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The Great Trump Peace Tour Is Beginning

by JovitaLarnach Posted on May 19, 2016

Mother Jones

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From Bloomberg:

Donald Trump is looking to break down the political wall between him and a segment of Hispanic voters: Latino evangelicals who tend to vote Republican. Trump aides have told the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference that the presumptive Republican presidential nominee will submit videotaped remarks to be played at their annual conference this weekend in California.

….“It would be the first time that I’m aware of that he’s addressing, even though it’s a videotaped message, a Latino organization,” said Brent Wilkes, the national executive director of the League of United Latin American Citizens. “That’s encouraging, honestly.”

Encouraging! Maybe so—for Trump, anyway. One of the things he seems to have learned in his career is that it’s usually not too hard to kiss and make up. You can treat people as harshly as you want, but once the fight is over all you have to do is announce publicly that these are really great guys and you have nothing but respect for them. It’s life as a football game.

Will it work in a presidential campaign? Can Trump make up with women, blacks, gays, Hispanics, and the disabled? It’s possible. People have short memories, and they’re suckers for praise. If he’s smart enough to rein in the insults and shower conservative-leaning groups with praise, there’s no telling how far he can go.

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The Great Trump Peace Tour Is Beginning

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Congressional Republicans Found the Most Useless Way to Combat Race and Sex Discrimination

by JulianneR05 Posted on April 25, 2016

Mother Jones

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Republicans in Congress are trying to end race and sex discrimination—in the womb. The Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act (PRENDA) would ban abortion on the basis of the race or sex of the fetus. Republicans say the measure is necessary to protect the civil rights of African Americans and women.

“It took the Civil War to make the state-sanctioned practice of human slavery come to an end,” said Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.), the bill’s author, during a recent hearing on the measure. “One glaring exception is life itself, the most foundational civil right of all.”

According to Franks, who has introduced various versions PRENDA since 2008, ending race- and sex-selective abortions is the “civil rights struggle that will define our generation.” During a hearing by an all-male committee earlier this month, Franks also noted that upward of 50 percent of African American babies are “killed before they’re born,” and that “a Hispanic child is three times more likely to be aborted than a white child.”

The proposed measure would make it illegal for a physician to perform on abortion on a pregnant woman who wants the procedure because the fetus isn’t her desired sex or race. Under the measure, the father of the unborn child and the pregnant woman’s parents could sue a physician who performs such an abortion. Doctors would also be required to report suspected cases to law enforcement.

It’s unclear where Franks is getting his numbers. A 2012 Guttmacher report found that evidence of sex- and race-based abortions in the United States is limited and inconclusive. According to the report, two studies using 2000 US census data found that although the sex ratio of first-born children was normal in families of Chinese, Indian, and Korean descent, those families did have a preference for sons in second and third births. The authors in that study were unable to conclude whether the imbalance was caused by abortion or fertility treatments.

But in a single 2011 study, commonly cited by PRENDA advocates, 65 Indian Americans who were interviewed had practiced sex selection, through either fertility treatments or abortion.

More recent data suggests that contrary to some stereotypes, Asian American communities are not biased in sex selecting for sons. A 2014 report by researchers at the University of Chicago Law School and two abortion rights groups analyzed population data from 2007 to 2011 and found that Chinese, Indian, and Korean Americans have more girls that white Americans.

Evidence to suggest that black and Hispanic communities are targeting their abortions is even less clear. According to Guttmacher, abortions are more common in black communities than white ones because unintended pregnancies are also more common. As a result, African American women get abortions at a rate five times higher than white women. “The truth is that behind virtually every abortion is an unintended pregnancy,” wrote Susan A. Cohen in a 2008 article on abortion and women of color.

In a letter to the House, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a coalition of 200 civil rights organizations, points out that health and economic disparities of black and Hispanic women are likely to blame for increased abortion. “African American women and Latina women have less access to contraception, prenatal care, and other critical reproductive health services, resulting in stark disparities across a number of sexual and reproductive health indicators,” the Leadership Conference wrote.

Loretta Ross, the national coordinator of SisterSong, a reproductive justice organization for women of color, told Mother Jones in 2011, “It’s kind of hard to find evidence that a black woman is going to have an abortion because she’s surprised to find her baby is black. It just strains credulity to think that’s a problem. I mean, she wakes up in the morning and says ‘Oh my God! My baby’s black!’?”

According to abortion rights advocates and Democratic legislators, the measure could increase discrimination against pregnant women, particularly women of color, by forcing doctors to speculate on the reasons their patients seek abortions, and then requiring the physicians to report suspected discriminatory abortions. Because of stereotypes that Asian communities prefer male children, advocates worry that Asian women would be especially vulnerable to profiling by their physicians.

“This bill is so horrendous that I could not believe it when it was first brought up,” said Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.). “It is a nightmare. This is a piece of legislation that would impose criminal penalties on providers and limit the reproductive choices of women of color and all women.”

Seven states already ban abortion based on sex selection. Only Arizona, which Franks represents, also bans race-selective abortions.

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Congressional Republicans Found the Most Useless Way to Combat Race and Sex Discrimination

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9 figures to help you understand the state of renewable energy

by MaritaMontefior Posted on March 24, 2016

9 figures to help you understand the state of renewable energy

By on 24 Mar 2016 10:59 amcommentsShare

Today, you’ll see some headlines touting last year’s record investment in renewables. A new report from the Frankfurt School–UNEP Centre and Bloomberg New Energy Finance shows investment in clean energy grew to $286 billion globally in 2015 — a new world record! — up 5 percent from the previous year. Here’s what the global trend in renewable investment looks like since 2004:

Global new investment in renewable energy by asset class, 2004–2015, $bn

UNEP, Bloomberg New Energy Finance

As a whole, investment in renewable capacity was more than twice that invested in coal- and gas-fired projects last year, and new clean generating capacity added was greater than all other kinds of new generating capacity combined. Note that coal and gas only make up about a third of the pie chart below:

New power generating capacity added in 2015 by main technology, gigawatts

Bloomberg New Energy Finance

But it would kind of be bonkers if that weren’t the case.

Investment in new renewable generating capacity has had a rocky history, but it has more or less been rising everywhere except Europe for the past decade. (Europe has notably seen a decline in investment since about 2011.)

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Still, total global renewable capacity — not just newly added renewable capacity — continues to make up just a small fraction of the energy mix. Total clean energy capacity grew to 16.2 percent of the global mix in 2015, an increase from 15.2 percent in 2014. Actual electricity generated by renewable sources (excluding large hydroelectric projects) grew to 10.3 percent. It’s encouraging growth, to be sure, but perhaps not the sunny picture painted by the phrase “new world record.”

Zooming the lens in a bit reveals a more interesting story. “There are so many numbers, it’s difficult to wrap them up in a few remarks,” cautioned Angus McCrone, lead author and chief editor on the report, on a press call. Indeed, there’s a lot going on in the UNEP report, but one of the things it does well is shine a shaft of light between the big numbers. Who, exactly, is spending all this money, and what kind of money are they spending? China — whose just-released Five-Year Plan has been heralded as its greenest ever — is pouring money into new renewable projects. But what kind of projects are we actually talking about?

China was No. 1 in renewable investment in 2015, responsible for 36 percent of the world’s total. Europe came in second; even its continued slide in investment left it with $4 billion more pumped into the renewable sector than the United States. Here’s the regional breakdown, in billions of dollars, of spending on renewables in 2015:

Global new investment in renewable energy by region, 2015, $bn

UNEP, Bloomberg New Energy Finance

That’s not the whole story, though. While China experienced 81 percent growth last year in new small distributed capacity (solar projects with a capacity of less than 1 megawatt), Japan still smashed the rest of the world in that sector. In the bar graph below, note that even with declining investment in small distributed capacity, the U.S. still finished in second:

Small distributed capacity investment by country, 2015, and growth on 2014, $bn

UNEP, Bloomberg New Energy Finance

China commissioned around 29 gigawatts of onshore wind capacity in 2015 and installed close to 16 GW of solar PV projects. The country’s investments are largely dominated by company borrowing for and spending on renewable projects: what UNEP calls asset finance. Asset finance mostly consists of what’s on company balance sheets, as well as loans and equity financing. Europe, too, invested more than the U.S. in terms of asset finance last year. Here’s the breakdown of how countries invested their renewable dollars in 2015:

New investment in renewable energy by country and asset class, 2015, and growth on 2014, $bn

UNEP, Bloomberg New Energy Finance

So the UNEP report helps clarify the role China plays in the renewable sector: It’s mostly deploying utility-scale projects, and they’re mostly projects that are ready for asset finance. Globally speaking, though, here’s what asset finance for renewables looks like over time and space:

Asset finance investment in renewable energy by region, 2004–2015, $bn

Bloomberg New Energy Finance, UNEP

But asset finance comes relatively late in a renewable project’s life cycle; that is, at the point of roll-out. Earlier in the cycle, though, the funding landscape looks a little different. Funding from public markets, for example, might begin to trickle in at the point when a given company scales up manufacturing. The United States, which leads the world in terms of investment in publicly listed renewable companies, saw a 41 percent increase in this kind of funding in 2015, compared to the previous year. Note China’s 45 percent dip in this area in the following chart:

Public markets investment in renewable energy by company nationality, 2015, and growth on 2014, $bn

Bloomberg New Energy Finance

In terms of venture capital and private equity — the kind of investment that comes at an earlier stage in a company’s cycle — the United States also boasted the heaviest spend. Here’s the global distribution of venture capital spending since 2004, broken down by region:

Venture capital/private equity investment in renewable energy by region, 2004–2015, $bn

Bloomberg New Energy Finance, UNEP

And the U.S. was responsible for more value in terms of mergers and acquisitions (including refinancings, takeovers, and buy-outs) in the renewables space than any other country last year. As the following chart shows, while China has seen modest growth in acquisitions over the past couple years, the country still makes up only a small chunk of total spending in this space:

Asset acquisitions and refinancings by region, 2004–2015, $bn

Bloomberg New Energy Finance

None of this is particularly surprising, but it is illuminating — and in many cases, sobering. Don’t forget that China brought more than 40 GW of coal and gas power online last year, too. Investment in the renewable sector continues to grow, but if countries are serious about the commitments they made at the Paris Climate Conference, they’ll have to wean themselves off fossil fuels a lot faster. “When you’re on a diet, it’s not enough to account for the salads you’re eating,” said Ulf Moslener, lead editor on the report, on a press call. “You also have to account for the ice cream.”

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9 figures to help you understand the state of renewable energy

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House Science Chair launches new attack on climate scientists

by MadelaiCHZ Posted on March 17, 2016

House Science Chair launches new attack on climate scientists

By on 17 Mar 2016commentsShare

Lamar Smith is at it again.

Smith, chair of the House Science Committee and — ironically — a noted climate change denier, has a history of harassing scientists. The Texas Republican has particularly targeted Kathryn Sullivan, a former NASA astronaut and the first American woman to walk in space, and now head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The conflict goes back to last year, when Smith began demanding that NOAA turn over internal documents related to a study he objected to. The study revised earlier findings that there has been a “pause” in global temperature rise at the beginning of this century.

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Here’s Smith’s objection in his own words, from an op-ed published in the conservative Washington Times:

NOAA often fails to consider all available data in its determinations and climate change reports to the public. A recent study by NOAA, published in the journal Science, made “adjustments” to historical temperature records and NOAA trumpeted the findings as refuting the nearly two-decade pause in global warming. The study’s authors claimed these adjustments were supposedly based on new data and new methodology. But the study failed to include satellite data.

There is no validity to Smith’s claim, according to actual scientists, but that didn’t stop him from subpoenaing NOAA emails containing the words “temperature,” “climate,” “change,” “U.N.” “United Nations,” “clean power plan,” “regulations,” “Environmental Protection Agency (EPA),” “President,” “Obama,” “White House,” and more. NOAA has turned over some documents, but not as many as Smith would like, arguing that this would be a massive burden on agency scientists, who are supposed to be doing, you know, science.

Smith used a hearing on Wednesday about NOAA’s budget to revisit the issue. The congressman, who has received more than $600,000 in donations from the fossil fuel industry, objects to NOAA’s proposed budget for 2017, which earmarks $190 million for climate change research and $100 million for weather forecasting.

“Instead of hyping a climate change agenda, NOAA should focus its efforts on producing sound science and improving methods of data collection,” Smith said. “Unfortunately, climate alarmism often takes priority at NOAA.”

He then proceeded to harangue Sullivan about that NOAA study (again), accusing the agency of manipulating data to support President Obama’s clean energy proposal. “It was published just before the administration was about to propose its final Clean Power Plan regulations at the U.N. Paris Climate Change Conference,” he said.

Sullivan wasn’t having it. “I stand by the integrity and quality of the study,” she told Smith, and assured him that the agency is working to comply with his subpoena.

But regardless of how many documents NOAA turns over, it looks like Lamar Smith is just getting warmed up for his fight against science.

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House Science Chair launches new attack on climate scientists

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At Conservative Gathering, Attacks on Donald Trump Are Not Sticking

by euro9 Posted on March 4, 2016

Mother Jones

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Increasingly desperate in the face of Donald Trump’s growing lead in the Republican primary contest, his opponents have begun hurling attacks at him in a last-ditch effort to stop his rise. Marco Rubio is now calling Trump a “con artist” who started a “fake university” in order to trick people into taking out loans. Ted Cruz continues to hammer at Trump for having previously been pro-choice and progressive on other issues before he decided to run for president. Mitt Romney lashed out at him on Thursday as “a phony, a fraud.” A new super-PAC dedicated to defeating Trump released an ad this week hitting the front-runner for the Trump University scam.

But attendees of this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, just outside Washington, DC, say these attacks are one scam they are not going to fall for.

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At Conservative Gathering, Attacks on Donald Trump Are Not Sticking

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Conservatives Defend Trump Over KKK Dodge

by StarSlonemfxegk Posted on March 3, 2016

Mother Jones

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Last Sunday, Donald Trump declined to disavow David Duke, a white supremacist and former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan who asked his supporters to back Trump for president. The next day, Trump blamed his response on a bad earpiece garbling the question. It wasn’t until Thursday morning that he finally came around to condemning Duke. By then, the media and Trump’s GOP rivals had spent five days attacking Trump over the issue and hand-wringing about the state of the Republican Party. “So is this how the party of Abraham Lincoln dies?” asked Joe Scarborough, the conservative co-host of MSNBC’s Morning Joe.

But the fact that it took Trump days to condemn a white supremacist didn’t faze many Republican voters at the Conservative Political Action Conference, the annual conservative gathering just outside of Washington, DC.

“Ridiculous,” said Sharon Begosh, 54, of Maryland, when asked about the furor over Trump’s response to the David Duke question last week. She’s pretty sure Trump didn’t hear the question correctly. “There’s not a racist bone in his body,” she said.

Begosh, who is supporting Cruz, said the Duke controversy is an example of people playing the “race card” when they have nothing else on their political opponents.

“The Ku Klux Klan won’t rise again,” said Grace Hagerty, 83, of Virginia, who voted for Trump on Super Tuesday.

While pundits have pointed to Trump’s KKK dodge as evidence that the Republican front-runner is riling up racist elements in the party, CPAC attendees saw it differently. One of the most common responses to questions about the Duke issue was that politicians simply are not responsible for who their supporters are or what they believe.

“I don’t think you can control who your supporters are,” said Nestor Riano, 53, of Minnesota.

Brian Bledsoe, 35, of Texas echoed that sentiment. “Can’t blame the candidate about who’s supporting him,” he said.

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Conservatives Defend Trump Over KKK Dodge

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At COP21, Victims of Paris Attack Mobilize for Climate Action

by Myrna Posted on November 30, 2015

Mass marches were banned following the terrorist attacks, but some protesters are pushing the boundaries. Over 20,000 shoes were placed in Paris’s Place de la République to symbolize those unable to march for climate action on November 29. Among them were the pope’s black leather dress shoes. Antonia Juhasz for Newsweek Amelie Cornu’s sister-in-law was at the Bataclan theater on November 13, the night 130 people were killed in a series of coordinated attacks across Paris, and the site of the deadliest violence that night. She survived, although other friends of Cornu’s friends did not. Iain Keith was sitting in a restaurant when he looked up to see a man outside of the window dressed all in black carrying a gun walking up the street and shouting. A waiter hurried Keith and the others there down the stairs and to a back room. All left physically unharmed. A friend of Alix’s (who did not give a last name) lost her sister in the attacks. “We all knew someone, or know someone who knew someone,” directly harmed in the attacks,” says Lola Sigogneau of the French climate organization Alternatiba. “But the same is true for all of Paris.” All were originally united by over a year’s worth of effort to plan what they hoped would be the single largest march demanding action on climate in history, but their lives became inextricably linked that night by the worst attack in French history since World War II. The tragedy ultimately permeated every event held for the climate on November 29, the day before world leaders gathered in Paris for the United Nations 21st Conference of the Parties (COP21). Read the rest at Newsweek. Visit site:   At COP21, Victims of Paris Attack Mobilize for Climate Action ; ; ;

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At COP21, Victims of Paris Attack Mobilize for Climate Action

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Instead of buying something this Friday, fix something

by ThorstenHardiman Posted on November 25, 2015

Instead of buying something this Friday, fix something

By on 25 Nov 2015commentsShare

If you’re looking for something to do this Black Friday that’s doesn’t involve draining your bank account directly into the pockets of giant corporations, then consider this: Your home is probably already full of half-broken junk. So why not just fix some of that, rather than spring for a bunch of brand-new, soon-to-be-half-broken junk?

I know, I know — that doesn’t sound nearly as much fun as strapping on the old IV drip of consumerist Kool-Aid and getting lost in the aisles of Walmart, but stick with me. I promise that this alternate route leads to pizza, whiskey, and the beautiful but increasingly elusive feeling of self-reliance. It also leads to socially and environmentally responsible consumerism, but in the battle against shameless indulgence, it’s probably best to focus on the pizza and whiskey.

Our journey begins with Jason Koebler, a reporter with Motherboard who took a deep dive into the DIY repair community — and those trying to sabotage it — after accidentally busting the screen on his own Apple laptop. You can read all about Koebler’s long road from a loose pentalobe screw to the Electronics Reuse Conference here, but if you’re anxious to get back to those Black Friday deals on Amazon, here are some highlights. First, what’s a pentalobe screw?

The iPhone 4 shipped with standard, Phillips head screws. Sometime in late 2010, however, the company began ordering its Apple Store Geniuses to replace standard screws with pentalobe ones on any iPhone 4 devices that were brought in for repair. Reuters reported on January 20, 2011 that employees were instructed to not tell customers that they had made the switch. The switch should have, in theory, made it impossible for anyone except for Apple to open the device.

Koebler was lucky, then, that when he knocked over his laptop, one of those screws just happened to come loose. Fortunately for the rest of us, the well-known DIY repair company iFixit also countered the pentalobe move with an “iPhone Liberation Kit,” complete with a homemade pentalobe screwdriver. “That was the first screwdriver in the world outside of Apple that would remove the pentalobe screw,” Kevin Wiens, CEO of iFixit, told Koebler. “Apple was literally screwing their customers, and because we had a heads up, we were able to sell a screwdriver as soon as it came to the United States.”

But as Koebler discovered, Apple isn’t alone in trying to prevent consumers from repairing their own property. Plenty of companies are now using copyright laws to prevent third party repair shops from stepping on their business. Here’s more from Koebler:

Last year, Customs and Border Patrol seized $162 million worth of consumer electronics in 6,612 separate raids as part of a program called “Operation Chain Reaction” that 16 separate government agencies are involved in. Spend some time searching the internet, and you’ll find forum posts written by people who say their businesses or livelihoods were destroyed because of a CBP seizure.

“We got really scared, legitimately. We pulled all our parts out of our stores and we kept them at my house,” Ivan Mladenovic, who runs two TechBar repair shops in South Florida, told me about the months following the federal raids in Miami. “We would shuttle parts to the store 2-3 at a time. I’m under the impression that the business of repairing iPhones could just go away one day. Apple could vanish an industry if it really wants to go after us.”

Still, the DIY repair community is fighting back. Koebler found himself at the heart of that community earlier this month at the Electronics Reuse Conference in New Orleans, where he met some pretty badass DIY-ers like this:

Jessa Jones, a former microbiologist-turned iPad repairwoman, is widely considered in the profession to be among the best repair professionals in the world. In between taking care of her four kids as a stay-at-home mother, she spends her days casually recovering priceless data from water-damaged iPads that would no one else would ever bother touching, or fixing short circuits that cause the iPad LCD backlight to burn out. She’s so good that, if she can’t fix a device, she doesn’t charge her customers.

Of course, fixing one’s own electronics is about more than self-reliance and sticking it to the man. It’s also about the massive e-waste problem piling up in the developing world. Wiens of iFixit is highly aware of this problem and has even visited some of these places to see for himself how bad it is. This epidemic is partly why iFixit deals not only in Apple devices, but in all kinds of products, including Xbox 360s, DSLR cameras, washing machines, alarm clocks, and even Patagonia shirts.

Now, if you’re still not convinced that fixing your old junk is a good idea, then I did promise you pizza and whiskey, so here’s a look at what Koebler, Jones, and Wiens got up to after the Electronics Reuse Conference:

iPhone and iPad parts littered the floor and table. Someone was showing off the custom back they had made for their phone. Jessa Jones was fixing iPad backlights and teaching others what each little electrical component does. Wiens and his staff were talking about sci fi books and discussing what toppings of pizza to order and were geeking out over their most recent repairs. Several separate beer runs were made.

At one point, Wiens poured himself a room-temperature whiskey. He grabbed a pressurized can of freeze spray—used to find hot chips on broken logic boards—stuck it into his whiskey, and sprayed. It splashed all over the place, but the drink was colder.

Source:

How to Fix Everything

, Motherboard.

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Instead of buying something this Friday, fix something

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What a New Poll About Mass Shootings in America Gets Dangerously Wrong

by MandyLienhop Posted on October 27, 2015

Mother Jones

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A Washington Post-ABC News poll on gun violence published Monday included a stark finding: “By a more than 2-to-1 margin, more people say mass shootings reflect problems identifying and treating people with mental health problems rather than inadequate gun control laws.” Sixty-three percent of respondents blamed a deficient mental health care system as the prime reason for America’s incessant gun massacres, while 23 percent pointed to weak gun regulations.

What’s most troubling about these results and the question that prompted them is that they perpetuate a dangerous stigmatization. The vast majority of mentally ill people are not violent. I wrote about this in my recent Mother Jones cover story on threat assessment, a growing strategy for stopping mass shooters that relies on collaboration between mental health and law enforcement experts:

We know that many mass shooters are young white men with acute mental health issues. The problem is, such broad traits do little to help threat assessment teams identify who will actually attack. Legions of young men love violent movies or first-person shooter games, get angry about school, jobs, or relationships, and suffer from mental health afflictions. The number who seek to commit mass murder is tiny. Decades of research have shown that the link between mental disorders and violent behavior is small and not useful for predicting violent acts. (People with severe mental disorders are in fact far more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators.)

Then there is the role of guns. As a top forensic psychologist described it to me at a recent summit of more than 700 threat assessment professionals in Southern California, “One of the first things you focus on with this process is access to weapons.” Guns obviously are no more a sole cause of mass shootings than schizophrenia or suicidal depression are. But their role in such crimes is self-evident:

Can they be prevented from striking?

Possession of a firearm, of course, is not a meaningful predictor of targeted violence. But at the conference in Disneyland, virtually everyone I spoke with agreed that guns make these crimes a lot easier to commit—and a lot more lethal. “There are so many firearms out there, you just assume everybody has one,” Scalora says. “It’s safer to assume that than the opposite.” The presence of more than 300 million guns in the United States—and the lack of political will to regulate their sale or use more effectively—is a stark reality with which threat assessment experts must contend, and why many believe their approach may be the best hope for combating what has become a painfully normal American problem.

The Washington Post-ABC News poll furthered a misleading stereotype about a broad population of Americans by presenting a false choice between mental health and gun policy. The chart above shows that only 10 percent of respondents recognized that solving mass shootings is more complicated than checking one box or the other. Any solution deeply involves both, and a whole lot more.

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What a New Poll About Mass Shootings in America Gets Dangerously Wrong

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Ryan: No Immigration Reform If He’s Speaker

by MaiChristiansen Posted on October 21, 2015

Mother Jones

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Rep. Paul Ryan met with the Republican caucus in the House today and told them he was willing to run for Speaker. But only on his terms: unanimous support, reduced fundraising duties, and an end to mid-session attempts to remove the Speaker from power. According to a team of National Review reporters, he didn’t offer much in return—except for this:

Though it wasn’t a night in which Ryan was making many concessions — aside from a nod that he was seriously considering taking a job he has said publicly he does not want — he also hinted strongly that he will not bring an immigration bill to the House floor. He told his colleagues the issue was simply “too divisive” and he wanted to focus on the things on which the conference is in agreement, like border security and internal enforcement, as opposed to a comprehensive bill.

This doesn’t strike me as a huge concession. Ryan may be an immigration dove, but under the current circumstances there’s no way he’d try to cut a deal with Democrats for comprehensive immigration reform. Especially not during an election year. The conservative base rebelled over this in 2006 and then again in 2013. Bringing it up again would be nuts. And whatever else Ryan is, he’s not nuts.

So there you have it: no immigration reform this year or next. But you weren’t really expecting any, were you?

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Ryan: No Immigration Reform If He’s Speaker

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