RSN: Bess Levin | Obama Privately Warned Reporters Trump Would Destroy America in 8 Years in Last Days in Office
02 October 22
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Though for some reason he thought four years would be “okay.”
While Obama did choose to start talking toward the end of 2020—warning that August that Trump would “tear our democracy down” if given the chance—the remarks that he reportedly made in private were the ones people probably would have appreciated hearing the most, wherein he described the 45th president as “a madman,” “a racist, sexist pig,” a “corrupt motherfucker,” and a “fucking lunatic.” And apparently, he had other things to say about the guy too.
Bloomberg News reports that in his final days as president, Obama warned reporters, in an off-the-record conversation, that while America would be “okay” from four years of Trump, “eight years would be a problem. I would be concerned about a sustained period in which some of these norms have broken down and started to corrode.” (The remarks were revealed in a transcript that was released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed in 2017 by reporter Jason Leopold.) Trump has, of course, been threatening to make another bid for office for some time now, which, if successful, would give him those eight years Obama warned against. While that would obviously be extremely bad for humanity, one might argue that the country is already quite worse for wear after just the first four, and that Obama was a little too optimistic about how Trump’s first term would shake out.
Elsewhere in the conversation, Obama told reporters that he didn’t believe Trump was keen on starting any wars, though he would probably be into “bombing the heck out of terrorists.” (In early January 2020, the Trump administration assassinated Iranian military leader Qasem Soleimani; Trump would later complain that he didn’t get enough credit for this, and that he should have because Soleimani was a much “bigger” terrorist than Osama bin Laden, whose 9/11 attacks he bizarrely attempted to downplay.) “I think his basic view—his formative view of foreign policy is shaped by his interactions with Malaysian developers and Saudi princes, and I think his view is, ‘I’m going to go around the world making deals and maybe suing people,’” Obama said during the chat. “But it’s not, ‘let me launch big wars that tie me up.’ And that’s not what his base is looking [for] from him anyway.” According to Bloomberg, Obama said his biggest fear about his successor was the politicization of the nation’s top law enforcement agency. “I would be like white on rice on the Justice Department,” Obama told reporters. “I’d be paying a lot of attention to that. And if there is even a hint of politically motivated investigations, prosecutions, et cetera, I think you guys have to really be on top of that.” Trump, of course, spent much of his time in office demanding the DOJ investigate his political rivals, including Obama, Joe Biden, and Hillary Clinton. As Bloomberg notes, “Geoffrey Berman, the former US attorney for the Southern District of New York, recently accused Trump’s Justice Department of meddling in prosecutions and pressuring his office to launch politically motivated probes into Trump’s adversaries.”
In addition to opining on Trump, Obama reportedly offered his thoughts on the GOP, saying that “the Republican Party now is ideologically completely incoherent. You don’t know what they stand for. So what’s bound them together is opposition to me, opposition to a fantastical creature called the liberal who looks down on them and just feeds all that regional resentment. And there are a handful of issues, like guns, that trigger that sense of ‘these folks aren’t like us and they don’t like us and act like us.’ And there’s obviously some racial elements that get put out into that stew.”
Ginni Thomas swears she never once discussed her attempt to overturn the 2020 election with her husband, Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas
And if you believe that, we’ve got a bridge to sell you. Per The New York Times:
During her interview, Ms. Thomas, who goes by Ginni, repeated her assertion that the 2020 election was stolen from President Donald J. Trump, [Rep. Bennie] Thompson said, a belief she insisted upon in late 2020 as she pressured state legislators and the White House chief of staff to do more to try to invalidate the results. In a statement she read at the beginning of her testimony, Ms. Thomas denied having discussed her postelection activities with her husband.
In her statement, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times, Ms. Thomas called it “an ironclad rule” that she and Justice Thomas never speak about cases pending before the Supreme Court. “It is laughable for anyone who knows my husband to think I could influence his jurisprudence—the man is independent and stubborn, with strong character traits of independence and integrity,” she added.
In March, shortly before Thomas’s incredibly damning text messages with Mark Meadows regarding the 2020 election were revealed, she admitted in an interview that she’d attended the “Stop the Steal” rally that preceded the January 6 attack on the Capitol, adding, of her husband, “Like so many married couples, we share many of the same ideals, principles, and aspirations for America.” But she also insisted: “We have our own separate careers, and our own ideas and opinions too. Clarence doesn’t discuss his work with me, and I don’t involve him in my work.” Which was about as believable then as it is now.
TFW you are actually claiming that a man whose entire persona revolves around bullying people, and whose personality inspired one of the film industry’s most famous bullies, is…a victim of bullying
Ukraine says Lyman's capture will allow Kyiv to advance into the Luhansk region. (photo: Rodrigo Abd/AP)
Moscow says troops withdrawn from key city of Lyman to ‘advantageous lines’ following encirclement by Ukrainian forces.
The announcement on Saturday came a day after President Vladimir Putin proclaimed the annexation of four Ukrainian regions – including Donetsk, where Lyman is located – and placed them under Russia’s nuclear umbrella, at a ceremony condemned by Kyiv and the West as an “illegitimate farce”.
“In connection with the creation of a threat of encirclement, allied troops were withdrawn from the settlement of Krasny Liman to more advantageous lines,” Russia’s defence ministry said, using the Russian name of the city.
The Russian statement ended hours of official silence after Ukraine first said it had surrounded thousands of Russian troops in the area and then that its forces were inside the city.
Ukraine’s defence ministry wrote on Twitter that “almost all” the Russian troops in Lyman had either been captured or killed.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy later said in a video address that although the Ukrainian flag was flying in the city, “fighting is still going on there”.
He also indicated Ukrainian troops had taken the village of Torske on the main road out of Lyman to the east.
‘Drastic measures’
US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin meanwhile praised Ukraine’s capture of Lyman, which is 160km (100 miles) southeast of Kharkiv, saying it was an encouraging battlefield success that would create new “dilemmas” for Russia’s military.
“Absolutely, it’s significant. We’re very encouraged by what we’re seeing right now,” Austin told reporters at a news conference in Hawaii.
Russia has used Lyman as a logistics and transport hub for its operations in the north of the Donetsk region. Its capture would be Ukraine’s biggest battlefield gain since a counterattack in the northeastern Kharkiv region last month.
Austin noted that Lyman was positioned across supply lines that Russia has used to push its troops and materiel down to the south and to the west, as the Kremlin presses its more than seven-month-long invasion of Ukraine.
“And without those routes, it will be more difficult. So it presents a sort of a dilemma for the Russians going forward,” he said.
“And we think the Ukrainians have done great work to get there and to begin to occupy the city.”
Ukraine’s recent successes, however, have infuriated Putin allies such as Ramzan Kadyrov, the leader of Russia’s southern Chechnya region, who said he felt compelled to speak out.
“In my personal opinion, more drastic measures should be taken, right up to the declaration of martial law in the border areas and the use of low-yield nuclear weapons,” Kadyrov wrote on Telegram.
Other top Putin allies, including former President Dmitry Medvedev, have suggested Russia may need to resort to nuclear weapons, but Kadyrov’s call was the most urgent and explicit.
Putin said last week he was not bluffing when he said he was prepared to defend Russia’s “territorial integrity” with all available means, and on Friday made clear this extended to the new regions claimed by Moscow.
Washington says it would respond decisively to any use of nuclear weapons and has told Moscow of the “catastrophic consequences” it would face.
‘Psychologically very important’
Two Ukrainian soldiers taped the yellow-and-blue national flag to the Lyman welcome sign at an entrance to the city, a video posted by the president’s chief of staff showed.
“October 1. We’re unfurling our state flag and establishing it on our land. Lyman will be Ukraine,” one of the soldiers said.
Ukraine said controlling Lyman would allow Kyiv to advance into the Luhansk region, whose full capture Moscow announced in early July after weeks of grinding advances.
“Lyman is important because it is the next step towards the liberation of the Ukrainian Donbas. It is an opportunity to go further to Kreminna and Severodonetsk, and it is psychologically very important,” spokesperson Serhii Cherevatyi told Reuters.
Donetsk and Luhansk regions make up the wider Donbas region that has been a major focus for Russia since soon after the start of Moscow’s invasion on February 24 in what it calls a “special military operation” to demilitarise its neighbour.
Putin proclaimed the Donbas regions of Donetsk and Luhansk and the southern regions of Kherson and Zaporizhia to be Russian land on Friday – a swath of territory equal to about 18 percent of Ukraine’s total surface land area.
Ukraine and its Western allies branded Russia’s move as illegal. Kyiv promised to continue liberating its land from Russian forces and said it would not hold peace talks with Moscow while Putin remained president.
Meanwhile, on the Russian-annexed Crimean Peninsula, the governor of the city of Sevastopol announced an emergency situation at an airfield there. Explosions and huge billows of smoke could be seen by beachgoers in the Russian-held resort. Authorities said a plane rolled off the runway at the Belbek airfield and said ammunition on board had caught fire.
Ukrainian authorities accused Russian forces of targetting two humanitarian convoys in recent days, killing dozens of civilians.
In other developments, in an apparent attempt to secure Moscow’s hold on the newly annexed territory, Russian forces seized the director-general of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Ihor Murashov.
Ginni Thomas. (photo: AP)Lawmakers wanted to ask Thomas about her urging Trump White House and officials in several states to challenge the results of the 2020 election.
The committee wanted to interview Ginni Thomas about her advocacy for challenging the results of the 2020 election. The chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., told reporters after the session she repeated her opinion the election was stolen.
"She said that," Thompson told CNN.
Her lawyer, Mark Paoletta, issued a statement saying she answered the committee's questions, voiced her concerns about election fraud and condemned the violence of Jan. 6.
"As she has said from the outset, Mrs. Thomas has significant concerns about fraud and irregularities in the 2020 election," Paoletta said. "Beyond that, she played no role in any events after the 2020 election results."
Numerous public officials at federal and state levels investigated election results and found no widespread fraud, including Trump aides such as former Attorney General Bill Barr. Richard Donoghue, former acting deputy attorney general, said Trump provided an "arsenal of allegations" about election fraud that were all shot down, including a baseless claim about Italian satellites altering votes.
“The whole thing was very, very murky at best, and the video was absurd,” Donoghue told the House committee.
The committee has been eager to talk with Ginni Thomas because she sent dozens of text messages to former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows urging him to fight the results of the 2020 election.
Among the 29 messages, Ginni Thomas called Biden's win “the greatest Heist of our History” in a text on Nov. 10, 2020, according to The Washington Post.
“Do not concede,” Thomas wrote on Nov. 6, 2020. “It takes time for the army who is gathering for his back.”
In addition, Ginni Thomas urged Arizona state lawmakers to reverse former President Donald Trump's election loss in 2020 by choosing electors themselves. The Washington Post reported she also pressured Wisconsin lawmakers to do the same.
Her political activism has raised concerns in the past about possible influence on Clarence Thomas and prompted calls for him to recuse himself from cases dealing with the Capitol attack. But Ginni Thomas said she doesn’t discuss cases with her husband, and he hasn’t commented on possible conflicts.
Ginni Thomas acknowledged attending Trump’s rally Jan. 6, 2021, before a mob of his supporters attacked the Capitol. But she said she left the rally because it was cold and never went to the Capitol.
Wetlands in Lady Huntley Meadows Park in Alexandria, Va. (photo: Toni L. Sandys/WP)
The court will hear oral arguments Monday morning in a closely watched challenge to the Clean Water Act, passed in 1972 to protect all “waters of the United States”— including streams, rivers, lakes and wetlands — from harmful pollution.
Environmentalists fear the court's conservative majority could dramatically narrow the law's reach, undercutting the federal government's ability to protect waterways — and the wildlife for which they provide critical habitat — across the country.
“This decision will be nothing short of a life-or-death sentence for coho salmon, razorback suckers, California tiger salamanders and hundreds of other endangered animals that rely on ephemeral and intermittently flowing streams and wetlands,” Hannah Connor, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement.
However, business groups and home builders have cheered the court's decision to take the case. They argue that legal confusion over the definition of “waters of the United States,” or WOTUS, has created regulatory chaos for businesses and property owners.
“Without clear guidance from this Court, the Chamber’s members will continue to endure an expensive, vague, and time-consuming process whenever they need to determine whether a project or activity will impact waters subject to federal jurisdiction,” the U.S. Chamber of Commerce wrote in a brief.
The case comes after the Supreme Court ruled in June that the Environmental Protection Agency had overstepped its authority under the Clean Air Act to slash planet-warming emissions from power plants.
Here's what to know about the Clean Water Act case — and why it matters.
SCOTUS takes on WOTUS
The case, Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency, centers on a long-running dispute involving an Idaho couple named Chantell and Michael Sackett.
- The couple began their lengthy legal battle in 2007, when they tried to build a home on their land near Idaho's Priest Lake. The EPA determined that the property contained a wetland, and that the couple needed to obtain a Clean Water Act permit or face heavy fines.
- The Sacketts, who are represented by the conservative Pacific Legal Foundation, have won at the Supreme Court before. This time, they're calling on the justices to significantly narrow the definition of “waters of the United States” so that their property — and others like it — would not be subject to the Clean Water Act.
In the famously muddled 2006 case Rapanos v. United States, the justices split 4-1-4 over which test courts should use to determine what constitutes “waters of the United States.”
- Under the test proposed by then-Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, a wetland must have a “significant nexus” to regulated waters. Federal courts have favored this interpretation, which informed the Obama administration's Clean Water Rule.
- Under the narrower definition proposed by then-Justice Antonin Scalia, a wetland must have a “continuous surface connection” to "relatively permanent" waters. Business groups such as the Chamber of Commerce and National Association of Home Builders favor this interpretation, which informed President Trump's Navigable Waters Protection Rule.
- A federal court has since struck down Trump's rule. The Biden administration is planning to issue a new regulation.
‘A major rewrite’
Mark Ryan, a Clean Water Act expert who worked as a lawyer at the EPA for 24 years, said he thinks at least five conservative justices could vote to adopt Scalia's narrower test.
“Reading the tea leaves of the Supreme Court is always a dangerous venture,” Ryan said. “But I would predict a 5-4, if not a 6-3, adoption of something in line with the Scalia standard from the Rapanos decision, which would be a major rewrite of the Clean Water Act.”
Damien Schiff, a senior attorney at the Pacific Legal Foundation who will argue the case on Monday, said he is “quietly optimistic” that the Sacketts will prevail. He noted that Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. signed Scalia's opinion in Rapanos, while Justice Neil M. Gorsuch signaled in the Clean Air Act case that he is “skeptical of broad EPA interpretations of statutes.”
Jon Devine, who leads the Natural Resources Defense Council's federal water policy team, said the adoption of Scalia's test could remove Clean Water Act protections for roughly 19 percent of streams and 51 percent of wetlands in the country.
“That would be catastrophic,” he said, “for the water quality purposes of the act.”
Oral arguments in Sackett v. EPA begin at 10 a.m. Eastern time on Monday, both in person and online here.
Extreme events
Revived Hurricane Ian aims for South Carolina after battering Florida
Hurricane Ian re-intensified and set its sights on South Carolina on Friday after walloping Florida as one of the deadliest storms to ever hit the United States, The Washington Post's Jason Samenow, Kelly Kasulis Cho, Annabelle Timsit and Kim Bellware report.
In an update at 2 a.m. Friday, the National Hurricane Center placed Ian about 175 miles southeast of the historic city of Charleston, where the Category 1 storm could make landfall later Friday, bringing with it “life-threatening storm surge" and maximum sustained winds of 85 mph.
In Florida, where Ian came ashore Wednesday as a monster Category 4 storm, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said at least 700 rescues were conducted Thursday involving the U.S. Coast Guard, the National Guard and urban search-and-rescue teams. As of Friday morning, more than 2 million customers in Florida remained without power, according to the online tracking site PowerOutage.us.
President Biden, speaking at the Federal Emergency Management Agency headquarters Thursday, said Ian “could be the deadliest” storm in Florida history. As of Thursday evening, 12 people had been confirmed dead in the storm, Phil Helsel, Daniel Arkin and Tim Stelloh report for NBC News.
Ian's rapid intensification bears the unmistakable fingerprints of climate change, The Post's Scott Dance and Kasha Patel report. Warmer waters give hurricanes more energy to release through crushing winds and pounding waves. Since 2017, six other hurricanes to hit the U.S. shorelines have qualified as “rapid intensification events,” meaning their wind speeds increased by at least 35 mph within 24 hours.
According to a preliminary analysis released Thursday, human-caused climate change increased Ian's extreme rainfall rates by 10 percent. The analysis, conducted by Stony Brook University professor Kevin Reed and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory senior scientist Michael Wehner, has not yet been peer-reviewed but relied on the same methodology as a prior peer-reviewed study of the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season.
Pressure points
David Hayes, White House climate staffer, steps down
David Hayes, who served as deputy secretary of the Interior Department during the Clinton and Obama administrations, is stepping down from his post as special assistant to the president for climate policy. His last day is Friday, The Post's Allyson Chiu scoops.
Hayes, 68, helped develop and carry out President Biden's ambitious goal of conserving 30 percent of the nation's lands and waters by 2030. He also helped establish interagency working groups focused on climate resilience and worked to expand offshore wind power.
In an interview with The Post this week, Hayes warned that America has not adequately prepared to cope with the perils of a warming planet.
“Ian reminds us that we have underinvested in longer-term resilience,” he said. “We’ve been very good as a country in terms of immediate response and you’ll see it again with the Federal Emergency Management Agency. They are fabulous in coming in and working to get the power back up and dealing with the immediate impacts. But as a country and certainly prior administrations and prior Congresses have not funded the longer-term issues.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly said Hayes is 69. He is 68.
On the Hill
Senate Environment and Public Works panel approves TVA nominees
The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on Thursday voted to advance five nominees to be members of the Tennessee Valley Authority Board of Directors.
If confirmed by the full Senate, the nominees — Robert Klein, Michelle Moore, William Renick, Joe Ritch and Adam Wade White — would help oversee the nation’s largest federally owned utility as President Biden targets a carbon-free electricity grid by 2035.
“As the nation’s largest public power system, TVA should be leading the charge in offering affordable rates and transitioning to cleaner energy generation,” Committee Chair Thomas R. Carper (D-Del.) said in a statement. “I believe that all starts with the right leadership.”
House Natural Resources Committee passes bill to update U.S. fishing laws
The House Natural Resources Committee on Thursday advanced legislation to reauthorize U.S. fishing laws, which haven't been updated in 15 years and don't mention climate change.
The Sustaining America’s Fisheries for the Future Act from Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) aims to modernize the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, the primary law governing federal fisheries management and conservation.
The measure would require consideration of climate change in regional fishery management council planning, according to a summary from Huffman's office. It comes as the ocean has absorbed more than 90 percent of the excess heat that greenhouse gas emissions have trapped in the atmosphere, threatening marine species and ecosystems.
Trump. (photo: Getty Images)
The former president howled about the Senate Minority Leader and made a racist remark about former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao
“He has a DEATH WISH,” Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social of Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell, while also adding a racist dig at McConnell’s wife Elaine Chao, who is Asian American and a former member of Trump’s own cabinet.
“Must immediately seek help and advise [sic] from his China loving wife, Coco Chow!”
Chao was born in Taiwan.
“Is McConnell approving all of these trillions of dollars worth of Democrat-sponsored bills, without even the slightest bit of negotiation, because he hates Donald J. Trump, and he knows I am strongly opposed to them,” Trump angrily mused, “or is he doing it because he believes in the Fake and Highly Destructive Green New Deal, and is willing to take the country down with him?”
The screed came after President Joe Biden signed into law a bill to fund the US government until Dec. 16 to avoid a shut down at midnight. It also provides $12.4 billion in military and diplomatic aid to Ukraine, the Washington Post reports.
The former president spent hours on Friday afternoon engaged in an extended posting barrage on his personal social media platform Truth Social, leveling attacks against McConnell at least three separate times.
In 2017 Trump lambasted McConnell after the senate failed to secure passage of a bill that would partially repeal the Affordable Care Act, and the relationship between the two giants of the Republican Party has remained tenuous.
In recent weeks, Trump has vented to some confidants that if Republicans fail to take back both the House and Senate in the 2022 midterms, the ex-president expects “all these fucking RINOs” to blame him for any GOP high-profile losses, according to a person with direct knowledge of this grievance. In these complaints, Trump has repeatedly singled out McConnell — who the former president regularly calls a “son of a bitch” — as someone who Trump claims is actively working to sabotage Republicans’ odds of winning the Senate in this year’s critical elections.
“Blame Mitch,” Trump has recently said, if Republicans fail to retake the Senate this cycle, this source relayed.
Beto O'Rourke on Friday with family members of the children who lost their lives at Robb elementary school. (photo: Joel Martinez/AP)
Families of those killed in May school shooting support Democrat in race against Texas governor Greg Abbott
“Maybe you don’t consider yourself a political person,” Kimberly Rubio, whose 10-year-old daughter Lexi was also killed in the 24 May shooting at Robb elementary, said Friday during a pre-debate news conference.
“Maybe you’re not a fan of either candidate, but I implore you to ask yourself, do you want to send your child off to school and have them return? Do you want to hug them every night before bed? Do you want the opportunity to watch them grow?”
Kimberly recalled dropping off Lexi at Robb’s campus for an awards ceremony on the morning of the shooting. The girl’s parents promised her ice cream.
“She turns around to leave. We’re walking behind her. I tell her that I love her and we’ll pick her up from school. She turns around and smiles at me,” Kimberly recalled. That was the last time she’d see her daughter, whom her father described as bright and opinionated, alive.
The Rubios were one of several Uvalde families who accompanied O’Rourke to Edinburg on Friday, despite the 10-hour bus ride each way.
Uvalde was shattered – changed forever – after an 18-year-old man stormed into the Robb school with a pair of high-powered rifles as well as hundreds of rounds of ammunition and killed 19 children and two teachers there.
“The community is basically a Republican town,” Jesse Rizo, Jacklyn’s uncle, said Friday morning. “So it makes it a little bit challenging. But I think the people at this point are putting their differences aside. They’re not voting straight blue or straight red.”
Republican lawmakers at the local and state level who were reluctant to support restricting access to high-powered guns frustrated the families of those killed at Robb. They characterized themselves as Democrat or apolitical, and they have now decided to join O’Rourke because he has at least promised reform that could have changed the trajectory of their lives.
“If changes were made years ago, my daughter would still be alive today,” Jacklyn’s mom, Gloria Casarez, said. “My daughter was transported to the hospital [that day] with a heartbeat. She later died.”
Aside from reproductive rights, immigration reform and LGBTQ rights, O’Rourke’s support for gun control has helped him make some gains with Texas voters who agreed changes were necessary after the Uvalde massacre.
“I’ve traveled to every part of the state, literally,” O’Rourke said. “I listened to people who are for me. I have listened to people who will never vote for me.”
And those travels have inspired him to propose prohibiting anyone who is younger than 21 from buying guns.
“All of them agree that this makes sense,” O’Rourke said about raising the minimum age to legally purchase firearms. The measure would allow the state to preserve the right to bear arms as called for by the US constitution’s second amendment while also “better protecting the lives of our children”.
O’Rourke is also pushing for universal background checks and the implementation of red-flag laws, which help keep guns away from those deemed to be a danger to themselves or others.
“Criminals won’t follow the law. It won’t matter what we do,” O’Rourke said, referring to the criticism heard by some voters. He acknowledged his proposed changes won’t always stop a tragedy from happening. “But this troubled young man in Uvalde patiently waited until he was 18 years old. He never tried to acquire that firearm when he was 16 or 17. Upon his 18th birthday, he was legally able to go into a gun store and buy not one, but two AR-15s and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.”
Abbott has dedicated resources to address mental health problems after the Uvalde massacre, but victims’ relatives have noticed he has avoided embracing gun control reform.
“There’s a combination of things – one of them is a mental issue,” Jesse Rizo said. “The other one is going to be about putting a weapon in the hands of a young person. It doesn’t make any sense. Things like that resonate.”
Rizo said O’Rourke captured his attention by listening to their pleas for reform. Loved ones of those lost in May said Abobott met their cries with deaf ears.
“We are no longer asking – we’re demanding that governor Abbott call a special [legislative] session and raise the age limit to 21,” said Veronica Mata, whose daughter Tess Marie was killed at Robb.
Mata, Rizo, the Rubios and the rest of the families were not able to attend the debate despite their long trek to south Texas. O’Rourke said Abbott would only agree to debate with no audience – even spouses. However, O’Rourke said he would bring the greeting card signed by the Uvale victims’ families with him on stage, along with other mementos.
Meanwhile, the Uvalde families pledged to continue their journey beyond Friday’s debate.
“It happened to me – it can happen to you,” Kimberly Rubio said. “I’m speaking directly to moms when I say our babies’ lives are on that ballot.”
Pesticide application. (photo: Simonk/Getty Images)
The birds and the bees and the pesticide-covered seeds that kill them.
The petition, filed in 2017 by nonprofits Center for Food Safety, Pesticide Action Network of North America, and Pollinator Stewardship Council, among other groups, claimed that the EPA’s lack of regulation on the seeds “could precipitate an economic and ecological disaster.”
“We gave EPA a golden chance and a blueprint to fix a problem that has caused significant harm to people, bees, birds, and the environment — and it stubbornly refused,” said Amy van Saun, senior attorney with the Center for Food Safety, in a statement. “It’s extremely disappointing and we’ll be exploring all possible next steps to protect communities and the environment from the hazard of pesticide-coated seeds, including a lawsuit challenging this decision.”
The seeds in question are coated in a class of chemicals known as neonicotinoids, or “neonics,” and have been cited in the mass die-off of various pollinators, such as bees and birds. The seeds are covered in chemicals that harm pollinators’ nervous systems, causing paralysis and death. The chemicals, banned in the European Union, aren’t regulated by the EPA’s pesticide enforcement rulings, which prompted environmental and ecological groups to take legal action. In the agriculture industry, seeds are treated with pesticides before they are put in the ground to protect plants from pests and diseases.
In its responsive letter, the EPA said it does not agree with the request of the petitioners to “categorically exclude seed treated with systemic pesticides” from the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act. This EPA legislation limits the use of pesticides that “generally pose unreasonable risks to people, including agricultural workers, or the environment.”
In addition to killing bees, the class of chemicals has also been cited as a public health concern and directly linked to nearly 2,000 pet deaths, caused by flea and tick collars, which have also caused seizures in humans. The federal agency has not issued a formal warning against these collars.
Mead, Nebraska, a rural village outside of Omaha, has been embroiled in a battle with a neighboring ethanol plant linked to these pesticide-coated seeds. The now-closed plant produced ethanol out of coated seeds and created a byproduct ripe with neonicotinoids. Village residents reported the loss of bee colonies and birds when the plant was still in operation. More troubling, these chemicals have been detected at least 40 feet beneath groundwater wells downstream of the shuttered site. Efforts are also underway to clean up a sludge of byproduct, called “wet cake,” which contains traces of toxic chemicals roughly 85 times higher than the legal limit. Last year, the state of Nebraska sued AltEn, the Kansas company that owns the plant.
Jody Weible, a Mead resident whose home is less than a mile from the shuttered plant, told Grist the EPA was “dead wrong,” in its decision to not increase regulations for these chemicals. Weible said cleanup efforts fronted by herself and others have been slowly progressing since the plant closed last year, but being cast off by government agencies, state or federal, has been a familiar part of her journey as an affected resident.
Weible, who has lived in her home for almost four decades, said while the ethanol plant was active, it was difficult to just be outside. She recounted that children would experience nosebleeds, family members had severely irritated eyes, and opening windows was a risk. She collected the byproduct in a jar over three years and said, to this day, the “sweet, dead, acidic” smell will still “drop you to your knees.”
She said since the plant closed, researchers have visited her home and found high levels of neonicotinoids in the house’s dust. Since the plant closed, noticeable changes have occurred, but clean-up efforts continue. “We now have mosquitoes back,” Weible said. “We had almost no birds, no butterflies. Everything’s coming back.”
The practice of burning pesticide-coated seeds was lucrative for ethanol plants and other big agricultural industry players. The AltEn plant opened in 2015 and closed in 2021. At that time, it produced approximately 24 million gallons of ethanol annually, billing itself as a place for large pesticide companies, like Bayer and Syngenta, to recycle their leftover seeds for free. Ethanol is a powerful industry in Nebraska and other Corn Belt states. In the wake of these findings, Nebraska banned the practice but is the only state to do so in the country, where there are over 200 other ethanol refineries.
The EPA has been monitoring the Nebraska plant for continued pollution, but neighboring residents say efforts haven’t been fruitful. Last year the agency conducted air monitoring around the facility and said they have not detected pollutants considered an “immediate health threat.”
In 2020, the EPA released interim proposals to regulate this class of chemicals. The agency suggested growers use more protective gear when handling the chemicals, limiting the times that the chemicals can be sprayed on blooming plants that attract pollinators and adding packaging language that advises homeowners not to use neonicotinoids. In the decision letter released this week, the agency said it intends to continue seeking comments and information about how these chemicals and the seeds they are coated with may be in violation of public health and industry use.
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