Category Archives: Jason

Greenland, the land of ice and snow, is burning

This is going to sound weird, but there’s a wildfire right now in west Greenland. You know, that huge island of mostly ice? Part of it is on fire.

There’s been nothing even close to this since reliable satellite-based fire detection records began in Greenland in 2000. Very small wildfires can evade satellite detection, and old-timer scientists who have worked in Greenland for decades say that micro-fires there aren’t necessarily uncommon.

This week’s fire, however, is on another level.

“This is the largest wildfire we know of,” says Stef Lhermitte, a satellite expert at Technische Universiteit in Delft, Netherlands, who did some of the initial mapping of the fire. “For a lot of people, it’s been a bit of discovery on the go.” The fire was first spotted by a local aircraft on July 31.

What’s striking about the Greenland fire is that it fits a larger trend of rapid change across the northern reaches of the planet. A 2013 study found that across the entire Arctic, forests are burning at a rate unseen in at least 10,000 years.

By American standards, the Greenland fire is small, covering around 1,200 acres (about two square miles) — about the size of midtown Manhattan. The massive Lodgepole Complex wildfire that scorched eastern Montana in July — the largest fire in the country this year — was more than 200 times bigger. But for Greenland, a fire of this size is so unusual that even scientists who study the huge island don’t really know what to make of it.

The Danish meteorological service (Greenland is technically an autonomously governing part of Denmark) said it has no experts who specialize in Greenland fire. The European Commission has tasked its Emergency Management Service with a rapid mapping of the region of the fire, in part to help local officials assess the risks to public health. Mark Parrington, a meteorologist with the European government, said on Twitter that he “didn’t expect to be adding Greenland into my fire monitoring,” adding that he may need to recalibrate his air pollution models to account for the smoldering way that fire tends to burn in permafrost soil.

Riikka Rinnan, an ecologist at the University of Copenhagen, said her research team had started work earlier this summer on how potential fires could impact Greenland’s tundra, but didn’t expect one so soon. Jessica McCarty, a satellite data expert at Miami University in Ohio, said she’s planning to have one of her students construct what might be the first-ever comprehensive history of fires in Greenland.

And yes, as you might expect, climate change probably made this whole thing more likely.

“Everything we know suggests that fire will increase in the Arctic,” climate scientist Jason Box, whose work focuses on Greenland, told me. “It’s fair to say that it’s part of the pattern of warming. We should see more such fires in Greenland.”

Though west Greenland, where the fire is burning, is a semi-arid region, rainfall and temperatures there have been increasing, helping to foster more dense vegetation. Box says this is part of the “shrubification” of the entire Arctic as temperatures warm and the growing season lengthens. Denser vegetation is making large fires more likely, in combination with the simultaneous tendency for longer and more intense droughts and the rise in thunderstorm likelihood due to erratic weather patterns.

Box says he saw a fire in west Greenland back in 1999. “It’s pretty interesting for Greenland, people don’t think about it as a place where that’s possible — nor did I until I saw it with my own eyes.” Once he realized he was watching a wildfire, he said, “It was like, what the heck? What is going on?”

What set off this blaze? The scientists I spoke with aren’t sure. The primary cause of Arctic wildfires is lightning, but a lightning storm in Greenland would have been news. Thunderstorms typically need warm, humid air for fuel, and both are in short supply so close to the world’s second largest ice sheet.

According to John Kappelen, a Danish meteorologist, the region surrounding the fire has had well below average rainfall since June, making wildfire more likely.

“This time of year, everybody’s going out and picking berries and fishing and hunting,” says Ruth Mottram, a climate scientist at the Danish meteorological service who conducts frequent fieldwork in Greenland. Maybe someone in the area set a fire that grew into the big blaze. Greenland’s second largest town, Sisimiut, with a population of 5,500, is about 90 miles away.

Mottram says that if the fire is burning in peatland, it could rage for weeks. If the winds shift, soot from the fire could be transported up to the ice sheet, where it might speed local melting in the coming years by darkening the surface of the ice, helping it to absorb more energy from the sun. This is something that scientists like Box and Mottram are spending their careers studying, but up to now, they thought that virtually all the soot that’s making the bright white ice darker was transported there from Canada or Russia. Now, a new source may be emerging.

Should wildfires like this one increase in frequency, we may have just witnessed the start of a new, scary feedback loop.

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Greenland, the land of ice and snow, is burning

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The Photo That May Help Unlock the Trump-Russia Scandal

Mother Jones

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On Monday, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) announced that the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has documents indicating that Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn appears to have lied in the process of obtaining top-level security clearance to be President Donald Trump’s national security advisor. The disclosure was made in a letter to Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) that urged the committee chairman to issue subpoenas for additional documents related to Flynn’s brief tenure at the White House. “We need to know what the President, the Vice President, White House Counsel, and other top officials knew about General Flynn—and when they knew it,” Cummings wrote. Flynn resigned in mid-February after it became public that he had lied to Vice President Mike Pence and other White House officials about his communications with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kisylak.

Cummings’ letter focused on Flynn’s trip to Russia in December 2015 for a conference and dinner celebrating the 10th anniversary of RT, the Kremlin-backed news channel. Little noticed at the time, Vladimir Putin’s guests that night included Flynn and future Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein—an odd couple who reflected the Russian president’s efforts to court fringe figures on both the right and the left and otherwise meddle in US politics. (Also at the table were Putin’s spokesman, chief of staff, and deputy chief of staff.)

Stein said the soiree was “a great opportunity to lay out some of my foreign policy proposals and get Russian reactions to them.” Flynn, who commanded a $45,000 fee to speak at the event, said he didn’t ask to be seated next to Putin. “I found it a great learning opportunity,” he told the Washington Post.

According to Cummings’ letter, Flynn told security investigators that “I didn’t take any money from Russia” in connection with the event. Yet Cummings wrote that his committee has documents showing how the $45,000 payment was transferred from RT to Flynn’s lobbying firm, as well as an email in which an RT official states, “We will be covering the payment of General Flynn’s fee.”

Flynn downplayed his dinner with Putin during his security check, telling investigators that during his foreign trips he “had only unsubstantial contact with foreign nationals.” Cummings wrote, “It is difficult to understand how General Flynn could have believed that his dinner with Russian President Vladimir Putin was an ‘insubstantial contact.'”

The White House has refused to provide the House oversight committee with any documents related to its vetting, hiring, and firing of Flynn. Flynn has refused to comply with a subpoena from the Senate intelligence committee, citing the Fifth Amendment’s protection against self-incrimination.

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The Photo That May Help Unlock the Trump-Russia Scandal

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Michael Flynn Is Pleading the Fifth

Mother Jones

Former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn will invoke the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination on Monday and refuse to comply with a congressional subpoena, according to the Associated Press. The Senate intelligence committee had asked Flynn for documents in his possession that might relate to the committee’s investigation into Russia’s interference with the 2016 election.

It’s not a surprising move—Flynn was not expected to turn over the documents without immunity, “because he would be waiving some of his constitutional protections by doing so,” according to the AP. Last week, Richard Burr (R-N.C.), chairman of the intelligence committee, prematurely said Flynn would not cooperate.

It’s unclear how Republicans will respond to Flynn’s decision. The intelligence committee could ask Congress to vote on whether to hold Flynn in contemptan option that would force Flynn to face possible fines or jail time if he continued to withhold the documents. “I’m not going to go into what we might or might not do,” Burr said last week when asked what the committee would do next if Flynn refused to cooperate with the investigation. “We’ve got a full basket of things that we’re willing to test.”

Meanwhile, Democrats on the House’s oversight committee are increasing pressure on Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) to subpoena the White House for documents on how the White House vetted Flynn, which the committee asked for two months ago. “The White House is obstructing our investigation on the Oversight Committee, covering up for General Flynn, and refusing to produce a single document that Chairman Chaffetz and I asked for in a bipartisan letter two months ago,” Rep. Elijah Cummings (R-Md.), ranking member of the committee, said in a statement over the weekend. “I have prepared a subpoena that the Chairman could sign today.” Cummings says if Chaffetz doesn’t want to issue the subpoena himself, he should allow committee members to take a vote on it.

Chaffetz isn’t always so shy about using the power to subpoena—he asked for the FBI’s full investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails and just last week demanded that the FBI hand over the Comey memos, which detail President Donald Trump’s attempts to curb the federal investigation into Flynn, according to an explosive report last week from the New York Times.

Update, 3:32 p.m. ET: Former Trump campaign associates Paul Manafort and Roger Stone turned in documents Monday for the Senate intelligence probe according to NBC News.

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Michael Flynn Is Pleading the Fifth

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A Fishing Hole Spat Could Give Democrats a Shot at a Montana House Seat

Mother Jones

With Thursday’s special election approaching, the race for Montana’s vacant House seat has gone national. The president’s son Donald Trump Jr. flew to the small town of Hamilton to raise money for Republican businessman Greg Gianforte; Bernie Sanders made a four-stop swing through the Big Sky to stump for Democrat Rob Quist. Both parties have tried to nationalize the race: The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee injected $600,000 into the contest, and its Republican counterpart has already spent several times that.

With the congressional midterms still 18 months away, Democrats have seized on House special elections as an early test of their political energy and an opportunity to steal a few seats. In a historically red Georgia district, Democrat Jon Ossoff has raised more than $10 million in his bid to replace Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price and is approaching 50 percent in the polls ahead of the June 20 runoff. Kansas Democrat James Thompson narrowly lost his bid to replace CIA director Mike Pompeo, in a district Donald Trump won by 27 points.

Quist, a country singer rarely seen without his white cowboy hat, thinks he can kickstart a Democratic turnaround in the House by betting big on the smallest of issues: a fishing hole.

In the race to fill the seat vacated by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke in March, Quist has tapped into deep-seated fears about the fate of Montana’s public lands in Republican-dominated Washington. He has held six rallies “for public lands” across the state and been buoyed by a massive “hands off public lands” protest in Helena and a growing network of progressive grassroots groups. At the heart of his critique of his rival is a decade-old story about a river, a trail, and a legal threat that just a few months ago helped dash Gianforte’s bid for governor.

Gianforte, a wealthy businessman who moved to Montana from New Jersey two decades ago, should have had the wind at his back in the gubernatorial race in a state Trump won easily. But Gov. Steve Bullock, the Democratic incumbent, succeeded in positioning himself as a champion of the outdoors—and Gianforte as its greatest threat.

The acquisition of federal lands in the West was a huge issue during the Obama years, culminating in a string of high-profile showdowns between members of the Bundy family and federal agents in Nevada and Oregon. Many Republican state lawmakers, including in Montana, pushed legislation that would compel the federal government to transfer the deed to some of its public lands to their states. Bullock was fiercely against the idea; Gianforte suggested that such a move might be appropriate at a later time. But Gianforte had also donated money to the Republican lawmaker who chaired the American Lands Council, the primary driver of the lands-transfer movement.

Maybe that alone wouldn’t have been enough to sink Gianforte, but Bullock had a trump card: a 2009 legal battle. Gianforte’s property abutted the East Gallatin River outside Bozeman and included an easement long used by locals for fishing. (The easement was granted through an agreement with the property’s previous owner.) Gianforte argued that the easement was ruining his property and sued the state of Montana to have to have the area closed off. He eventually reached a compromise with the state, but the dispute fed into Bullock’s narrative. It was one thing to campaign on the fear that Republicans would try to limit public access to public lands, but it was far easier when Gianforte had actually tried to do it.

“Montanans have been locked in a battle against wealthy out-of-state land owners buying up land and blocking access to places Montanans have literally enjoyed for generations,” Bullock said at the time. He hammered Gianforte’s river-access suit in speeches and ads.

When, at their final debate, Gianforte sought to dispute the governor’s version of events, Bullock pulled out a copy of the complaint, ignoring the agreed-upon prohibition on props.

“I just want to note the governor violated the rules,” Gianforte said.

“I just want to note Greg Gianforte sued all of Montana,” Bullock said.

Bullock won by four points.

“I’ve been doing this a while and it was one of the most damaging negatives I’ve ever seen,” says Eric Hyers, Bullock’s 2016 campaign manager.

When the DCCC got involved in the race in April, it wasted no time jumping on the easement fight. “You’ve seen it before: millionaires buying trophy ranches in Montana, then suing to block you out,” a narrator intoned in the group’s first ad, over an image of a “no hunting” sign. “Well it’s exactly what this millionaire from New Jersey did.” Last week, Quist went a few steps further; in two new ads running statewide, he walks along the very riverside trail Gianforte sought to block access to, declaring, “You shouldn’t have to be rich to get outdoors in Montana.”

Other Democrats have tried this line of attack with less success. Zinke, who hails from just outside Glacier National Park, easily won reelection and then the Interior job in part because of the perception that he was more of a conservationist than other candidates. (It was Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, the nonprofit that helped organize the public-lands protest and whose director ran a dark-money group that helped Democratic Sen. Jon Tester win reelection in 2012, that reportedly lobbied Donald Trump Jr. to consider Zinke for the Interior job.) The key to the public lands movement’s success in resisting the land-transfer push has been that it comprises more than just crunchy environmentalists. It also has the backing of hunting and fishing groups and trade associations such as the Montana Wood Products Association.

After President Trump’s inauguration, fears grew that public lands would come under threat. In late January, one week after the Helena women’s march drew record crowds to the capitol grounds, 1,000 demonstrators, organized by a coalition led by the Montana Wilderness Association, crowded inside the capitol building with luminaries such as Bullock, Tester, and Hilary Hutcheson, a fly-fishing guide who hosts a popular TV show on Trout TV. They had a specific concern in mind: that the Trump administration would sign off on a push by congressional Republicans to sell off public lands.

Similar events, dubbed “Public Lands in Public Hands,” were held across the West—500 people in Santa Fe; 200 in Boise. A few days later, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), who had sponsored the sell-off proposal, backed down. “I hear you and HR 621 dies tomorrow,” he wrote in an Instagram post.

With Zinke running the Interior Department, the status of Montana’s lands is no less fuzzy. In May, Zinke announced that he was reviewing the status of some three dozen national monuments established over the previous three presidential administrations, with the possible end result of revoking their protected status. Among the monuments on the chopping block: Montana’s own Upper Missouri Breaks.

The clearest sign of how potent the public-lands protests—and messaging—have been is that Gianforte himself is using the protesters’ language. “I’ve been very clear all along that public lands must stay in public hands,” he told Montana Public Radio in an interview earlier this month, echoing the language used by the demonstrators. “I’ve been very clear. I don’t support deed transfer of lands. Public lands have to stay in public hands.”

The race to replace Zinke is in some ways a fitting coda to the political fights of the Obama administration, which saw a new “Sagebrush Rebellion”—the name for the ’80s anti-government movement led by Western ranchers— that featured, most sensationally, the antics of the Bundy clan. These new Sagebrushers were backed up by a new crop of local law enforcement leaders who resisted federal authority, as well as legislators, in Washington and state capitals, bent on redistributing federal lands to the states.

The Trump administration’s push to reconsider places like Upper Missouri Breaks, which have been in the sights of conservative groups for a long time, represents a high-water mark for this movement. Quist is hoping his race is the beginning of another kind of wave.

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A Fishing Hole Spat Could Give Democrats a Shot at a Montana House Seat

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L.A.’s promise to join the Paris Agreement is a wee bit presumptuous.

The National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority mentioned the leak in an annual report on offshore exploration but revealed no details about who operated the well.

That information came to light on Friday, when Woodside Petroleum — Australia’s largest oil and gas producer, owned by Royal Dutch Shell — admitted to owning the well on the North West Shelf of the country. The leak began in April 2016 and lasted about two months. All told, it spilled nearly 2,800 gallons of oil into the ocean.

Woodside gave a statement to the Australian Broadcasting Company claiming the spill caused no damage: “Due to the composition of the fluid, small quantity released, water depth at release site, and distance from environmentally sensitive areas, there was no lasting impact to the environment.”

Offshore oil safety expert Andrew Hopkins told the Guardian that the Australian regulator’s failure to identify who was responsible for the spill is concerning, as it spares reckless firms from justice via “naming and shaming.”

“Companies that know they will be named in the case of an incident like this,” Hopkins said, “are going to be less likely to do it.”

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L.A.’s promise to join the Paris Agreement is a wee bit presumptuous.

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Apple doesn’t want you to be able to fix your own phone.

The National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority mentioned the leak in an annual report on offshore exploration but revealed no details about who operated the well.

That information came to light on Friday, when Woodside Petroleum — Australia’s largest oil and gas producer, owned by Royal Dutch Shell — admitted to owning the well on the North West Shelf of the country. The leak began in April 2016 and lasted about two months. All told, it spilled nearly 2,800 gallons of oil into the ocean.

Woodside gave a statement to the Australian Broadcasting Company claiming the spill caused no damage: “Due to the composition of the fluid, small quantity released, water depth at release site, and distance from environmentally sensitive areas, there was no lasting impact to the environment.”

Offshore oil safety expert Andrew Hopkins told the Guardian that the Australian regulator’s failure to identify who was responsible for the spill is concerning, as it spares reckless firms from justice via “naming and shaming.”

“Companies that know they will be named in the case of an incident like this,” Hopkins said, “are going to be less likely to do it.”

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Apple doesn’t want you to be able to fix your own phone.

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The Flynn Scandal Explodes: What This Means and How It Happened

Mother Jones

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On Wednesday, not one but two bombshells exploded concerning Michael Flynn, the national security adviser President Donald Trump was compelled to fire after only 22 days on the job. The New York Times reported that on January 4—weeks before the inauguration—Flynn informed Trump’s transition team that he was under Justice Department investigation for his undisclosed lobbying work on behalf of Turkish interests. And McClatchy revealed that six days later, Flynn attended a meeting with Susan Rice, President Barack Obama’s national security adviser, and asked her to delay a planned US-Kurdish military operation against a top ISIS target, an action that Turkey, which had opposed joint US-Kurdish operations, would not have supported.

Together these two stories present a stunning scenario: Trump’s team allowed a lobbyist for foreign interests who was under federal investigation to become the president’s top national security aide and to participate in decision-making related to his lobbying.

The story gets worse. It was 16 days after Flynn’s meeting with Rice that Sally Yates, then the acting attorney general, informed the Trump White House that Flynn had lied about conversations he had with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak regarding the sanctions Obama imposed on Moscow for its covert intervention in the 2016 campaign. Yates also warned Don McGahn, the White House counsel, that Flynn was now vulnerable to Russian blackmail. Still, the White House kept Flynn in the job for another 18 days. It was only after the extent of Flynn’s contacts with Kislyak was publicly exposed by a Washington Post story that Trump fired him. (On Thursday morning, Yahoo News reported that on April 25, Flynn told a group of friends that Trump had recently sent him a message: Stay strong.)

Flynn, who has offered to testify before Congress if granted immunity from prosecution, has emerged as central figure in the Russia scandal enveloping the Trump administration. The retired lieutenant general who led “lock her up” chants during the presidential campaign is currently under investigation on several fronts. The Justice Department is probing his Turkish lobbying, and the FBI is investigating his contacts with Russian officials during the presidential campaign and transition period. The Senate intelligence committee recently subpoenaed Flynn for records of his Russian contacts.

The latest Flynn revelations are a tremendous blow for a White House already reeling from the Trump-Russia scandal, the news that Trump disclosed highly sensitive top-secret information to Russian officials in the Oval Office, Trump’s firing of FBI director James Comey, and the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller. The Flynn affair, which has the potential to derail Trump’s presidency, is full of twists and turns, and it seems like there’s more to come. Here’s how it has unfolded so far.

April 30, 2014: Flynn announces his retirement form the military about a year earlier then expected. He has reportedly been forced out as the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency by the Obama administration. Flynn subsequently forms the Flynn Intel Group.

October 8, 2014: The counsel’s office of the Defense Intelligence Agency responds to an inquiry from Flynn about ethics restrictions that will apply to him after his Army retirement. The office explains in a letter that he can not receive foreign government payments without prior approval, due to the Constitution’s emoluments clause. “If you are ever in a position where you would receive an emolument from a foreign government or from an entity that might be controlled by a foreign government, be sure to obtain advance approval from the Army prior to acceptance,” the letter states.

December 10, 2015: Flynn travels to Moscow to attend the 10th anniversary dinner of Russia Today, a media outlet owned by the Russian government. Flynn is paid more than $30,000 to speak at the event and is seated next to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

February 2016: Flynn begins advising the Trump campaign.

July 18, 2016: During his speech at the Republican National Convention, Flynn eggs on the chanting crowd, saying, “Lock her up, that’s right. Yep, that’s right: Lock her up!”

August 9, 2016: Flynn and his company, the Flynn Intel Group, ink a $600,000 contract with Inovo BV, a company owned by Ekim Alptekin, a Turkish businessman and ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. According to the New York Times, the contract calls for Flynn’s company to “run an influence campaign aimed at discrediting Fethullah Gulen, an reclusive cleric who lives in Pennsylvania and whom Mr. Erdogan has accused of orchestrating a failed July 2016 coup in Turkey.”

August 17, 2016: Trump receives his first classified intelligence briefing as the GOP nominee for president. He brings Flynn with him to the meeting, which includes discussion of the intelligence community’s assessment that Russia was interfering in the US election.

November 8, 2016: On Election Day, Flynn publishes an op-ed in the Hill that calls Gulen “a shady Islamic mullah” and “a radical Islamist.”

November 10, 2016: During a meeting at Trump Tower with Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, Flynn says he wants the national security adviser post in the new administration, NBC News reports. Kushner and Trump indicate that “President-elect Trump would certainly approve of that request to reward Flynn’s loyalty,” according to NBC. That day, Trump meets with Obama in the Oval Office, where Obama warns him against hiring Flynn.

November 11, 2016: The Daily Caller reveals Flynn’s contract with Inovo BV.

November 2016: “Days after” seeing the Daily Caller story, according to the New York Times, Trump campaign lawyer William McGinley holds a conference call with members of Flynn Intel Group to gather more information about its foreign business dealings.

November 17, 2016: Trump names Flynn as his national security adviser.

November 30, 2016: The Justice Department notifies Flynn in a letter that it is investigating his Turkish lobbying work.

December 2016: Flynn and Kushner meet with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak at Trump Tower. Kislyak was not caught on tape entering the building, suggesting that he may have been brought in through a back entrance.

December 29, 2016: Obama announces sanctions against Russia in response to that country’s interference in the US presidential election. The measure includes the ejection of 35 Russian diplomats from the United States; the closure of Cold War-era Russian compounds in New York and Maryland; and sanctions against the GRU and the FSB (Russian intelligence agencies), four employees of those agencies, and three companies that worked with the GRU. Flynn holds five phone calls with Kislyak that day, during which they at some point discuss US sanctions against Russia. (White House press secretary Sean Spicer later claims falsely that they held just one call, in which they merely discussed “logistical information.”)

January 2017: The FBI begins investigating Flynn’s December phone conversations with Kislyak.

January 4, 2017: Flynn tells McGahn, who at the time was the transition team’s top lawyer, that he is under investigation for failing to disclose his work as a lobbyist for Turkey during the campaign.

January 6, 2017: Flynn’s attorney and transition team lawyers hold another discussion about the investigation involving Flynn.

January 10: According to McClatchy, Obama’s national security adviser, Susan Rice, informs Flynn of the Pentagon’s plan to use Syrian Kurdish forces to retake the Islamic State’s de facto capital, Raqqa. Flynn asks Rice to delay the operation, a position that “conformed to the wishes of Turkey.”

January 15, 2017: In an appearance on CBS’ Face the Nation, Vice President-elect Mike Pence says Flynn told him that he did not discuss US sanctions during his conversations with Kislyak.

January 23, 2017: Spicer holds his first White House press briefing. He insists that Flynn’s conversations with Kislyak included no discussion of US sanctions.

January 24, 2017: The FBI interviews Flynn about his phone conversations with Kislyak. Flynn reportedly denies having discussed US sanctions on Russia.

January 26, 2017: Yates, the acting attorney general, informs McGahn—who by then was the White House counsel—that Flynn had discussed US sanctions on Russia with the Kislyak, despite Flynn’s claims to the contrary. Yates also warns McGahn that as a result, Flynn could be vulnerable to Russian blackmail. McGahn subsequently informs Trump of Yates’ report.

January 27, 2017: Yates and McGahn meet again at the White House.

January: Michael Cohen, Trump’s personal attorney, meets at a Manhattan hotel with Felix Sater and a pro-Putin Ukrainian lawmaker to discuss a potential peace plan for Ukraine and Russia, according to the New York Times. The Times reports that Cohen delivered this plan to Flynn. Cohen confirms he met with Sater and the Ukrainian lawmaker but denies that they discussed a Ukraine-Russia peace plan or that he delivered such a plan to Flynn or the White House.

February 1, 2017: In a letter to Defense Secretary James Mattis, the ranking Democrats on six House committees demand an investigation into Flynn’s connections to RT.

February 8, 2017: In an interview with the Washington Post, Flynn denies discussing US sanctions with Kislyak.

February 9, 2017: A spokesman for Flynn softens the national security adviser’s denial, telling the Washington Post that “while he had no recollection of discussing sanctions, he couldn’t be certain that the topic never came up.”

February 10, 2017: Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump says he is not aware of reports that Flynn has discussed US sanctions with Kislyak. He has in fact been aware of Flynn’s contacts with Kislyak since late January. His transition team has known Flynn was under Justice Department investigation for more than a month.

February 13, 2017: Flynn resigns following reports that Yates warned the White House that Flynn had misled senior members of the administration, including Pence, about whether he discussed US sanctions with Kislyak.

February 14, 2017: In an Oval Office meeting with Comey, Trump asks the FBI director to drop the bureau’s investigation of Flynn. “I hope you can let this go,” Trump says, according to a two-page memo of the conversation reportedly drafted by Comey.

February 15, 2017: During a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump does not answer a question about potential connections between his campaign and Russia during the election. He blames Flynn’s ouster on leaks. This is a different position than the one taken by the White House previously: that Flynn was asked to resign because he misled Pence about his communication with the Russian ambassador.

March 7, 2017: Flynn retroactively registers as a foreign agent in connection with his Turkish lobbying work.

March 30, 2017: The Wall Street Journal reports that Flynn has told the FBI and the congressional committees investigating ties between the Trump campaign and Russia that he will agree to be interviewed in exchange for immunity from prosecution. Flynn’s attorney says in a subsequent statement that the retired general “certainly has a story to tell, and he very much wants to tell it, should the circumstances permit.”

March 31, 2017: Trump tweets that Flynn “should ask for immunity in that this is a witch hunt (excuse for big election loss), by media & Dems, of historic proportion!” But NBC reports that the Senate intelligence committee has denied Flynn’s request for immunity, telling Flynn’s lawyer the request was “wildly preliminary” and currently “not on the table.”

April 4, 2017: The Pentagon launches an investigation into Flynn for accepting payments from a foreign government without prior approval, in potential violation of the Constitution’s emoluments clause.

April 25, 2017: Leaders of the House Oversight Committee tell reporters that Flynn may have broken the law by failing to disclose the $34,000 payment he received for speaking at the 2015 RT gala. “As a former military officer, you simply cannot take money from Russia, Turkey or anybody else,” committee chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) says. “And it appears as if he did take that money. It was inappropriate. And there are repercussions for the violation of law.” The same day, Trump apparently reached out of Flynn. “I just got a message from the president to stay strong,” Flynn tells a group of loyalists during a gathering at a restaurant in Northern Virginia, according to a later report from Yahoo News.

May 8, 2017: Ahead of a Senate hearing, where Yates will testify about her warnings to the Trump administration over Flynn, Trump appears to blame his hiring of Flynn on his predecessor: “General Flynn was given the highest security clearance by the Obama Administration – but the Fake News seldom likes talking about that,” Trump tweets.

May 9, 2017: Trump fires Comey. CNN reports that day that the US attorney’s office in Alexandria, Virginia, has issued grand jury subpoenas to Flynn associates.

May 10, 2017: The Senate intelligence committee subpoenas Flynn for documents concerning his communications with Russian officials.

May 16, 2017: The New York Times reports that Trump pressured Comey to end the bureau’s investigation into Flynn, according to the then-FBI director’s notes of their meeting.

May 17, 2017: Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appoints former FBI Director Robert Mueller as special counsel to oversee the Trump-Russia investigation.

May 18, 2017: Trump tweets:

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The Flynn Scandal Explodes: What This Means and How It Happened

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"I Have My Subpoena Pen Ready": Congress Reacts to News Trump May Have Asked FBI to Stop Flynn Probe

Mother Jones

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On Tuesday evening, the New York Times reported that President Donald Trump asked former FBI director James Comey during a February meeting to end the federal investigation into Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn. The White House denied in a statement that Trump had ever asked Comey or “anyone else to end any investigation, including any investigation involving General Flynn.”

Since the latest bombshell hit, lawmakers have come out to question whether the president engaged in obstruction of justice—and one senator raised, for the first time, the prospect of impeachment. Here are some of the responses from members of Congress on Tuesday night:

“This reporting, if confirmed, would represent a grave development. The need for a special counsel and an independent commission to investigate the President’s conduct, as it relates to this issue, and his campaign’s possible coordination with Russia is urgent. The stories of the last week raise serious questions about whether the President respects the independence of the FBI and law enforcement authorities. It is vital that Congress obtain these memos and hear public testimony from former Director Comey. No one, not even the President, is above the law and the American people deserve answers about President Trump’s conduct.” — Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.)

Meanwhile, a number of Republicans were quick to unleash a flurry of “no comments”:

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Democrats on the House Oversight and Judiciary committees sent a letter on Tuesday demanding a full investigation into whether Trump and his top officials engaged in an “ongoing conspiracy to obstruct” federal and congressional investigations into his campaign’s ties to Russia.

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We will continue updating this post as more members of Congress weigh in.

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"I Have My Subpoena Pen Ready": Congress Reacts to News Trump May Have Asked FBI to Stop Flynn Probe

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What Some of Our Greatest Writers Are Reading to Stay Sane in the Age of Trump

Mother Jones

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Almost as interesting as what our favorite authors write is what they read, and why. We asked more than two dozen—authors, bloggers, essayists, poets, comic artists—to recommend, in their own words, readings that bring solace and understanding in this age of political rancor. These are excerpts. Click on an author’s name or “more” to read their complete responses.

Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood, Hag-Seed
In times of great anxiety, what could be better than The Lord of the Rings? A horrible tyrant. An obsession with power. Nine dead guys running errands for him. Small folks doing their bit. It’s okay to have pointy ears. And it comes out all right at the end. Or sort of all right. (more)

George Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo
Anton Chekhov’s short stories, just because, in dark times, it’s important for people in resistance to fortify themselves with beauty, if only to remind ourselves that kindness, nuance, and ambiguity are real things. In particular: the beautiful trilogy consisting of “The Man in a Case,” “Gooseberries,and “About Love.(more)

Ana Castillo, Black Dove
Worth adding to any library is The Wind Is Spirit: The Life, Love, and Legacy of Audre Lorde, a collection of essays compiled by Gloria I. Joseph, Lorde’s romantic partner at the time of her death. It brings together memories from more than 50 contributors—such as Sonia Sanchez and Angela Davis—and reminds us not only of the significance of Lorde’s work but also of the importance of a writer’s perseverance in the face of political adversity. (more)

Daniel Alarcon

Daniel Alarcón, At Night We Walk in Circles
Sometimes I think dystopian literature is the only literature we can write these days. That Margaret Atwood’s masterpiece, The Handmaid’s Tale, feels so resonant more than 30 years after it was published is singularly depressing. Read it as a cautionary tale. (more)

Phil Klay, Redeployment
I’ve been thinking increasingly about Teddy Roosevelt’s 1883 speechThe Duties of American Citizenship.” Though some of his positions are dated—”the ideal citizen must be the father of many healthy children”—so much of it holds up as solid, practical advice in how to go about creating political change. Roosevelt continually stresses the hard work of building up organizations and institutions as the key component of American political life. “A great many of our men in business,” he says, “rather plume themselves upon being good citizens if they even vote; yet voting is the very least of their duties.” Sadly, he has little to say on the possibility of tweeting your way to a greater democracy. (more)

Piper Kerman

Piper Kerman, Orange Is the New Black
When I read Jesmyn Ward‘s Men We Reaped, it absolutely gutted me. I return to it again and again in my mind because it so perfectly crystallizes what’s at stake until we establish equality for all Americans when it comes to safety and freedom. Ward’s writing is heartbreakingly beautiful. The book that actually does provide me with solace is Alice in Wonderland. When I was a child I wanted to change my name to Alice. I had a copy in my locker when I was incarcerated, and there’s one on my bedside table now. (more)

Jesmyn Ward, The Fire This Time (editor)
The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism: Author Edward E. Baptist builds a very compelling argument that slavery made the foundation and growth of the United States, as an independent country, possible. This book is so necessary because it seems we live in a time where those in power are invested in willful ignorance, “alternative facts,” and a revisionist view of the kind of real pain, suffering, and dehumanization that actually allowed this country to ascend to “greatness.” We need books like this to shine light on the darkness that beats at the heart of America today. (more)

William Gibson

William Gibson, The Peripheral
Outbreak! The Encyclopedia of Extraordinary Social Behavior, by Hilary Evans and Robert Bartholomew, is a compendium of the workings of rumor, fear, and the madness of crowds. Baffled by Trump’s popularity? Read Evans and Bartholomew on lycanthropy and laughing epidemics. Seriously. (more)

Mohsin Hamid, Exit West
Fantastic Mr. Fox, by Roald Dahl, because he takes us into the world of imperfect but resolutely defiant characters who triumph in the face of impossible odds, and because no matter how powerful the mechanical shovels that come for us, we can always dig, dig, until we make a better world. (more)

Karen Russell

Karen Russell, Sleep Donation
Because, if everything we write and read becomes dire and reactionary, Trump will have truly won, here’s a book that celebrates the radical freedom of the imagination: Cosmicomics, by Italo Calvino is brimming with recombinatory energy, play and joy. Light by which to see into many different futures. (more)

Reza Farazmand, Poorly Drawn Lines
Somehow, Cat’s Cradle still manages to present a fictional political setting stranger than the one we’re in now. I can reread Kurt Vonnegut’s absurd parody of Cold War politics and think, “Well, at least things aren’t this weird yet.” (more)

W. Kamau Bell, The Awkward Thoughts of W. Kamau Bell
Lindy West, the author of Shrill, is a critical voice. If we all want to have any hope of not just surviving but thriving in the next four years to eight years and beyond, then we need to listen to her. Also, she’s funnier than probably everybody you know—unless you know her. (more)

Tracy K. Smith

Tracy K. Smith, Ordinary Light: A Memoir
Poetry helps me contend with the smallness of spirit—the greed, the dishonesty, the disregard for the lives of others—at the root of American politics. When I feel beaten down by all of the wrongheadedness, I turn to the wisdom, on what often feels like a cosmic scale, running through The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965-2010. Clifton was one of America’s great poets, whose work throughout her lifetime was committed to chronicling and celebrating black lives. The honesty, joy, wisdom, and hope she brought to this task are regenerative. For years, I’ve been completely captivated by a poem cycle—”the message from the Ones (received in the late 70s)”—that appears in her 2004 collection, Mercy. What is the message? One we and our elected leaders need desperately to hear and to heed. (more)

Dave Eggers, Heroes of the Frontier
The Great Lie, edited by Flagg Taylor, collects essays by a wide range of writers who lived under tyranny, and the results are richly rewarding and surprisingly accessible. Taylor is a professor at Skidmore College and the book is about 800 pages, and yet it’s eminently approachable by anyone interested in seeing the parallels between our current flirtations with truthless fascism and those societies that were truly crushed by totalitarianism. Everyone you could think of is in there—Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Václav Havel, Hannah Arendt—and some lesser-known essayists like Aurel Kolnai and Waldemar Gurian get their due, too. The title, of course, references the sort of lie told by authoritarian governments that’s so outrageous and unbelievable that citizens feel it must be true. In our age of alternative facts, this collection is timely and deeply unsettling. (more)

Siddhartha Mukherjee

Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Gene: An Intimate History
How could one not choose the timeless Henrik Ibsen play An Enemy of the People? A Norwegian doctor suspects that the municipal water in a town has been contaminated with toxins. He hesitates but ultimately follows his moral instincts to release the news to the public. He is dubbed an enemy of the people and publicly flayed. Perhaps the president forgot the irony of that title in using the phrase to describe the press. (more)

Rabbi Jack Moline, Growing Up Jewish
I can’t avoid including the Book of Psalms. Aside from the fact that it is the only book in the Jewish Bible that is of undisputed human authorship, it is a collection of essential yearnings and gratitudes that give me a sense that our current troubles, existential and political both, are neither new nor permanent. In addition, the melodies to which so many of the psalms have been set are inseparable from the words. And how can I not also hear Leonard Cohen in every “hallelujah.” (more)

Wendy C. Ortiz

Wendy C. Ortiz, Bruja
Handwriting, by Michael Ondaatje, lives in the drawer of my night table—it’s my antidote to despair of all kinds. The fragmentary nature and white space allow for breaths. I’ve memorized lines from this book over the years and consider it an influence on my prose, poetry, and my psyche. (more)

Kwame Alexander, The Crossover
There are so many incredible books that speak to our times, stories that take place in the past, present, and future. Stories that connect us to our ancestors or people who lived like our ancestors, or to the people who paved the way for our world today—stories like The Underground Railroad, All The Light We Cannot See, Freedom Over Me, March. Stories for adults, teens, and children. Stories that grab hold of us and show us all the pain and beauty that races through and weaves between covers—books like Speak, Pax, Brown Girl Dreaming, Radiant Child, Bridge to Terabithia, As Brave as You, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Tale of Despereaux. Selected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni (and Langston Hughes and Pablo Neruda). Books that will stick with us, comfort us, and strengthen us, long after we’ve read them. (more)

Peggy Orenstein

Peggy Orenstein, Girls & Sex
I’m reading My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, Emil Ferris’ graphic novel about a 10-year-old Mexican-Irish-Cherokee girl growing up in 1960s Chicago, a social outcast who tries to solve the murder of her Holocaust-survivor neighbor. The radical politics of her present spiral with the fascism and kink of the Third Reich: The novel tackles race, gender, and what it means to be “monstrous” in big and small ways. It could not be more relevant to today’s climate. (more)

Joe Romm, Climate Change: What Everyone Needs to Know
The last time this country was so divided, the greatest orator and writer ever elected president repeatedly shared his thoughts on what the country needed to do to preserve liberty. Abraham Lincoln: His Speeches and Writings, edited by Roy Basler and Carl Sandburg, is one of the best collections. It includes classics like the Gettysburg Address alongside lesser-known gems like “The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions,” in which a 28-year-old Lincoln explains the danger to the Republic of a demagogue just like Trump. (more)

Alex Kotlowitz, Never a City So Real
For all the obvious reasons (yes, Mr. Trump, history matters), I’m revisiting former Sen. Paul Simon’s Freedom’s Champion: Elijah Lovejoy. As if we need reminding what happens when good and decent people don’t stand up against the onerous assault on a free press. (more)

Gene Luen Yang

Gene Luen Yang, Secret Coders
Silence, by Shusaku Endo, is probably my favorite fiction book of all time. It’s about a Catholic missionary to 17th-century Japan who eventually loses his faith. The story reminds me that grace can be found even when things are horribly broken. (more)

Ayelet Waldman, A Really Good Day
It was as if Mohsin Hamid knew exactly what would convulse the world when he wrote Exit West. It’s a novel about refugees, about cruelty and empathy and compassion, and in the end—oddly—about the possibility of an odd kind of redemption. (more)

Bill McKibben, Oil and Honey
This Is an Uprising, by Paul and Mark Engler, is the best summary of all that the last 75 years has taught us about nonviolent organizing. It’s the book I wish I’d had a decade ago, because it would have saved a lot of trial-and-error experimentation as we got 350.org up and running. (more)

Darryl Pinckney

Darryl Pinckney, Black Deutschland
These days I turn to the consolations of poetry. James Fenton, his Yellow Tulips: Poems. (He’s my partner, my life.) I open the Donald Allen edition of The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara that I have had for decades. His poetry is a past I share with several friends. And then for the small hours there is Thomas Wyatt: “These bloody days have broken my heart.” (more)

Michael Eric Dyson, Tears We Cannot Stop
Richard Hofstadter’s The Paranoid Style in American Politics offers bracing commentary and vibrant analysis of the fringe political movements that have defined our nation in times of crisis, paying attention to the paranoia and conspiracy that fuel reactionary outlooks. That clearly helps us to put this Trumpian epoch in illuminating context. (more)

T Cooper

T Cooper, Changers (YA novel series with Allison Glock-Cooper)
I frequently find myself turning to Kiss of the Spider Woman, Manuel Puig’s brave and stunning novel from the mid-1970s, but it’s hitting a little close to home just about now—what with the “freak” and the revolutionary locked in a cell together by a corrupt and repressive government. Molina and Valentin make strange but necessary bedfellows who run into some gender trouble and the usual wretchedness (not to mention betrayal), but also uncover unexpected tenderness and hope inside the walls of the prison where most of the novel is set. Running through it all (in the form of 1930s and ’40s movie plots that Molina recounts to Valentin to pass time and ease their suffering) is the promise of stories that are perpetually unfolding somewhere “out there” in another world, despite the horrors happening “in here” in this one. I’m grateful for the escapism, even if sometimes it feels there’s no real chance of escape. (more)

Illustrations by Allegra Lockstadt

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What Some of Our Greatest Writers Are Reading to Stay Sane in the Age of Trump

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House Democrats Demand Investigation of Comey Firing

Mother Jones

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Every Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee signed a letter Thursday afternoon to the committee’s chairman, Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), demanding an investigation into President Donald Trump’s firing of FBI chief James Comey. The letter calls for hearings featuring testimony from Comey and from two high-ranking Trump administration officials who were involved in Comey’s termination: Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

In explaining why such hearings are necessary, the letter highlights the disjointed and contradictory explanations put forth by the White House over the past two days.

“The dismissal of Director Comey demands a clear and compelling explanation,” the letter states. “To date, the Administration has provided none.” It goes on to note that the administration’s initial justification for Trump’s actions—Comey’s handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails—would have necessitated Comey’s firing months ago. And it notes that while the White House initially portrayed Rosenstein as the person behind the decision, Trump himself acknowledged in an interview with NBC Thursday that “I was going to fire him regardless of Rosenstein’s recommendation.”

The demand by the judiciary committee’s 17 Democrats echoes calls from Senate Democrats, who have requested hearings over Comey’s abrupt dismissal and the appointment of a special prosecutor of oversee the investigation into Russian interference with the 2016 election.

It’s possible that at least some House Republicans will be more willing to investigate the firing than their colleagues in the Senate. Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), the chairman of the House oversight committee, on Wednesday asked the inspector general for the Justice Department to look into the circumstances surrounding Comey’s firing. “Previously I asked Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz to review the FBI’s actions in advance of the 2016 election,” Chaffetz said in a statement. “Today I sent a letter urging IG Horowitz to expand the scope of his review to include the decision to fire Director Comey. I look forward to receiving the IG’s findings.” But Chaffetz did not go so far as to schedule a hearing.

Here’s the Democrats’ letter:

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House Democratic Letter (PDF)

House Democratic Letter (Text)

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House Democrats Demand Investigation of Comey Firing

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