay followed-up on the right-wing backlash by sending a campus-wide email on November 9 that amounted to an endorsement of calls to repress student opposition. In her message, Gay portrayed Harvard campus as a hotbed of antisemitism and honed in on the “river to the sea” slogan used by protesters, writing that such phrases “…bear specific historical meanings that to a great many people imply the eradication of Jews from Israel and engender both pain and existential fears within our Jewish community”.
Life scientists are leaving academia for biotech, imperiling research-- Step inside Natasha Sheybani’s office at the University of Virginia, where she runs a bioengineering lab, and you’ll find a kaleidoscopic sea of sticky notes. She uses purple for ideas sparked by meetings, orange for future grant proposals. But she’s most excited about the yellow stickies, which Sheybani saves for moonshots: projects that are high-risk and high-reward. For now, those are just thought experiments. “We actually are not doing those projects,” she said. That’s because Sheybani has been unable to hire a postdoctoral researcher since starting her lab in 2021. She’s come tantalizingly close, twice, making offers that seemed like done deals. But in each case the candidate opted for a job at a biotech company. She’s not alone. Academia is in the midst of an unprecedented exodus of life science researchers, many of whom are leaving for lucrative jobs in the private sector. STAT has written extensively about this seismic workforce shift over the past year, and new reporting reveals it’s already having a detrimental impact on basic research, slowing the pace of scientific progress. Faculty struggling to recruit and retain researchers spoke openly about promising hypotheses going untested, grant dollars sitting unused, and projects languishing in limbo for months to years.
Senate Republicans fail to stop Biden’s new student loan income-driven repayment plan --Senate Republicans failed in their efforts to pass a resolution to overturn President Biden’s new student loans income-driven repayment (IDR) plan Wednesday. All present Republicans and Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin (W.Va.) voted in support of a Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution that would have halted the Saving on Valuable Education (SAVE) IDR plan, ultimately falling one vote short of the 50 needed to overturn the plan. The CRA makes it so only 50 votes would have been needed to pass the resolution instead of the 60 that is typically needed to beat a filibuster. The final tally of Wednesday’s vote was 50-49 against the effort, with Republican Tim Scott (S.C.) the lone senator not voting. “This is irresponsible. This is deeply unfair,” Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, said of Biden’s plan before the vote. The SAVE plan is being implemented in two parts. This fall, borrowers are seeing a rise in income exemption for student loan payments from 150 percent to 225 percent above the federal poverty guidelines. Borrowers will also not see their unpaid interest grow. Next year, borrowers will receive other benefits such as monthly payments getting cut from 10 percent of discretionary income to 5 percent. Republicans highlighted that the plan will cost taxpayers $559 billion, saying individuals who never went to school or already paid off their student loans would wind up paying for others. Previously, opponents in both the Senate and House were able to pass a CRA measure against Biden’s broader student debt relief program before the plan was struck down by the Supreme Court over the summer, but that resolution was ultimately vetoed by the president. Democratic Sens. Manchin and Jon Tester (Mont.) and Independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.) all voted in support of the resolution to stop the student debt relief plan back in June.
Two million US children have been removed from Medicaid health insurance since April - New research shows that at least two million US children who are eligible for government assistance have been kicked off of Medicaid health insurance since last April, when federal pandemic aid programs were halted.According to data compiled by the Georgetown Center for Children and Families and KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation), under the title “Medicaid Enrollment and Unwinding Tracker,” as of November 8 the two million children who qualified for ongoing coverage had their insurance terminated largely due to bureaucratic bungling, including missing paperwork and government errors.Additionally, the Georgetown and KFF study says that due to lags in data reporting by states, the numbers being reported “undercount the actual number of disenrollments to date.”Last Thursday, Joan Alker, the executive director of the Georgetown center and a research professor at the university’s McCourt School of Public Policy, told the New York Times it is likely that at least one million of these children are currently uninsured.Alker added that the numbers of children being disenrolled nationally is accelerating, and, in the coming weeks, new data from the states “will probably show that three million children have lost coverage.” She went on to call the situation “unprecedented” and warned that the mass disenrollment of children from Medicaid “has the potential to increase the uninsured rate for children by the largest amount that we’ve seen in decades.”According to the research tracker website, it provides “the most recent data on monthly Medicaid disenrollments, renewals, overall enrollment and other key indicators reported by states during the unwinding of the Medicaid continuous enrollment provision.” The tracker gathers available data about the unwinding of Medicaid coverage from state websites and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).The data shows that, overall, 10.135 million people have been disenrolled from Medicaid nationwide, even though they completed renewal applications, due to the unwinding that began in April. Another 18 million have had their coverage renewed. The study shows that there is a “wide variation in disenrollment rates across reporting states.” In Texas, for example, 1.2 million, or 65 percent, of nearly two million people statewide have been disenrolled.
The male-female longevity gap widens -- Through 2021, COVID-19, drug overdoses, and suicides were killing Americans faster than advances in healthcare were saving them. A new study from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and UC San Francisco, published November 13, finds that the average American was projected to live about three fewer years in 2021 than in 2019. During that period, the life expectancy gap between men and women grew—men are now estimated to die almost six years earlier than women. The study sought to quantify the longevity gap by gender and identify the differences in causes of death. The researchers found that between 2019 and 2021, the life expectancy gap between men and women grew much more dramatically (total increase of 0.70 years) than it had in the previous decade (total increase of 0.23 years). “There’s been a lot of research into the decline in life expectancy in recent years, but no one has systematically analyzed why the gap between men and women has been widening since 2010,” said Brandon Yan, a research collaborator at the Harvard Chan School who led the study. Two other Harvard faculty members contributed to the report: senior author and professor of the practice of public health leadership Howard Koh, and senior lecturer on social and behavioral sciences Allan Geller. COVID-19 was the primary factor fueling the recent increase in the gender lifespan gap. The researchers suggest that men had a “higher burden of comorbidities,” sought medical care more reluctantly, and spent more time in environments where they were susceptible to disease (work, jail, and homeless shelters). In the past, much of the gender gap has stemmed from tobacco use, which is more prevalent in men than in women. Now, other kinds of substance abuse are killing men, too. The researchers found that “deaths from despair”—alcoholism, overdose, and suicide—are another factor disproportionately affecting men. The researchers hope that by identifying gendered causes of death, they may be able to drive improvements in healthcare. Their results suggest that men in particular could benefit from additional mental health and substance abuse care. “We have brought insights to a worrisome trend,” Yan said. “Future research ought to help focus public health interventions towards helping reverse this decline in life expectancy.” COVID-related deaths were still at high levels when the study’s dataset ended in 2021. In the future, the researchers want to assess the gap again as pandemic deaths wane. “We need to track these trends closely as the pandemic recedes,” said Koh. “And we must make significant investments in prevention and care to ensure that this widening disparity, among many others, does not become entrenched.”
COVID increased gender life expectancy gap in US - For more than 100 years, American women have outlived American men, largely due to differences in rates of cardiovascular disease and lung cancer. Now COVID-19 has widened the gendered life expectancy gap, according to aresearch letter published yesterday in JAMA Internal Medicine. The study was based on mortality data from the National Center for Health Statistics, and it compared life expectancy at birth between men and women from 2010 to 2021, divided by pre– and post–COVID-19 year, and cause-specific mortality. It's already been well-documented that the COVID-19 pandemic lowered life expectancy rates for all US adults, with expectancy at birth decreasing from 78.8 years in 2019 to 76.1 years in 2021. In 2010, US women were expected to live 4.8 years longer than male counterparts, but by 2021 that gap increased to 5.8 years. From 2010 to 2019, the gender life expectancy gap increase by only 0.23 years. From 2019 and 2021 it increased by 0.70 years. "From 2019 to 2021, COVID-19 became the leading contributor to the widening gender life expectancy gap (−0.33 years [39.8%]) followed by unintentional injuries (−0.27 years [32.5%]," the authors wrote. From 2010 to 2019, the gender mortality gap was caused by unintentional injuries, diabetes, suicide, homicide, and heart disease.The absolute difference in age-adjusted death rates between men and women increased from 252 to 315 per 100,000 from 2010 to 2021, the authors found. Men experiences higher mortality rate from COVID-19 for many reasons, mostly because they carry a higher burden of comorbidities that make them susceptible to severe COVID, the authors note. Men also experience more socioeconomic factors, including incarceration and homelessness, that have been linked to COVID-19 deaths. "Differentially worsening mortality from diabetes, heart disease, homicide, and suicide suggest that chronic metabolic disease and mental illness may also contribute," the authors said.They also note that increasing deaths of despair among men spotlight the contributions that drug use and firearms make in the gendered age gap.
4th COVID vaccine dose tied to reduced infection, poor outcomes in those with rheumatic disease -People with rheumatic disease who received a fourth mRNA COVID-19 vaccine dose had a 41% lower risk of infection and a 65% lower risk of hospitalization or death than those who received only three doses, according to a study published yesterday in The Lancet Rheumatology.A team led by Mass General Brigham researchers analyzed observational data to determine the risk of COVID-19 infection, hospital admission, and death among 4,305 patients with systemic autoimmune rheumatic disease. The patients were taking disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs) and were eligible for a fourth vaccine dose from January to June 2022, a period of Omicron variant predominance.The authors noted that patients with rheumatic diseases who take DMARDs have suppressed immune systems."In addition to the use of DMARDs, comorbidity burdens, systemic autoimmune rheumatic disease activity, and dysregulated immune responses also contribute to this increased risk," they wrote. "However, many patients with systemic autoimmune rheumatic diseases receiving DMARD therapy also have blunted humoral responses to COVID-19 vaccines."After overlap propensity score weighting, an equal number of patients (2,563) had received and not received a fourth dose. Median follow-up was 135 days among fourth-dose recipients and 65 days among fourth-dose nonrecipients.COVID-19 infection risk was lower among fourth-dose recipients (hazard ratio [HR], 0.59). The additional dose reduced the risk of hospitalization or death from 3 days before to 14 days after infection (HR, 0.35)."These patients should be encouraged to stay up-to-date with COVID-19 mRNA vaccines, including boosters after the primary vaccination series," the researchers wrote.
XBB.1.5 shows we’re thinking about covid variants all wrong. Here’s a better way. - When SARS-CoV-2 first spilled into humans, we were all blank slates, immunologically speaking. Without preexisting defenses, any human the virus encountered looked the same. In that homogenous landscape, the main way a new mutation could differentiate itself was by increasing transmissibility. A variant that spread faster in one population could likely do the same in another since no one had immunity. Of course, many other factors, from demographics to seasonality, also shaped any location’s experience with those early variants. But “the first part of the evolutionary trajectory is going to be about the intrinsic properties of the virus,” said Scarpino. Now, just about everyone on the planet has some immunity, either through vaccination or infection. But the nature of that immunity depends on myriad factors that change over time. “I know people who haven’t gotten covid and some who’ve had it four times, some who’ve been infected and gotten boosted, others who didn’t get boosted, people that had delta but not omicron, omicron but not delta,” said Scarpino. On a larger scale, differences in how countries have dealt with the pandemic create regional variation. China, which is just lifting its zero-covid policies, looks a lot different to the coronavirus than Sweden, which took a more lax approach beginning in 2020. “All those interactions matter in terms of the probability of getting infected,” he said. That varied and changing landscape means there are many more ways for the coronavirus to make a living, so to speak. That’s “part of the reason why there are so many more variants out there,” said Scarpino. It also makes evaluating or predicting the impact of any given variant more difficult. Take BF.7, which split off from the omicron BA.5 lineage that caused many surges this summer across Europe and the United States. BF.7 has mutations that help it dodge antibody responses (like those spurred by prior infection or vaccination) but has been relatively quiet around the world. But in China, BF.7 is driving a surge in infections among a population with almost no exposure to any version of covid, threatening to overwhelm the country’s healthcare system. “Context matters,” said T. Ryan Gregory, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Guelph. “You can have a mutation that is totally irrelevant in one environment, massively successful in a different environment and detrimental in a third environment,” he said. Drawing conclusions about whether a variant will cause a spike in illness or death based on a snapshot in time just doesn’t work anymore. “This expectation of a sharp peak caused by one variant is really distorting our understanding,” he said. It can also blind us to the actual ongoing impact of variant evolution. “There’s this idea that unless something is surging, causing a huge number of hospitalizations on par with the first waves, it’s not something to worry about,” said Gregory. But these omicron offshoots have been killing between 300 and 400 people each day in the United States since the end of spring and leaving scores more with long covid and other complications. Omicron and its subvariants caused Canada’s deadliest year of the pandemic yet in 2022. Gregory and others argue that we must ditch the old way of looking at variants as static entities that can be assessed with a snapshot and instead take on a more global and dynamic perspective. “We always want to boil this down to something simple, but it’s time to be holistic rather than reductionist,” he said. “Reductionism worked OK while it was a simple system, but it’s not simple anymore, and it’s causing us to really lag behind what’s going on.”
COVID data show small rise ahead of the holidays --After declining trends since the end of September, US COVID indicators rose slightly last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said today in its latest updates.The rise comes just ahead of Thanksgiving gatherings and as other respiratory viruses such as flu and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) continue to increase. In a survey update today, the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) found that Americans' concerns about COVID-19 are lagging, which it says may explain lukewarm uptake of the updated vaccine.Among the CDC's severity markers, hospitalizations rose 8.6% compared to the previous week. More than 16,000 people were admitted to the hospital for COVID last week. The level of new admissions is lower than the CDC saw in November 2022.Hospitalization rates for COVID are increasing in infants younger than 6 months old and in seniors atseveral locations. A few counties are at the high level for hospitalization rates, most of which are in Montana, Nebraska, and Kansas. In its weekly respiratory virus snapshot, the CDC said hospital occupancy and capacity, including intensive care units, remains stable.COVID-related deaths rose 9.1% over the same period, with COVID responsible for 2.4% of all deaths. The highest levels were in Colorado and Maryland.Early indicators—emergency department (ED) visits and test positivity—also rose. ED visits for COVID rose 7.1% compared to the week before and were at the substantial level in New Mexico. The CDC said ED visits for COVID are highest in children younger than 2 years old and in seniors.Nationally, test positivity is at 8.4%, reflecting a 0.1 percentage-point rise, with levels higher in the Midwest and West Central regions than in the rest of the country. Meanwhile, wastewater detection analysis reported by Biobot shows a gradual increase since the middle of October, with rises seen in most regions.In its latest vaccine uptake estimates, the CDC said uptake varies widely by age. Seniors have the highest level, at 31.7%, followed by 14.8% in other adult age-groups, and 5.4% for children. The CDC recommends that everyone age 6 months and older be immunized.The latest KFF COVID-19 Vaccine Monitor survey, conducted from October 31 to November 7, found that about half of US adults don't plan to get the updated COVID vaccine, which has been available for 2 months. Similar to previous patterns, uptake is highest in seniors and Democrats, with lower levels in younger adults, Republicans, and independents. Black and Hispanic adults were more likely than Whites to say they intend to get the updated vaccine.Besides lagging concern about the virus, other reasons for not getting the vaccine were lack of time and waiting to get it later.The poll also surveyed respondents about their thoughts on COVID and the winter holidays, with about a quarter worried that they will contract the virus over the holidays, but with 46% concerned about a rise in hospitalizations.KFF said the public is divided over precautions of the holidays, with about half signaling they will take some precautions to limit the spread of the virus, such as avoiding large gatherings and wearing a mask in crowded settings, and half saying they won't take any.
High-dose fluvoxamine did not shorten COVID recovery times - Results from a randomized clinical trial today of 1,208 participants show that high-dose (100-milligram [mg]) fluvoxamine did not improve time to sustained recovery in people with mild to moderate COVID-19 infections.Fluvoxamine, known as Luvox, is a selective-serotonin reuptake inhibitor. Its potential use for COVID-19 was considered as part of the Accelerating Coronavirus Disease 2019 Therapeutic Interventions and Vaccines (ACTIV-6) platform, which aims to investigate repurposed medications in the outpatient setting for mild to moderate COVID-19.The study is published in JAMA.Participants were enrolled from August 25, 2022, to January 20, 2023, and were 30 years or older with confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection and at least two acute COVID-19 symptoms for 7 days or less. The participants were randomized to receive fluvoxamine 50 mg twice daily on day 1 followed by 100 mg twice daily for 12 additional days (601 patients), or a placebo (607).The primary outcome was time to 3 consecutive days without symptoms.The participants' average age was 50 years old, 65.8% were women, 45.5% identified as Hispanic/Latino, and 76.8% reported receiving at least two doses of a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine.The authors found no differences among the study participants in time to recovery (adjusted hazard ratio, 0.99; 95% credible interval, 0.89 to 1.09), with both groups achieving sustained recovery by days 10 or 11. No participants died during the study, and fluvoxamine was not associated with any adverse events.
Nearly half of US veterans had long-COVID symptoms up to 6 months later - Nearly half of 363,000 US veterans who tested positive for COVID-19 still had symptoms up to 6 months later, and the risk factors for this condition were Black race, older age, diabetes, and severe infection, concludes a studypublished yesterday in the Annals of Epidemiology.Researchers from Emory University and the Atlanta Veterans Affairs (VA) Medical Center retrospectively determined the rates of and risk factors for long COVID (also called post-acute sequelae of COVID-19 [PASC]) among 363,825 veterans who tested positive for COVID-19 from February 2020 to September 2022. Participants were predominantly White men younger than 65 years living in a city. Of all participants, 31% were unvaccinated, 23% had received two COVID-19 vaccine doses, and 40% had received a booster.A total of 45% of veterans had long-COVID symptoms 1 to 6 months after infection. Risk factors for long COVID were Black versus White race (adjusted odds ratio [aOR], 1.14), ages 50 to 64 versus 50 or younger (aOR, 1.80), diabetes (aOR, 8.46), and severe infection (aOR, 1.42)."Results demonstrate potential health inequities for vulnerable individuals, as well as increased risk for individuals with pre-existing comorbidities," the study authors wrote. "The prevalence of PASC provides estimates for future health care utilization. The risk factors identified can aid public health interventions to reduce the burden of PASC."
US flu activity continues to rise steadily Positive tests, hospitalizations, and outpatient visits for flu rose again last week, with levels highest in the south central, south, and western regions, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said today in its latest update.The percentage of outpatient visits for flulike illness, at 3.5%, is above the national baseline for the second week in a row and is at or above baselines in 5 of 10 US regions. The percentage of respiratory specimens that were positive for flu rose to 4%, up from 3% the week before. Among positive samples at public health labs, 75.8% were influenza A, and, of subtyped specimens, 87.2% were the 2009 H1N1 strain.The CDC estimated that there have been at least 780,000 flu infections, 8,000 hospitalizations, and 490 deaths from flu so far this season.Hospitalizations rates are highest in seniors and in children ages 4 and younger, the two age-groups that also have the highest levels of outpatient visits.One state—Louisiana—reported very high flu activity, a marker that tracks clinic visits for flu. Eight jurisdictions reported high activity: Alabama, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, New Mexico, Puerto Rico, and South Carolina.The CDC didn't report any new pediatric flu deaths, which remain at one for the season. Earlier this week, however, Mississippi reported its first flu death of the season.Regarding flu vaccine uptake, the CDC estimates that more than half (57.6%) of seniors have been immunized, followed by nearly 35% of adults in other age-groups and 32.6% of children. The CDC recommends that all people ages 6 months and older be vaccinated against flu.
Substantial decrease noted in severe respiratory illness during first 2 years of pandemic - Compared to the 3 years prior to the pandemic, children with medically complex conditions and otherwise healthy children saw decreases in severe non-COVID respiratory illnesses in 2020 and 2021, the authors of a study yesterday note in JAMA Network Open. The cross-sectional study, based on 139,078 respiratory hospitalizations in Canada, shows that the mitigation efforts used during the first several months of COVID-19 likely prevented serious outcomes from respiratory illness complications, including hospitalizations, intensive care unit (ICU) admissions, and death. Previous studies have shown that the COVID-19 prevention strategies used by many countries were associated with substantial reductions in circulating levels of respiratory syncytial virus and influenza. This is one of the first studies, however, to examine severe respiratory illness occurrence among children with medical complexity (CMC) and without medical complexity (non-CMC). CMC include those with neurologic impairment (NI), which accounts for 28% of all Canadian CMC, children with congenital heart diseases, cystic fibrosis, and sickle cell disease. The study was based on hospitalizations tracked in the Canadian Institutes for Health Information Discharge Abstract Database (CIHI-DAD) from April 1, 2017, to February 28, 2022, for all children 18 years and under, excluding residents of Quebec. A CMC hospitalization was defined as a child with any complex chronic condition or NI diagnosis code recorded in the 5 years before the index hospitalization, the authors said. The prepandemic period was April 1, 2017 through March 1, 2020, and the pandemic phase of the study was April 2020 through February 2022. The researchers limited capture of data on COVID-19 diagnoses to children who had an additional respiratory illness, such as pneumonia. "Although we may have missed some cases that were misclassified, at the time, 43.2% of Canadian children admitted to hospital with SARS-CoV-2 infections were not admitted because of COVID-19 (they typically had incidental SARS-CoV-2 infection detected during universal screening at hospital admission)," they wrote. In total there were 139,078 respiratory hospitalizations (29,461 for CMC and 109,617 for non-CMC) from March 1, 2017, to February 28, 2022, and children ages 2 and younger accounted for 34.8% of CMC hospitalizations and 51.7% of non-CMC hospitalizations. During the first year of the pandemic, CMC annual respiratory hospitalization rates drops from 1,385.6 per 10,000 hospitalizations per year to 611.4 per 10,000 CMC, an annual rate difference of 774.2 per 10 000 CMC and a rate ratio (RR) of 0.44 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.42 to 0.46). Among non-CMC, the drop was even greater, from 52.9 per 10,000 in the prepandemic years to 9.7 per 10,000 in 2020. Respiratory ICU admissions for CMC decreased from 441.8 per 10,000 prepandemic to 248.9 per 10,000 (RR, 0.56 [95% CI, 0.53 to 0.59]) in 2020 and 292.7 per 10,000 (RR, 0.66 [95% CI, 0.63-0.70]) in 2021. Among CMC, compared with prepandemic (33.8 per 10 000), mortality during respiratory hospitalizations decreased in both 2020 (21.2 per 10 000; RR, 0.63 [95% CI, 0.51 to 0.77]) and 2021 (24.2 per 10,000; RR, 0.72 [95% CI, 0.59 to 0.87]) "Taken together, this degree of serious respiratory illness reduction over the 2 pandemic years corresponds to a decrease in over 44,500 hospitalizations among Canadian children (7409 for CMC, 37 448 for non-CMC)," the authors wrote.
WHO and CDC warn of rising measles cases and deaths - In a joint report today, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said amid ongoing declines in measles vaccination, cases in 2022 rose by 18%, and deaths were up 43% globally compared to 2021.The groups detailed their findings in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Last year, 37 countries reported large or disruptive outbreaks, up from 22 in 2021. The African region was hit hardest, with 28 outbreaks, followed by the Eastern Mediterranean (6), South East Asia (2), and European regions (1).The researchers also saw coverage gaps of the vaccine, which is given as a two-dose series. Though global vaccine coverage was up modestly between 2021 and 2022, 33 million kids missed a measles vaccine dose, including 22 million who didn't get their first dose and 11 million who never received their second shot. Global coverage rates are still below the 95% two-dose goal needed to protect communities from outbreaks.Measles deaths were highest in low-income countries, where coverage rates were lower, with no sign of recovery after the pandemic. Of 22 million who missed their second measles vaccine dose last year, more than half were from just 10 countries: Angola, Brazil, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Madagascar, Nigeria, Pakistan, and the Philippines.In a CDC press release, Kate O'Brien, MD, the WHO's director for immunization, vaccines, and biologicals, said the report's findings are an alarm bell for action. "Measles is called the inequity virus for good reason. It is the disease that will find and attack those who aren’t protected," she said.In a statement, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, said the findings reiterate the ongoing need to speed and support recovery following the pandemic. Aurelia Nguyen, Gavi's chief program officer, said filling coverage gaps was a challenge even before the pandemic. "And with cases, outbreaks and preventable deaths rising so sharply due to increased immunity gaps related to the pandemic, it shows how even more important it is that our Alliance provides an unprecedented level of support to countries in 2024," she said.
CDC updates advice for preventing, treating anthrax The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has updated itsrecommendations for the postexposure prevention and treatment of Bacillus anthracisinfection (anthrax). The CDC based the updates on systematic reviews of studies involving in vitro antimicrobial drug activity against B anthracis, in vivo antimicrobial drug efficacy for postexposure prevention and treatment, in vivo and human antitoxin efficacy for prevention or treatment, and survival after antimicrobial drug prevention and treatment of localized anthrax, systemic anthrax, and anthrax meningitis. The updates to the 2014 guidelines on naturally occurring anthrax, published today in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, include an expanded list of alternative antimicrobial drugs to use if first-line drugs are contraindicated, not tolerated, depleted, or ineffective after a bioterroristic release of aerosolized B anthracis or a multidrug-resistant genetically engineered strain of the bacterium. The updated guidelines in this report can be used by health care providers to prevent and treat anthrax and guide emergency preparedness officials and planners as they develop and update plans for a wide-area aerosol release of B. anthracis.The CDC also issued new recommendations on the diagnosis and treatment of anthrax meningitis and its comorbid, social, and clinical predictors. No changes were made to previously published CDC recommendations describing critical care measures and clinical assessment tools or procedures for anthrax or to Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices recommendations for the use of anthrax vaccine. "The updated guidelines in this report can be used by health care providers to prevent and treat anthrax and guide emergency preparedness officials and planners as they develop and update plans for a wide-area aerosol release of B. anthracis," the study authors wrote.
UK surveillance report shows rise in bloodstream infections, antibiotic use - A new surveillance report from the United Kingdom's Health Security Agency (HSA) shows substantial increases in rates of priority pathogens and antimicrobial use with the lifting of COVID-19 pandemic mitigations. Data from the English Surveillance Programme for Antimicrobial Use and Resistance (ESPAUR) show a 11.7% increase in patient episodes of bloodstream infections (BSIs) and/or fungemia from 2018 to 2022. The most common causes of monomicrobial BSIs were Escherichia coli (20.9%) and Staphylococcus aureus (7.7%). The incidence of Candidemia increased by 22.7% The estimated overall burden of antimicrobial resistance (AMR)—measured by the number of BSIs resistant to at least one antibiotic—decreased by 1.6%, and 4.6% for BSIs caused by priority pathogens. But the AMR burden in BSIs varied by region, with London (the highest) having twice the rate of resistant BSIs as southwest England (the lowest). In addition, there was a significant increase in the percentage of E coli andKlebsiella pneumoniae BSIs that were resistant to piperacillin/tazobactam—a critical drug for patients with severe drug-resistant infections. While White ethnic groups had the highest percentage of BSIs, the proportion that were resistant was nearly double in Asian ethnic groups compared with White ethnic groups (34.6% vs 18.7%) Meanwhile, total antibiotic consumption in the United Kingdom saw its first increase since 2014, climbing by 8.4% from 2021 to 2022, to a rate of 17.4 defined daily doses per 1,000 population per day. The increase was observed in all healthcare settings except for dental care, with general practice continuing to be by far the biggest contributor for antibiotic prescribing (80.2%). Notably, general practice penicillin prescribing rose by 18.5%, driven in part by an outbreak of invasive group A streptococcal infections and scarlet fever. Antibiotic use in secondary care increased by 6.3% in 2022 but remained below 2018 levels, a trend driven by reductions in outpatient prescribing. The authors of the report say the increase in antibiotic use in the community is most likely related to increased healthcare demands in 2022 following the removal of many pandemic-related mitigations.
- The Lancet yesterday released its annual report on the health effects of climate change, which said impacts are surging worldwide, with vulnerable groups—seniors and infants—experiencing twice as many heatwave days than between 1986 and 2005. Destructive weather events in 2021 threatened water safety and food production and put 127 million people at risk for moderate to severe food insecurity. The experts also said the changing climate is accelerating the spread of infectious diseases caused by microbes such as Vibrio bacteria that have expanded their reach as waters warm on the world's coastlines, putting 1.4 billion people at risk. In a statement today, the World Health Organization (WHO) said it strongly supports the Lancet Countdown Report call to action, which comes ahead of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in the United Arab Emirates that begins November 30.
- Bangladesh is still in the grips of a record dengue outbreak, with deaths topping 1,500, according togovernment figures and media reports. Just today, the country reported 24 new deaths, putting the total at 1,520. Officials also reported 1,623 more hospitalizations across the country. So far, nearly 290,000 people have been infected by the mosquito-borne virus. Bangladesh's outbreak, which began in June, has been fueled by an earlier-than-usual start to the season, with unusually high temperatures, rainfall, and humidity that have resulted in increased mosquito populations, the WHO said in an Auguststatement.
- In a recent preprint study, scientists from Cyprus and their international collaborators reported a novel highly pathogenic recombinant canine-feline alphacoronavirus that has triggered a rapidly spreading outbreak of feline infectious peritonitis in Cyprus. The recombinant virus is 97% similar to pantropic canine coronavirus CB/05, and examination of isolates from cats suggests a role of direct transmission in the spread of the virus among cats of all ages. The researchers proposed naming the virus FCoV-23. They said Cyprus has a large population of stray cats that are often relocated to other parts of Europe, and they note that the new virus has already been identified in a cat imported to the United Kingdom. The group said similar recombinations have happened before in Europe, thought the cause of the hypervirulent strain is unclear. "One possible explanation is the 'right mutation, right time, right place' theory," they wrote.
CWD confirmed in Yellowstone National Park for first time -Yellowstone National Park and the Wyoming Game and Fish Department (WGFD) announced yesterday that chronic wasting disease (CWD) has been confirmed for the first time in the park, which involves an adult mule deer found dead.In a National Park Service statement, officials said WGFD had in March captured the deer near Cody, roughly 50 miles to the east, and fitted it with a GPS collar as part of a population dynamics study. The collar indicated that the deer died in the middle of October. It was found on the Promontory, a land mass that separates the south and southeast arms of Yellowstone Lake.Samples were positive for CWD on multiple tests that were conducted by the WFGD's Wildlife Health Laboratory. As a result, park officials are stepping up collaboration with the WGFD and other agencies to identify Yellowstone areas at increased risk for CWD, increasing monitoring of the park's deer and other cervids, and increasing the investigation of carcass identification and sampling.The park also said that, based on the detection, it is revising its 2021 CWD surveillance plan, which it expects to complete in 2024. CWD was first detected in mule deer in southeastern Wyoming in 1985 and was first found in elk in the state the following year, according to the WGFD. Over the past two decades the disease has spread westward, affecting most of the state, especially mule deer. CWD is a prion disease similar to bovine spongiform encephalopathy ("mad cow" disease). The prion causes fatal neurologic disease in cervids. So far, no infections in humans have been found, but health officials urge people to avoid eating meat from infected animals and to take precautions when field-dressing or butchering animals.
Tackling chronic wasting disease: A Q&A with the codirectors of the University of Minnesota's prion research center | CIDRAP -- Within 1 week of Peter Larsen, PhD, joining the faculty as an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota's College of Veterinary Medicine in 2018, the dean organized a meeting with faculty on neurodegenerative diseases such as chronic wasting disease (CWD), a fatal prion infection that affects cervids like deer. "A group of legislators had reached out to the University of Minnesota demanding action on CWD diagnostics," Larsen told CIDRAP News. "Old tools were being used, and hunters and cervid farmers were waiting weeks to get results." That meeting helped spark the opening of the Minnesota Center for Prion Research and Outreach (MNPRO), which Larsen codirects with Assistant Professor Tiffany Wolf, DVM, PhD, later that year. Larsen and Wolf recently spoke with CIDRAP News about MNPRO's work on protein-misfolding disorders (PMDs) such as CWD, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS); the future of PMD prevention and treatment; and collaborations with Minnesota tribes on CWD surveillance and management. Although the prevalence of CWD is low overall, it is spreading, and scientists fear it could someday infect humans. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Most Americans are oblivious to 'forever chemicals' and risks, research finds - Texas A&M AgriLife scientists conducting the first generalized U.S. study on public awareness of perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, found most Americans do not know what the substances are or have knowledge of any potential associated risks.PFAS are a category of thousands of manufactured chemicals and an emerging concern to environmental and human health. PFAS are called "forever chemicals" because their bonds between carbon and fluorine molecules, one of the strongest chemical bonds possible, make PFAS removal and breakdown very difficult."This is the first survey of its kind, and what we found is that the vast majority of people do not have a clear understanding of PFAS," said Texas Water Resources Institute, TWRI, Interim Director Allen Berthold, Ph.D., lead author of the studypublished in the journal PLOS ONE.PFAS compounds have been used in industry and products since the 1940s, including fire extinguishing foam, nonstick cookware, food wrappers and many other consumer goods. Levels of PFAS compounds have also been detected in food and water supplies.In March, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, proposed a national standard for PFAS in drinking water. As communities grapple with how to ensure their water supplies do not contain unsafe levels of PFAS, most consumers are completely unaware there is an issue with these chemicals."When I ask an audience at a public presentation if they've ever heard of PFAS, usually only a few people from a room of 100 will say yes, and that's fairly consistent with these survey results," Berthold said. "PFAS in drinking water has received media and regulatory attention this year, but the general public's awareness of the contaminant had not been measured until this research." Some notable findings were:
- 45.1% of respondents had never heard of PFAS and did not know what they are, and 31.6% responded that they had heard of PFAS but did not know what they are.
- 11.5% knew their community had been exposed to PFAS.
- 97.4% did not believe their drinking water had been impacted by PFAS.
"Research has come out in the last year showing that many Americans are exposed to PFAS, including through drinking water supplies, whether they know it or not," McCrary said. "So, a significant knowledge gap here needs to be addressed."
EU Commission to extend use of glyphosate for 10 more years after member countries fail to agree (AP) — The European Commission will continue the use of the controversial chemical herbicide glyphosate in the European Union for 10 more years after the 27 member countries again failed to find a common position for or against a prolongation. Representatives of EU states were unable to reach a decision last month, and a new vote by an appeal committee was again unconclusive on Thursday. Because of the deadlock, the EU’s executive arm said it will endorse its own proposal and renew the approval of glyphosate for 10 years, with new conditions attached. “These restrictions include a prohibition of pre-harvest use as a desiccant and the need for certain measures to protect non-target organisms,” it said in a statement. The chemical, which is widely used in the bloc to the great anger of environment groups, had been approved in the EU market until mid-December. The Greens political group of the EU Parliament immediately urged the Commission to backpedal and ban the use of glyphosate. “We should not gamble with our biodiversity and public health like this,” said Bas Eickhout, the vice chair of the Environment Committee. Over the past decade, glyphosate, used in products like the weedkiller Roundup, has been at the heart of heated scientific debate about whether it causes cancer and its possible disruptive effect on the environment. The chemical was introduced by chemical giant Monsanto in 1974 as an effective way of killing weeds while leaving crops and other plants intact. Bayer bought Monsanto for $63 billion in 2018 and has been trying to deal with thousands of claims and lawsuits related to Roundup. In 2020, Bayer announced it would pay up to $10.9 billion to settle about 125,000 filed and unfiled claims. Just weeks ago, a California jury awarded $332 million to a man who sued Monsanto contending that his cancer was related to decades of using Roundup. The France-based International Agency for Research on Cancer, which is part of the World Health Organization, classified glyphosate as a “probable human carcinogen” in 2015. But the EU’s food safety agency paved the way for a 10-year extension when it said in July it “did not identify critical areas of concern” in the use of glyphosate. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency found in 2020 that the herbicide did not pose a health risk to people, but a federal appeals court in California last year ordered the agency to reexamine that ruling, saying it wasn’t supported by enough evidence. The 10-year extension proposed by the European Commission required a “qualified majority,” defined as 55% of the 27 members representing at least 65% of the total EU population of some 450 million people. That was not achieved, leaving the final say to the EU’s executive arm.
Toxic Pesticides Are Sprayed Next to Thousands of US Schools - Young children go to schools within just 200 feet of farms where pesticides are likely to be sprayed, a new analysis of farms across the country has found. Although most states have laws restricting how and when pesticides can be applied near schools, pesticide companies and their allies in Congress are trying to preempt such laws, the report warned.Farmers apply about a billion pounds of pesticides every year in the United States, including a dozen particularly dangerous compounds banned in the European Union. Growers may be applying any number of toxic pesticides within just 200 feet—about the length of an ice hockey rink—of more than 4,000 elementary schools, researchers with the nonprofit Environmental Working Group reported in the new analysis released Thursday. The analysis shows why it’s so important to protect state and local laws that are designed to protect kids from pesticides, said Scott Faber, head of government affairs for the Environmental Working Group, at a press briefing. “Thousands and thousands of schools are located near farms where pesticides may be sprayed,” Faber said. “To protect our kids when they’re at school, many states, cities and counties have adopted legal standards to restrict pesticide spraying near schools.”Yet some members of Congress are trying to block or preempt those state and local laws, Faber said. “They’re putting the profits of pesticide companies like Bayer’s Monsanto and pesticide applicators ahead of the risks posed to our kids.”Bayer and Monsanto, which was acquired by Bayer in 2018, spent more than $1.5 million on campaign donations in the last five years, according to data from Open Secrets, which tracks money in politics.It’s well known that pesticides can drift from the fields where they’re applied and travel several miles on a breeze. Even low doses of pesticides can harm children, particularly during critical windows of neurodevelopment. Children exposed to pesticides in the womb later face a greater risk of childhood cancer and are more likely to score lower on IQ tests, show abnormal reflexes and have attention problems with and without hyperactivity, among other problems. Roughly 2 million children at the schools flagged in the report could be exposed to harmful pesticides, based on data from the National Center for Education Statistics. Communities of color and low-income communities face the highest risk from exposure to pesticides in both rural and urban settings, a study published last year in BMC Public Health found. In California, which leads the nation in pesticide use, Latino children were twice as likely to go to schools next to fields with the highest pesticide use, a 2014 study found.Beyond the halls of Congress, this is not a partisan issue, said Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) at the briefing. “It’s an issue based on science and fact,” he said. “Parents, school districts, local leaders clearly have shown they do not want their kids exposed to these toxic chemicals.”
Poverty is killing the Amazon rainforest. Treating soil and farmers better can help save what's left -At dawn in this small Amazonian village in Brazil's Para state, flocks of noisy green parrots soar overhead as children run and play between wooden homes, kicking up sandy soil—in places white and bare as a beach.The ground reveals one of the paradoxes of the rainforest.Renowned for its beauty and biodiversity, the life-giving nutrients of the forest are mostly stored in the trees and other plants, not the soil.When the forest is cleared—for a cattle ranch, soybean field or even a small cluster of village homes—the combination of scorching Amazonian sun and intense rainfall combine to leach scarce nutrients from the soil in just a few years, leaving behind surprisingly barren ground. Soil rich in organic matter is black, but here it's sometimes the color of bone. Some ecologists call it a "wet desert."This impoverished dirt makes it difficult to sustain agriculture in one place.And in a region with some of the highest poverty levels in Brazil, people with few options have often just abandoned degraded fields and cleared more forest—hastening the cycle of deforestation that threatens the planet's climate and the millions of species unique to the Amazon."The biodiversity is rich, but so many people are very poor," said Judson Ferreira Valentim, a soil scientist for the government's agricultural research agency, Embrapa. "We can't protect the rainforest without addressing the poverty of the Amazon."The only way to meet both goals is to find more paths for people to make a living in the Amazon without further destroying the rainforest, say experts who have long worked in the region. That means using already deforested land more efficiently—to reduce pressure to clear more forest—as well as supporting businesses that sustainably harvest native products such as açaà and cacao.Valentim, who works in the northern state of Acre, where he's lived for four decades, points from the window of his truck to areas of abandoned farmland: some are patches of bare soil or red clay; some are overgrown with dark shrubby weeds.The scale of abandoned farm and pastureland across the Brazilian Amazon is massive—covering an area larger than Portugal, according to an AP analysis of data derived from satellite imagery by the Brazilian research collaboration Mapbiomas.Other researchers estimate that ranching, which accounts for between 60% and 80% of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, is only a third as productive as it should be, and that increasing the efficiency on the same land area would more than meet increasing demands for meat through 2040. Brazil is a major exporter of beef to global markets, and currently 43% of Brazil's cattle are raised within the Amazon region, according to an AP analysis of government data."You have to enforce laws against deforestation, but that's only part of the solution. You also have to give people alternatives" to improve their livelihoods, said Rachael Garrett, a researcher at Cambridge University who's conducted fieldwork in the Amazon since 2006.There are 28 million people living in just Brazil's portion of the Amazon—including Indigenous farmers, ranchers who migrated from other parts of the country, and settlers forcibly relocated decades ago when the government took their old land for infrastructure projects like the Itaipú Dam. “You can't ignore that millions of people are living there," Garrett said. "The more their needs are ignored, the worse some problems get."
Planting Trillions of Trees Won’t Save the Planet. Here’s a Better Way - Quick fixes for climate change are extremely alluring, given the enormity of the challenge humanity faces. In recent years, perhaps no “fix” has been more tantalizing — and controversial — than planting lots and lots of trees.The hype for planting trees really kicked off in 2019, when a study made headlines by claiming that Earth has space for another 1 trillion trees. These theoretical trees could, in turn, suck up almost a third of the climate-warming carbon we emit. When it came out, the authors suggested that tree planting was the most effective solution to climate change. The claim made it the second most-covered paper in the media that year, and set off a bonanza of tree-planting campaigns. Tree planting seemed like the quick fix the world had been looking for — until it didn’t.As popular as the paper was with the media, it drew intense criticism from other scientists. Some charged that the analysis, which relied on satellite imagery, was unrealistic and assumed new forests could grow in places they can’t, like grasslands or savannas, and that it discounted the role of diverse forests. Many scientists also said the paper enabled greenwashing and gave polluters cover to continue emitting greenhouse gasses — as long as they sponsored tree planting.“It was a very difficult time,” said Thomas Crowther, the ecologist at ETH Zurich who led the 2019 study, told The Messenger. “That message was oversimplified by the media.” Now, he and over 200 scientists are back with an updated analysis out Monday in the journal Nature. This time, they are combining satellite data with on-the-ground measures of biodiversity to estimate that, under a more realistic restoration scenario, forests could capture over 220 gigatons of carbon — an amount that more or less equates to all global energy-related CO2 emissions from 2015 to 2021. Crowther and his team found that preserving existing forests and allowing them to regrow would achieve the bulk of forests’ carbon-storing potential — not simply planting millions of new trees.Crucially, those gains can only be realized if they’re coupled with emissions reductions, said Crowther. “These are areas where we could capture carbon if and only if we also decarbonize and if and only if we do so with healthy, diverse systems.”Compared to Crowther’s 2019 study, the updated estimate is “a much more sensible figure,” Simon Lewis, an ecologist at University College London who wasn’t involved in the study, told The Messenger. “There is a lot of spin and bluster over what trees can do for the environment,” Lewis said. But there’s only a finite amount of land that can be forested, which limits trees’ ability to store carbon, he added. “The reality is that we need to slash fossil fuel emissions, end deforestation, and restore ecosystems to stabilize the climate.”
Wildfires in NC, Virginia close sections of Appalachian Trail, Blue Ridge Parkway -- Wildfires in Virginia and North Carolina have shut down portions of the Blue Ridge Parkway and the Appalachian Trail, according to officials.A Friday release by the Forest Service in the George Washington and Jefferson National Forest and the National Interagency Fire Center’s Southern Area Incident Management Red Team announced a closure of the Blue Ridge Parkway from “from milepost 66.3, near US Highway 501, to milepost 85.9, at VA Route 43 until further notice” in relation to the Matts Creek Fire.The release on the Matts Creek Fire also said a section of the Appalachian Trail from “from James River Foot Bridge to Petites Gap Road” was closed in relation to the wildfire.The U.S. Forest Service in North Carolina noted another portion of the trail, “from Interstate 40 to Max Patch,” was being closed in relation to the Black Bear Fire. The announcement was made in a Facebook post Friday. The Matts Creek Fire and the Black Bear Fire were 2 and 0 percent contained respectively, according to officials. The Matts Creek Fire is significantly larger than the Black Bear Fire, having a coverage of 5,148 acres, versus Black Bear’s 1,193 acres.Shenandoah National Park also said a vehicle fire had spread into the park and caused a closure of the trail.“The Appalachian Trail is closed from Jarman Gap (mile 98.6) to Rockfish Gap (mile 105) due to wildfire,” Shenandoah National Park posted Friday on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
Colorado River in Crisis: A Los Angeles Times documentary - Los Angeles Times The Colorado River can no longer withstand the thirst of the arid West. Water drawn from the river flows to millions of people in cities from Denver to Los Angeles and irrigates vast farmlands. For decades, sections of the river have been entirely used up, leaving dusty expanses of desert where water once flowed to the sea in Mexico. Now, chronic overuse and the effects of climate change are pushing the river system toward potential collapse, with depleted reservoirs near the lowest levels since they were filled. A water reckoning is about to transform the landscape of the Southwest.Colorado River in Crisis follows Los Angeles Times journalists traveling throughout the river’s watershed, from the headwaters in the Rocky Mountains to the river’s dry delta. These stories reveal the stark toll of the river’s decline, responses that have yet to match the scale of the crisis, and voices that are urging a fundamental rethinking of how water is managed and used to adapt to the reality of an overtapped and dwindling river. This documentary was filmed and produced by Albert Brave Tiger Lee, with reporting by Ian James and other L.A. Times journalists. Consulting producers included Maggie Beidelman, Robert Meeks and Erik Himmelsbach-Weinstein. (46 minutes) Read the L.A. Times series:
Report: Climate change impacts on water are profound and unequal - Climate change is intensifying rainfall and floods, deepening droughts, and shifting weather patterns across the globe, threatening terrestrial freshwater supplies and water quality, according to the Fifth National Climate Assessment (NCA5), released Nov. 14. These impacts are unequal, disproportionately affecting the most frontline populations in the United States."Climate change will manifest through profound changes to the movement, amounts, and timing of water," said CU Boulder's Liz Payton, a water resources specialist in the CIRES-based Western Water Assessment, and lead author of the water chapter. "The water chapter offers a big-picture understanding of the magnitude of these changes and the challenges ahead."Payton worked closely with a team of 11 authors from around the country who brought expertise in climate science, hydrology, groundwater, water management, water quality, and Tribal water issues.The NCA is a Congressionally mandated report released every four years by the U.S. Global Change Research Program. It synthesizes scientific knowledge about current and projected trends in global change, both human-induced and natural, for the recent past and the next 25 to 100 years.The water chapter, one of 32 chapters in the NCA5, explores the nexus of climate change and water, such as how increasingly heavy rainfall events threaten people and infrastructure in U.S. cities and rural communities.Overall, climate change impacts on water are dire; but the authors explained that science advances are increasingly helping to shape decisions. For example, the report cites international collaboration among two Canadian provinces, eight U.S. states, and several sovereign Tribes and First Nations to manage the water in the Great Lakes collaboratively and equitably, addressing both flooding and coastal wetland health.By contrast, there has been little to no progress in many areas, the chapter notes, for example, in managing the country's aging water infrastructure. "More than 1,000 community water systems—primarily serving older adults and people who are economically disadvantaged, rural, Indigenous, or with less education—are already providing poor-quality water and are not prepared to cope with climate change-driven flooding, drought, and waterborne diseases," the authors wrote."Water is critical to all communities," said Heather Tanana, co-author and Visiting Professor at the University of California, Irvine. "Although climate impacts to water vary across the United States, the NCA5 provides important information on how water cycle changes disproportionately affect certain communities, including Tribes. The report is a valuable tool to understand and address these inequities." Imtiaz Rangwala, a co-author on the water chapter added that the report details many other examples of how climate change is and will impact both water qualityand water availability in challenging ways."Stories of climate change are largely stories of water, whether we are talking about droughts, desertification, wildfire, or floods," said Rangwala, the lead climate scientist at the North Central Climate Adaptation Science Center (NC CASC).In the NCA5 Overview, the US Global Change Research Program highlighted reasons for hope: "U.S. emissions have decreased, while the economy and population have grown," the report states. And "Efforts to adapt to climate change and reduce net greenhouse gas emissions are underway in every U.S. region and have expanded since 2018."Today, the NCA5 is in the hands of Congress and decision-makers so they can understand the current implications of climate change, including impacts on water, and what the country can expect in the future. Payton and the lead authors of other chapters are in Washington D.C. for the unveiling of the report, and they will spend the next few weeks and months discussing findings with various stakeholders and the general public in online webinars and regional workshops."There are few, if any, benign consequences from climate change, and the impacts will be felt largely through changes in water," said Payton. "But there is momentum in the water resources community to prepare and adapt for the changes we're seeing now and expect to experience in the future."
Severe Tropical Cyclone “Mal” approaches Fiji, evacuation centers open on Viti Levu - Tropical Cyclone “Mal” formed near the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific Ocean on November 10, 2023, as the second named storm of the 2023/24 South Pacific Ocean cyclone season. The system is moving SE toward Fiji and is expected to pass close the eastern coast of Viti Levu Island in the late afternoon (UTC) of November 14. At 12:00 UTC on November 14, the center of Severe Tropical Cyclone “Mal” was located about 140 km (85 miles) west-southwest of Viwa Island and 185 km (115 miles) west of Nadi, Fiji. It had a maximum 10-minute sustained winds of 120 km/h (75 mph), with gusts up to 165 km/h (105 mph). Maximum 1-minute sustained winds were at 120 km/h (75 mph). The minimum central barometric pressure was 970 hPa, and the system was moving south-southeast at 30 km/h (18 mph). Several evacuation centers were already preventively opened across the Viti Levu Island by national authorities. Mal is expected to continue moving south-southeast, slightly strengthening, and to pass close to the eastern coast of Viti Levu Island late afternoon (UTC) of November 14, with maximum sustained winds up to 120 km/h (75 mph). After that, it is forecast to continue southeastward on November 15 – 17, further weakening and dissipating. Over the next 24 hours, heavy rainfall, strong winds and storm surge are forecast over most of Viti Levu Island. The Fiji Meteorological Service has issued an Orange warning for gales over the whole Island. Tropical Cyclone “Lan” remains situated under a belt of moderate upper-level northwesterlies, which is exerting pressure on the northern periphery of the system. Despite this pressure, the system appeared to be consolidating until about 11:10 UTC today with a more symmetric central dense overcast (CDO) and colder cloud top temperatures, JTWC forecasters said at 15:00 UTC on November 14. Since 11:10 UTC today, animated enhanced infrared satellite imagery revealed a quickly fragmenting, more asymmetric appearance with warming cloud top temperatures. This rapid cycling of core convection is expected to continue over the next 12 hours, aided by robust poleward outflow and warm sea surface temperatures. Lan is forecast to track south-southeastward along the southwestern periphery of the subtropical ridge STR over the next 36 hours. The system should maintain intensity at 120 km/h (75 mph) but could possibly intensify slightly higher over the next 12 hours due to enhanced poleward outflow into the subtropical jet. Between 03:00 UTC on November 15 and 00:00 UTC on November 16, vertical wind shear (VWS) will increase to high levels, which will lead to a steady weakening trend. As the system recurves around the STR after midnight UTC, November 16, VWS will increase to 120 km/h (75 mph) as the system begins to interact with the subtropical jet (STJ) and commences subtropical transition (STT). STT will complete over the next 48 to 72 hours as the system interacts with a weak baroclinic zone and tracks under the STJ.
Storm Debi leaves a trail of disruption across Ireland and Northern Ireland - Storm Debi hit Ireland and Northern Ireland on Monday, November 13, 2023, leading to extensive power outages, road network disruptions, and flooding, exacerbating the challenges faced by residents and emergency services in these regions. Storm Debi, the fourth named storm of the 2023/24 European windstorm season, has significantly impacted Ireland and Northern Ireland on November 13, 2023, causing extensive power outages and flooding. “Debi has developed rapidly overnight and will bring impacts across parts of the UK today. Because of the particular risk of impacts to parts of County Armagh and County Down this morning and parts of northwest England through much of the day we have issued two amber wind warnings,” Matthew Lehnert, a Chief Meteorologist with the Met Office said. Approximately 80 000 homes and businesses in Ireland have been left without electricity due to the storm’s impact. The Irish national electricity provider, ESB, reported considerable damage to the network, predominantly in the western, midwest, and midlands regions. Claregalway in Co Galway and Mohill in Co Leitrim were among the most severely affected areas. The progression of Storm Debi led to escalating weather warnings by Met Éireann, including Status Red wind warnings in several counties and a Status Orange wind warning in various areas. Despite the lifting of the most severe warnings, the number of power outages was expected to increase as the storm continued its eastward trajectory. The ESB deployed all available resources to address the outages and warned the public to avoid any fallen wires or damaged electricity networks. In Northern Ireland, the storm’s impact was felt through severe rainfall and flooding, particularly affecting parts of the road network. Police officers reported dealing with a collision on the M1 due to the adverse weather conditions. Motorists were advised to slow down and allow extra time for travel due to hazardous conditions, including surface water. The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) advised people to avoid unnecessary journeys and stay at home if possible, as Storm Debi brought strong winds amid an amber weather warning. Debi will move into the North Sea on Monday evening.
Flash floods kill 100 in Horn of Africa: charity --More than 100 people, including 16 children, have died and over 700,000 been forced out of their homes in the Horn of Africa due to flash flooding, the British charity Save the Children said Thursday. The region, particularly Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia, has been lashed by unrelenting downpours since the beginning of the month due to the El Niño weather phenomenon, inundating homes and farmland. About 46 people had died in Kenya, 32 in Somalia and another 33 in Ethiopia, Save the Children said, warning the rains were "showing no signs of slowing down". The Horn of Africa is one of the regions most vulnerable to climate change and extreme weather events are occurring with increased frequency and intensity. The region is emerging from the worst drought in four decades after multiple failed rainy seasons that left millions of people in need and devastated crops and livestock. "Heavy flooding and displacement have cut off families and children from basic services including access to food, health care, water and hygiene services," said Xavier Joubert, Ethiopia director for Save the Children. "With that comes the real risk of waterborne diseases including cholera and measles." Humanitarian groups have warned that the situation is only likely to worsen and called for urgent global intervention as El Niño is expected to last until at least April 2024. El Niño is typically associated with increased heat worldwide, as well as drought in some parts of the world and heavy rains elsewhere. Between October 1997 and January 1998, devastating floods caused by El Niño led to more than 6,000 deaths in five Horn of Africa countries. At least 1,800 people died in Somalia where the Juba River burst its banks. At the end of 2019, 265 people died and tens of thousands were displaced during two months of relentless rainfall in several countries in East Africa.
‘Once-in-a-century’ flood disaster strikes Somalia: Over 450 000 displaced, 1.2 million affected and 32 fatalities reported - (videos) In a dramatic shift from drought to deluge, Somalia is experiencing unprecedented flooding described as a ‘once-in-a-century’ event by the UN. This natural disaster, exacerbated by El Niño and the Indian Ocean Dipole, has put approximately 1.6 million people at risk, with over 1.24 million already affected. The nation faces a severe humanitarian challenge as it contends with the aftermath of these extreme weather conditions. Somalia is currently experiencing what the United Nations has termed a “once-in-a-century” flooding event, following a historic drought. This natural disaster has uprooted hundreds of thousands of people not only in Somalia but also in neighboring East African countries. As of November 14, 2023, heavy rains and floods have impacted over 1.24 million people and displaced over 456 800 in Somalia. At least 32 fatalities have been reported, with the majority of those affected residing in the South West State. The situation is compounded by the fact that camps for people displaced by an Islamist insurgency and the worst drought in four decades have also been flooded, forcing people to flee a second time. The United Nations and its partners estimate that up to 1.6 million people could be affected by flooding during the current Deyr rainy season. Additionally, around 1.5 million ha (3.7 million acres) of farmland are potentially at risk of destruction. Humanitarian agencies, led by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), have scaled up assistance to help the affected population. However, the ongoing El Niño phenomenon risks further increasing humanitarian needs in already vulnerable communities. Martin Griffiths, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, emphasized the need to get ahead of these looming crises. YouTube video The severe weather conditions are attributed to the combined impact of two climate phenomena: El Niño and the Indian Ocean Dipole. The IGAD Climate Prediction and Applications Centre (ICPAC) has forecasted very heavy to extremely heavy rainfall in southern Somalia, with likely riverine and flash flooding from November 14 to 21. The Bay region in South West State, parts of Somaliland, and Galmudug State are expected to experience particularly heavy rains.
New survey shows opinions differ on causes, effects of extreme weather --Ask a cross section of Texans, and about half are likely to say there is a link between climate change and severe weather events, suggests the newest report in the Texas Trends 2023 survey series."But among Texans who have experienced hardship due to an extreme weather event, there is likely to be more certainty in the belief that a direct link does exist," said Sunny Wong, associate dean for graduate studies at the University of Houston's Hobby School of Public Affairs and an author of the survey.The Climate Change: Beliefs and Actionsreport was released today by the UH Hobby School and the Texas Southern University Barbara Jordan–Mickey Leland School of Public Affairs. In addition to examining perceptions of a link between climate change and weather, it also asked Texans who or what they believe is at the root of the increase in weather-induced crises—including hurricanes, wildfires, drought, severe freezes and heat waves—and what actions they take at home to prepare for emergencies and cope with widening fluctuations in seasonal weather."When we looked closely at the numbers, we found opinions dividing along generational and political lines," said research associate Maria P. Perez Argüelles, also an author of the study. For example, 58.7% of the survey's Generation Z respondents, born in or after 1997 (but at least 18 to participate in the survey) show greater concern about the state of the environment, versus 32.4% of the Silent Generation respondents, born in or before 1945. Among Democrats, 73.4% said they were very concerned about climate issues, versus 30.6% of Republicans.When asked which industries are most responsible for climate shifts, about a fifth (20.9%) of all respondents considered the coal industry highly responsible, contrasting with the even third (33%) who said they did not hold coal responsible at all."In a surprise finding, most respondents said the oil and gas industry has only low-level responsibility for climate change," said Perez Argüelles. Just over two-fifths (41.6%) found it not responsible at all, compared to almost a fifth (19.8%) finding oil and gas very responsible.Considered by age, slightly more than half (51.9%) of Gen Z attributed more responsibility to the oil and gas sector, compared to just a fifth (21.1%) of Silent Generation respondents who agreed.
A not so silver lining: Microplastics found in clouds could affect the weather - From the depths of the seas to snow on mountains and even the air above cities, microplastics are turning up increasingly often. Now, in Environmental Science & Technology Letters, researchers have analyzed microplastics in clouds above mountains. They suggest that these tiny particles could play a role in cloud formation and, in turn, affect weather.Microplastics—plastic fragments smaller than five millimeters—originate from a myriad of items used daily, such as clothing, packaging and car tires.As research in the field evolves, scientists are not only detecting microplastics in the atmosphere but also investigating how they may play a role in cloud formation. For example, a group of researchers recently detected plastic granules, which had water-attracting surfaces, in Japanese mountaintop clouds.So, to learn m ore, Yan Wang and colleagues set out to look for microplastics in mountain clouds, used computer models to figure out how they could have gotten there, and tested how the particles could have impacted—and been impacted by—the clouds.Wang and the team first collected 28 samples of liquid from clouds at the top of Mount Tai in eastern China. Then they analyzed the samples and found:
- Low-altitude and denser clouds contained greater amounts of microplastics.
- Particles were made of common polymers, including polyethylene terephthalate, polypropylene, polyethylene, polystyrene and polyamide.
- The microplastics tended to be smaller than 100 micrometers in length, although some were as long as 1,500 micrometers.
- Older, rougher particles had more lead, mercury and oxygen attached to their surfaces, which the researchers suggest could facilitate cloud development.
To investigate where the plastic particles in the clouds originated, Wang and the team developed computer models that approximated how the particles traveled to Mount Tai. These models suggested that airflow from highly populated inland areas, rather than from over the ocean or other nearby mountains, served as the major source of the fragments. In laboratory experiments, the researchers demonstrated that microplastics exposed to cloud-like conditions—ultraviolet light and filtered cloud-sourced water—had smaller sizes and rougher surfaces than those exposed to pure water or air. Additionally, particles impacted by the cloud-like conditions had more lead, mercury and oxygen-containing groups. These results suggest that clouds modify microplastics in ways that could enable the particles to affect cloud formation and the fate of airborne metals. The researchers conclude that more work is needed to fully understand how microplastics affect clouds and the weather.
High risk of eruption near GrindavÃk: 15-km long magma intrusion identified northwest of town, Iceland - A new update from the Icelandic Meteorological Office (IMO) at 18:30 UTC today has raised significant concerns about an imminent volcanic eruption near GrindavÃk on the Reykjanes Peninsula. The latest data, stemming from a crucial status meeting involving the IMO, the University of Iceland, and the Department of Civil Protection and Emergency Management, points to a substantial risk of volcanic activity in the coming days. Key takeaways:
- Initial seismic activity detection: The earthquake swarm started on October 25, 2023. The onset of an intense seismic swarm north of GrindavÃk was first observed at 15:00 UTC on November 10.
- Major earthquake event: The largest earthquake in this swarm, with a magnitude of 5.0, occurred at 18:00 UTC on October 10, located 1 km (0.6 miles) east of Mt. Þorbjörn.
- Dike intrusion confirmation: GPS and satellite imagery subsequently confirmed a dike intrusion extending from Sundhnjúkagig through GrindavÃk and southwestward.
- Observation of unprecedented ground deformation: Data revealed that the rate of ground deformation in the area is significantly higher than any previously recorded levels on the Reykjanes Peninsula.
- Magma accumulation analysis: It was noted that the volume of magma accumulated has now surpassed that of the previous three eruptions in the area.
- Extent of magma intrusion: Further data analysis indicated that the magma intrusion extends from Stóra-Skógsfell in the north to GrindavÃk in the south, extending beneath the sea.
- Magma intrusion depth determination: The shallowest depth of the magma intrusion north of GrindavÃk was identified as 800 m (2 600 feet).
- Magma movement detection: Instruments showed clear signs of magma moving toward the surface.
- Comprehensive hazard assessment: At a status meeting held at 18:00 UTC today, a 15-km (9.3 miles) long dike intrusion was identified just northwest of GrindavÃk, representing a significant volcanic hazard.
- Emergency response initiation: In response to these findings, the Civil Defense declared a state of emergency on November 10 and ordered the evacuation of GrindavÃk, with a population of 2 856, to mitigate potential risks.
The focus of the meeting was to analyze the most recent measurements of seismicity and ground deformation in the GrindavÃk region, as well as to review current geophysical models and hazard assessments. A key finding from the combined assessments, which included satellite radar imagery, ground-based GPS measurements, and seismic data, is the identification of a 15-km (9.3 miles) long dike intrusion, located just northwest of GrindavÃk. This dike intrusion presents a significant volcanic hazard. Geophysical modeling of the intrusion suggests that the magma is propagating upwards, currently estimated to be at a depth of approximately 800 m (2 600 feet) beneath the surface. The exact location for a potential eruption site remains uncertain. However, the length and orientation of the dike provide strong indicators of possible eruption points. The meeting concluded with a consensus that the likelihood of a volcanic eruption is high, potentially occurring within a matter of days. Given the extent of the dike, there is a possibility that magma could emerge south of the dike, just outside GrindavÃk. This scenario raises the prospect of a submarine eruption, which could lead to explosive volcanic activity due to the interaction of magma with seawater. Preparations are underway to address this increased risk. A hazard area has been delineated based on the location of the dike, and authorities are closely monitoring the situation. This map, issued by the IMO, illustrates the area of concern and is critical for emergency planning and public safety: Residents and visitors in the affected areas are urged to remain vigilant and to follow all safety instructions issued by local authorities.
Satellite data show a graben-like formation that cuts through part of GrindavÃk, Iceland - Seismicity along the 15-km (9.3 miles) long magma intrusion in Iceland continues, although the size and intensity of the activity is decreasing, the Icelandic Met Office reported at 13:00 UTC on November 13, 2023 Since midnight UTC today, around 900 earthquakes have been detected. The seismic activity is concentrated on the region of the intrusion, between Sundhnúkur and GrindavÃk at a depth of about 2 – 5 km (1.2 – 3.1 miles). While decreasing rates of ground deformation are seen in GPS data from GrindavÃk, satellite radar results show a graben-like formation that cuts through part of GrindavÃk. This feature was first identified by IMO in satellite radar imagery early on November 12. The imagery shows up to 1 m (3.3 feet) of vertical ground displacement in the western part of GrindavÃk, caused by the propagation of the magma intrusion. “From geodetical modeling results, we infer that (as of November 12) the greatest area of magma upwelling is sourced close to Sundhnúkur, 3.5 km (2.1 miles) north-northeast of GrindavÃk,” IMO scientists said. According to their latest estimates, the volcanic hazard assessment in and around GrindavÃk is unchanged from November 12. All monitoring systems are being monitored closely in real-time, especially near GrindavÃk, for any indications of sudden change. The natural hazards monitoring team at IMO is operating at maximum surveillance while the Department of Civil Protection and Emergency Management coordinates short-term, temporary access to GrindavÃk today, November 13.
Graben-like formation in Grindavik still forming and mechanically active, Iceland - Over 700 earthquakes have been detected along the orientation of a magma intrusion in Iceland during the first 12 hours of November 14, 2023. The latest measurements show that the graben-like formation is still forming and is mechanically active. Ongoing deformation measurements and satellite imagery indicate a continuing, albeit reduced, magma inflow into the region. The likelihood of an eruption remains high. The Icelandic Met Office (IMO) has reported over 700 earthquakes along the orientation of magma intrusion from midnight to 12:40 UTC on November 14. The largest of these quakes was registered as M3.1 near Hagafell. It follows a significant seismic event the previous night near Kleifarvatn, where an M3.8 earthquake was recorded at 21:09 UTC. The current seismic pattern is largely concentrated along the magma intrusion, with most earthquakes being micro-earthquakes occurring at depths between 3 to 5 km (1.8 – 3.1 miles). This specific pattern of seismicity, especially the shallow focal depths, suggests ongoing movements of magma beneath the surface. Earthquakes on November 14, 2023. Credit: IMO Earthquakes on November 14, 2023. Credit: IMO reykjanes grindavik iceland earthquakes on november 14 2023 z Earthquakes on November 14, 2023. Credit: IMO Complementing the seismic data, deformation measurements have been instrumental in understanding the ongoing geological events. High-resolution aerial observations, satellite radar imagery, and ground-based GPS observations all reveal continued ground movements consistent with the formation of the magma intrusion. These measurements are crucial for predicting potential volcanic activity and assessing the risk it poses to nearby areas. Between November 12 and 13, the magma inflow rate to the intrusion was estimated at 75 m3 (2 560 ft3) per second, and the intrusion is thought to be at an average depth of around 800 m (2 620 feet). These estimations, derived from model-based calculations, carry a degree of uncertainty but are vital in understanding the scale and potential impact of the unfolding geological event. In response to this ongoing volcanic unrest, the focus has been on continuous monitoring of seismicity and ground deformation in the GrindavÃk – Svartsengi region. To enhance monitoring capabilities, additional GPS stations have been installed in and around GrindavÃk as well as ground-based SO2 detectors, overlooking GrindavÃk and south of Sundhnúkur. These stations have provided valuable data, showing that the graben-like formation is still forming and mechanically active. The formation has resulted in significant damage in parts of the town of Grindavik, evacuated on Friday, November 10. (see photos) Based on the current observations and data, the likelihood of an eruption remains high, IMO said. If an eruption occurs, it is most likely to happen along the magma intrusion. The latest hazard assessments do not indicate any other potential eruption sites. The focus remains on ensuring public safety and readiness to respond effectively should an eruption occur. ‘
Close look at severe road damage in Grindavik caused by significant ground deformation, Iceland - The intense seismo-volcanic crisis in Iceland’s Reykjanes peninsula has led to severe infrastructure damage across the evacuated town of Grindavik, leaving roads in and out of town impassable and closed. Since October 25, 2023, the region has been grappling with the effects of intense earthquake swarm and significant ground deformation. A new ascending COSMO-SkyMed (CSK) interferogram covering the period from November 3 to 11 supported the difficult decision made by Civil Protection to evacuate the town of GrindavÃk late Friday evening, November 10. It also enabled modeling of the dimensions of the dike intrusion on November 11, which provided a median dike length of 15 km (9 miles) and a top depth of less than 1 km (0.6 miles) below the surface. The image shows over 1 m (3.3 feet) of ground displacement in the western part of GrindavÃk, caused by the propagation of the magma intrusion. The greatest area of magma upwelling is sourced close to Sundhnúkur, 3.5 km (2.2 miles) north-northeast of GrindavÃk. Estimate of the vertical displacements caused by the dike during its initial propagation from Friday afternoon to Saturday morning (UTC), November 10 – 11, 2023. The displacements were estimated by combining ICEYE and COSMO-SkyMed pixel offset tracking results. The Icelandic Road Administration released videos and photos showing extensive damage to local roads, including large holes and cracks that have rendered many impassable. The town is still evacuated.
Strong explosive eruption, lava fountains at Etna volcano, Aviation Color Code raised to Red, Italy - Mount Etna, Europe’s highest and most active volcano, showed a significant increase in volcanic activity on November 12, 2023, leading the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology, Etna Observatory to raise the Aviation Color Code to Red. The observatory reported an increase in Strombolian activity at Etna’s Southeast Crater (SEC) at 09:00 UTC on November 12, accompanied by a modest lava overflow, confined to the SEC’s saddle. This increase in volcanic activity coincided with a substantial rise in volcanic earthquakes, peaking at 9:00 UTC, with quake sources aligning with the SEC at approximately 2 900 m (9 515 feet) above sea level. Despite the worsening conditions, the observatory’s GNSS and clinometric networks have not recorded any significant variations. However, at 15:58 UTC, the observatory updated that ashfall was reported in the village of Milo, with volcanic tremors intensifying and infrasonic signals widening, primarily localized in SEC. A few scenes of the paroxysm at #Etna's Southeast Crater on the evening of 12 November 2023. Unfortunately, clouds covered the volcano most of the time, and there were only rare glimpses of the lava fountains. First scene filmed from Taormina, the others from Tremestieri Etneo pic.twitter.com/SteQnkm0I5 Earlier on November 9, the Etna Observatory reported moderate explosive activity at the summit craters and subsequently elevated the Aviation Color Code from Yellow to Orange. By November 12 at 14:49 UTC, with the detection of strong explosive activity at the summit craters and a lava fountain at the CSE, estimated at 4 500 m (14 763 feet) above sea level, the Aviation Color Code was raised to Red. While volcanic ash was not visible, an SO2 cloud located 185 km (115 miles) east of Etna was moving eastward at 92 km/h (57 mph) and dissipating, the Toulouse VAAC reported at 22:00 UTC on November 12.
In the Florida Everglades, a Greenhouse Gas Emissions Hotspot - —It used to be the water spilled over Lake Okeechobee’s southern shore, flowing eventually into the sawgrass prairies of the Florida Everglades. For thousands of years the marsh vegetation flourished and died here in an endless cycle, the plant remains falling beneath the slow-coursing water to form a rich layer of organic soil called peat.Over time the fertile soil, along with the subtropical climate and abundance of water, drew the attention of farmers, who as far back as the 1880s began digging canals to drain away the water and expose the peat for planting. Today this region, known as the Everglades Agricultural Area, is among the nation’s most bountiful, raising rice, sod, vegetables like lettuce, celery and corn and most notably sugar cane, making Florida the country’s top producer of the crop.Growing evidence suggests that draining the water and exposing the peat also has made the region a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions, which are warming the global climate and contributing to impacts like hotter temperatures, rising seas and more damaging hurricanes.The Everglades represent Florida’s most important freshwater resource. The watershed spans much of the peninsula, encompassing the Kissimmee River, Lake Okeechobee, sawgrass prairies to the south and Florida Bay. Various efforts over the last century to drain the Everglades, the largest steered by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, have made modern Florida possible and left the river of grass drastically altered. A $21 billion federal and state effort to restore the Everglades is among the most ambitious of its kind in human history.The Everglades Agricultural Area hugs the southern shore of Lake Okeechobee, the state’s largest lake. Emissions here especially are a concern because, although vast swaths throughout the watershed have been drained, this region historically harbored the greatest deposits of peat, said Meenakshi Chabba, ecosystem and resilience scientist at the Everglades Foundation, an advocacy group that commissioned one recent study on the emissions. “This is one little spot nestled in a highly conserved area that is really a global emissions hotspot,” she said. “Right here is the Everglades Agricultural Area, which is bleeding greenhouse gas emissions and leading to global heating.”
Heat projected to kill nearly five times more people by 2050 --Nearly five times more people will likely die due to extreme heat in the coming decades, an international team of experts said Wednesday, warning that without action on climate change the "health of humanity is at grave risk".Lethal heat was just one of the many ways the world's still-increasing use of fossil fuels threatens human health, according to The Lancet Countdown, a major annual assessment carried out by leading researchers and institutions.More common droughts will put millions at risk of starving, mosquitoes spreading farther than ever before will take infectious diseases with them, and health systems will struggle to cope with the burden, the researchers warned.The dire assessment comes during what is expected to be the hottest year in human history—just last week, Europe's climate monitor declared that last month was the warmest October on record.It also comes ahead of the COP28 climate talks in Dubai later this month, which will for the first time host a "health day" on December 3 as experts try to shine a light on global warming's impact on health.Despite growing calls for global action, energy-related carbon emissions hit new highs last year, The Lancet Countdown report said, singling out still-massive government subsidies and private bank investments into planet-heating fossil fuels.Last year people worldwide were exposed to an average of 86 days of life-threatening temperatures, according to The Lancet Countdown study. Around 60 percent of those days were made more than twice as likely due to climate change, it said.The number of people over 65 who died from heat rose by 85 percent from 1991-2000 to 2013-2022, it added."However these impacts that we are seeing today could be just an early symptom of a very dangerous future," Lancet Countdown's executive director Marina Romanello said.Under a scenario in which the world warms by two degrees Celsius by the end of the century—it is currently on track for 2.7C—annual heat-related deaths were projected to increase 370 percent by 2050. That marks a 4.7-fold increase.Around 520 million more people will experience moderate or severe food insecurity by mid-century, according to the projections.And mosquito-borne infectious diseases will continue to spread into new areas. The transmission of dengue would increase by 36 percent under a 2C warming scenario, according to the study.Meanwhile, more than a quarter of cities surveyed by the researchers said they were worried that climate change would overwhelm their capacity to cope."We're facing a crisis on top of a crisis," said Lancet Countdown's Georgiana Gordon-Strachan, whose homeland Jamaica is currently in the middle of a dengue outbreak."People living in poorer countries, who are often least responsible for greenhouse gas emissions, are bearing the brunt of the health impacts," she said.
Climate engineering could slow Antarctic ice loss, study says -Scattering sunlight-reflecting particles in the atmosphere could slow rapid melting in West Antarctica and reduce the risk of catastrophic sea-level rise, according to a study led by Indiana University researchers.The study, one of the first to look at howclimate engineering might impact Antarctica, comes as scientists sound the alarm over the increasing likelihood of accelerated ice loss in West Antarctica this century. The work appears in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres."Even if the world meets the ambitious target of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels—which we are not on track to do—we are going to see significant sea-level rise," said Paul Goddard, an assistant research scientist in the IU College of Arts and Sciences' Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and the lead author of the study."Exploring ways to reflect sunlight into space before it is absorbed into Earth's climate system could help buy us more time to address climate change and avoid or delay climate tipping points, such as collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet."In addition to Goddard, co-authors on the paper include IU Earth and atmospheric sciences assistant professor Ben Kravitz; Douglas MacMartin and Daniele Visioni of Cornell University; Ewa Bednarz with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; and Walker Lee of the National Center for Atmospheric Research.The study explored a form of climate engineering called stratospheric aerosol injection, in which large amounts of tiny sulfur droplets are released into the stratosphere by a fleet of airplanes as a proposed method for keeping global temperatures in check.The approach mimics what happens when a large volcano spews vast amounts of particles into the upper atmosphere and precipitates a cooling effect that can last months to years. It was recently discussed in a White House report outlining a potential research program on stratospheric aerosol injection and marine cloud brightening, another proposed strategy for cooling the planet.
UN: Countries' current climate action plans would raise emissions -A new United Nations report finds that countries’ current plans to reduce their carbon emissions would actually increase global emissions 8.8 percent by 2030 compared to 2010 levels — falling far short of the drastic cuts needed to limit warming.Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, which set a target of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), countries agreed to submit plans detailing how they would do their part to curb emissions. These plans are known as “nationally determined contributions,” and countries are encouraged to strengthen them frequently. But year after year, the U.N. has found a wide gap between the commitments made and the action needed to reach the Paris target — a 45 percent reduction in global emissions by 2030 compared to 2010 levels. Last year, the same report projected that emissions would rise 10.6 percent by 2030, making this year’s finding a minor improvement. “Today’s report shows that governments combined are only taking baby steps to avert the climate crisis,” Simon Stiell, executive secretary for the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, said in a video released on Tuesday. “And it shows why governments must make bold strides forward at COP28 in Dubai to get on track.” At the end of this month, world leaders are expected to review their commitments at the annual U.N. climate talks in Dubai and agree to set more ambitious national goals under the Paris Agreement. A report that the U.N. released in September found that countries are coming up short on almost every goal set in the landmark climate treaty, including by making inadequate progress on adaptation efforts and failing to provide enough financing to developing countries.
Environmental Justice a Key Theme Throughout Biden's National Climate Assessment - —Whether it’s the likelihood of living in a flood zone, lacking access to parks or having fewer resources to recover from a destructive storm, the consequences of climate change are not experienced equally in the United States. That’s a key message from some of the nation’s leading climate scientists, public health experts and economists in a landmark federal report released Tuesday. It’s the first time a National Climate Assessment, the federal climate report mandated by Congress under the Global Change Research Act of 1990, has placed such a heavy emphasis on the concept of environmental justice—that low-income families and communities of color have historically borne the brunt of the nation’s environmental harms while benefiting least from environmental regulation. To coincide with the release of the report, the administration announced $6 billion in federal investments into new and expanded programs to reduce flood risk, advance environmental justice, and bolster the aging U.S. electric grid—money that Congress previously made available in the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure act and other legislation. The report, which comes out at least once every four years, compiles the latest peer-reviewed studies and other relevant research on climate change into a comprehensive and easily-digestible document for U.S. policymakers. Similar to the United Nations’ IPCC report on the global level, the National Climate Assessment is considered the nation’s single-most authoritative document on how global warming is affecting the country. Previous assessments, including the 2014 report released under President Barack Obama and the 2018 report released under President Donald Trump, often approached the inequitable outcomes of the climate crisis as an afterthought, mentioning “social justice,” “climate justice” or “environmental justice” just a little over a dozen times total in documents that were hundreds of pages long. By contrast, the Fifth National Climate Assessment discusses social, economic and health inequities throughout the entire report and even dedicates a chapter to “social systems and justice,” noting that societal factors, including historic racism, have shaped the climate reality experienced by many low-income families and communities of color today. “For example, areas that were historically redlined—a practice in which lenders avoided providing services to communities, often based on their racial or ethnic makeup—continue to be deprived of equitable access to environmental amenities like urban green spaces that reduce exposure to climate impacts,” the report’s authors wrote. “These neighborhoods can be as much as 12 degrees Fahreinheit hotter during a heatwave than nearby wealthier neighborhoods.”
US climate policy is lacking: Government report - Every region of the US is already feeling the effects of climate change but policymakers are still not doing enough to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, according to a new report from US government scientists. The fifth National Climate Assessment, a congressionally mandated report released around every five years, is the product of 14 federal agencies and hundreds of authors. It offers largely similar conclusions as prior iterations, namely that fossil fuel use is the primary driver of global warming, though the authors note that recent scientific advances allow for more certainty around future projections. "This assessment shows us in clear scientific terms that climate change is impacting all regions, all sectors of the United States," US president Joe Biden said today. "Not just some, all." The US now experiences a $1bn weather disaster about every three weeks, compared with once every four months during the 1980s, and is set to warm more on average than the rest of the world as global temperatures continue rising, the report says. Regional impacts vary. Heightened drought risks in the western US endanger hydropower generation for instance, while sea level rise is projected to be greatest along the US Gulf Coast, threatening much of the country's crude oil production and refining capacity. US GHG emissions fell by 12pc from 2005-2019, largely because of declining coal-fired generation, but meeting the country's Paris climate agreement commitments and achieving net-zero emissions by 2050 will require emissions to decline by more than 6pc/yr on average. Recent policies like the federal Inflation Reduction Act's clean energy tax credits and new state-level mitigation efforts have helped, but much more action is needed, according to the report. Existing policies "remain woefully insufficient and incremental," said Kristina Dahl, a report contributor and principal climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists. Some solutions are already cost-effective, such as building more wind and solar capacity and electrifying more vehicles and heating systems. Less proven technologies like carbon capture may help, according to the report, which also expresses cautious optimism about the voluntary carbon offset market's potential role helping companies meet their climate targets. The country's exact path to net-zero is still hazy, however, given uncertainty around the role of natural gas-fired generation in a renewables-dominant grid and the extent to which biofuels and hydrogen will help decarbonize sectors that are difficult to electrify. The report notes that most available modeling of a net-zero US involves "substantial" reliance on carbon removals, although it is unclear what strategies, which range from reforestation to industrial direct air capture, will be available at scale. Though the researchers make clear that the risks of climate change are far greater, the energy transition creates its own risks too. The report notes the high likelihood of rising power demand as more sectors electrify, requiring more investments in energy infrastructure, and the threat of "near-term shortages" of metals and minerals crucial for zero-carbon technologies.
'Superuser' states devour climate grants as others get nothing - A federal climate grant program has been monopolized by five large states that together have collected half of its money, highlighting an uneven disbursement of government funding that often leaves poorer regions with less financial help to prepare for intensifying disasters. Meanwhile, several smaller states such as Mississippi and West Virginia haven’t collected millions of dollars set aside for them, effectively ignoring the government’s offer of free money for climate-related infrastructure projects, an E&E News analysis of federal records shows. The 3-year-old program within the Federal Emergency Management Agency has become a national showcase for expansive projects that are meant to protect communities against the strengthening impacts of disasters such as floods and wildfires. Yet the program — known as Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities, or BRIC — also has become a warning sign as the federal government distributes tens of billions of dollars in new climate-resilience money. The program, and others like it that were launched recently, award money through competitions that often favor large, affluent jurisdictions with the resources to submit detailed grant applications. “There’s more funding than there’s ever been before, but it’s not enough for all the adaptation and resilience work that must occur for us to be ready for the next 60 or 80 years,” said Victoria Salinas, FEMA associate administrator for resilience. “That’s one of the critical gaps in this time of historical investments — our ability to help underserved communities develop resiliency plans and technical capacity not just for FEMA [grants] but for other agencies.” California and four other states — Florida, New York, North Carolina and Washington state — have together received $2 billion, or half of the money allocated through BRIC since 2021. Yet 24 smaller states have altogether been awarded less than 5 percent of BRIC funding. “Some states don’t have the people, time or resources,” Salinas said, referring to the in-depth process of applying for grants. Records recently published by FEMA show that Mississippi and West Virginia did not apply this year for any of the $2 million that was set aside through BRIC for every state. The grants could be spent on resilience projects, planning or the development of expertise on those issues. Mississippi, which also did not apply for funds that were set aside in 2021, said it was using other types of FEMA funding for resilience projects, according to the E&E News analysis of FEMA records. West Virginia, with some of the nation’s highest flood risk, has not submitted a single application for a separate part of BRIC that has distributed $3 billion in grants through a national competition. New Mexico also has not sought any of the $3 billion, records show. Officials from both states did not respond to requests for comment. “We’re seeing year after year that there are many communities that are low-capacity or rural that are just not getting this money,” said Kristin Smith, a climate expert at Headwaters Economics research group in Montana who analyzed BRIC allocations. The inability or unwillingness of some states to seek the FEMA climate grants could signal larger problems that delay regions on the front lines of rising seas, hurricanes and wildfires from building new infrastructure to prevent damage. FEMA designed BRIC to help every state — by setting aside tens of millions of dollars a year to be divided equally among them. The annual allocation payment from BRIC can fund a range of activities and is given to any state that applies. But states collectively have not received $58 million of the money set aside in the three years since BRIC began, E&E News found. The figure accounts for nearly a third of the $184 million that FEMA has set aside.
Critics allege CO2 pipelines 'farm the government' for climate money while helping oil industry - South Dakota Searchlight - Plans to capture carbon dioxide emitted by ethanol plants, ship it via pipelines and store it underground are viewed by some as a way to fight climate change.The process is one way to keep carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, where it acts as a heat-trapping greenhouse gas.But critics say the process known as carbon capture and sequestration could also aid oil production.In a process called enhanced oil recovery, CO2 can be injected into aging oil wells to make it less thick, help it flow better, and cause the oil to expand toward wells.Silvia Secchi, an environmental impacts researcher and professor at the University of Iowa, said oil extraction runs contrary to the goals of carbon sequestration, and to the goals of federal tax credits for sequestration projects. Those credits — up to $85 per metric ton of annual sequestered carbon — are supposed to motivate companies to help mitigate climate change.“These people farm the government,” Secchi said. “They don’t care about climate change.”That’s a belief shared by thelawyer representing over 1,000 landowners in four states who are opposed to carbon pipeline projects using eminent domain – the power to access private property for public use, provided the owner is given just compensation.“Their climate change mask is being removed,” said the Omaha-based lawyer, Brian Jorde. “Do you honestly believe the majority of that CO2 will not be used for enhanced oil recovery? This is all the biggest joke on the taxpayer.” Both of the multi-state carbon pipeline proposals that include South Dakota have had their permit applications rejected by state regulators, due in part to landowner opposition. One company, Navigator C02, has sincewithdrawn its proposal. The other company, Summit Carbon Solutions, plans to adjust its route and reapply. Summit’s pipeline could permanently store up to 18 million tons of carbon dioxide annually; at $85 per ton, that would equal $1.5 billion per year from the sequestration tax credit. The pipeline would capture carbon dioxide emitted from more than 30 ethanol plants in South Dakota, North Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa and Nebraska and transport it for sequestration in North Dakota. In August, North Dakota’s Department of Mineral Resources said more CO2 will be needed to sustain oil production in the state for the long term. However, Summit says its project will not be used for enhanced oil recovery. “The permits we have filed, which specifies exactly what we are requesting from regulators, note clearly that our project is about the permanent sequestration of CO2,” the company’s website reads. “Additionally, Summit Carbon Solutions’ sequestration site outside of Bismarck, North Dakota, is entirely separate and apart from the Bakken or other areas where enhanced oil recovery is possible.” Yet project maps show the sequestration area is near the oilfields of western North Dakota. During a September permit hearing in Iowa, Jimmy Powell, Summit’s chief operations officer, left open the possibility that CO2 transported in the pipeline to North Dakota could be used to extract oil in the future. “If another carrier decided to use, or ask us to transport CO2 for another purpose, like enhanced oil recovery, then that’s a possibility,” Powell said. Powell also said the project is “maintaining 10% of the capacity of the pipeline for other shippers.” He said that’s something the project is doing as a “common carrier.”
US drive to make green jet fuel with ethanol stalled by CO2 pipeline foes (Reuters) - The U.S. drive to develop sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) using ethanol could be slowed because of growing opposition to proposed pipelines that would curb greenhouse gas emissions from ethanol plants by capturing carbon dioxide and carrying it away to other states for storage. Ethanol industry players say the developments raise questions about future growth for U.S. producers of the biofuel, including POET, Valero (VLO.N) and others, who have been banking on proposed carbon capture and storage (CCS) pipeline projects across the heartland. These are needed to lower ethanol’s climate impact enough for the fuel to qualify as a feedstock for SAF under the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). President Joe Biden's administration has committed to producing 3 billion gallons of SAF annually by 2030 and 35 billion gallons by 2050. The goal is to decarbonize the airline industry while also supporting the ethanol sector and the corn farmers that supply it. The proposed pipeline projects would siphon millions of tons of CO2 off Midwest ethanol processing plants and move the gas to other states for underground injection. Some residents along the pipeline routes worry the pipelines could spring deadly leaks or that their land will be seized to build the projects. Last month, Omaha-based Navigator CO2 Ventures canceled its proposed pipeline. Two others underway from Iowa-based Summit Carbon Solutions and Denver-based Wolf Carbon Solutions face permitting setbacks and public resistance. "Without carbon capture and storage, conventional ethanol does not have a pathway into SAF under today's policies," said Homer Bhullar, vice president at biofuel producer Valero Energy, which was an investor in Navigator, said on the company’s Oct. 26 quarterly earnings call. Valero declined an interview request. U.S. corn growers and the politically powerful ethanol industry hope airline fuel production will boost sales as ethanol’s traditional market as a gasoline additive shrivels due to rising electric vehicle use and increased fuel efficiency. Biden sought to kickstart SAF production with a $1.25 per gallon production tax credit in the IRA. To be eligible for the credit, SAF producers must demonstrate their fuel is 50% lower in emissions than conventional jet fuel. Currently, using ethanol to make SAF only cuts its emissions by 15%, according to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) website.
US agency proposes allowing carbon capture projects in national forests (Reuters) - The U.S. Forest Service wants to allow carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects on national forest land, according to a proposed rule published by the agency on Friday. Carbon capture is key to the climate strategy of the administration of President Joe Biden, which has pledged to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. The proposed rule would amend existing Forest Service regulations by allowing "exclusive and perpetual use" of national forest land and pore space beneath it for approved CCS projects. Authorizing such projects on forest land would support the administration's climate goals, said the proposed rule. Some environmental groups opposed the rule, arguing it would amount to the privatization of public land. "Our nation’s forests should not be a dumping ground for polluters," said Jim Walsh, policy director of the environmental group Food & Water Watch. Some CCS projects in the U.S. are facing obstacles securing access to geological storage sites where captured carbon dioxide could be sequestered for hundreds of years. Regulators in North Dakota in August denied a permit application from Iowa-based Summit Carbon Solutions, which hopes to store as much as 18 million metric tons of carbon dioxide there as part of its multi-state CCS pipeline, due to concerns about the project's impact to residents and the environment. The state is reconsidering Summit's application.A CCS pipeline project from Nebraska-based Navigator CO2 Ventures struggled to get support from landowners living above its proposed sequestration site in Illinois before canceling the project in October.
Relying too much on carbon dioxide removal is 'likely inconsistent with international law,' say researchers -- Governments that over-rely on carbon dioxide removal (CDR) to meet their climate targets may be breaching international law, says a new study. The research team, at the University of Oxford and Imperial College London, are calling for faster cuts in greenhouse gas emissions to limit countries' dependence on CDR, and warn that they will otherwise risklegal challenges. The study is published today in Science. To limit the effects of global warming, carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from human activities must decline to "net zero"—where the amount of CO2 we emit into the atmosphere is equal to the amount we remove from it. To keep within the 1.5° C limit of the 2015 Paris Agreement, many states have drawn up plans that include removing CO2 alongside reducing emissions. CDR is any process that captures CO2 from the atmosphere and stores it, whether on land, in the ocean, in geological formations, or in products. While some CDR projects have demonstrated progress, the technologies remain in their early stages. Yet the failure of many governments to cut emissions fast enough will leave them heavily reliant on CDR to meet their climate targets. The authors demonstrate how this presents a number of risks, including:
- CDR not being deployed at expected levels in the future—a risk amplified by the lack of legally binding commitments to scale up CDR to necessary levels
- CO2 removed by CDR leaking back into the atmosphere over time
- An overreliance on CDR in the long term, leading to Paris Agreement targets being temporarily overshot and exposing the world to greater climate change impacts and burdening future generations with retrieving excess emissions from the atmosphere while battling increased climate change impacts
- Social, economic and environmental problems, including competition with agriculture for land.
These risks jeopardize the Paris Agreement target, the authors say, and are not in keeping with countries' commitments to make "fair" and "ambitious" contributions to net zero "in line with the best available science." Because of this, countries that rely heavily on CDR may not be aligned with the norms and principles of international law. "Inadequate near-term action creates a long-term dependence on removals. If the emissions leading up to net zero are too high, future generations are handed down a costly legacy that exposes them to additional risks. Without legal guidance and limits on CDR use in climate targets, over-reliance on removals may be the next aspect of climate action failure to be challenged in court." Lead author Dr. Rupert Stuart-Smith, from the Oxford Sustainable Law Programme at Oxford's Smith School, said, "There is no way to meet the Paris Agreement target of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees without removing some CO2 from the atmosphere. "However, there is a big difference between pathways to net zero that fail to cut emissions adequately in the near term and leave us with little choice but to retrieve vast quantities of emissions from the atmosphere in subsequent decades, and those that entail steep and immediate cuts in emissions—at least 50% this decade—and do not leave such a heavy cleanup burden for future generations. Policymakers must recognize this point, and failing to act accordingly could see climate targets challenged in the courts."
The Lego-like way to get CO2 out of the atmosphere - For decades, scientists have tried to figure out ways to reverse climate change by pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and storing it underground. They’ve tried using trees, giant machines that suck CO2 out of the sky, complicated ocean methods that involve growing and burying huge quantities of kelp. Companies, researchers and the U.S. government have spent billions of dollars on the research and development of these approaches and yet they remain too expensive to make a substantial dent in carbon emissions. 10 steps you can take to lower your carbon footprint Now, a start-up says it has discovered a deceptively simple way to take CO2 from the atmosphere and store it for thousands of years. It involves making bricks out of smushed pieces of plants. And it could be a game changer for the growing industry working to pull carbon from the air. Graphyte, a new company incubated by Bill Gates’s investment group Breakthrough Energy Ventures, announced Monday that it has created a method for turning bits of wood chips and rice hulls into low-cost, dehydrated chunks of plant matter. Those blocks of carbon-laden plant matter — which look a bit like shoe-box sized Lego blocks — can then be buried deep underground for hundreds of years. The approach, the company claims, could store a ton of CO2 for around $100 a ton, a number long considered a milestone for affordably removing carbon dioxide from the air. Carbon removal may not seem like a top priority — why not just stop using fossil fuels in the first place? — but virtually every projection of cutting greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050 involves some amount of it. That’s because certain areas of the economy like aviation, cement-making and steelmaking, are very challenging to do with renewable energy and batteries. It’s hard to make temperatures hot enough with electricity to produce cement or steel, and to fly planes on heavy lithium-ion batteries. “We’ve bet the future of our planet on our ability to remove CO2 from the air,” said Chris Rivest, a partner at Breakthrough Energy Ventures. “Pretty much every IPCC scenario that has a livable planet involves us pulling like 5 to 10 gigatons of CO2 out of the air by mid- to late-century,” he added, referring to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Five to 10 gigatons of CO2 a year is around 12 to 25 percent of what humanity currently emits every year. Graphyte’s approach uses the power of plants and trees to photosynthesize and pull carbon dioxide from the air. While trees and plants are excellent at carbon capture, they don’t store that carbon for very long — when a plant burns or decays, its stored carbon comes spilling back out into the air and soil. Graphyte plans to avoid that decomposition by taking plant waste from timber harvesters and farmers and drying it thoroughly, removing all the microbes that could cause it to decompose and release greenhouse gases. Then, in a process that they call “carbon casting,” it will compress the waste and wrap it into Lego-like bricks, for easier storage about 10 feet underground. The company says that with the right monitoring systems, the blocks can stay there for a thousand years.
'A giant fusion reactor in the sky': Elon Musk told Joe Rogan that you can power the entire US with 100 x 100 miles of solar — and it’s ‘not hard.’ 3 stocks to bet on that sunny outlook - Due to the complex interplay between environmental concerns, economic interests and geopolitical dynamics, energy is a highly contentious topic. But according to Tesla CEO Elon Musk, there’s a great energy source that can fulfill all our needs right above us: the sun. “You could actually power the entire United States with 100 miles by 100 miles of solar,” Musk said during a recent episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast. Host Joe Rogan was intrigued by the idea, asking, “Really? So you could just pick some dead spot, cover that sucker up with solar panels and charge the whole country?” “Absolutely,” Musk responded. “We need batteries, but yes.” Musk explained that “it’s not hard” and “very feasible” to power the entire country with solar because the sun is converting more than four million tons of mass to energy every second and requires no maintenance. “That thing just works. We have a giant fusion reactor in the sky,” he said. Musk’s perspective not only highlights technological possibilities, but also draws attention to the solar industry’s financial potential. In fact, many companies are already helping people harness the power of the sun. The U.S. is expected to add a record 32 GW of new solar capacity this year, a 52% increase from 2022, according to a report from the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) and Wood Mackenzie.
Areas once surrounded by fossil fuels are becoming clean energy hubs - In Carbon County, Wyo. — a county named for its coal deposits — a power company is building hundreds of wind turbines. In Mingo County, W.Va., where many small towns were once coal towns, the Adams Fork Energy plant will sit on a former coal mining site and produce low-carbon ammonia. A little over a year after the passage of President Biden’s landmark climate bill, a new analysis shows the White House has delivered on a key front: A disproportionate amount of wind, solar, battery and manufacturing investment is going to areas that used to host fossil fuel plants. And while that investment might not reshape the 2024 election, it could start to shift how rural communities view clean energy in the years to come.According to the independent research firm Rhodium Group and MIT’s Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, the share of clean energy investment occurring in areas that the White House classifies as “energy communities” is almost double their share of the national population. While communities that once hosted coal, oil or gas infrastructure make up only 18.6 percent of the population, they received 36.8 percent of the clean energy investment in the year after the Inflation Reduction Act’s passage.“We’re talking about in total $100 billion in investment in these categories,” said Trevor Houser, a partner at Rhodium Group. “So $37 billion investment in a year for energy communities — that’s a lot of money.”Funneling clean energy cash toward areas that have relied economically on coal, oil and gas has been a top Biden administration priority. The White House has repeatedly emphasized that clean energy can be a pathway to jobs and the rejuvenation of rural economies — rather than a path to job losses for coal, oil and gas workers.“The same communities that were once thriving coal mining and power plant towns will now be at the center of our clean energy economy,” Biden said in a speech last month in Philadelphia, flanked by a gigantic sign reading “Bidenomics.” “They deserve it.”
This Week in Nairobi, Nations Gather for a Third Round of Talks on an International Plastics Treaty, Focusing on Its Scope and Ambition -Led by the EU, some nations are pushing for binding provisions to restrain and reduce the consumption and production of plastics. The U.S. has staked out a middle ground, calling for provisions to reduce plastic pollution while embracing industry’s call for advanced plastics recycling.Delegates from more than 175 countries are gathered in Nairobi to advance a potential diplomatic solution to a global plastic pollution crisis amid a growing awareness of the effect of plastic on the environment and human health. An often described “miracle product,” plastic in its many forms has become ubiquitous in the global economy, used to make lightweight and durable parts for cars, trucks and airplanes, and life-saving medical supplies and equipment, but also packaging that is opened and tossed aside in minutes.As such, millions of tons of this discarded waste have become a pervasive menace, choking streams, lakes and oceans, killing wildlife and, in tiny particles called nanoplastics, finding its way into the blood and placental fluids of human beings all over the planet. In one new peer-reviewed study published in the journal Science of the Total Environment, Purdue University scientists found that plastic-induced eating difficulties of tiny zooplankton at the base of nature’s food web were limiting the aquatic organism’s ability to control algal proliferation, a serious water quality concern.The United Nations Environment Assembly in March 2022 launched a two-year effort to reach a global agreement to stop plastic pollution, and since then, an Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee has met twice toward that end. A third negotiation session starts Monday in Nairobi, after a pre-session by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) on Saturday.“Plastics and raw materials used in plastics and plastic waste, are widely traded across boundaries, and they have trans-boundary effects, so they really need to be regulated at the international level,” said Aaron Wu, a London-based expert in international environmental law with the British multinational law firm Slaughter and May.Countries have recognized that no existing treaty regulates the entire plastics lifecycle and now agree that is something they need to do, said Wu, a former trade and environmental policy advisor to the Australian government.In September, UNEP released what it calls the “zero draft” of a potential agreement, a first step toward a final document that begins to provide a framework. With the zero draft, Wu said, “we’re starting to see huge areas of convergence” as well as “areas of divergence.”One potential outcome of the Nairobi meeting could be an agreement to write a formal first draft of a plastics treaty to be discussed at the fourth negotiation session scheduled for April in Ottawa, Canada.The goal is to have an international plastics agreement by the end of 2024, a fast process for any global agreement.“I think that remains an ambitious goal,” said Nick Mallos, vice president for conservation at the Ocean Conservancy, an environmental advocacy group that leads an international coastal cleanup annually. “I think it is doable, and I think Nairobi will be critical,” he said, adding that it will provide a “real gut check” on whether high levels of ambition are realistic. “Coming out of Nairobi, we will have much greater clarity there,” he said.
Companies Pushing Weak UN Plastics Treaty Dump Millions Into US Elections --Major multinational corporations attending negotiations for a global plastics treaty in an effort to weaken the agreement spent tens of millions of dollars on lobbying and political contributions during the 2022 election cycle, revealed an analysis published Friday by the Center for Biological Diversity.As Common Dreamsreported this week, 143 fossil fuel and chemical industry lobbyists registered to attend the third session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-3) in Nairobi, Kenya, which is scheduled to run through Sunday. That's more than the combined delegations from 70 nations, and far surpasses the 38 members of a scientists' coalition participating in the negotiations.Representatives of companies including ExxonMobil, Chevron, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and Dow are among the registered attendees. Industry lobby groups representing hundreds of companies are also attending the talks, including the American Chemistry Council, the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, and the International Council of Beverages Associations."These companies came to Nairobi to make sure the world doesn't get strong protections against the plastic havoc they've been wreaking."With over $20 million spent on lobbying and campaign contributions during the 2022 election cycle, the American Chemistry Council topped the Center for Biological Diversity's (CBD) list, which is based on data from the government watchdog group OpenSecrets. Boeing spent more than $17 million, while Chevron shelled out nearly $15 million."These companies came to Nairobi to make sure the world doesn't get strong protections against the plastic havoc they've been wreaking," David Derrick, a CBD attorney attending INC-3, said in a statement. "We knew that industry had way too much influence over the global plastics treaty as well as our political system at home, but these dollar amounts highlight how far petrochemical and consumer goods companies will go to keep polluting."INC-3 is focused on the so-called zero draft of the legally binding plastics treaty. On Thursday, the fourth day of talks, delegates completed a first reading of the zero draft, with participating nations submitting suggestions for what they believe should be included in the treaty's first draft, which will be the basis of negotiations at INC-4, scheduled to take place next October and November in Ottawa, Canada. Susan McCarthy, media and external affairs director at World Wildlife Fund U.S., said that "what is worrying... is the voluminous amount of suggestions that member states have submitted.""This creates the temptation for member states to veer towards compromises that have the potential of watering down the eventual treaty in an effort to include as many suggestions as possible," she continued. "Whittling down a massive list to a number of key priorities can also be onerous, and can result in the convergence we're seeing now fragmenting as member states push for their suggested items.""Fragmentation can occur as different member states may have different priorities, such as political affiliations or a preference to base decisions only on scientific evidence, which could drive the decision-making process in opposing directions," McCarthy added. Derrick asserted that "the only way to curb our catastrophic plastic pollution problem is to cut plastic production, but the industry is spending big to block action at every level to protect their profits."
Residents sheltered in place for hours after chemical plant explosion in rural Texas injured worker - (AP) — A massive fire at a chemical plant in rural Texas on Wednesday sent a plume of black smoke into the sky as officials closed down a local highway and ordered residents to take shelter for several hours. Authorities had asked residents within a one-mile radius of a chemical plant fire in Shepherd as well as those in surrounding communities to shelter in place for about five hours on Wednesday and lifted the order early Wednesday afternoon. Shepherd is a mainly rural area about 60 miles (100 kilometers) northeast of Houston. Officials in San Jacinto County said the explosion took place at Sound Resource Solutions, a company that recycles and repackages various chemicals. Officials said a preliminary investigation found the explosion happened when an employee noticed a container leaking with chemicals and tried to use a forklift to lift the container, after which there was an ignition. The investigation was still ongoing. San Jacinto County Sheriff Greg Capers said that officials began receiving calls shortly after 8 a.m. about an explosion at the company’s facility. Capers said one employee suffered minor burns to his body and was taken to a hospital, where he was in stable condition. He said initial reports indicated the chemicals involved in the fire were flammable liquids, including possibly diesel and turpentine. The fire was contained by Wednesday afternoon, said San Jacinto County Emergency Management coordinator Emmitt Eldridge. Fire crews had worked with two ladder trucks to put out the fire with foam. The solvents produced in the factory are used to make glue and paint remover, the Polk County Office of Emergency Management said in a statement. The agency warned that chemicals from the plant are toxic and can cause eye and skin irritation.
Massive blaze burns at chemical plant north of Houston - Last Wednesday, November 8, a massive fire at a chemical plant in Shepherd, Texas, approximately 60 miles northeast of Houston, forced officials to close down a local highway and order residents to take shelter for several hours. According to the police, the fire, which expelled thick clouds of black smoke into the sky, was started by an explosion at Sound Resource Solutions. A large plume of smoke from the facility could be seen in videos captured by residents.San Jacinto County Sheriff Greg Capers said that officials began receiving calls shortly after 8:00 a.m. about an explosion at the company’s facility. Capers said a preliminary investigation found that the explosion occurred when an employee tried to move a container that was leaking chemicals. The container ignited when the worker attempted to use a forklift to move it. Capers said one employee suffered minor burns to his body and was taken to a hospital, where he remains in stable condition. The sheriff added that initial reports indicated the chemicals involved were flammable liquids, including possibly diesel and turpentine. There has been no further official clarification of the chemicals involved. However, records say the plant was housing a number of chemicals at the time of the fire, such as wood turpentine, phosphoric acid, xylene, diesel fuel, IMP-IC-2012, sulfuric acid, CDS-121, NP 9, isopropyl alcohol, IMB-BAC-2, .AZA-121, dispersants and acetic acid.The solvents produced in the factory are used to make glue and paint remover, the Polk County Office of Emergency Management said in a statement. The agency warned that chemicals from the plant are toxic and can cause eye and skin irritation. In extreme cases, the chemicals can cause skin corrosion, choking and organ toxicity.Shortly after the fire at the plant, authorities asked residents within a one-mile radius of Sound Resource Solutions, as well as those in surrounding communities, to shelter in place for five hours. Residents were also told to shut off their HVAC air conditioning systems. At one point, the Polk County Sheriff’s Office warned in a Facebook post that the smoke might have headed toward the nearby city of Livingston. According to data compiled by the Coalition to Prevent Chemical Disasters, a group of environmental justice organizations, a chemical fire, explosion or toxic release occurs every other day in the United States. At least 27 chemical incidents have occurred in Texas so far this year, the most of any state. Chemical incidents often have a severe impact on the health of people living and working nearby.Moreover, the US Government Accountability Office reports that about a third of facilities which store hazardous chemicals are located in areas that are susceptible to natural hazards, made worse by climate change, such as wildfires and storm surges.
Thousands to feel traffic impact on I-10 after destructive pallet yard fire in downtown Los Angeles -- Los Angeles city leaders gathered Monday morning to address thedestructive storage yard fire that has forced the indefinite closure of the I-10 Freeway, making clear that there are actions underway to ease the expected traffic nightmares that will inevitably come along with it. The freeway remains closed in both directions between Alameda Street and Santa Fe Avenue, with the closure also affecting connectors to I-5 and the U.S. 101 and SR-60 freeways.Officials said roughly 300,000 commuters regularly use the 10 Freeway, making it one of the busiest freeway corridors in the country. In a press conference, Mayor Karen Bass said thousands of people were notified through mobile alerts, the Nextdoor app, and an Instagram Live that Bass hosted about the closures and alternate routes. City leaders also made it clear that traditional navigation apps like Waze and Google Maps will provide updated information on the lingering closure."Losing this stretch of the 10 Freeway will take time and money from people's lives and businesses," Bass said. "It's disrupting in every way. Whether you are talking about traveling to and from work, or your child care plans and the flow of goods and commerce, this will disrupt the lives of Angelenos. So, I will not settle for anything other than a rebuilding plan and a timeline that becomes a new model for speed."Commuters were already warned to expect delays on Sunday, as the major thoroughfare acts as one of the largest arteries to get to and from downtown Los Angeles.
Hanger fire flare up in Tustin prompts school closures - - A hangar fire in Tustin has reignited, causing concern among residents and authorities alike Saturday and leading to school closures ordered for Monday. The North Hangar, which initially erupted on Tuesday morning, had ongoing flames and smoke billowing from the site over the weekend. The situation has prompted heightened safety measures and evacuation efforts. The fire, which initially raised alarms for its intensity, has now taken an additional toll on the community due to the detection of asbestos in the affected hangar. Authorities swiftly issued health warnings to residents, advising precautions against exposure to the hazardous material. In response, school closures have been implemented, affecting all schools within the Tustin Unified School District. As a precautionary measure, all tests scheduled for Monday have been canceled. Firefighters are actively working to contain the fire and assess the extent of the asbestos threat. Firefighters from the Orange County Fire Authority planned to just let the initial fire burn itself out, as they did when the fire first erupted about 1:30 p.m. Tuesday, Capt. Greg Barta said. Due to the size of the 17- story structure and difficulty of safely reaching the flames, Orange County Fire Authority crews opted to pull back and allow the massive wooden hangar at Valencia Avenue and Armstrong Road to burn, essentially consuming the structure. "Please continue to stay out of the area," the city and OCFA told residents on X . "Residents in the area should continue to keep their doors and windows closed as a precaution. We will continue to have our 24 hour fire watch personnel on site until further notice." On Wednesday, the South Coast Air Quality Management District issued a warning about unhealthy air quality in the area after tests of debris and ash from the fire showed the presence of asbestos, prompting the issuance of the emergency proclamation and a call for residents to take precautions. Those precautions included the Thursday closure of schools in the Tustin Unified School District and several community parks. Schools were previously scheduled to be closed Friday in observance of Veterans Day.
Tustin schools closed again Monday due to lingering effects of hangar fire - All Tustin Unified School District schools will again be closed on Monday as emergency workers continue to assess the environmental impact left behind by a devastating fire that ravaged one of the two World War II blimp hangars located on the Tustin Air Base. Schools were first closed on Thursday after air quality experts detected asbestos at the historic hangar, located at Valencia Avenue and Armstrong Road, that caught fire on November 8. "We have secured a certified asbestos consulting firm, Envirocheck, to conduct testing at all TUSD campuses," District officials said in a statement. Our top priority remains getting our students and staff safely back on campus." TUSD officials have provided a detailed breakdown of the campuses most impacted by their proximity to the burn site, which can be found on their district website. Parents and students will be notified as campuses are cleared for in-person education. Early Monday morning, district officials said that some campuses would be fully reopened on Tuesday, including:
- Benson Elementary School,
- Guin Foss Elementary School,
- Loma Vista Elementary School,
- Myford Elementary School,
- Red Hill Elementary Schools,
- Hewes Middle School.
For students at campuses that will remain closed Tuesday, staff is working to put contingency plans into place that include virtual learning for grades 3 through 12. As they continue to work hand-in-hand with local authorities like the South Coast Air Quality management and Orange County Health Care Agency officials, Tustin City Council members on Friday unanimously voted on an agreement with the United States Navy, which owns the base, to immediately begin remediation efforts caused by the blaze. Additionally, the agreement calls for the demolition of the parts of the hangar that are still standing. The fire started at around 1:30 p.m. on Tuesday last week, completely destroying the massive hangar, which stands about 17 stories high, that was first used by United States military troops during World War II. On Saturday, at around 5:30 p.m., the structure experienced a flare-up, four days after the blaze first began. As with the initial fire, Orange County Fire Authority crews simply let the flames burn themselves out. Due to the size of the structure and the difficulty that firefighters would have in reaching the flames, they have allowed the fire to consume the structure. Late Sunday, Tustin city officials announced that the fire had again reignited, this time in the building's west wall. SkyCal flew overhead, showing the active flames and billowing smoke. While the incident persists, Orange County health officials are urging residents to limit their time outside and keep windows and doors shut.
High-pressured gas line cut near local interstate - FOX 8 News (WJW) – A local interstate was shut down for several hours overnight after fire officials say a contractor cut a high-pressured gas line.The incident took place just before midnight on the Columbia Road overpass near I-480.The eastbound lanes of the interstate were closed at Great Northern Blvd.The roadway reopened at about 5 a.m. No injuries were reported.
Several homes in Orlando evacuated due to gas leak - The Orlando Fire Department said its Hazmat Team evacuated several homes on Monday due to a gas leak. Crews were at the scene of E. Jefferson St. and Bumby Ave. working with TECO to stop the gas leak which they said had been difficult to locate. In addition to the evacuations, some roads in the area were also affected. All of this was happening about a block west of the Orlando Executive Airport in an area know as the Milk District. A FOX 35 News crew observed crews digging a hole in the parking lot of the Milkhouse, at 203 N Bumby Ave. This is a developing story. FOX 35 has a crew at the scene gathering more information. Check back for updates.
Booming Florida is burning more trash. Locals say it’s making them sick. Like many booming metros, Tampa is finding that more people equals more garbage. In response, officials there are leaning into an approach popular in Florida: Set it on fire. “All areas that are experiencing growth are going to find issues of capacity” for managing waste, said Jack Mariano, the commissioner of Pasco County, just north of Tampa’s Hillsborough County. “Everybody’s facing: Where are we gonna put the trash?” In September, Pasco authorities approved a $540 million plan to add a fourth boiler to the county’s waste-to-energy facility, or WTE, boosting capacity at the incinerator complex by around 50% while feeding more power — from a turbine spun by steam heated through garbage burning — to the electric grid. Authorities plan to tap Inflation Reduction Act funds to offset about $60 million of the project, targeted for completion in summer 2026, Mariano said. The plant is one of three in the Tampa area that process solid waste, but it currently can handle less than two-thirds as much as a nearby Hillsborough WTE and a third the volume of Pinellas County’s to the west, a facility official said. WTEs have been around for decades, but their technology is getting cleaner and safer, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and ongoing research. Regulators have required substantial upgrades over the years, including to the Pasco plant, built in 1989. Many of the facilities are eligible for tax credits expanded by the Inflation Reduction Act, an Energy Department spokesperson said. The expansion plan includes outfitting the boilers with new technology to reduce nitrogen oxide emissions, a local official said. When the project is finished, Pasco will boast “the first waste-to-energy facility in the country to have a CO2 limit in its permit,” Roessler said. Still, waste-to-energy plants handle highly hazardous materials, and even the cleanest operations emit federally allowable levels of noxious chemicals formed during combustion. Lately, residents’ concerns over the potential health risks have drawn more scrutiny. Ana Vale relocated her family from Atlanta last year to a home in Doral, Florida, about 20 doors down from Miami-Dade County’s incinerator. About two weeks after moving in, her now-14-year-old daughter began complaining about her skin itching and burning. Soon afterward, a dermatologist diagnosed her with eczema.Then, on Feb. 12, the plant caught fire and burned down, raising Vale’s concerns even further. While recent research has linked environmental toxins, including air pollution, to rising rates of eczema, Vale said her daughter’s doctor didn’t draw any conclusions about the role of the incinerator. But she believes it’s a factor. A group of residents sued Covanta in Marchover the Miami-Dade fire, saying it exposed them to health threats or has already made them sick. In June, following a complaint filed last year by the environmental advocacy group Earthjustice, the EPA launched a civil rights probe into whether state environmental regulators harmed the health of Black and Latino communities.The Earthjustice complaint alleged those groups are disproportionately likely to live near Florida’s waste incinerators, and that officials made information about their operations difficult to access for people with disabilities or limited English. In New York, state environmental authorities are investigating accusations that Covanta’s incinerator in Hempstead, on Long Island, for years dumped toxic ash into a landfill near a predominantly Black neighborhood, with some residents claiming health impacts, Newsday has reported. The area’s school district also faces a wrongful death lawsuit filed this month by a family alleging the plant contributed to their son contracting lymphoma after starting middle school there. He died last year.
We'll never run out of sand, right? -- It just doesn't seem reasonable to be concerned that we will somehow run out of sand. After all, the estimated weight of the Earth is 1.3 X 1025 pounds (13 followed by 24 zeros) or 6.5 X 1021 tons. The crust makes up 1 percent of that total weight, so the crust weighs 6.5 X 1019 tons. Of that, 27.7 percent is silicon or 1.8 X 1019 tons. The world consumes about 50 billion tons a year. For comparison's sake, that's 5 X 1010 tons annually—which if you do the math means we will run out of sand from the Earth's crust in 360 million years at current rates of consumption.But, of course, not all sand is created equal. Much of it is unsuitable for industrial purposes such as making concrete or proppants in hydraulically fractured oil and gas deposits (fracking). The shape and uniformity of sand grains are crucial in certain uses such as proppants (which keep fractures open once they've been made). Sand casting (used to make metal objects) requires a mixture of three different kinds of sand, each with a different chemical formula. Sand of particularly high purity is required for glass-making and for solar panels and computer chips.Desert sand is too fine and wrongly shaped for almost all industrial and consumer uses and is never used to make concrete, the principle use of sand. Much of the best sand comes from riverbeds, the mining of which has many nasty environmental side-effects. And, of course, the sand in the Earth's crust is not uniformly distributed; nor is most sand available since it is too deep for economical recovery. The Earth's crust run 5 to 10 kilometers deep under the oceans and 30 to 50 kilometers deep under continents.Sand is used in so many products and processes in our modern life, that our civilization would be unthinkable without it. And therein lies the problem. As the BBC reported in 2019, "The demand for that material is so intense that around the world, riverbeds and beaches are being stripped bare, and farmlands and forests torn up to get at the precious grains." In fact, high demand for sand is now the cause of illegal mining and gang violence in India, something most people associate with diamonds or oil, according to Nautilus. One of the biggest uses of sand is to create additional land in coastal areas. More than 5,000 square miles have been added to the world's coasts since 1985. To give you a sense of how much the tempo of sand consumption is increasing, a piece in Yale Environment 360 points out that "[a]round 60 percent of sand use worldwide is in China, which is estimated to consume more sand in three years than the U.S. consumed in the entire 20th century." The same article details some of the environmental damage in China and elsewhere as entire river watersheds are altered in ways that tend to increase flooding, undermine marine life, collapse riverbanks, and reduce the amount of water in natural lakes linked to river systems. And, it turns out that river sands are being consumed much faster than they can be replenished. Whether, as suggested in the previously cited Nautilus article, the world will run out of sand suitable for all the purposes for which it currently wants sand by 2050 cannot be known. But it is a straw in the wind that a resource that the vast majority of people consider inexhaustible is now considered threatened even by such mainstream sources as the United Nations Environment Program and the World Economic Forum. If even the sand beneath our feet is threatened, what other resources are we exhausting that have escaped our awareness? Fertile topsoil comes to mind. So do fresh water and petroleum.
Puerto Rico raises alarms as FEMA ends power generation mission - Puerto Rico’s government and private institutions are worried the island’s electric grid could once again collapse, after federal officials announced the end of an emergency power generation mission. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) officials last month informed Puerto Rico’s reconstruction authority, known as Cor3, that it would cease operations by March 15 of two emergency power generating stations with a 350 megawatt capacity installed on the island. The announcement puts Puerto Rico in a bind, as officials there are hoping to keep the generators online through the end of the 2024 hurricane season next November. “FEMA is trying to remove those generators by March 15, 2024,” Rep. Ritchie Torres (D- N.Y.) said. “I feel strongly that FEMA has a humanitarian obligation to keep those temporary generators in place until Puerto Rico has enough permanent power generation to replace them.” “Removing temporary generators without permanent replacement would constitute an act of cruelty against the people of Puerto Rico,” he added. Puerto Rican officials are also frustrated that their original request for 700 megawatts was downgraded to 350, and that the project is slated to have about a six month lifespan. In November of 2022, FEMA officials said they would have 600 or 700 megawatts up and running in two or three months, according to a report from the Associated Press, but the first plant generating 150 megawatts came online in July. The second plant, with 200 megawatts, came online in September, according to FEMA. The emergency power plants were installed as part of the response to Hurricane Fiona, and play a key role in the reconstruction of the island’s power generation infrastructure. The FEMA plants are essentially plugging holes in the system while Genera PR — the company that took over generation from state-owned utility PREPA in July — performs repairs on legacy equipment.
Ohio Justices Urged To Adopt Broad Utica Shale View – Law360 --- Gulfport Energy and Ohio oil and gas rights owner Tera LLC sparred before the Buckeye State Supreme Court on Tuesday, with the former telling the justices that a state appellate court rendered the language of the parties' oil and gas lease contracts "superfluous" by containing its drilling rights to the Utica Shale. . .
Ohio Fracking Contract Fight May Hinge on Utica Shale Definition - Bloomberg Law News
- Justices pondered what’s included in Utica Shale formation
- Drilling industry has expressed keen interest in case
A closely-watched case centering on a multimillion-dollar hydraulic fracturing deal in Ohio turns on how eight words in a drilling contract are interpreted, attorneys on both sides of a contract dispute told the state Supreme Court Tuesday.Gulfport Energy Corp. and a subsidiary of Rice Energy Inc. say the phrase “the formation commonly known as the Utica Shale”—which appears in a contract reached with a landowner in rural Belmont County, along the Ohio-West Virginia border—was known to include the Point Pleasant formation below Utica’s base. This gives the companies permission to conduct drilling for hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as “fracking,” ...
MWCD Makes Historic Economic Impact Across the Region -— The Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District (MWCD) announced a plan to address major upgrades and deferred maintenance needs at recreational facilities and marinas in 2014. The plan, which was enabled by revenues from Utica shale leases, has bolstered the region’s economy by nearly $1 billion through the MWCD’s investment of $221.9 million. It has also supported 2,606 jobs, paying out nearly $300 million in wages and benefits since its inception nine years ago.The economic benefits were calculated as part of a comprehensive analysis of the benefits of MWCD’s oil and gas revenue done by Cleveland State University and released publicly today.“MWCD is excited to work with Cleveland State University to show the historic levels of investments made from taking the bold step to allow oil and gas development on our lands,” said Craig Butler, MWCD Executive Director. “Through careful planning, analysis, and through a comprehensive lease and program, MWCD is leading the way and showing how we can have nearly $1 billion of economic impact, all while offering the best camping, fishing and overall recreation opportunities in Ohio. I am proud of decision by the Board of Directors and staff made in 2011 and very proud that we have been able to invest and support the region through these investments.”As the Cleveland State analysis underscores, increases in oil and gas revenues associated with Utica Shale development have generated revenue for MWCD that has enabled it to bring economic benefits to the conservancy district’s 18-county service area, including job creation, increased state and local tax revenue, and growth in related industries such as transportation and infrastructure. This development has also enabled MWCD to greatly expand its services so that it now provides some of the best recreational opportunities anywhere in Ohio. It has, for example, upgraded cabins, campgrounds, docks, playgrounds, picnic shelters, shower houses, trails, and wastewater utilities infrastructure to a level of quality rarely found in public parks and campgrounds anywhere in the country.The Cleveland State analysis includes MWCD’s investments through 2022 but does not include nearly $15M in project funding in 2023, and $30M budgeted for 2024. In addition, MWCD leased more than 7,300 acres in Harrison County in 2022. Spending resulting from this lease agreement is not reflected in this study either, although these revenues will catalyze further economic impact through capital improvements and ongoing operations for many years to come. With the addition of these additional significant investments, the economic benefits of MWCD’s oil and gas revenue are even greater. To review the Economic Impact Study, visit http://www.mwcd.org/EconomicImpact
Conservation District Brings $1 Billion to Ohio Region Thanks to Utica Shale Revenues - Energy In Depth - Natural gas and oil development in the Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District (MWCD) has brought $1 billion of economic impact to the region, according to a new analysis by Cleveland State University. The historic partnership has also supported 2,606 jobs totaling nearly $300 million in wages and benefits over the past nine years, while bringing increases in state and local tax revenue and growth in related industries such as transportation, tourism, and infrastructure. MWCD Executive Director Craig Butler called the decision to allow energy development on state lands – all while protecting and preserving Ohio’s lands – a “bold step:” “Through careful planning, analysis, and through a comprehensive lease and program, MWCD is leading the way and showing how we can have nearly $1 billion of economic impact, all while offering the best camping, fishing and overall recreation opportunities in Ohio. I am proud of decision by the Board of Directors and staff made in 2011 and very proud that we have been able to invest and support the region through these investments.” EID has discussed the many benefits stemming from oil and gas development in the MWCD. Thanks to revenues from Utica Shale leases, MWCD has invested more than $220 million in upgrades to its facilities. This includes efforts to build new campgrounds, renovate aging spaces, add new playgrounds, sports courts, trails, shower houses and wastewater utilities infrastructure the District calls “a level of quality rarely found in public parks and campgrounds anywhere in the country.” Likely in response to these upgraded recreational facilities, in 2021 MWCD saw a record-breaking 5 million-plus visitors, and forecasts that even more tourists will continue to visit its district. Given the success of MWCD’s Master Plan, the district recently signed its largest oil and natural gas lease to date to develop 7,300 acres of land in the Utica Shale basin. The five-year contract will result in around 15 wells, with the possibility to add additional wells in an optional three-year extension. However, MWCD and oil and gas operators take great care to ensure that the wells are no hindrance to parkgoers. In a video highlighting these standards, Brad Janseen, Chief of Natural Resources and Land Management, says:“We work with the operators to do things like sound walls for sound proofing and buffering. We do surveys before a rig even gets on the pad.”Additionally, the new analysis highlights the many conservation efforts MWCD has been able to achieve, thanks to oil and gas revenues: MWCD’s partnership with oil and gas operators while maintaining strict stewardship over Ohio’s lands is a prime case study in responsible development and comes the same week that the Ohio Oil & Gas Land Management (OGLM) Commission meets to finally determine the fate of energy development underneath state lands. This decision has been more than a decade in the making, after continued obstruction from activists, as EID has repeatedly discussed. The bold and historic partnership between the Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District and oil and natural gas operators has been a $1 billion economic machine for the region. The partnership is proof point that conservation, sustainability, and oil and gas are not mutually exclusive – but in fact, can all work together for the benefit of the state and our beautiful Ohio lands.
Muskingum Watershed Generated $1B in Econ Impact from Utica Drilling --Marcellus Drilling News - For more than a decade, MDN has brought you stories about shale development on and under land controlled by the Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District (MWCD), an agency formed in 1933 to help control flooding and promote water conservation in the Muskingum River watershed area of Ohio, an area that covers 8,000 square miles (see our Muskingum Watershed stories here). Over the years, MWCD has leased tens of thousands of acres for Utica Shale drilling and cut deals to sell water to drillers for fracking. According to a new study from Cleveland State University, the MWCD’s aggressive leasing for Utica drilling has brought more than $1 billion in economic stimulus to the region. And not one penny is government (your) money! It’s all private money being injected into the Buckeye State.
Ohio opens Salt Fork State Park and two wildlife areas to fracking for gas – The Oil and Gas Land Management Commission opened parcels of land underneath Salt Fork State Park and two other state-owned wildlife areas to oil and gas development, in the face of roaring chants from a room full of approximately 100 protesters during the hearing. The commissioners granted seven of the 10 requests for tracts spanning thousands of acres at Salt Fork in Guernsey County, plus smaller swaths of Valley Run Wildlife Area in Carroll County and Zepernick Run Wildlife Area in Columbiana County. The commissioners rejected a request to frack under Wolf Run State Park. Their rationale for the latter decision could not be heard over the thunder of chants like “don’t frack our futures.” At one point, a woman dressed as Milburn Pennybags (as seen on the cover of Monopoly board games) threw a handfull of faux gold coins in the air just in front of the commissioners. At one point, activists effectively hijacked the meeting. Roughly a dozen or so stood in front of the commissioners holding a “NO FRACKING OUR OHIO PUBLIC LANDS” sign, obstructing view of commissioners. Chants and a sing-along forced a roughly 15-minute recess. The commission eventually returned to the hearing room and approved various land nominations, ignoring the chants breaking out just a few feet in front of them. After the meeting, Ryan Richardson, who chairs the commission as a representative of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, which owns state park lands, quickly exited the hearing room and declined interview requests. Wednesday’s vote sends the parcels out for a bidding process, from which the OGLMC is to select the “highest and best” offer. The state can post the bid as soon as January, according to ODNR spokesman Andy Chow. From then, bidders have 30 days to make an offer. Only once a bid is selected will the state reveal the companies interested in the land and the terms of their offers. Republicans at the Ohio Statehouse created the land leasing program in 2011. However, the OGLMC under Gov. John Kasich and DeWine failed to roll out rules to administer and implement it. It took a new state law passed late last year, which also dubiously expanded the legal definition of “green energy” to include natural gas, to effectively force-start the state leasing program into existence. Randi Pokladnik, a retired research chemist affiliated with the grassroots Save Our Parks, said Wednesday’s outbursts were a foreseeable reaction to people who don’t want fracking, and must now shoulder the burden of its environmental and health consequences, going unheard. “For the people that live in Southeast Ohio, like we do in Harrison County and Guernsey County around these parks, that’s just going to make things all the worse for them,” she said. “They’re already subjugated to it on it private land. Now it’s public land.” The industry interest is unmistakable: this year, 98 individuals have registered to lobby the OGLMC on behalf of the likes of Marathon, Shell, BP, Encino Energy, Columbia Gas, EQT Corp., Gulfport Energy, TC Energy, Ascent Resources, Calpine Energy Solutions, Vistra Corp. and others. Before the new legal system took form, Encino offered the state as much as nearly $2 billion over 15 years for rights to drill under Salt Fork. The commissioners took the perhaps unexpected step of rejecting a nomination to frack 2,100 acres of Wolf Run State Park in Noble County. This amounted to the only instance of a wholesale rejection to frack a given protected area. The decision comes after Kara Herrnstein, special counsel for Ohio State University, wrote a letterMonday seeking the rejection of the Wolf Run nomination. She said of the 2,100 acres, OSU owns 770 of them, including the Eastern Agricultural Research Station. The OGLMC, she alleged, failed to identify OSU as the owner of its land and notify the public of as much, as it’s required to do. She said the school uses the land for academic research that requires removal of “external variables” and maintaining precisely controlled land conditions. The commissioners previously met in September with the intention of deciding on the 10 different land nominations to drill under state parks and wildlife areas that have been on their desks all summer. Theypunted on the decision at the time, however, citing a need for more stakeholder input. They did so in the face of a similar room of dozens of angry environmentalists urging rejection, citing a need to protect state lands from development. In the weeks before the hearing, Cleveland.com and the Plain Dealer published articles about more than 100 Ohioans saying their names were used without their knowing consent on letters submitted to the OGLMC urging them to support fracking Salt Fork State Park. Commissioners are required by law to consider the public comments they receive.Attorney General Dave Yost, shortly after publication, announced an investigation into the matter but has declined to provide updates on it. House Minority Leader Allison Russo, a Columbus-area Democrat, pressed him for more details in a public letter sent Tuesday.“A thorough investigation is imperative so Ohioans have confidence that any state process meant to include public input is, in fact, functioning to reflect public opinion and not another conduit for public corruption,” she said. “Identity theft in Ohio is a serious crime, and I look forward to the Attorney General improving public confidence in our state agencies and ensuring criminal activity does not permeate our state approval processes.” In both 2011 and 2022, the laws creating and implementing the system for fracking state parks were passed almost exclusively with Republican support. Gov. Mike DeWine, who signed the more recent legislation into law, declined to comment. Speaking to reporters Wednesday, Senate President Matt Huffman, a Lima Republican, said before the Senate spearheaded the 2022 law change, Ohio effectively couldn’t frack under parks, despite state law, because the state’s governors weren’t on board. He praised the day’s votes, but said fracking should go forward in an “environmentally sensitive way” for plants and other wildlife. “The state can derive a lot of revenue from those,” he said. “Revenue, on this side, means perhaps lower taxes, or just as likely, other benefits to the public, whether it’s fixing up state lodges, whether it’s more money for public schools.”A lawsuit filed by the Ohio Environmental Council, Sierra Club, and others seeking to overturn Ohio’s land leasing law also remains in process. The suit alleges lawmakers failed to heed constitutional rules that limit bills to one subject and require readings of bills over multiple days. A judge declined to freeze the law as the case proceeds, and it awaits trial.Meg Edwards, 24, who joined the protesters in obstructing the ongoing meeting, said after the meeting that the issue isn’t settled yet.“The fight isn’t over until drills are in the ground,” she said.
Ohio commission approves fracking in state parks and wildlife areas despite fraud investigation (AP) — Some state parks can be fracked in Ohio, a decision made by a government commission Wednesday despite an ongoing investigation into oil and gas companies claiming possible fraudulent support. During a raucous meeting attended by many fracking opponents, the Ohio Oil and Gas Land Management Commission OK'd several parcels for fracking by outside entities — all of them owned by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources and the Ohio Department of Transportation — that include state parks and designated wildlife areas. Under state law, the identities of those who nominated the land for oil and gas drilling are confidential. The vote took place during a tense public meeting at which anti-fracking protesters held up signs that read “DENY” and “Save Our Parks.” Advocates accused the state board members of lacking transparency, upholding the interests of corporate greed and poisoning future generations. Some threw money in front of the commissioners and shouted them out of the state meeting, while others sang protest songs in and chanted “Don't frack our futures," and “Shame.” A member of Save Ohio Parks, Cathy Cowan Becker, said opponents were disappointed by the vote but vowed to continue to show up to meetings. “At a time when the science is telling us we have to stop all the oil and gas, instead we're doing this in our parks,” Cowan Becker said. “We're rightfully really angry about this.” The decision is the first of its kind in Ohio, although laws allowing fracking have been on the books since 2011. Legislation under then-Gov. John Kasich, a former Republican presidential candidate, called for a state board to allow state-owned land to be “leased for the exploration for and development and production of oil or natural gas." But the formation of the commission was not formalized during the Kasich administration. In fact, its first meeting did not occur until December of 2022, after current GOP Gov. Mike DeWine signed a bill similar to the 2011 legislation. Commission chair Ryan Richardson emphasized in a previous commission meeting that according to the language in the nominated leases, no surface areas of the parks would be disturbed by oil and gas drilling as it would occur underground. However, most of the meeting Wednesday was nearly impossible to hear over the boos and chants of environmental advocates in the room. A spokesperson for Richardson said she would respond to reporters' questions later Wednesday. Oil and gas fracking is often a polarizing topic, but ongoing accusations of fraudulent support have added even more tension to the vote. A Cleveland.com investigation in September found that over a hundred Ohio residents said their names were attached to form letters sent to the commission in a public comment period without their knowledge — all of them urging state parks allow fracking.Those names included a 9-year-old girl and a blind woman. The form letter, which appears over 1,000 times in the public comment database, urges Ohio to “responsibly” lease rights to minerals under Salt Fork State Park, among other areas.
Ohio Finally Opens Energy Development Under State Lands - After more than a decade in the making, the Ohio Oil and Gas Land Management Commission (OGLM) voted today to allow for the safe development of oil and natural gas resources under the surface of state-owned lands and parks. This is a win for landowners and their right to develop private minerals close to and adjacent to Ohio state lands, as well as a massive economic win for Eastern Ohio, the entire state, and Ohio taxpayers. The opened parcels include land underneath Salt Fork State Park in Guernsey County, Valley Run Wildlife Area in Carroll County, and Zepernick Wildlife Area in Columbiana County. Bids will be accepted starting in January, and companies are already showing they are ready to invest in the state, helping to create local jobs and develop crucial energy resources. For example, EID has discussed before that a proposed lease to access natural gas and oil beneath Salt Fork State Park would have generated $1.8 billion in estimated royalties and lease bonus payments. This highlights the economic value deals like this will have for Ohio landowners, taxpayers, and parkgoers alike. Today’s OGLM vote proceeded despite the many interruptions and outbursts from protestors who repeatedly disrupted the meeting.Cleveland.com described these outbursts: “At one point, activists effectively hijacked the meeting. Roughly a dozen or so stood in front of the commissioners holding a “NO FRACKING OUR OHIO PUBLIC LANDS” sign, obstructing view of commissioners. Chants and a sing-along forced a roughly 15-minute recess.” This is no surprise: EID has repeatedly discussed the continued obstruction from activists and debunked their claims that oil and gas development harms Ohio lands. To the contrary, oil and gas development can actually boost Ohio’s conservation efforts as evidenced by the “bold” partnership between the Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District (MWCD) and oil and gas producers. A new analysis just this week shows that energy development in the MWCD has brought $1 billion of economic impact to the region and made it a record-setting site for tourism due to facility upgrades made possible by Utica Shale revenues. The energy development has also supported 2,606 jobs totaling nearly $300 million in wages and benefits, while bringing increases in state and local tax revenue and growth in related industries such as transportation and infrastructure – all while promoting and protecting Ohio’s lands. Bottom Line: Today’s vote is a win for landowners, a win for taxpayers, and importantly – with over a decade of evidence showing the safe and responsible development of Ohio’s natural resources and oil and gas partnerships actually increasing sustainability efforts – it’s a win for Ohio’s lands too.
OGLMC Votes to Allow Fracking Under Ohio's Salt Fork State Park | Marcellus Drilling News - Yesterday, the Ohio Oil & Gas Land Management Commission (OGLMC) met in a public forum and voted to allow shale drilling under (not on top of) three different state-owned tracts of land: all 20,000 acres of Salt Fork State Park in Guernsey County, more than 300 acres of Valley Run Wildlife Area in Carroll County, and 66 acres of the Zepernick Wildlife Area in Columbiana County. In addition, commissioners voted against shale drilling under Wolf Run State Park. Approximately 100 anti-fossil fuel zealots were on hand at the meeting and nearly made the votes impossible with their prancing, chanting, and singing. They made horses rear ends of themselves by making the meeting miserable for everyone else.
Ohio Extends Time to Build 2nd Utica-Fired Elec Plant Near Toledo --In December 2017, MDN told you about a second proposed natural gas-fired power plant planned by CME Energy for Oregon (Lucas County), Ohio (see Ohio Approves 2nd Oregon Utica-Fired Elec Plant (Near Toledo)). The first plant was called the Oregon Clean Energy Center. The second plant project was named Clean Energy Future – Oregon. The second plant is bigger than the first, targeted to generate 955 megawatts of power. At that time (in 2017), CME was in the permitting process for the second plant, with plans to have it built and online in 2020. Fast forward to today. The plant was never built but is still being planned.
Enbridge, EDF Energy Form Solar Project JV in Ohio -Enbridge said Wednesday that it has signed an agreement to form a joint venture with EDF Renewables to build and operate a solar project in Ohio.The Canadian energy infrastructure company said the definitive agreement is for a 50% interest in a JV with EDF Renewables for the Fox Squirrel solar project in Madison County.The project is expected to be constructed in three phases. Initially, it is seen generating about 150 megawatts of solar energy, and would ultimately deliver up to 577 megawatts of renewable energy to the grid by the end of next year.Enbridge plans to invest $149 million in the first phase and plans to reach a final investment decision in the following phases throughout next year.The company said the project has 20-year fixed-price power purchase agreements with a strong investment grade counterparty for the full generation capacity.
Invenergy’s natural gas powerplant outside Pittsburgh nixed - Another proposed natural gas power plant has been called off in Western Pennsylvania, this one after eight years of development, permitting and opposition. Chicago-based Invenergy, which was developing the Allegheny Energy Center project in Elizabeth Township, surrendered its installation permit last week and withdrew its application to connect to the regional grid. Invenergy cited “current market conditions” in a one-sentence statement about its decision and declined to elaborate further.But environmental groups that have fought the project from its zoning variance requests at the local level to its air permit applications with the Allegheny County Health Department celebrated their role in scuttling the plant, just as they did with the $1 billion proposed Renovo Energy Center in Clinton County that was canceled in April after eight years of permitting and development. The same groups, including PennFuture and the Clear Air Council, said strong community advocacy also ended the prospects of a natural gas plant that was proposed in Robinson Township. That initiative let its environmental permit expire in 2021 and never reapplied.“Allegheny Energy Center’s demise marks the end of giant new fossil-fueled power plants in Pennsylvania,” said Joseph Minott, executive director and chief counsel for the Clean Air Council. “Instead of locking us into decades of fossil fuel use and fueling the climate crisis, Pennsylvania can invest in wind and solar, which are safer, cheaper, and guarantee our energy independence far into the future.”Invenergy’s 639-megawatt power plant, if built, would have made enough electricity to power roughly half a million homes. It also would have been a significant emitter of nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds, ammonia and air pollutants.The project had been through several iterations since Invenergy first proposed it as a 550 megawatt gas plant in 2016 on the site of an industrial dump along the Youghiogheny River.It was met with opposition from residents and environmental groups, who argued it would be a major source of pollution and a visual blight on the area. Invenergy moved the project to another area of Elizabeth Township to tackle some of these challenges. In 2021, environmental groups challenged the project’s air permit and the case had advanced to trial. Then, after some witnesses had already testified, Invenergy asked to pause the proceedings, according to the groups’ account on Monday.Angela Kilbert, a senior attorney with PennFuture, declared Invenergy’s retreat a “victory for Allegheny County.”“We will continue to fight to protect the health of our communities from the harmful air pollution impacts imposed by fossil fuel facilities like this one,” she said in a statement.It’s not clear exactly what pushed Invenergy to abandon the effort now.The development of the Marcellus and Utica shales in Appalachia shuffled the dynamics of the regional power grid, which is operated by PJM Interconnection and includes Pennsylvania and 12 other states. With a new source of cheap and plentiful fuel, developers proposed to build gas power plants to soak up the new supply. Many of them never materialized.
22 New Shale Well Permits Issued for PA-OH-WV Nov 6 – 12 - New shale permits issued for Nov 6 – 12 in the Marcellus/Utica slipped but still turned in a respectable number. There were 22 new permits issued last week, versus 37 issued the week before. Last week’s permit tally included 6 new permits in Pennsylvania, 16 new permits in Ohio, and no new permits in West Virginia. Hilcorp Energy was the winner of most permits issued, with 12 new permits issued for a single well pad in Columbiana County, OH. BRADFORD COUNTY | CHESAPEAKE ENERGY | COLUMBIANA COUNTY | COTERRA ENERGY (CABOT O&G) | ENERGY COMPANIES | GULFPORT ENERGY | HARRISON COUNTY| HILCORP ENERGY | MONROE COUNTY | SOUTHWESTERN ENERGY | SUSQUEHANNA COUNTY |
New Study Finds Overwhelming Evidence of Harms From Fracking - The negative impacts of hydraulic fracturing on public health, the environment, and the climate are “intractable and not fixable,” according to a newly published report. Hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” along with advances in horizontal drilling, ushered in an enormous oil and gas production boom beginning about 15 years ago, leading to the U.S. becoming the largest oil and gas producer in the world. But the scientific literature on its impacts has grown larger with each passing year, shedding light on the vast human and environmental toll left in the industry’s wake. The fracking boom really began to take off in Pennsylvania in the late 2000s and early 2010s. Sandra Steingraber, a scientist and co-founder of Concerned Health Professionals of New York, a group of health professionals and scientists concerned about fracking, began scouring the scientific literature on the drilling practice. Fracking involves the use and release of toxic chemicals and contaminants into the air and water, through multiple stages of the drilling process. That pollution finds its way to people who live nearby. In addition, vast quantities of carbon and methane pollution are released into the atmosphere. In those early days, the science was playing catchup to a fracking boom that was already advancing at full speed. “At the time, there were really 65 studies in the peer-reviewed literature. I remember there was a time where I had them all sort of memorized,” Steingraber told Gas Outlook. Concerned Health Professionals of New York compiled all the literature into a “fracking compendium,” as they called it. Steingraber travelled around to speak to rural New York communities who were slated to be targeted by gas companies if the state moratorium was lifted. But in late 2014, New York announced that it was permanently banning fracking, with state officials citing “significant public health risks.” “It was like hearing our own study read back to us,” Steingraber told Gas Outlook. “They did in fact look at a lot of the same research we did, and came to the same conclusions.” But even then, the scientific evidence on the dangers of fracking was only beginning to be understood. The evidence began as a trickle, but quickly turned into an avalanche as scientists began to study the industry. “The second edition of the compendium had 150 studies and then it went to 400 studies for the third edition in 2014,” Steingraber said. “2014 was a year of just so many publications that I could hardly keep track anymore.” The latest version, the 9th edition, released in October, has nearly 2,500 studies showing evidence of harm from fracking. In the past decade, the science has been used by researchers, scientists and activists from all over the world. Steingraber has been in touch and worked with people in Ireland, Argentina, Mexico, South Africa, and Scotland, among other places. Taken together, the report finds that the health, environmental, and climate impacts of fracking are so profound, that there is “no evidence that fracking can be practiced in a manner that does not threaten human health directly or without imperiling climate stability upon which human health depends.” At a press conference on November 8, discussing the findings, Steingraber said that the problems with fracking are “intractable and are not fixable through any regulatory framework.” “Fracking resembles lead paint or indoor smoking — no rules or regulations can make these practices safe.”
Risks of Fracking Are “Real and Growing,” Report Warns -The human and environmental health risks associated with hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as fracking, are “real and growing,” according to a new report synthesizing nearly a decade of research.The Fracking Science Compendium, ninth edition was released in October by Concerned Health Professionals of New York and Physicians for Social Responsibility, and adds to evidence of numerous problems posed by natural gas extraction through fracking and fracking-associated infrastructure, from pipelines and compressor stations to appliances such as gas furnaces and stoves. The report compiles data and conclusions from thousands of studies, including peer-reviewed papers, investigative media reports and government documents.“Our examination uncovered no evidence that fracking can be practiced in a manner that does not threaten human health directly or without imperiling climate stability upon which human health depends,” the report states.For years, scientists have warned that living in close proximity to a fracking operation elevates one’s risk of developing various diseases or health impairments, and the science substantiating these exposure-based outcomes has only gotten more robust over the years.“This rapidly growing body of hundreds of studies supports the conclusion that fracking causes a variety of adverse health effects in fetuses, infants, children, and adults,” Dr. Ted Schettler, a retired physician and public health expert and science director of the Science and Environmental Health Network, said in a webinar held this week to discuss the report results.Schettler said several studies have found that children living near fracking sites are more likely to be diagnosed with cancer. One recent study for example found that children whose birth residence was within 2 kilometers of a fracking well were 2 to 3 times more likely to be diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia between the ages of 2 and 7 than children living further away.Exposure to fracking and associated infrastructure has also been linked to preterm birth, reduced birth weight and birth defects, increases in asthma attacks and respiratory diseases, cancers, heart attacks and heart failure, and premature death, among other adverse outcomes. Fracking inherently uses and generates toxic chemicals, many of which are not required to be disclosed, and these toxins contaminate air, water, and soil. Benzene and formaldehyde, fine particles, nitrogen oxides, and chlorine are among some the chemicals that have been detected at drill sites.Additionally, hazardous air pollution is infiltrating residential homes that are equipped with gas heating and appliances. Research shows that using gas stoves, especially in the absence of adequate ventilation, increases exposure to harmful chemicals such as nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, and benzene. About 1 in 8 cases of pediatric asthma in the US is attributable to exposure to indoor air pollution from gas stoves.Kathy Nolan, a pediatrician and president of the New York chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility, said people should replace gas stoves in their homes as a preventative health measure, similar to quitting smoking or prohibiting smoking indoors.“We have to wean ourselves off of natural gas,” she said.Transitioning away from gas is also necessary from a climate standpoint. Contrary to the narrative that gas is a cleaner substitute for coal or is a “bridge fuel” to renewable energy, more evidence is emerging indicating that this fossil fuel has a larger greenhouse gas footprint than was previously understood. The main reason for this is that natural gas is almost entirely composed of methane, which is itself a powerful greenhouse gas that is roughly 86 times more potent than carbon dioxide over a 20-year timeframe. In fact, scientists estimate about 40% of current warming stems from atmospheric methane buildup. “Shale gas has a greenhouse gas footprint that is certainly as big as that of coal,” said Robert Howarth, a professor of ecology and environmental biology at Cornell University. In a paper just submitted for peer review, Howarth analyzed the emissions associated with LNG export operations, which involves supercooling gas to liquefy it and then transporting it on giant tankers. His analysis shows that LNG carried by older-style tankers amounts to a greenhouse gas footprint that is roughly 2.5 to 3 times worse than simply burning coal, and even with the newest tankers it is still almost 25% worse than coal. “The science is quite clear. Liquified natural gas is a terrible idea from a climate standpoint,” Howarth said. This new analysis comes at a critical time when the US is rapidly expanding its LNG export capacity, driven at least in part by energy security concerns and energy policy decisions stemming from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The US currently has eight existing LNG export terminals with five more under construction and 17 others planned, 11 of which have received federal approval. Already the world’s number one exporter of natural gas and of liquified natural gas, the US is set to double its LNG export capacity over the next five years. “When it comes to fracked gas, the United States is the fentanyl dealer to the planet,” biologist and senior scientist at the Science and Environmental Health Network Sandra Steingraber said during the briefing webinar. Steingraber, who has been an instrumental contributor to the Compendium since its inception and referred to it as her life’s “most meaningful work,” emphasized that the detrimental impacts of this industry cannot be mitigated through existing regulations or controls. “The problems with fracking, both for our health and for our climate, are intractable and are not fixable through any regulatory framework,” she said. “In this, fracking resembles lead paint or indoor smoking. No rules or regulations can make these practices safe.” The only meaningful solution, the Compendium contends, is a comprehensive ban on fracking.
WhiteHawk Expands Marcellus Shale Assets to Boost Natural Gas Production WhiteHawk Energy, LLC announced a significant acquisition of additional Marcellus Shale natural gas mineral and royalty assets, marking a major boost to its portfolio. The total purchase price for the assets amounted to $54.0 million, allowing WhiteHawk to increase its mineral and royalty ownership in its existing 475,000 gross acre position by 100%. This acquisition doubles WhiteHawk’s Marcellus Shale assets and strengthens its position in Washington and Greene counties, Pennsylvania, which are known for their high-quality natural gas reserves. The newly acquired assets possess the ideal mineral and royalty attributes, including diversified acreage positions in well-established basins. These assets are operated by some of the best-in-class companies, generating significant cash flow with minimal additional capital expenditures. WhiteHawk’s Chief Executive Officer, Daniel C. Herz, expressed satisfaction with the initial Marcellus Assets acquired in 2022, highlighting their excellent performance and the opportunity to expand ownership under the world’s top natural gas operators. With this acquisition, WhiteHawk’s Marcellus Assets now cover approximately 475,000 gross unit acres, hosting more than 1,315 horizontal shale wells. Furthermore, the company owns mineral and royalty interests in 72 wells-in-progress, 64 permitted wells, and nearly 900 undeveloped Marcellus locations, with additional potential from the underlying Utica Shale. Notably, approximately 95% of production, cash flow, and present value associated with the Marcellus Assets are operated by EQT Corporation, Range Resources Corporation, and CNX Resources Corporation. This strategic move follows WhiteHawk’s earlier acquisition of natural gas mineral and royalty assets in the Haynesville Shale, resulting in ownership in approximately 850,000 gross unit acres across the two core operating areas. The company continues to expand its interests, specifically in the Marcellus and Haynesville Shales, to tap into the immense potential of these top-tier natural gas resource plays.
NY Fracking Ban Under Attack: Texas Corporation Proposes Carbon Capture Drilling Scam - According to media reports, a newly formed Texas corporation intends to drill thousands of new gas wells in the Southern Tier, by injecting carbon dioxide into fracking wells to escape regulation under New York’s nation-leading ban on fracking.Food & Water Watch research has found that direct air carbon capture is resource and energy intensive, prohibitively expensive, and a risk to human health. Using that carbon dioxide to extract methane, a potent greenhouse gas would further exacerbate these concerns. Food & Water Watch Northeast Region Director Alex Beauchamp issued the following statement:“After almost ten years of relief from the destructive fracking industry, fossil fuel profiteers have once again come knocking in New York. Southern Tier Corporations’ proposal to drill thousands of new gas wells is explicitly against the intention of New York’s nation-leading fracking ban. What’s more, the corporation’s proposal to use proven-to-fail carbon capture technology to skirt state regulation is absurd and dangerous for our climate and communities.“Direct air capture is expensive, unproven and will ultimately make almost no difference in reducing climate-warming pollution. Whether extracted with precious water supplies or energy-intensive sci-fi technology, methane gas has no place in New York’s future. Governor Hochul must come out early against Southern Tier Corporation’s carbon capture fracking scam.”
EIA Nov DPR: Another Big Drop in Shale Gas in M-U, Haynesville | Marcellus Drilling News - The latest monthly U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) Drilling Productivity Report (DPR) for November, issued yesterday (below), shows EIA believes shale gas production across the seven major plays tracked in the monthly DPR for December will *decrease* production from the prior month of November — by a significant quantity. This is the fifth month in a row that EIA has predicted shale gas production will decrease for the combined seven plays. EIA says combined natgas production will slide by 299 MMcf/d (million cubic feet per day) — nearly one-third of a billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d). The Marcellus/Utica, called “Appalachia” in the report, is predicted to decrease by a massive 189 MMcf/d in December compared with November, the biggest decrease in gas production for any of the seven plays.
Mountain Valley Pipeline partner charged in Pennsylvania natural gas explosion -The company that is leading construction of the Mountain Valley Pipeline was charged this week with failing to fix a natural gas leak that caused an explosion of an occupied house in Pennsylvania. A grand jury recommended criminal charges against Equitrans Midstream Corp. for failing to properly maintain a storage well beneath the home, according to state Attorney General Michelle Henry. Three occupants of the Greene County house, a couple and their 4-year-old son, suffered serious burns but were able to escape after the Oct. 31, 2018, explosion. “Pennsylvanians have a right to feel safe in their homes, without concern for large corporations creating environmental hazards,” Henry said in a news release this week. Prosecutors allege that Equitrans was aware that a storage well below the house had been deteriorating and leaking gas for years, resulting in methane contamination. After the gas migrated up into the home through its water supply, an explosion happened when resident Cody White turned on the stove to cook a meal for his child, according to the attorney general’s news release. White, his girlfriend and their son were knocked down by flaming debris, but were able to make it out of the house before it was destroyed by the blast and subsequent fire. Equitrans is the owner and operator of the Pratt Storage Field, directly underneath the White home. Storage fields allow companies to hold large supplies of gas, after it is extracted, so they have quick access to it during times of high demand. The Pittsburgh-region based company is also the lead partner in a joint venture building a 303-mile pipeline that passes through Southwest Virginia, where resistance has run high during more than five years of legal battles. Opponents fear that during long delays in construction, a protective coating designed to guard the pipe from corrosion has been damaged by prolonged exposure to sunlight. That could weaken the pipe, they say, and cause it to rupture and to explode once the line is buried and carrying gas under high pressure. “This news [of the Pennsylvania explosion] is further confirmation that Equitrans and the pipeline they’re backing, MVP, are dangerous actors,” the Protect Our Water, Heritage, Rights coalition, one of the groups fighting the pipeline, said in a statement Friday. POWHR raised similar arguments in August, after an investigation showed that corrosion of a well joint caused a leak at another storage facility in Pennsylvania. It took nearly two weeks for Equitrans to stop the leak, which spewed about 1 billion cubic feet of greenhouse gas into the atmosphere. Mountain Valley spokeswoman Natalie Cox said the company denies the attorney general’s allegations – and rebuts any connection between the incidents in Pennsylvania and the pipeline being built in West Virginia and Virginia. “It is no surprise that special-interest activist groups that have steadfastly opposed the MVP project for years are continuing to find ways to promote their own agendas over national and regional public interests,” Cox wrote in an email Friday. “Regardless,” the email continued, “it is important to note that vertical storage wells are vastly different from natural gas transmission lines, including in construction, operations, and materials, such as coatings.” Concerns about the coating were recently raised by the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. In August, PHMSA found that conditions may exist that “pose a pipeline integrity risk to public safety, property or the environment.” A consent agreement reached between the government and Mountain Valley in early October calls for additional inspections of pipes and an independent, third-party review of a process to test the steel pipes and, where needed, to reapply the protective coating. The 12-page consent agreement has been posted to PHMSA’s website, but so far various audit reports and written remedial actions that it requires have not been shared with the public. “While we appreciate PHMSA’s use of an electronic reading room, it appears that the MVP file has not been updated in several months,” the Sierra Club said in a recent letter to the agency. “PHMSA should make available to the public all information and data on safety of the MVP as soon as it becomes available.” A spokesperson for the agency said Friday it is working to increase transparency, “within the letter of the laws established by Congress.” While consent agreements and some enforcement data are currently available online, additional documents may be released later to the public, the spokesperson wrote in an email. After repeated lulls in construction since it began in 2018, Mountain Valley now says it expects to have the pipeline completed by early next year. As for the charges in Pennsylvania, the company said it shared information with the grand jury that it says showed its operation of the gas storage field did not cause the explosion. The charges, brought under Pennsylvania’s Clean Streams Law, allege failures to properly maintain a storage well and to conduct an investigation after the explosion. “We deny the Attorney General’s allegations, which were riddled with inaccuracies,” Cox wrote in the email. “We respect the judicial process and look forward to vindication in court.”
Advocates press Wisconsin regulators to reconsider gas plant --A social worker by training, Jenny Van Sickle sought office to fight for things like mental health resources and accessible childcare. The nuances of a massive power plant proposal were beyond her expertise, and like other civic leaders, she was open to promises that it would provide jobs, a bridge to clean energy and grid reliability. Heavy industry was nothing new in the port town; an Enbridge Energy oil terminal is also located in the neighborhood. In 2019, the council unanimously passed a resolution supporting the project. But the more Van Sickle learned, the more she had doubts about the plant. She began asking more questions and felt like she was getting “misinformation and disinformation” from its developers — Dairyland Power Cooperative and Minnesota Power. She was especially concerned to learn that the proposal included the possibility of burning heavily polluting diesel if natural gas wasn’t available. “When you finally build up the courage to talk about it, it’s like a dam breaking,” she recounted, and other residents also began to share their fears.Now, Van Sickle devotes much of her life to opposing the $700 million power plant, which received crucial approval from the state Public Service Commission in January 2020 and is scheduled to go online by 2027 — if it receives permits still needed from agencies including the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Construction could reportedly start next year.Meanwhile, the Sierra Club and Clean Wisconsin are demanding the Public Service Commission reconsider and reopen the process around the crucial certificate of public convenience and necessity that was issued in January 2020.That’s because two major factors have changed since the commission granted the certificate.Wisconsin utilities have launched plans to install 480 MW of battery storage by 2025. That’s enough storage to work in tandem with renewables to provide reliable power, advocates argue. And the Inflation Reduction Act offers direct-pay incentives for renewables, replacing tax credits and making renewable development much more financially viable for nonprofit entities, including rural electric cooperatives like Dairyland, that don’t pay taxes. Clean Wisconsin and Sierra Club filed a lawsuit challenging the Public Service Commission’s certificate. A district court backed the commission, and they are now awaiting an appellate court decision. Clean Wisconsin staff attorney Brett Korte noted that the Public Service Commission has the authority to reopen a case when it chooses. One of the three public service commissioners, Rebecca Valcq, argued against granting the certificate. Her dissent cited environmental impacts including erosion and the effect on wetlands, and she questioned the availability of water — to be drawn from an aquifer — to cool the plant. She also stated the plant was not needed for a reliable electric supply. Advocates are hopeful the commission would decide differently if the case is reopened.
TC Energy, Williams Each Fetch Final Approvals for Natural Gas Expansion - Columbia Gas Transmission LLC (TCO) and Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line Co. LLC (Transco) each gained FERC approval on three projects designed to boost natural gas deliveries to the Southeast and East Coast. Transco’s Southeast Energy Connector (SEC) would increase firm transportation supply by 150,000 Dth/d from Mississippi and Alabama to an existing power generation facility in Shelby County, AL. Supply would be delivered to Southern Company subsidiary Alabama Power Co.’s Ernest C. Gaston Electric Generating Plant. All but one unit, which would be transitioned from coal to natural gas by 2028, are slated for retirement. Three Federal Energy Regulatory Commission members voted for the certificate (No. CP22-501-000). Commissioner James Danly did not participate,
NextDecade Targets 2024 to Sanction Rio Grande LNG Expansion - As construction of the first phase gets underway in South Texas near the Mexico border, NextDecade Corp. is looking to finalize plans by mid-2024 to expand its Rio Grande LNG export project. The Houston-based firm broke ground in Brownsville on the first three trains of the facility last month, which could add 17.6 million metric tons/year (mmty) of export capacity to the global market by 2027. NextDecade reached a final investment decision (FID) on Rio Grande LNG in July after securing $18.4 billion in financing, making it one of the most expensive U.S. greenfield energy projects to date. In a third quarter business update, the firm noted that it had already started the process of front-end engineering and design (FEED) and securing engineering procurement and construction...
US natgas prices fall 4% on big storage build, record output (Reuters) - U.S. natural gas futures fell about 4% on Thursday on a bigger-than-expected weekly storage build and on record output that should enable utilities to keep injecting gas into storage through at least late November. Utilities usually start pulling gas out of storage to meet heating demand in mid-November. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said utilities added 60 billion cubic feet (bcf) of gas into storage during the week ended Nov. 10 after pulling 6 bcf out of storage during the week ended Nov. 3. The withdrawal during the colder-than-normal week ended Nov. 3 was the first withdrawal of the 2023-2024 winter season. The injection during the week ended Nov. 10 was bigger than the 40-bcf build analysts forecast in a Reuters poll and compares with an increase of 66 bcf in the same week last year and a five-year (2018-2022) average increase of 20 bcf. Analysts said utilities were able to add gas into storage during the week ended Nov. 10 because mild weather limited heating demand. Looking ahead, analysts said record output would likely allow utilities to keep injecting gas into storage during the weeks ended Nov. 17 and Nov. 24 if output remains at record highs. EIA did not release its weekly gas storage report last week due to a planned systems upgrade. Front-month gas futures for December delivery on the New York Mercantile Exchange fell 12.8 cents, or 4.0%, to settle at $3.062 per million British thermal units (mmBtu). In a sign that some in the market were giving up on the possibility of higher prices from extreme cold weather later this winter, the premium of futures for January over December NGZ23-F24 fell to just 17 cents per mmBtu on Wednesday, its lowest since November 2022. Based on current futures, the gas market may have already hit its highest price this winter in early November when the front-month closed at $3.52 per mmBtu on Nov. 3. It is actually not that unusual for the highest price of the winter to occur in November. In fact four of the highest prices seen during the heating season over the past five years occurred during November rather than January, which is traditionally the coldest month of the year. Traders noted that is because the anticipation of extreme cold is usually worse than the actual weather itself. The highest winter prices were $7.31 per mmBtu on Nov. 23, 2022, during the winter of 2022-2023; $6.27 on Jan. 27, 2022, during the winter of 2021-2022; $3.24 on Nov. 2, 2020, during the winter of 2020-2021; $2.86 on Nov. 5, 2019 during the winter of 2019-2020; and $4.84 on Nov. 14, 2018, during the winter of 2018-2019. Financial firm LSEG said average gas output in the Lower 48 U.S. states rose to 107.2 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) so far in November, up from a record 104.2 bcfd in October. Over the past four days, however, output was on track to drop by about 2.4 bcfd to a preliminary one-week low of 106.1 bcfd on Thursday. Meteorologists projected the weather would remain warmer than normal through Nov. 21 before turning close to colder than normal from Nov. 22-Dec. 1. With colder weather coming, LSEG forecast U.S. gas demand in the Lower 48 states, including exports, would rise from 112.2 bcfd this week to 113.8 bcfd next week. The forecast for this week was higher than Refinitiv's outlook on Wednesday. Gas flows to the seven big U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG) export plants rose to an average of 14.2 bcfd so far in November, up from 13.7 bcfd in October and a monthly record of 14.0 bcfd in April.
Court dismisses effort to restrict Gulf drilling over endangered whale - A federal appeals court has dismissed an effort from environmental groups to prevent an oil rights drilling auction from proceeding without protections for an endangered species of whale. Instead, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the Biden administration will have 37 days to carry out the auction for rights to drill in the Gulf of Mexico. The litigation stems from action by the Biden administration that would have put stipulations on an upcoming oil and gas lease sale auction in the Gulf as part of an effort to protect the Rice’s Whale. The administration said in August that it would shrink the sale and restrict ship activity in order to protect the whale, of which there are believed to be fewer than 100 remaining. Chevron, the state of Louisiana and an oil and gas lobbying group sued over that action, and a lower court ruled in their favor, saying that the Biden administration needed to move ahead with the sale in just a few days. Both the Biden administration and environmental groups appealed the lower court’s move, with the Biden administration asking for more time while environmentalists wanted the restrictions that aimed to protect the whale. The administration got more time, as it will now have 37 days to carry out the sale. However, judges Edith Brown Clement, Catharina Haynes and Andrew Oldham, who are Bush and Trump appointees, dismissed the environmental groups’ challenge. They found that the groups did not have standing in the case because they did not show that they will suffer “certainly impending” injury or that any such issues would likely be resolved by the court.
World's first (nearly) zero-emission gas plant delayed until 2027 - Supply chain challenges will delay the world’s first utility-scale gas plant with carbon capture, Net Power executives announced Tuesday.The clean energy technology company unveiled plans last November to build the natural gas plant in Texas’ Ector County, with expectations that the facility would be online in 2026. Project Permian would generate electricity with nearly zero emissions, according to Net Power.But on an earnings call Tuesday, Net Power President Brian Allen told investors that the date has slipped to “sometime between the second half of 2027 and first half of 2028.”“We believe this updated schedule will allow us to accomplish safe, clean and reliable operations and enable this project to serve as the catalyst for all future NET Power plant deployments,” said Allen, who is also the company’s chief operating officer.Allen attributed the delay to “global energy supply chain” challenges, which he said had caused “extensive lead times across critical components.” The company previously adjusted the cost of the project to approximately $1 billion, up from an initial price tag of between $750 and $950 million.Net Power’s technology produces electricity by combusting natural gas with pure oxygen, creating water and carbon dioxide — most of which is recirculated back into its power generation system. Excess high-purity CO2 can then be sold to industry or sequestered underground, according to Net Power. The company plans to use Occidental Petroleum’s existing infrastructure near Odessa, Texas, to move trapped CO2 to a permanent storage location.Occidental is a major supporter of Net Power, investing at least $350 million in the startup since it was founded in 2010.On an earnings call in May, Occidental CEO Vicki Hollub said Net Power’s technology is “really the only source of emission-free power technology that uses hydrocarbon gases.” Net Power’s plant will provide power for Occidental’s oil and gas operations, Hollub said, and “then in the future, it will be one of the emission-free power sources that we use for our direct air capture units.”Will Fitzgerald, an Occidental spokesperson, said Project Permian would not be used for Stratos, the direct air capture facility that’s under construction outside of Odessa. Occidental has entered into an agreement with Origis Energy to provide zero-emission solar power for Stratos, he said.“We intend to power DAC plants with zero or very low-emissions power and anticipate a variety of sources will be needed including wind, solar and potentially other types depending on location and technology development in the coming years,” Fitzgerald said in an email Tuesday.
Barnett Bonanza Is Coming | Rigzone --The Barnett bonanza is coming. That’s what Enverus Intelligence Research (EIR), a subsidiary of Enverus, stated in a release sent to Rigzone recently, which highlighted that the company had published a new report examining various exploration and production companies testing the Barnett Formation in the Midland Basin, “including economic and productivity outcomes”. The release pointed out that, according to a new analysis from EIR, “recent wells targeting the Barnett interval in the Midland Basin show higher oil recoveries and lower breakevens than other secondary zones”. Barnett wells drilled in the core of the Midland Basin average slightly higher oil rates than those drilled near its edges, EIR stated in the release, adding that “vertical separation of more than 1,000 feet from the Wolfcamp D makes the Barnett a true inventory expansion opportunity for operators with deep drilling rights regardless of previous shallower development”. “Sometimes the best place to find new oil is in already-producing areas, which neatly describes what’s happening in the Midland Basin in Texas,” Emily Head, A Senior Associate at EIR and the author of the report, said in the release. “The Barnett formation is buried about 1,000 feet deeper than the Wolfcamp, a prolific oil-producing zone,” Head added. “This separation means companies owning deep drilling rights in the area can expand their inventories of well locations that break even below $50 per barrel, an important metric for many investors,” Head went on to state. The U.S. Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) latest short term energy outlook (STEO), which was released earlier this month, projects that the West Texas Intermediate (WTI) spot price will average $79.41 per barrel in 2023 and $89.24 per barrel in 2024. The EIA’s latest STEO sees the Brent spot price averaging $83.99 per barrel this year and $93.24 per barrel next year. In 2022, the WTI spot price averaged 94.91 per barrel and the Brent spot price averaged $100.94 per barrel, the EIA’s November STEO showed. In another release sent to Rigzone last week, EIR Director Al Salazar noted that EIR expects Brent prices “to trade in the high-$80s – low-$90s into 2024, due to OPEC intervention”. “The Saudis wish to take the cyclicality out of the market,”
Researchers warn that changes in the Permian Basin surface due to oil and gas industry activities are leading to increasing number of geohazards | NM Political Report - A new study published this month examines how the petrochemical industry in the Permian Basin has deformed the landscape by causing some areas to sink while other areas rise.While the changes may not be easily noticeable, especially in sparsely populated areas like the Permian Basin, researchers say they can damage infrastructure. The study by researchers from Southern Methodist University was published in the August edition of the International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation.In their investigation, the researchers from Southern Methodist University sought to map the surface deformation across the Permian Basin and to quantify the relationship between oil and gas operations and the changes to the surface.They found, on average, the ground in the Permian Basin is subsiding at a rate of three to four centimeters annually, though there are several pockets with larger rates of subsidence.The researchers write in the study that, over the past few decades, the increase in oil and gas extraction has “contributed to the alarming increase in geohazards, sometimes permanently altering the local ecosystem, and is a growing concern for communities and policymakers worldwide.” They say it is important to understand “the dynamics of geohazards at various stages in production.”The Permian Basin is an important area to study because about 40 percent of the oil production in the United States occurs there.Dr. Zhong Lu, a professor at Southern Methodist University who has been studying land deformation in the region, said under normal conditions, the landscape would not experience what is known as subsidence, or sinking of the surface ground due to changes in subsurface conditions.“The Permian Basin, along with the rest of the US mid-continent, has long been considered geologically stable with no large-scale tectonic movement, volcanism, or seismic activities. Thus, natural geohazards are relatively uncommon,” Lu said.But, approximately 100 years of extractive industry in the Permian Basin has changed that.Now the basin is experiencing sinkholes, subsidence and uplifts as a direct consequence of the oil and gas activities. These changes in the landscape do not occur at a uniform rate. That means a plot of level ground may change so that one area is higher than an adjacent area. This can have various effects on infrastructure, architecture and even water sources. Uneven changes in the surface can damage pipelines or even disrupt flow within those pipelines, he said. In Pecos, Texas, and other Permian Basin communities, residents have seen their homes and businesses damaged by the changing lands. As many of the abandoned oil wells are more than 50 years old, cracks can form in the cement and corrosion can take place in the oil pipes. These can result in wastewater leaking from a previously sealed and isolated formation into the groundwater or even onto the surface, he said.Karanam said the oil and gas activities also increase the seismic activity in the basin and can induce the formation of sinkholes.It’s not new news that the Permian Basin’s oil fields have a sinkhole problem. In 2020, Undark published a story about the sinkholes in New Mexico’s Permian Basin. But the research that the team at Southern Methodist University is conducting provides a better understanding of how the oil and gas industry in the Permian Basin is changing the landscape and at what rates.
Colorado schools near fracking sites could get funding, but there are concerns — Christa Burke and Monica Aldridge have been friends since they moved to Aurora’s Southshore neighborhood just one day apart two years ago.Their families wanted a quiet community with access to nature and great schools.“We moved into this neighborhood, in particular, because it's part of the Cherry Creek School District, which is known for its excellence. And so, we were very excited,” said Burke, who has two sons in middle and high school."This neighborhood is full of young families with young children," said Aldridge, whose three children also go to the local schools. But soon after buying their new homes, she said they got “a surprise, and not a happy one.” Just east of their neighborhood, beyond the Aurora Reservoir, the oil and gas company Civitas is proposing to drill more than 170 wells.“They're going to do fracking very close by with young children,” Aldridge said.Burke, Aldridge and many of their neighbors are pushing back against the planned fracking through a grassroots group called Save the Aurora Reservoir.“Most of the neighborhood was unhappy, and our fears related really to the health impacts of fracking near homes and schools,” Burke said. "We have at least three elementary schools, two middle schools and a high school that are all within the map where the [horizontal drilling from the] wells will go underneath.”Altitude Elementary School, Fox Ridge Middle School and Cherokee Trail High School are among the schools nearby the proposed oil and gas operations on Lowry Ranch east of the Aurora Reservoir. If Colorado’s oversight agency, the Energy and Carbon Management Commission, and Arapahoe County approve the proposed fracking, the operator will drill the wells at the Lowry Ranch, sprawling grasslands owned by Colorado’s State Land Board.Kristin Kemp, a spokesperson for the land board, told Denver7 this summer that Colorado owns the Lowry Ranch land and minerals, and rents it out to companies, including oil and gas producers.Civitas is already operating several wells on the Lowry Ranch, since the company acquired an existing lease from the energy giant ConocoPhillips in 2020. Civitas hopes to incorporate those wells into its larger proposed project for the ranch.“It's been leased here for oil and gas development for almost 100 years already,” Kemp said. “The rent we collect helps fund public schools.”Civitas's subsidiary Crestone Peak Resources is already operating wells on the Lowry Ranch aquired from ConocoPhillips.The State Land Board has collected $1.5 billion for public schools from oil and gas operations over the last 15 years.Civitas estimates its proposed fracking on the Lowry Ranch could generate about $640 million for public schools in the first 15 years of operations, including both royalties paid to the State Land Board and property tax revenues, according to a statement provided to Denver7. Civitas also estimates the Lowry Ranch operations could help fund Arapahoe County more broadly with more than $400 million in public revenues."It's wonderful to have more money for schools, it is very necessary. But this might not be the best way to do it,” Aldridge said.Her neighbor Burke agrees.“I don't think … the benefits that come from funding for the schools outweigh the costs of our children's health. It doesn't cover the health care costs that come along with chronic illnesses like asthma or childhood cancer,” she said.
EIA Cuts WTI Oil Price Forecasts - The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) lowered its West Texas Intermediate (WTI) oil price forecast for 2023 and 2024 in its November short term energy outlook (STEO), which was released recently. According to the November STEO, the EIA now projects that the WTI spot price will average $79.41 per barrel this year and $89.24 per barrel next year. The latest STEO sees the average WTI spot price coming in at $85.93 per barrel in the fourth quarter of 2023, $89.64 per barrel in the first quarter of 2024, $90.34 per barrel in the second quarter, $89 per barrel in the third quarter, and $88 per barrel in the fourth quarter. In its previous STEO, which was released in October, the EIA projected that the WTI spot price would average $79.59 per barrel in 2023 and $90.91 per barrel in 2024. That STEO saw the average WTI spot price coming in at $86.65 per barrel in the fourth quarter of this year, $90.64 per barrel in the first quarter of 2024, $92 per barrel in the second quarter, $91 per barrel in the third quarter, and $90 per barrel in the fourth quarter. The EIA’s November STEO highlighted that the WTI spot price averaged $94.91 per barrel in 2022. In the first quarter of 2023, the WTI spot price averaged $75.96 per barrel, and in the second and third quarters, it averaged $73.49 per barrel and $82.25 per barrel, respectively, according to the STEO. A report sent to Rigzone on November 14 showed that Standard Chartered projected that the NYMEX WTI price will average $95 per barrel in 2024, $106 per barrel in 2025, and $125 per barrel in 2026. This report revealed that Standard Chartered saw the NYMEX WTI price averaging $89 per barrel in the first quarter of 2024, $91 per barrel in the second quarter, $95 per barrel in the third quarter, $103 per barrel in the fourth quarter, and $104 per barrel in the first quarter of 2025. Standard Chartered had exactly the same quarterly and yearly NYMEX WTI price projections in a separate report sent to Rigzone on October 10. That report also showed that the company saw the NYMEX WTI price averaging $91 per barrel in the fourth quarter of 2023. In a report sent to Rigzone on September 26, Standard Chartered projected that the NYMEX WTI price would average $88 per barrel in 2023. That report also showed that the company forecast that the NYMEX WTI price would come in at $91 per barrel in the fourth quarter of 2023, $89 per barrel in the first quarter of next year, $91 per barrel in the second quarter, $95 per barrel in the third quarter, $103 per barrel in the fourth quarter, $95 per barrel overall in 2024, and $106 per barrel overall in 2025. In a report sent to Rigzone on November 3, BMI, a Fitch Solutions company, revealed that it sees the WTI crude price averaging $79 per barrel in 2023 and $82 per barrel in 2024. When executives from 146 oil and gas firms were asked what they expected the WTI crude oil price to be at the end of the year as part of the latest Dallas Fed Energy Survey, which was released in September, they gave an average response of $87.91 per barrel. The low forecast came in at $70 per barrel, the high forecast came in at $120 per barrel, and the price of WTI during the survey was $90.29 per barrel, the survey highlighted. The next Dallas Fed Energy Survey is currently scheduled to be released on December 20
The Willow effect: Are even more Arctic oil projects on the way? -The massive Willow oil project on Alaska’s North Slope is all but certain to be built now that a federal judge has ruled against environmental groups hoping to halt the development. While it’s set to be Alaska’s biggest new oil field in decades, it very well may not be the last: Willow could give ConocoPhillips and other oil companies cheaper access to vast, untapped reserves beneath the tundra.U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason denied a challenge last week to the $7.5 billion project — a large expansion of ConocoPhillips’ sprawling network of oil rigs, roads, and pipelines — which the Biden administration controversially approved in March. The federal government estimates burning all the oil that Conoco hopes to extract from Willow would emit about 240 million metric tons of carbon dioxide.The judge’s ruling paves the way for Conoco to drill through permafrost and slurp up 600 million barrels of oil in the northeastern corner of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, an Indiana-sized swath of mostly undeveloped tundra in the western Arctic. But that’s not all. As the company moves ahead with construction of the new oil field, it’s looking to gain access to millions, perhaps billions, more barrels farther west and southwest in the reserve beneath the wild tussocks, sloughs, and lakes where caribou and migratory birds abound.“It’s not only itself a huge project,” said Erik Grafe, an attorney at Earthjustice, which represents the environmental groups that sued to stop the project. “It’s designed to be a hub for future development and that’s itself an even bigger problem.” Conoco told investors two years ago that Willow could be “the next great Alaska hub” for Arctic oil. The company leases a total of 1.1 million acres in the federal petroleum reserve, sitting on an estimated 3 billion barrels of oil. Other companies lease another1.4 million acres combined. Many of those leases lie outside of the roughly 13 million acres where the Biden administration plans to restrict drilling.Just last month Conoco proposed seismic surveys on about 272,000 acres of frozen earth, including an area west of the Willow site, deeper into the national oil reserve. The company initially said the surveys were intended to “determine the most efficient development” at Willow and “to identify potential future development areas” on Conoco’s leases. But the company later amended the proposal, reducing the survey area to some 160,000 acres and cutting the mention of its intention to identify future development areas. (Conoco has said the surveys are intended “exclusively” to support Willow.)Conoco has also drilled two exploratory wells a dozen miles west of Willow — in an area named “West Willow.” The several miles of new roads and pipelines that the company plans to build at Willow could significantly lower the cost of tapping into the estimated 75 million barrels of crude beneath West Willow. That oil “seems like the obvious next target,” Grafe said. “Willow puts in processing facilities, central operating facilities, pipelines, roads. Once that’s in place, it’s a lot cheaper for Conoco and maybe others to develop their leases and tie into that infrastructure.” Earthjustice plans to appeal Gleason’s ruling.
North America Poised to Double LNG Export Capacity by 2027: EIA - New projects are set to grow North America’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) export capacity to 24.3 billion cubic feet per day (Bcfpd) by 2027 led by expansion in the U.S., according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA). That is more than double the current capacity of 11.4 Bcfpd. “By the end of 2027, we estimate LNG export capacity will grow by 1.1 Bcf/d in Mexico, 2.1 Bcf/d in Canada, and 9.7 Bcf/d in the United States from a total of 10 new projects across the three countries”, the U.S. EIA said in a report Monday. Of the 10 projects expected to be put onstream by 2027, five are under development in the U.S., three in Mexico and two in Canada. Exxon Mobil Corp. and QatarEnergy expect to partially start up the three-train Golden Pass project in Texas by next year, before full operation by 2025. Plaquemines LNG, a two-phase project by Venture Global LNG Inc. in Louisiana, expects to be online 2024, with the second phase planned to come into service 2025. Cheniere Energy Inc.’s Corpus Christi project in Texas, already operating with three trains, expects to startup another facility 2025. TotalEnergies SE and NextDecade Corp. target to commission Rio Grande LNG in Texas 2027. Sempra Energy’s Port Arthur LNG, also in Texas, is planned to start up 2027. In Canada, Shell PLC and partners target to put LNG Canada, on the west coast, into service 2025. British Columbia’s Woodfibre LNG is planned to be put onstream 2027 by Pacific Energy Corp. Ltd. and Enbridge Inc. In Mexico, Fast LNG Altamira, a partnership between New Fortress Energy Inc. and state-owned CFE, expects to begin service December 2023 at its offshore unit and 2025 at its two onshore units. Sempra Energy and co-venturers plan to start exporting from Energia Costa Azul LNG, already operating as an import facility, in 2025. Fast LNG Lakach, another New Fortress project in partnership with state-owned Petroleos Mexicanos, is planned for startup 2026. In an earlier report the EIA said 55 countries are set to have LNG terminals by the end of next year with a combined regasification capacity of 163 Bcfpd. The projected capacity is an expansion of 16 percent or 23 Bcfpd compared to 2022 with seven nations having their first import terminals, it said basing the forecasts on data by the International Group of LNG Importers and trade press. In the first seven months of 2023 three countries started importing LNG for the first time: Germany, the Philippines and Vietnam, the EIA noted. "By the end of next year, we expect Antigua, Australia, Cyprus, and Nicaragua to start importing LNG", it said in the report August 30. "Several more countries are in advanced stages of developing LNG import capacity." The EIA sees Asia as the growth leader in global regasification capacity in 2023 and 2024 accounting for 52 percent or 11.9 Bcfpd. Europe would comprise 30 percent or 8.6 Bcfpd and the rest of the globe 10 percent or 2.3 Bcfpd. China is expected to host the bulk of the Asian expansion, at 8.5 Bcfpd. "China was the country that had the most LNG imports in 2021, but its LNG imports declined in 2022, mainly because of the COVID-19-related economic slowdown", the EIA said. Meanwhile India expects 1.3 Bcf/d of capacity added by the end of this year through the Dhamra LNG and Chhara LNG projects. In new markets the Philippines and Vietnam, additions of 1.1 Bcfpd in 2023 and 0.1 Bcfpd by the end of 2024 are expected respectively. In Europe, lower natural gas imports by pipeline from Russia would drive regasification capacity growth by one-third by the end of 2024 compared to 2022, the EIA said. "Germany began importing LNG this year as operators fast-tracked construction of regasification capacity by using Floating Storage and Regasification Units", with three terminals put into operation and three more under construction for an expected startup by the end of 2023, it said. The report put Germany's active and under-development capacity at up to 3.7 Bcfpd. "Eleven other [European] countries will each add between 0.1 Bcf/d and 0.7 Bcf/d of new or expanded regasification capacity for a combined 4.9 Bcf/d of additions", it added. "Cyprus is also expected to start importing LNG in 2024." In the Americas, Brazil is projected to add 1.8 Bcfpd in regasification capacity this year, while Nicaragua and Antigua and Barbuda will together add 0.1 Bcfpd as first-time LNG importers. Elsewhere, "Australia, although also one of the world’s three largest LNG exporters, will add 0.3 Bcf/d of regasification capacity through a new offshore terminal on its eastern coast", the EIA said.
BC Energy Export Terminal One Step Closer to FID - The Ridley Energy Export Facility (REEF) project in British Columbia, spearheaded by a joint venture of AltaGas Ltd and Royal Vopak, is nearing a final investment decision (FID) as site clearing work will begin in the coming weeks. REEF, located on Ridley Island, is planned to be a large-scale coastal terminal that will have the capability to export liquified petroleum gases (LPGs), methanol, and other bulk liquids. Following a five-year environmental preparation and review process, the project FID is expected in the first half of 2024, AltaGas and Vopak said in a joint news release Tuesday. The site clearing work will include logging, clearing, and drainage activities. REEF has been granted key Federal and Provincial permits to construct storage tanks, a new dedicated jetty, and rail and other ancillary infrastructure, according to the release. The project will be developed on a 190-acre (77-hectare) site on lands administered by the Prince Rupert Port Authority (PRPA), where the joint venture has executed a long-term lease. The project will operate under AltaGas and Vopak's existing exclusive rights granted by the PRPA to develop LPG, methanol, and other bulk liquid exports on Ridley Island. REEF has made “strong advancements across critical workstreams” required to reach a positive FID, including commercial, engineering, and partnership agreements, the joint venture said, adding that it will be positioned to award several contracts in the first half of 2024. In October, AltaGas entered into a five-year transportation agreement with Canadian National Railway Company, which provides the joint venture and its customers with cost and service predictability for Ridley Island Propane Export Terminal and the REEF expansion project, according to the release. The joint venture said it would have the option to progress evaluation work on fuels of the future, such as hydrogen, “which has growing customer interest in Asia, particularly Japan and South Korea”. Vopak is one of the “preeminent third-party hydrogen storage platforms globally, operating multiple terminals across several countries”, the release noted. The joint venture highlighted the advantages when the REEF project is completed, claiming that it will take only ten shipping days for Canada’s energy products to reach the “fastest growing demand markets in Northeast Asia”. It added that REEF would have an approximate 60 percent base time savings over the U.S. Gulf Coast, which requires a minimum 25-day shipping time to Northeast Asia, and approximately 45 percent base time savings over the Arabian Gulf, which requires a minimum 18-day shipping time. The geographical advantage expands when there is significant congestion in the Panama Canal or when other global shipping pinch points experience disruptions, the joint venture added. AltaGas is a North American infrastructure company operating a diversified Utilities and Midstream business. Its Midstream business includes global market access for North American LPGs, which provides North American producers and aggregators with the best netbacks for LPGs while delivering diversity of supply and stronger energy security to its downstream customers in Asia. Rotterdam-based Royal Vopak is an independent tank storage company that also aims to develop infrastructure solutions for new vital products, focusing on zero- and low-carbon hydrogen, ammonia, carbon dioxide, long-duration energy storage, and sustainable feedstocks.
Aspiring LNG Exporter Mexico Pacific Touts Chihuahua Natural Gas Pipeline Agreement - Mexico Pacific Ltd. LLC has reached an agreement with the government of Chihuahua state to advance the proposed 2.8 Bcf/d Sierra Madre natural gas pipeline. ExportsSierra Madre would supply Permian Basin gas from the U.S. border across the states of Chihuahua and Sonora to Mexico Pacific’s proposed Saguaro EnergÃa LNG export terminal envisioned for Puerto Libertad on the Sonoran coast. Under the agreement, “the government of Chihuahua will continue to pave an efficient path for the commencement of construction of this historic project in the coming months, marking yet another significant milestone in the progression of energy infrastructure for the state,” Mexico Pacific said. Mexico Pacific has yet to reach a final investment decision (FID) on Saguaro EnergÃa.
Policy Concerns or No, Mexico Natural Gas Imports to Keep Growing, Experts Say - -- Mexico’s pipeline imports of U.S. natural gas should continue rising over the coming years even in the most conservative demand scenarios, experts agreed at the US-Mexico Natural Gas Forum. The power sector is driving demand growth currently, a trend that is likely to continue in the immediate term as state power company Comisión Federal de Electricidad (CFE) expands its fleet of combined-cycle gas turbine plants, energy consultant Guillermo Turrent told the gathering held Nov. 13-15 in San Antonio, TX. Turrent, who is the general manager of Energy and Infrastructure Advisors, highlighted that CFE imports 100% of its gas supply, and company gas imports peaked around 5 Bcf/d last summer.
Pemex Ordered to Provide Weekly Spending Update --Petroleos Mexicanos has been ordered to provide weekly updates on its spending to the head of the country’s tax authority, an effort by Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to rein in excesses at the state-owned oil producer. The president imposed the condition last month amid growing tensions between Pemex and the Finance Ministry, according to people familiar with the matter. Ministry officials have grown increasingly frustrated with the company’s ever-expanding bill to cover its debt payments and fund its expansion into refining and exploration, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing internal moves. Finance officials are worried about growing expenses that will weigh on the next administration and Mexico’s credit rating, the people said, leading the president to call for the requirement of supervision as a condition for support, the people said. Most recently, the Finance Ministry provided 145 billion pesos ($8.2 billion) of additional funds in the 2024 budget while also lowering a profit-sharing duty, which lawmakers then cut even further. That comes after some $77 billion in cash and tax breaks the company has received during Lopez Obrador’s administration, which have failed to reverse losses. Pemex’s debt reached $106 billion last month, according to Chief Executive Officer Octavio Romero, making the company the most indebted oil producer in the world. Since the reviews by tax officials began, the company has yet to show signs of improvement amid a pile of unpaid suppliers, said one of the people. Spokespeople for Pemex, the tax authority SAT, and the president didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment. Despite Lopez Obrador’s support this year, Pemex bonds show investors remain concerned, with yields on longer-dated bonds up around 100 basis points since June, said George Ordonez, a strategist at BBVA. Money managers are also wary of whether the next administration—which will be elected next year— can, or will, be able to provide the same level of support as Lopez Obrador, he added. “The piecemeal approach to meeting debt obligations has also proven worrisome,” Ordonez said.
Europe Gas Prices Fall on Strong Supply - -- European natural gas eased on Tuesday with the market so brimming with supplies that even the potential shutdown of an LNG plant in Texas isn’t worrying traders for now. Benchmark futures fell as much as 2.4% on Tuesday, after a modest increase late Monday after news of the issues at the Freeport LNG export plant. Storage tanks that are more than 99% full, and mild weather, are helping reduce price sensitivity. Unseasonably mild weather is expected to extend across much of continental Europe well into late November reducing heating demand, according to forecaster Maxar Technologies Inc. In parts of the UK, storm Debi has triggered weather warnings as it brings strong winds, which have boosted renewable generation in the country, further cutting gas use in the power sector. Europe’s energy supplies are on far more stable footing than they were at the peak of last year’s energy crisis, even as withdrawals from gas inventories have now started. Storage has reached maximum levels earlier than usual in the season. Global supply balances remain tight and prolonged supply disruptions or a recovery in industrial demand could tilt the fragile balance. So far this year, extended maintenance in Norway, LNG worker strikes in Australia and the Middle East war have prompted sharp intraday price swings. Dutch front-month futures, Europe’s gas benchmark, fell 1.37% to €47.22 a megawatt-hour at 9:15 am in Amsterdam. The equivalent UK contract also dropped.
Spanish LNG imports, reloads drop in October - Spanish liquefied natural gas imports and reloads dropped in October compared to the same month last year, according to LNG terminal operator Enagas.LNG imports decreased by 8 percent to about 21.8 TWh in October and accounted for 67.6 percent of the total gas imports. In September, LNG imports reached some 19.2 TWh.Including pipeline imports from Algeria, France, and Portugal, gas imports to Spain reached about 33.8 TWh last month, a drop from some 36.9 TWh in October last year, Enagas said in its monthly report.Moreover, national gas demand in October dropped by 10.6 percent year-on-year to some 25 TWh.Demand for power generation declined by 42 percent year-on-year to about 8.3 TWh last month, while conventional demand rose by 22.3 percent to 16.7 TWh, the LNG terminal operator said.The firm previously said that August of this year marked the first time in its history that Spain has managed to fill 100 percent of its underground storage facilities.Storage facilities were also full in October, according to Enagas.Enagas operates a large network of gas pipelines and has four LNG import plants in Barcelona, Huelva, Cartagena, and Gijon.It also owns 50 percent of the BBG regasification plant in Bilbao and 72.5 percent of the Sagunto plant, while Reganosa operates the Mugardos plant.
Israel’s Natural Gas Flow To Egypt To Return To Normal Next Week -Natural gas supply from Israel to Egypt is expected to return early next week to normal levels after an Israeli gas field resumed production suspended in the wake of the Hamas attack in early October, Bloombergreported on Tuesday, quoting a source with knowledge of Egypt’s gas import levels.Low Israeli gas supplies to Egypt also mean low or none Egyptian LNG exports to Europe, which rely on a growing number of cargoes to replace the pipeline gas supply from Russia, most of which was cut off last year after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In Israel, gas production from the offshore Tamar field has resumed, a month after it was suspended in the wake of the Hamas attacks on southern Israel. The Tamar field is one of the two massive offshore gas fields that put Israel on the global gas map when they were discovered. The field last year produced 10.25 billion cubic meters, up by 18% in 2021. It is operated by Chevron, which also operates the other major gas field in the country, Leviathan.After the resumption of gas production at Tamar, gas flows from Israel to Egypt are set to nearly double and return to the pre-war levels by early next week, according to Bloomberg’s source. Egypt’s gas imports from Israel are set to return to the pre-war level of 800 million cubic feet a day early next week, compared to only 250 million cubic feet per day in early November, the anonymous source told Bloomberg.Export flows of gas from southern Israel to Egypt through the offshore EMG pipeline are also likely to restart this week, sources told Bloomberg on Monday. Supplies from Israel to Egypt via EMG were suspended following the shutdown of the Tamar field, although some of those exports were re-routed through Jordan. Higher Egyptian gas imports and eased concerns about production disruption in the Eastern Mediterranean are good news for Europe, which could hope for some LNG from Egypt this winter, barring an escalation and other field shut-ins.
EU settles on methane limits for fossil fuels imports - The European parliament and EU states have agreed methane greenhouse gas (GHG) intensity thresholds, and penalties, for oil, coal and gas importers. Petrochemicals escape the new rules. With a view to the upcoming UN Cop 28 climate talks in Dubai, parliament's chief lawmaker for methane regulation, Jutta Paulus, said it was "high time" to deliver on the global methane pledge. "Not all fossil fuel exporting countries will appreciate it. But the US will appreciate the EU restricting imports to those countries that act on methane emissions," Paulus told Argus. The text agreed between negotiators has to be formally adopted by parliament and by EU ministers. The regulation would then apply directly in the 27 EU states on publication in the bloc's official journal. Oil, gas and coal importers would, from 1 January 2027, have to demonstrate equivalent monitoring, reporting and verification requirements at production level. And the European Commission would, within three years, have to propose delegated legislation setting methane intensity classes for producers' and companies' crude, natural gas and coal sold in the EU. Individual EU states retain the right to set penalties. Parliament failed to have a provision for closing the EU market to non-compliant producers. "On imports, I'm not so much worried about loopholes," said Paulus. "I'm more worried about a very very long timeline [till 2030]. The measures on imports will come pretty late and will not have an effect until at least 2028 when we have equivalency on monitoring, reporting and verification [of methane emissions]." The regulation obliges oil and gas operators in the EU to detect and repair methane leaks, and to submit a methane-leak detection and repair programme to national authorities within nine months from the regulations' entry into force. A first leak-detection and repair survey of existing sites would have to take place within 12 months. There are strengthened repair obligations and general bans on venting and flaring methane from drainage stations and ventilation shafts. For coal, EU countries have to measure and report methane emissions from operating underground and surface mines. For mines closed or abandoned in the past 70 years, countries have to draw up public inventories and measure emissions, except for mines flooded for more than 10 years. Coal mine flaring is banned from 1 January 2025 and venting from 1 January 2027, if those mines emit over 5t of methane per kilotonne of coal mined. Venting and flaring is banned from closed and abandoned mines from 1 January 2030. Paulus regretted a "no go" from EU member states and commission for including methane emissions from the petrochemicals sector. But she said the commission will make sure that updated implementing rules to the bloc's Industrial Emissions directive, so-called Best Available Techniques (BAT), will be amended to include petrochemicals in 2030. "The rules will be copy-pasted from the methane regulation," she said. Paulus noted inclusion of an overarching methane target cut in the regulation would have excluded emissions from agriculture and waste, which the European Environment Agency (EEA) notes as responsible respectively for 53pc and 26pc of EU methane emissions compared with the energy sector's 19pc.
Gazprom to ship 40.5 mcm of gas to Europe via Ukraine on Monday - Russia's Gazprom said it would ship 40.5 million cubic metres of gas to Europe via Ukraine on Monday, a slightly lower volume than in recent days.
Russian crude exports are rising despite pledge to cut, helping keep oil prices in check -Russia may be helping fuel the steady decline of global oil prices, despite Moscow's commitment to limit its exports.Crude oil shipments from the OPEC+ member's western port have risen since September, according to E.A. Gibson Shipbrokers data cited by the Wall Street Journal reported.That coincided with a nearly 13% slide in Brent crude.The international benchmark now trades at around $82 a barrel, despite earlier forecasts that it could reach $100.And even the latest report from OPEC on Monday also appeared to acknowledge the increase in crude flows. While it said refined product exports are down, the oil cartel noted seaborne crude shipments out of Russia rose.Russia has vowed to curb crude exports by 300,000 barrels per day, in a deal reached with OPEC-leader Saudi Arabia.But October's seaborne outflows totalled 3.54 million barrels per day, surpassing the limit by about 300,000 barrels per day, according to Rystad Energy. It added that as refinery activity in Russia rebounds, less crude oil will likely be exported.As global benchmark oil prices fall, Russia's Urals crude is also trending lower. Last week, it traded at $66.19, according to data cited by Bloomberg, closer to the $60-per-barrel price cap imposed by the West late last year for Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.
US To Sanction Shippers of Russian Oil Over Price Cap Violations - On Thursday, the US Treasury Department imposed a set of new sanctions on ships and companies accused of using American service providers to ship Russian crude oil above the $60 price cap. The cap, imposed by the US and the Group of Seven (G7) nations in late 2022, was meant to deprive the Kremlin of funds for its war effort, but that strategy has failed.Three firms based in the United Arab Emirates and three ships wereblacklisted from transferring oil and other products with US service providers. Last month, the Treasury issued its first sanctions over violations of the Russian oil price cap and notified shipping management firms in more than 30 countries that Washington is seeking information regarding 100 vessels it believes are dodging sanctions.“We are committed to maintaining market stability in spite of Russia’s war against Ukraine, while cutting into the profits the Kremlin is using to fund its illegal war and remaining unyielding in our pursuit of those facilitating evasion of the price cap,” boasted Wally Adeymo, the deputy secretary of the Treasury. It’s been almost a year since the price cap was implemented and Moscow has seen an “almost complete export volume recovery” in oil, Chris Weafer, the chief executive officer of strategic consultants Marco-Advisory Ltd,told Newsweek.He continued, highlighting that Russia shipped 3.5 million barrels of crude per day last month via tankers, along with 1.2 million barrels through the East Siberia pipeline. In August, Russia was selling oil at an average price of $74 per barrel. Weafer also notes Russia has seen further gains as a result of the Brent crude price increasing from $70 to $95 per barrel between July and September.In response to the sanctions and the price cap, the Kremlin continued looking east and selling its oil to non-sanctioning countries. Last year, Moscow became the top crude supplier to India and China. Russia has also been using a “shadow fleet” of vessels to circumvent the Western economic penalties.Weafer says Washington and the G7 expected to be dealing with the “old tanker market structure… [assuming Russia would be using a] few very big tanker operators with large fleets that would have been easy to monitor and enforce.”However, he says, “what has emerged is a greatly dispersed fleet ownership with the flexibility to disappear and reappear with a new name faster than the G7/EU can catch them.”At any rate, Washington and NATO’s proxy war with Russia in Ukraine has been a disaster. As EUROCOM chief General Christopher Cavoli explained to Congress earlier this year, Russia’s navy and air force have taken negligible losses and its ground forces are “bigger today” than when the war began. The Pentagon is depleting its own weapons stocks to support Kyiv’s failing war effort, while Russia’s capacity to produce armor and ammo hasoutstripped the entire NATO alliance.Ukraine has lost 20% of its country, the Kremlin gained more territory than Kyiv this year, and Ukrainian forces are estimated to have suffered tens of thousands of casualties during recent months. Despite all this, the White House is still seeking roughly $60 billion from Congress to continue funding the war through next year’s presidential election. In September Russia’s Finance Ministry published a document explaining that Moscow will ramp up defense spending by 68% to 10.8 trillion rubles ($111.15 billion) next year.
Disclosed Oil and Gas Contract Value Drops in Q3 -The oil and gas industry’s overall disclosed contract value witnessed a quarter on quarter decrease of 26 percent in the third quarter. That’s what GlobalData noted in a release sent to Rigzone this week, which outlined that the company’s latest report showed that overall contract value decreased from $57.4 billion in the second quarter to $42.6 billion in the third quarter. Contract volume also saw a drop from 1,425 in the second quarter to 1,128 in the third quarter, GlobalData stated in the release. According to a chart included in the release, which showed oil and gas industry contracts by scope in the third quarter, there were 663 contracts during the period with an operations and maintenance scope. There were 165 deals with a procurement scope, 147 contracts with multiple scopes, 88 contracts with a design and engineering scope, 61 contracts with a construction scope, and four contracts with an installation scope in the third quarter, the chart revealed. In the release, GlobalData highlighted that HD Hyundai Heavy Industries’ agreement with QatarEnergy for the construction of 17 LNG carriers and the National Petroleum Construction Co/Tecnicas Reunidas consortium’s contract from ADNOC Gas for the expansion of gas processing infrastructure at the Habshan complex were “some of the notable contracts during the quarter”. The company pointed out that McDermott International’s contract from Qatargas Operating Company for Engineering, Procurement, Construction, and Installation services for the North Field Production Sustainability COMP1 project “is the other major contract in the quarter”. “The ongoing geopolitical tensions and the unpredictable fluctuations in crude oil prices are significantly dampening the overall sentiment within the oil and gas sector,” Pritam Kad, an oil and gas analyst GlobalData, said in the release. “This is translating into a notable slowdown in projects/contracts activity reflecting a cautious approach among key stakeholders,” Kad added. In a separate release sent to Rigzone back in August, GlobalData revealed that the overall oil and gas industry’s disclosed contract value jumped 60 percent in the second quarter, “mainly driven by a mega contract for Qatar’s North Field South LNG project”. The company’s latest report at the time showed that overall contract value increased from $35.4 billion in the first quarter to $56.7 billion in the second quarter, that release outlined. Contract volume dropped from 1,625 in the first quarter of 2023 to 1,256 in the second quarter, the release pointed out.
China independent refineries see govt raising fuel oil import quota: sources - China's small independent refineries expect the government to raise the fuel oil import allowance for 2023 to allow them to bring in more barrels as an alternative feedstock for the remainder of the year, refining sources told S&P Global Commodity Insights Nov. 14. There has been widespread talk that the government would likely raise the 2023 fuel oil import allowance by 3 million mt for non-state-owned enterprises as the quotas are running out under the annual limit of 16.2 million mt set at the beginning of the year. The annual limits have been kept stable for several years as the fuel oil quotas were more than sufficient either due to slow refining demand or abundant crude oil imports. Unlike quotas for importing crude oil or exporting oil products, which are allocated to each oil firm, refineries or oil companies are required to apply for the fuel quota cargo by cargo until the annual limit is reached, in a first-come-first-served manner. But this year, due to the combination of competitive prices of Russian fuel oil, strong refining margins in the first half of the year and tight crude import quota availability, small independent refineries had almost used up the 16.2 million mt fuel oil import quotas as of the end of October, according the refining sources. China imported 17.38 million mt of fuel oil in the first nine months of 2023, more than double the 7.65 million mt in the same period last year, according to customs data. The imports include barrels saved in bonded warehouses, which do not consume fuel oil import quotas. Some small independent refineries have paid about Yuan 10/mt ($1.37/mt) to procure imported fuel oil via state-run trading houses by using their import quotas for state-run enterprises, the sources said. "The shortage of fuel oil quotas has not had much impact on the volume of fuel oil, but the cost is higher," a source at a Dongying-based independent refinery said. A Shandong-based analyst said: "Some independent refineries will likely take this chance to import a few more cargoes of fuel oil, but the supply seems to be a bit tight, capping imports." The Dongying-based refinery source said the import cost of Russian M100 fuel oil was "slightly lower than the cost of some crudes, making it attractive as a feedstock." A trade sources said fuel oil had become "a bit economic as the price basis of MOPS has come off more than that of ICE Brent, which made it possible for independent refineries to replenish the barrels as a feedstock." Russian M100 fuel oil was offered at a premium of around $70-$75/mt against the MOPS 380 CST HSFO assessment, which was up from deals done at around $65-$70/mt last week, sources said. Some trading sources also said the tight crude import quota availability was the main reason behind the growing appetite of independent refineries for imported fuel oil, sources said.
Iran's Booming Oil Exports Threatened By Looming Gas Shortages | Iran International - A senior Iranian oil industry official has warned of the detrimental effects of the country’s gas shortages on its oil production. Erfan Afazeli, the chairman of the Iranian Federation of Petroleum Industry, explained to ILNA that Iran needs to inject gas to its oil reservoirs to maintain the production flow, warning if not, “it will result in significant damage." He said the necessary measures would help maintain or increase the pressure within the oil reservoir to push the oil towards the extraction wells; and would enhance oil recovery for the oil that would otherwise be left behind, known as Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR). The process is essential for maximizing the extraction of oil from a field. “Currently, our oil recovery factor is less than 20 percent,” he said, claiming that “every one percent increase in the oil recovery factor from oil fields will result in nearly one billion barrels of extra production. Therefore, in the event of the inability to inject gas, the amount of damage is unpredictable.” Iran’s Oil Minister Javad Owji claimed earlier in the month that the country is producing 3.4 million barrels per day (mb/d) of crude oil, about 1.2 mb/d more than in mid-2021. Stressing the significance of gas injection for both maintaining current production levels and increasing future production, Afazeli said that Iran’s enhanced oil recovery projects are not implemented due to a lack of know-how and insufficient capital. “Firstly, we lack the necessary technology for enhanced oil recovery. Secondly, and more importantly, we lack the capital required for these projects,” he said. He bemoaned the fact that currently a significant portion of the produced gas is wasted in the residential sector due to the absence of consumption optimization. Afazeli referred to North Pars Gas Field -- one of the biggest independent gas fields of the world located some 120 kilometers southeast of Bushehr province in water depths of 2 to 30 meters in the Persian Gulf. The field has the potential for increased gas extraction and injection. “For instance, with an investment of approximately $4 billion, North Pars can be brought into operation to extract and inject gas," he said. He warned that “without gas injection and pressure maintenance in the coming years, Iran will face a daily decrease of around 20 to 25 million cubic meters in gas production.” While he said current production and extraction is 600 million cubic meters of gas per day from South Pars, he warned that "it is certain that there will be a decline in production starting in a few years”. He suggested that to enhance recovery in oil and gas fields, "we need an investment of $80 billion, and this capital is contingent on cooperation with the world,” referring to the regime's economic and political isolation on the global stage. His remarks came as a confirmation to an Iran International article which warned that without re-injecting natural gas into oil deposits, some fields might become unproductive, leading to substantial economic losses for the country's oil sector.
India asks OPEC to ensure oil market stability - India, the world's third largest oil consumer, has asked oil producers cartelOPEC to maintain and ensure market stability for the benefit of consumres, producers and global economy. Oil Minister Hardeep Singh Puri said this at the 6th India-OPEC Energy Dialogue that took place on November 9 in Vienna, an official press statement said on Monday.The meeting was co-chaired by OPEC secretary general Haitham Al Ghais and Puri."The open and candid discussions at the meeting focused on key issues related to oil and energy markets with a specific emphasis on ensuring availability, affordability and sustainability, which are necessary in ensuring the stability of energy markets. The two sides discussed the short, medium and long-term outlooks for the industry and recognized the important role of India in global economic growth and energy demand," the statement said.At the meeting, Puri highlighted that as the third-largest energy consumer, crude oil importer and the fourth-largest global refiner, close ties between India and OPEC are not only essential but also natural."He added that as India remains on a trajectory of stable and robust economic growth, fostering deeper collaboration for the mutual benefit of both parties has the potential to contribute significantly to the long-term prosperity and stability of the global oil markets," the statement said. "In this context, he called on OPEC to continue playing its key role in maintaining and ensuring market stability for the benefits of consumers, producers and global economy."
Opec upgrades 2023 oil demand growth forecast -Opec upgraded its oil demand growth forecast for 2023 and said "exaggerated negative sentiments" explain the recent slide in oil prices. In its Monthly Oil Market Report (MOMR), published today, Opec revised up its 2023 oil demand growth forecast by 20,000 b/d from last month to 2.46mn b/d. This was mainly driven by third and fourth quarter upgrades to China's oil demand growth, which Opec now sees at 1.14mn b/d in 2023, up by 70,000 b/d. "Recent data confirm robust major global growth trends and healthy oil market fundamentals," it said. Opec said China's crude imports increasing to 11.4mn b/d in October and remained on track to reach a record this year, "despite the overblown negative sentiment" regarding the country's oil demand. It said India's crude imports will pick up in the fourth quarter to reach a record high this year. Opec revised up its fourth quarter global oil demand forecast by 150,000 b/d compared with last month, to 103.28mn b/d. It kept its 2024 oil demand growth forecast unchanged at 2.25mn b/d. The group said the recent fall in oil prices was "mainly driven by financial market speculators" that "sharply reduced their net long positions over the month of October, compared to the late September." Front month Ice Brent has been on a downward spiral in the past few weeks, falling from around $93/bl in mid-October to around $82/bl as of midday London time today. The group increased its non-Opec liquids supply growth forecast for this year by 100,000 b/d and once again upgraded its supply forecast for Russia. It now sees non-Opec liquids supply rising by 1.78mn b/d this year, compared with a 1.68mn b/d increase in last month's forecast. The revision was mainly driven by upgrades to Russian, US and Brazilian supply, partly offset by downward revisions from Canada and Norway. Opec expects sanctions-hit Russia to produce 10.61mn b/d of liquids in 2023, 80,000 b/d more than in last month's projection. It forecasts Russian supply will remain at 10.61mn b/d next year. Opec's call on its members' crude was revised down by 50,000 b/d in 2023 and 2024 to 29.08mn b/d and 29.88mn b/d, respectively. The group produced 27.9mn b/d of crude last month, up by 80,000 b/d from September, according to an average of secondary sources that includes Argus.
Oil Rebounds After OPEC Lifts Global Oil Demand Outlook -- Oil futures moved higher on Monday at the start of a new trading week. Investors looked past Moody Investors Service's U.S. credit rating downgrade ahead of another deadline to reach a debt ceiling agreement on Capitol Hill to instead focus on the outlook for fuel demand following upbeat projections from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. Saudi-led OPEC dismissed an "exaggerated negative sentiment" on the oil markets, blaming the recent decline in oil prices on speculators and hedge fund managers. Oil prices have declined in each of the past three weeks, sending the international crude benchmark Brent contract below the $80-a- barrel (bbl) mark on Nov. 9 for the first time since mid-summer. In its Monthly Oil Market Report released Monday morning, OPEC asserts physical market fundamentals are "strong and supportive" due to solid demand growth in China and India -- Asia's two largest oil consuming nations. "Despite the overblown negative sentiment in the market regarding China's oil demand performance, and global oil market in general, the latest data shows Chinese crude imports increasing to 11.4 million barrels per day (bpd) in October and remaining on track to reach a new annual record high for this year," according to OPEC's MOMR. As such, OPEC lifted its global oil demand growth outlook to 2.5 million bpd this year, up from 2.44 million bpd in the previous month's outlook. OPEC said despite healthy and supportive market fundamentals, financial market speculators have sharply reduced their net long positions over the month of October compared to late September, particularly in NYMEX West Texas Intermediate futures and options contracts. The producer group pointed to data that showed hedge funds and other money managers sold an equivalent of 161 million bbl and 43 million bbl of NYMEX WTI and ICE Brent futures and options contracts, respectively. In total, they have sold an equivalent of more than 200 million bbl of oil since late September, reducing their bullish positions by 37%. In broader markets, investors seemed to shrug off Moody's weekend downgrade for the outlook on U.S. credit rating, with the agency lowering the credit rating from stable to negative ahead of a potential federal government shutdown on Friday, Nov. 17. The key drivers for the outlook change are the downside risks to U.S. fiscal strength and high interest rates that are expected to sustain large fiscal deficits in the near-term, which, in turn, will significantly weaken debt affordability for the U.S. government. "Continued political polarization within U.S. Congress raises the risk that successive governments will not be able to reach consensus on a fiscal plan to slow the decline in debt affordability," said Moody's. The credit rating agency maintained however U.S. long-term and foreign-currency country ceilings at a AAA rating, citing the central roles of the U.S. dollar and Treasury bond market in the global financial system among other factors. At settlement, NYMEX December WTI futures added $1.09 to $78.26 bbl, with January WTI closing the session with a $0.07 bbl discount against the front-month contract. ICE January Brent futures settled the session $1.09 higher at $82.52 bbl, while the next month February contract expanded the discount to the prompt month to $0.33 bbl. NYMEX December RBOB futures rallied to $2.2359 gallon, up $0.0464, and NYMEX December ULSD futures advanced $0.0962 to $2.8393 gallon.
The Oil Market on Wednesday Erased Some of its Recent Gains Following the Larger Than Expected Builds in U.S. Crude Stocks - The oil market on Wednesday erased some of its recent gains following the larger than expected builds in U.S. crude stocks. The oil market traded to a high of $78.77 in overnight trading amid the news that China’s economic activity grew in October as industrial output increased at a faster pace and retail sales growth surpassed expectations. However, weighing on demand was a decline in China’s refinery throughput in October amid weakening industrial fuel demand. The crude market erased its gains ahead of the release of the EIA’s petroleum stock report on Wednesday morning. It extended its losses to $1.95 as it sold off to a low of $76.31 on the close following the release of the inventory report, which showed a build of 3.6 million barrels in the week ending November 10th while U.S. domestic production remained at a record 13.2 million bpd. The December WTI contract settled down $1.60 to $76.66 and the January Brent contract settled down $1.29 at $81.18. Meanwhile, the product markets ended the session in mixed territory, with the heating oil market settling up 3.16 cents at $2.8687 and the RB market settling down 2.1 cents at $2.2018. The EIA reported that total U.S. crude oil inventories in the week ending November 10th increased by 3.6 million barrels. It reported that East Coast crude stocks increased by 800,000 barrels to 9.5 million barrels, the highest level since November 2021. The Financial Times reported that Denmark will be tasked with inspecting and potentially blocking tankers carrying Russian oil through its waters under new European Union plans. The FT said that Denmark would target tankers carrying Russian oil that did not have Western insurance, a step that would hit Russian oil export income hard while impacting Russian oil production and refinery business. In response to the report, the Kremlin said it was necessary to caution everyone that the rules of international commercial shipping needed to be observed after the Financial Times reported that Denmark could block Russian oil from reaching world markets. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that he had no information about such a move. When asked if Russia might escort tankers with Russian oil if Denmark moved ahead with the alleged plan, he said that Russia did not make such grave decisions based on newspaper reports. A spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, said that all vessels, including Russian ones, has free passage through the Baltic Sea and said that any attempt to violate international law on the free movement of shipping was dangerous. Amrita Sen, co-founder of consultancy Energy Aspects, said Saudi Arabia is expected to extend its additional voluntary supply cuts to at least the first quarter, if not the first half of 2024. She said current oil prices are not low enough to push OPEC+ to deepen supply cuts in 2024. The next OPEC+ ministerial meeting is scheduled for November 26th to discuss market outlook. IIR Energy said U.S. oil refiners are expected to shut in 787,000 bpd of capacity in the week ending November 17th, increasing available refining capacity by 602,000 bpd. It reported that offline capacity is expected to fall to 264,000 bpd in the week ending November 24th.
Chinese Refinery Slowdown, US Output Surge Drive Global Oil Prices Down 5% -Global oil prices fell by nearly 5% Thursday, continuing a nearly two month decline amid rising U.S. oil supply and sluggish Chinese refinery output.U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude (WTI) prices were down by 4.75% as of 12:40 PM (EST) on Thursday, at $73.02 per barrel.WTI prices were $93.68 per barrel at the close of business on Sept. 27; current prices reflect a 22% decline over that seven-week period.The UK-origin Brent crude index was down by 4.80% Thursday ($77.28 per barrel), marking a 18% decline since its Sept. 27 peak.Despite prior projections of persistently high prices in the wake of OPEC+ production cuts and the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas War, global crude oil prices have followed a downward trajectory in response to increased oil output from non-OPEC+ members and news of slowing consumption in China.U.S. crude oil stockpiles rose by 3.6 million barrels in the week leading up to Nov. 10, the Energy Information Agency disclosed Wednesday, doubling experts' estimated predictions.The U.S. has produced record levels of crude oil in 2023, according to official data. Nationwide oil production topped 13 million barrels per day in October for the first time ever.The U.S. is the world's largest producer of crude oil and natural gas, with a total annual oil output comparable to that of the next largest producers, Russia and Saudi Arabia, combined.Slowing oil prices are likely to provide a further inflationary cushion; U.S. consumer prices were unchanged in October, the Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Tuesday.
Oil Sinks Into Bear Market as Robust Supply Pressures OPEC+ -- Oil headed for a fourth weekly loss after sinking into a bear market as signs of healthy supplies and rising stockpiles offset attempts by OPEC+ leaders Saudi Arabia and Russia to keep declines in check. West Texas Intermediate traded near $73 a barrel after dropping more than 20% from a high in September. Global benchmark Brent plunged almost 5% on Thursday. The declines followed a build in US crude inventories, and were likely amplified by automated selling programs. Crude’s run of four straight weekly declines — the longest losing streak since May — has come despite collective and voluntary supply cuts by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies. The losses have also been abetted by the evaporation of an Israel-Hamas war risk premium as fears the conflict would expand and disrupt oil supplies have so far not eventuated. The International Energy Agency said earlier this week that production growth means the global market won’t be as tight as had been expected this quarter, adding pressure on OPEC+ ahead of a meeting on its supply policy on Nov. 26. “We believe that OPEC will ensure that Brent oil prices end up in a $80-to-$100 range in 2024 by ensuring a moderate deficit and leveraging its pricing power,” Goldman Sachs Group Inc. analysts including Daan Struyven said in a note. The latest selloff was driven by non-OPEC supply topping expectations, they said. Data midweek showed nationwide US crude stockpiles expanded for a fourth week to hit the highest level since August. Some of that increase came at the key hub in Cushing, Oklahoma, where holdings expanded by more than 8%. There have also been some clouds on the demand horizon. Figures from China, the world’s largest importer of crude, showed that refiners cut daily processing rates in October as apparent oil demand fell from a month earlier. Meanwhile, US unemployment benefits rose to the highest level in almost two years, signaling a slowdown in the world’s biggest crude consumer. “The string of weak macro data, coupled with rising US crude stockpiles, triggered the sell-down in oil,” said Han Zhong Liang, investment strategist at Standard Chartered Plc. WTI prices are likely to be sluggish on the back of a slowing global economy, he added. Pricing patterns along the futures curve point to looser conditions. The spread between Brent’s two nearest contracts was 5 cents a barrel in contango — where near-term prices are below longer-dated ones — compared with more than $1 a barrel in backwardation a month ago.
Oil Futures Rebound After Selloff, Still Post 4th Weekly Loss -- After Thursday's steep selloff sent oil futures into a bear market, West Texas Intermediate and Brent crude retraced most of the losses on Friday, rallying 4% as the U.S. dollar index pulled back and traders looked ahead to the meeting among OPEC+ ministers that could deliver deeper production cuts to their supply accord. Despite Friday's rebound, the oil complex failed to break a four-week losing streak, with both WTI and Brent contracts falling more than 20% since their September highs. In technical terms, the oil market has entered a bear market. A combination of rising inventories in the United States, lower refinery runs in China and production gains outside of OPEC+ prompted investors to broadly reassess fundamentals in the physical oil market. Furthermore, the unwinding of geopolitical risk premium tied to the Oct. 7 surprise attack by Hamas on Israeli civilians added to bearish sentiment. This week's Energy Information Administration inventory report exacerbated the collapse of oil prices on Thursday, revealing commercial crude oil inventories in the U.S. increased by a massive 19.6 million barrels (bbl) in the four weeks ending Nov. 10. Domestic oil production, meanwhile, remained at a record high 13.2 million barrels per day (bpd). Faced with these headwinds, OPEC+ ministers are reportedly considering deeper production cuts when the group meets on Nov. 26, according to a Reuters report citing sources close to negotiations. Saudi Arabia, Russia and other OPEC+ producers have already pledged to extend a total of 3.66 million bpd in production cuts through the end of 2024. Additionally, Russia, and Saudi Arabia, the group's two largest producers, agreed to a voluntary 1.3 million bpd in production and export reductions through year's end. One OPEC+ source cited in the Reuters report said the existing curbs might not be sufficient to backstop volatility in the market and that the group would likely analyze if deeper cuts could be implemented. On the macroeconomic front, the number of Americans filing for initial unemployment claims jumped to a three-month-high 231,000 in the most recent week after rising for each but one of the past five weeks, according to data released Thursday from the U.S. Labor Department. Continued jobless claims, a proxy for the number of Americans receiving unemployment benefits on a recurring basis rose to a two-year-high 1.87 million in a clear sign of a growing slack in the labor market. Combined with moderation in consumer spending, a softer labor market doesn't bode well for U.S. gasoline demand heading into the holiday season. The most recent data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration showed gasoline demand nosedived 544,000 bpd for the first week of November to 8.949 million bpd, 103,000 bpd or 1.2% below last year's level. At settlement, NYMEX December WTI futures rebounded $2.99 to $75.89 bbl, with January WTI holding its premium against the front-month contract at $0.15. Lending support to the WTI contract, the U.S. dollar retreated 0.42% against a basket of foreign currencies to 103.795. ICE January Brent futures jumped $3.19 to $80.16 bbl and the next month's February contract settled the session at $80.50 bbl. NYMEX December RBOB futures added $0.0834 to $2.1845 gallon and NYMEX December ULSD futures gained $0.0223 to $2.7725 gallon.
US Official Says Up To Seven Killed in Latest US Airstrike in Eastern Syria - A US official told Reuters on Tuesday that up to seven people were killed in the US airstrikes in eastern Syria on Sunday that targeted Shia militias.If confirmed, the casualties are the first known deaths since the Biden administration began launching airstrikes in eastern Syria as US troops in the region have come under a spate of attacks due to US support of Israel’s onslaught on Gaza.The Pentagon said Tuesday that it’s still assessing the aftermath of the airstrikes. “We are aware that there were IRGC-affiliated members in the proximity of the facilities that were struck by our aircraft. But I don’t have more on casualty numbers or anything else to read out,” said Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh.Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said the strikes targeted facilities “used by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Iran-affiliated groups” at two sites in eastern Syria’s Deir Ezzor province.The US official speaking to Reuters did not share any details about the people who were killed. The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights previously said that eight people were killed in the strikes and described them as “pro-Iran fighters,” including at least one Syrian and Iraqi nationals, but the SOHR report has not been confirmed.Attacks on US bases in Iraq and Syria have continued since the airstrikes were launched on Sunday, as Shia militia leaders have warned they’re not backing down until there’s a durable ceasefire in Gaza.The Pentagon said on Tuesday that the total number of attacks on US bases in Syria and Iraq since October 17 has climbed to 56. At least 59 US troops have been injured, including 32 listed with “non-serious” injuries and 27 suffering from traumatic brain injuries.
Israel says it is carrying out operation inside al-Shifa hospital - The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on Tuesday said forces were carrying out an operation inside of al-Shifa hospital, the largest medical facility in Gaza that Israeli officials said is a major base of operations for Hamas. “Forces are carrying out a precise and targeted operation against Hamas in a specified area in the Shifa Hospital, based on intelligence information and an operational necessity,” the IDF wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. Israel has been fighting outside al-Shifa for days, part of several clashes at hospitals and health care sites across Gaza City, which has alarmed humanitarian groups and the World Health Organization. Israel has said al-Shifa is the biggest base of operations for Hamas, the Palestinian militant group it is aiming to dismantle for launching a deadly Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel that killed 1,200 people. Hamas also took about 239 hostages. While Hamas disputes the claims it is operating inside of hospitals like al-Shifa, the U.S. shared declassified intelligence with reporters on Tuesday that it says shows Hamas does operate out of hospitals across Gaza. Israeli forces undertaking the operation inside al-Shifa includes medical teams and Arab speakers who have been trained “to prepare for this complex and sensitive environment, with the intent that no harm is caused to the civilians being used by Hamas as human shields,” the IDF said in the post on X. The IDF said officials also coordinated with hospital staff for evacuations before soldiers went inside the complex, and issued calls in the past 12 hours for all military activity to cease. “Unfortunately, they did not,” the IDF wrote. “We call upon all Hamas terrorists present in the hospital to surrender.” The fighting around al-Shifa in the past few days has already damaged the facility, which has reportedly run out of water, food and electricity. Some patients without ventilators have died, according to Doctors Without Borders, a humanitarian group. Also on Tuesday, Palestinian health officials claimed there were mass graves being dug around al-Shifa. The Palestinian Health Ministry, which is run by Hamas, said Israel has bombed intensive care units at the hospital and power outages have endangered patients. “The Israeli occupation puts all those present in the Shifa Medical Complex in the circle of death after being surrounded by all sides and violent bombings and intense shooting continue for two hours,” the Ministry wrote on Facebook.
Gaza Doctors Plead for Help Saving Premature Babies at al-Shifa Hospital - Doctors at Gaza’s al-Shifa hospital are pleading for help as the medical facility has ceased functioning after its power failed over the weekend amid an Israeli siege. The medical staff has refused to evacuate the hospital due to fears that the approximately 700 hundred patients they would leave behind will die. Among the at-risk patients are newborn and premature babies who were taken off incubators due to the power outage. Dr. Ahmed Mokhallalati, al-Shifa’s head of plastic surgery, told ABC News that three out of 39 babies in the hospital’s neonatal unit have died since the incubators stopped working on Saturday. Dr. Shireen Noman Abed, a neonatologist, said she expects all the babies to die due to a lack of clean water to mix formula with. “Most of them are pre-term babies who need incubators, who need electricity, who need special food, who need care,” she said. “We expect all to die because they don’t have water to prepare [formula] for them.”The three babies who died were among the 32 patients Gaza’s Health Ministry said lost their lives in the past three days due to power outages and Israeli siege. Israel is justifying its attack on the hospital by claiming a Hamas command center is underneath the facility, a claim strongly denied by Hamas and hospital staff.“The tanks are in front of the hospital. We are under full blockade. It’s a totally civilian area. Only hospital facility, hospital patients, doctors and other civilians staying in the hospital. Someone should stop this,” Mokhallalati said, according to Reuters. “They bombed the (water) tanks, they bombed the water wells, they bombed the oxygen pump as well. They bombed everything in the hospital. So we are hardly surviving. We tell everyone, the hospital is no more a safe place for treating patients. We are harming patients by keeping them here,” he added.The medical charity Doctors Without Borders put out a press release on Monday after getting in contact with one of its surgeons in al-Shifa. The surgeon detailed the situation at the hospital.“We don’t have electricity. There’s no water in the hospital. There’s no food. People will die in a few hours without functioning ventilators. In front of the main gate, there are many bodies. There are also injured patients; we can’t bring them inside,” the surgeon said. “When we sent an ambulance to bring the patients—a few meters away—and they attacked the ambulance. There are injured people around the hospital looking for medical care. We can’t bring them inside. There’s also a sniper who attacked patients, they have gunshot wounds. We operated on three of them.”The surgeon said the medical staff needs a guaranteed safe corridor to evacuate the hospital because some people who tried to leave were killed. “Inside Al-Shifa Hospital, there are injured patients and medical teams. If they give us guarantees and evacuate the patients first, we will evacuate,” the surgeon said.
Israel Will Ignore UN Security Council Resolution Calling for Pause in Fighting in Gaza - The UN Security Council passed a resolution on Wednesday that called for a temporary pause to the fighting in Gaza. Tel Aviv said the call for a short peace was a decision “disconnected from reality and holds no significance.”The resolution passed the UN’s most powerful body in a vote of 12-0. The US and UK did not vote for the motion because it did not condemn Hamas. Russia abstained over concerns that the resolution did not make a strong enough call for peace. Moscow’s representative said Washington is responsible for removing the word “ceasefire” from the text.The resolution called for “urgent and extended humanitarian pauses” in Gaza to allow aid to reach Palestinian civilians and for “the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages held by Hamas and other groups, especially children, as well as ensuring immediate humanitarian access.” The AP reports the language in the resolution was watered down.In response to the Security Council passing its first resolution on the war in Gaza, Tel Aviv said it would ignore the call for a humanitarian pause. “The decision is disconnected from reality and holds no significance,” Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan, said. “Israel already operates in Gaza according to international law, while Hamas terrorists will ignore the decision and certainly not act in accordance with it. Israel will continue its actions until the destruction of Hamas and the return of the kidnapped.”Tel Aviv has resisted all calls or agreements even to pause its onslaught against Gaza. VICE News reports Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected a hostage agreement because he wanted to free the captives using the Israeli military. “It’s clear the Israelis wanted a ground offensive underway before considering this proposal, which has been on the table since the first days of the conflict,” a regional diplomat said.A NATO official told the outlet, “Netanyahu can now look at the Israeli public and tell them his firm action with the ground offensive is what freed some hostages.” The source added, “[Netanyahu] sees a short-term political gain to arguing the offensive forced Hamas into concessions but he doesn’t seem to fear explaining how hostages might have died in air strikes while the same deal was available.”The New York Times reported on Wednesday that Tel Aviv raided the al-Shifa Hospital, the largest and most modern medical facility in Gaza, to pressure Hamas into accepting an agreement on Israeli terms. Tel Aviv has been pushing for a hostage release that includes as short a pause to fighting as possible.Israeli War Cabinet Minister Benny Gantz says even if Tel Aviv agrees to a short pause to military operations in Gaza, it plans to settle the war with its military. “Even if we are required to pause fighting in order to return our hostages, there will be no stopping the combat and the war until we achieve our goals,” he said.
Displacement and Killings Surge in West Bank, Amid Gaza War - A wave of murders, violence, and harassment waged against Palestinians has been unleashed by Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) personnel and illegal settlers alike in the occupied West Bank, according to the Time of Israel. Nearly 200 Palestinians have been killed, including 48 children, in the West Bank since Tel Aviv’s massive bombing campaign against the besieged Gaza Strip was launched last month.B’tselem, the premier Israeli human rights organization, reports that since the October 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel, 963 Palestinians have been displaced in these rampant attacks. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimates the number of people forced from their homes and villages is even higher.OCHA notes about 1,150 Palestinians from 15 herding communities have been uprooted by repressive movement restrictions imposed on Palestinians in the West Bank as well as the settler violence. Entire villages such as Radhem and Zanutah have been depopulated over the last month as well.In that same time, the Yesh Din organization estimates that there have been in excess of 185 attacks by settlers against Palestinians in more than 84 villages and towns. Times of Israel reports that in the wake of the current war, illegal West Bank settlers have been recruited by the army into six so-called regional defensive battalions.As the line between settlers and the military is obscured, violent attacks have escalated. Earlier this month, Haaretz reported that some of the settlers being inducted into these army militias, ostensibly formed to defend ultra-orthodox illegal colonies in the West Bank, may have criminal records.For example, in the village of Susya, a Palestinian shepherd named Ahmad Jabra Nawaja, was brutally beaten in front of his wife and daughters and threatened with death in the middle of the night by masked men in IDF uniforms, armed with M-16 assault rifles. They warned if he did not destroy structures on his property and leave his land, they would come back and kill him. “When he put the gun to my neck I was terrified. I thought he was going to shoot me, I thought it was over. My heart was beating like crazy,” Nawaja told the outlet. He says such incidents are the new reality in the West Bank, lamenting “We have nowhere else to go. We don’t have any alternative.” Additionally, deliberate destruction and sabotage of water tanks and solar panels has occurred in multiple Palestinian villages, according to B’tselem. For instance, in Susya, three water cisterns were damaged severely and rendered unusable after a man, believed to be a settler, using a tractor pushed rubble into them under the supervision of armed IDF soldiers. In a response to questions regarding the demolition, the Israeli army spokespersons unit stated, “IDF forces that came to Susya to carry out an engineering operation… on October 16 exceeded the boundaries of the actions that had been defined due to lack of coordination.” Peace Now, the Israeli activist group, has explained that Israel’s bombing campaign and ground invasion in Gaza, which has killed over 11,000 Palestinians, along with tensions at the northern border with Hezbollah, “created a new reality where the security system in the West Bank increasingly relies on settlers within the framework of operational activities, becoming more dependent on them.” The group adds, that “Ideological and violent settlers leverage the war to coerce the military for their own goals of expulsion and harm to Palestinians.” Settlers have murdered olive harvesters and then even killed people attending their funerals. OCHA says that, since the October 7th Hamas attack and the war on Gaza began, settler attacks on Palestinians have more than doubled. Itmar Ben-Gvir, the extremist settler and Israel’s National Security minister, announced last month that Tel Aviv would purchase and distribute 10,000 assault rifles to Israeli citizens including within the West Bank’s illegal settlements.According to Axios, the US State Department is set to approve a $34 million sale of 24,000 M-16 semiautomatic and automatic rifles after reportedly receiving dubious assurances from Tel Aviv that the weapons will not be provided to settlers.Concurrently, per the Palestinian Prisoners Society, almost 2,800 Palestinians have been rounded up by Israeli security forces since October 7 as a huge arrest campaign has been ongoing in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Middle East Eye reports the “compiled figures include arrests made from homes, military checkpoints,” and Palestinians forced into submission “under pressure” by Israeli forces.
Israel Tells Palestinians To Evacuate City in Southern Gaza - Israeli forces have already pushed hundreds of thousands of the north half of Gaza into the enclave’s south. It is unclear where Tel Aviv expects the people to flee.Israeli aircraft dropped leaflets on a city in the southern half of the Gaza Strip, instructing Palestinians to flee the area. The evacuation notice suggests that Tel Aviv plans to ramp up its military operation in south Gaza. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant confirmed a ground invasion of the area would happen at some point.In the first days of Israel’s military operation in Gaza, it instructed Palestinians to flee to the southern half of the besieged enclave. At the time, human rights groups warned the forced displacement of the million people who live in the northern half of Gaza would create a humanitarian crisis. The Norwegian Refugee Council slammed Tel Aviv, calling the evacuation order a “war crime of forcible transfer.”As Israel’s onslaught in Gaza concludes its sixth week, the northern half of the strip has been decimated. While south Gaza has been bombed, Israel’s main ground operations have been limited to the north. The UN estimates that of the 2.3 million people living in Gaza, 1.5 million have been displaced. Around half of the population of the strip are children. Over 11,000 Palestinians have already been killed, including 4,500 children. Tel Aviv says 50 Israeli soldiers have been killed during ground operations inside of Gaza. Now, Tel Aviv appears ready to turn the focus of its military to the south. The Israeli air force dropped leaflets on Wednesday night in eastern areas of Khan Younis, a city in southern Gaza, ordering people to leave their homes and shelters “for their own safety.”The leaflets suggest an invasion of south Gaza will begin soon. Gallant saidthe ground operation will eventually “include both the north and south. We will strike Hamas wherever it is.” However, he did not indicate when he would order his forces into the southern half of the strip.Some of the Palestinians sheltering in Khan Younis fled northern Gaza last month. The UN explains that patients have been evacuated from the Al Quds hospital in Gaza City to a hospital in Khan Younis. According to the AP, there is not a clear plan in place for where the Palestinians should go. “It’s not clear where else they could go, as Egypt refuses to allow a mass transfer onto its soil,” the AP reports. Cairo sees opening its borders to the Palestinians creating permanent refugees and participating in Tel Aviv’s ethnic cleansing of Gaza.
Israel's Other War: Ethnic Cleansing in the South Caucasus - – Over the past month, legacy and social media have been saturated with reports of the Netanyahu regime’s war on Gaza, which is being met with growing calls from the international community to invoke the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.Less known, however, is the role the Israeli government has played in another genocide that took place in West Asia only a month and a half ago. This genocide, little noted in the Western press, involved the ancient Christian community of Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh, known within Armenia as the Republic of Artsakh, that was ethnically cleansed by the Ilham Aliyev, the Shia dictator of Azerbaijan, in late September and early October. The muted response to Azerbaijan’s crime might plausibly be chalked up to the strength of its well-funded and influential lobby in Washington which profits off of the oil and gas revenue generated by SOCAR, the State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic. SOCAR has links to the Podesta Group (co-founder John Podesta currently serves as a senior adviser to President Biden), lobbying powerhouse BGR Government Affairs, LLC, as well as numerous think tanks and academics associated with, among others, The Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and the American Foreign Policy Council.Yet another reason for the subdued response by Washington is the well documented ‘special relationship’ between the 51st US state, Israel, and Azerbaijan. A discussion I had last week with the Armenian academic Dr. Benyamin Poghosyan, who serves as Chairman of the Center for Political and Economic Strategic Studies and Senior Research Fellow on Foreign Policy at the Applied Policy Research Institute (APRI) of Armenia, shed some light on the role the Israeli government and its defense industry has played in enabling Azerbaijan – and why.The relationship between the two countries began to deepen around 15 years ago when Azerbaijan, flush with revenue from its oil and gas deposits in the Caspian basin, began looking to purchase advanced weapons systems.According to Poghosyan, “as late as September 2023, just before the most recent Azerbaijani attackseveral cargo planes went to Israel and came back to Azerbaijan full of weapons. And there is even information that Israel continued to supply weapons to Azerbaijan even after October 7th.”The AP reports that it is estimated that Israel has supplied Azerbaijan with “nearly 70% of its arsenal between 2016 and 2020.”And just this week it was reported that Azerbaijan inked a $1.2 billion dollar deal with Israel Aerospace Industries to purchase the Barak MX air defense system, described as “a modular air defense system… designed to address missile and aircraft threats.”According to Poghosyan, Azerbaijan has agreed “to allow Israel to use their territory for anti-Iranian activities. And we are speaking about covert activities, foreign intelligence… Azerbaijan gave the green light to Israeli special services, especially its foreign intelligence service, to do whatever they want in Azerbaijan. Of course now they have access to that security zone around Nagorno-Karabakh, which borders Iran.”Poghosyan notes that in recent years (in the aftermath of its earlier attempt to subjugate Nagorno Karabakh in 2020) Azerbaijan constructed two airports in the territory it gained around Nagorno Karabakh. “They are,” says Poghosyan “supposedly civilian airports, yet they are located very close to Azerbaijani-Iranian border – a distance of 30, 40 kilometers from the border. There are a lot of reports that Israeli military intelligence or foreign intelligence operatives are using these airports for operations against Iran.”Israel’s role in assisting Azerbaijan’s ethnic cleansing of Nagorno-Karabakh is well known inside Israel, which it must be said, conducts a far more robust debate over Israel’s foreign policy than is allowed here in the United States.The estimable Israeli newspaper Haaretz recently editorialized that Israel has, in their words, “its fingerprints” all over Azerbaijan’s ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh. Haaretz also contends that “Israel hasn’t just supplied Azerbaijan with arms. It has also helped it distort history” by its refusal to recognize the Armenian genocide, which the Israeli regime merely defines as a “tragedy.”
Ukraine is waking up to reality -- Ukraine won the war of 2022. That was the year of Ukraine’s victory. Putin’s troops had to withdraw from Kyiv and Kherson, and they ran from Kharkiv. But the year 2023 has not been so good. Russian generals have learned from their mistakes, and the learning curve was quite steep. All while engaging Ukraine in a bloody war of attrition at Bakhmut, Russia erected impregnable defenses in the south. They laid minefields. Not minefields but minefields — hundreds of miles long. What’s more, Russia fooled the satellites. The Ukrainian south is basically a steppe crisscrossed by strips of forest planted to prevent erosion. They are called exactly that: lesopolosa, “forest strip.” Turns out that every forest strip was fortified by Russia. Dug inside out, stuffed with troops and strongholds. The Ukrainians, relying on the expected digital transparency of the battlefield, missed the preparations. Still, Ukrainian troops advanced. They carved out a bridgehead, crushed through the first line of Russian defenses and closed in on a major railway hub of Tokmak. Russians counterattacked, trying at all costs to regain lost ground, smashing their reserves against the new frontline. Ukraine had never seen the likes of it during the whole war. It was hand-to-hand combat in trenches, with enormous losses to Russia and every tactical advantage on the Ukrainian side; the Ukrainians were gutting Russian reserves. But the attacks were not futile: while Putin was spending his best troops, in the rear new formidable defense lines were created, new mines were sown. The current attack on Avdiivka is following the same pattern; it’s leading to incredible Russian losses, but it stopped Ukrainian hopes of taking Tokmak. Russia started to properly use electronic countermeasures and new precision Lancet drones. Russian choppers are now staying out of range of Ukrainian air defenses, using an analog of the famous Israeli Spike NLOS (non-line of sight) missile with a nine-mile range. Putin has an enormous stock of obsolete non-guided air bombs. These were once useless; Russia only had total air superiority in Mariupol, which Russian planes bombed mercilessly. Not anymore — nowadays these bombs are fitted with primitive guidance systems, and planes launch them from a safe distance of 30 miles. It’s cheap and primitive, but in war, if it works and it’s simple, it’s the best solution. Not exactly regained air superiority, but close. The war is a bloody stalemate that can hardly be budged. Were Putin to achieve some success, it would be immediately countered by a new cache of U.S. weapons: e.g. ATACMS have recently taken out a dozen Russian choppers right on the airfield. Were Ukrainians to advance substantially, Putin would mobilize more troops. But it is not just the front lines. The situation is much more serious. Western sanctions did not destroy Russia’s economy — rather, they repositioned it. Oil once sold to Europe now goes to China and India via a fleet of “ghost tankers.” In September, Russia got $18 billion in oil revenues. Putin is planning to spend around $110 billion on war in 2024, and that’s just the open part of the budget. Ukraine will be lucky if it gets $60 billion from all its allies combined. What’s even more amazing, the Russian economy is rebounding. The Western-oriented creative class in big cities is hard up, but almost every other stratum of Russian society is better off. Poor people from destitute Russian regions are, for the first time ever, earning good money by enlisting to serve. If they are killed, their families are getting money they never dreamt of. Salaries at military factories are up, and regular salaries are up too because of the shortage of labor. It is a sort of military Keynesianism. Meanwhile, in Ukraine itself, things are not so bright. The initial incredible enthusiasm has waned, superseded by the usual trench horrors. People are hiding from conscription, the U.S. insists on increasing the sheer size of Ukrainian army, and Kyiv counters by asking for modern weapons that permit to keep the military smaller. Soldiers on the ground are seeking whom to blame, and the usual scapegoat is corruption.
Russia labels Moscow Times a ‘foreign agent’ -The Russian Justice Ministry labeled The Moscow Times, a popular English-language online newspaper, as a “foreign agent” on Friday, continuing a national crackdown on opposition media.The Moscow Times, founded after the downfall of the Soviet Union in 1992, is popular among Russian ex-patriots, foreigners in Russia and those critical of the Russian government.The “foreign agent” designation subjects companies to increased financial and legal scrutiny. It is also commonly used to hurt a company’s credibility, according to The Associated Press.The paper’s newsroom was relocated from Moscow to The Netherlands in 2022 after new media regulations following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Its website was banned in Russia weeks after the invasion began, and is currently accessible in the country via a constantly-rotating list of proxy addresses communicated to readers through Telegram.Friday’s announcement follows a trend of using “foreign agent” status to limit media, including placing the label on Nobel Prize-winning editor Dmitry Muratov in September. The country shut down his publication, Novaya Gazeta, days later.Russia has prominently jailed multiple western journalists accusing them of espionage, including The Wall Street Journal’s Evan Gershkovich and Radio Free Europe’s Alsu Kurmasheva — both Americans.
Japan economy shrinks far more than expected in Q3 - Japan's economy shrank at its fastest annualized quarterly pace in two years in the July-September period, provisional government data showed Wednesday, as rising domestic inflation weighed on consumer demand, adding to export woes as demand waned. Both declines were Japan's first in four quarters and are part of an unstable trend since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020 that has seen periods of economic expansion alternating with contraction. The latest growth print underscores the policy challenges that Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Bank of Japan Governor Kazuo Ueda face in the coming months. Provisional gross domestic product fell 2.1% in the third quarter compared to a year ago, after expanding 4.8% in April-June. This was its biggest contraction since the third quarter of 2021 and a bigger contraction than the expected 0.6% decline in a Reuters poll. The GDP deflator in the third quarter stood at 5.1% on an annualized basis. The world's third-largest economy also contracted 0.5% in the third quarter from the previous quarter, after expanding 1.2% in the second quarter from the first. This was also a larger contraction than expectations for 0.1% contraction. "The biggest drag on activity came from stock building, which subtracted 0.3%-pts from GDP growth last quarter. Even so, it's worth noting that there was a concurrent, broad-based decline in private demand," said Marcel Thieliant, Capital Economics' head of Asia-Pacific coverage. The weaker GDP print was partly driven by weaker than expected domestic capital expenditure, which contracted 0.6% in the third quarter from the second quarter — as opposed to expectations for a 0.3% expansion, according to the same government release. Private consumption in Japan was flat in the third quarter from the previous quarter, as domestic and foreign demand weighed on the economy. "With real household incomes set to fall at least until the middle of next year, that bodes ill for consumer spending, which we expect to grind to a standstill next year," Thieliant added. The Japanese yen was trading at about 150.6 against the U.S. dollar in mid-morning trade Wednesday, coming off its lowest in a year while still languishing near its lowest in more than three decades. The fragility of the Japanese economy underscores the complexities for its central bank as Ueda mulls the feasibility of its ultra-easy monetary policy. It also bolsters the case for the Japanese government's 13.2 trillion yen ($87 billion) economic package aimed at curbing rising living costs. It's expected to feature subsidies and payouts to low-income households to mitigate soaring energy and utility bills.
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