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Fox News Retracts Tweets Implying Quebec City Mass Shooter Was Muslim

by Tarah51F22734806 Posted on February 1, 2017

Mother Jones

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Fox News has retracted and apologized for three tweets misidentifying the suspect in the massacre at a Quebec City mosque on Sunday night as a Moroccan.

Quebec authorities initially indicated on Monday that they had two suspects in custody, but soon clarified that the sole suspect in the killings was a white Canadian man. Although Fox News updated its story with that information on Monday, the network’s erroneous tweets remained online, pointing to a person identified by authorities as Mohamed el Khadir as the perpetrator. In fact, the sole suspect in the attack was 27-year-old Alexandre Bissonnette, who was reported to be a right-wing extremist and vocal supporter of Donald Trump.

A day after Mother Jones first reported on the erroneous Fox News tweets—which collectively were retweeted thousands of times before their removal—the director of communications for Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau sent an email to Fox News calling for a retraction and rebuking the network for allowing “false and misleading language” to continue circulating:

These tweets by Fox News dishonour the memory of the six victims and their families by spreading misinformation, playing identity politics, and perpetuating fear and division within our communities.

We need to remain focused on keeping our communities safe and united instead of trying to build walls and scapegoat communities. Muslims are predominantly the greatest victims of terrorist acts around the world. To paint terrorists with a broad brush that extends to all Muslims is not just ignorant — it is irresponsible.

(See the full text of the email from Trudeau’s communications director, Kate Purchase, in her timeline.)

In a statement emailed to Mother Jones, the managing director of FoxNews.com, Refet Kaplan, said: “FoxNews.com initially corrected the misreported information with a tweet and an update to the story on Monday. The earlier tweets have now been deleted. We regret the error.”

The earliest information to emerge as a mass shooting unfolds almost always contains inaccuracies, a well-known fact in newsrooms. Two of the Fox News tweets highlighting the unconfirmed identity of the shooter as a Moroccan were posted on its primary account, which has 13 million followers, and remained online for more than a day. A third tweet, posted on anchor Bret Baier’s Twitter feed for his show “Special Report,” was removed on Wednesday morning. It had circulated widely since Monday, after being retweeted by Donald Trump Jr. (See all three tweets here.)

On his show Monday night, Baier appeared to remain focused on the shooting suspect as a Moroccan—even after his own correspondent reported otherwise on the air.

“Bret, in the aftermath of this attack there was a great deal of confusion and contradictory reports,” said Fox correspondent David Lee Miller, reporting from Quebec City. “Initially it was said that there were two shooters. Now authorities are saying there was only one, and just a short time ago the suspect was brought into court. He is identified as Alexandre Bissonnette.” Miller described Bissonnette’s age and the murder charges brought against him. Then he added: “We are told he had been a student at a local university here, and that he had what are described as extreme right-wing views.”

Miller also went on to say that the mosque had previously faced anti-Muslim harassment, including reports of it being vandalized with swastikas and the delivery of a pig’s head to the building last summer.

After Miller’s reporting of all these details, Baier responded:

“And just to be clear, David Lee, one of them is Moroccan? Do we know anything more about the background?”

Miller again emphasized that el Khadir had by then been identified as a witness to the shooting, not a suspect: “The man described as the Moroccan was someone who was worshiping inside the mosque when the gunfire erupted.”

“OK, that’s a good point to make,” said Baier.

Watch the full segment here:

Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com

Continued here – 

Fox News Retracts Tweets Implying Quebec City Mass Shooter Was Muslim

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How to Get Rid of Fruit Flies in the Kitchen

by YvonneButz Posted on January 29, 2017

Few things are peskier than asudden onslaught of fruit flies in your kitchen. It doesn’t matter how quickly you eat your produce, they always seem to find it first!

Fruit flies breed extremely quickly, so it’s pretty easy to end up with a colony in no time. But if you’re dealing with an infestation in the kitchen, odds are you don’t want to spray toxic chemicals in the area.

Sick of them taking over? Compostyour overripe fruit, then testone of these tried-and-true, chemical-free remedies to banish them from your kitchen forever.

Vinegar Trap

Non-toxic and works like a dream! This classic recipe will get those little bugs in no time.

Grab a small jar and put a few tablespoons of apple cider vinegar in the bottom.
Gently mix in several drops of liquid dish soap.
Place the jar on your kitchen counter, wherever you see the most gnats.
They will be drawn to the smell of the apple cider vinegar, but the soap will catch them.
When you’re satisfied, empty the jar and rinse.

Catch & Release

Humane and low-tech, this catch and release methodis a winner.

Set a nice piece of soggy, rotting fruit in a container with a lid.
Wait for the bugs to start feasting.
Quickly cover the containerthen release the flies outside, away from your home and your food.

Sticky Honey Trap

Easy to make and works like a charm.

Spread an index card with honey.
Tape the trap to a window frame or otherwise open location.
Dispose of the trap when you’ve captured all the pests you can.

General Tips & Tricks

Have an indoor kitchen compost? Empty it daily to eliminate it as a food source for fruit flies.
Keep your indoor compost’s moisture content balanced and dryishby adding “browns” i.e. any compostable element that is carbon-based, like newspaper or wood shavings.
Toss old flowers and the stale water they are standing in.
Deodorize your garbage disposal. Drop a quarter of a lemon and a splash of vinegar down the drain, then run the disposal.
Clean the kitchen and sweep up crumbs. Fruit flies zero in on food wherever it may be. Deep clean to remove any sweet residue or forgotten piece of food that may attract them.

Do you have any other creative ways to rid your kitchen of fruit flies? Let us know in the comments!

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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How to Get Rid of Fruit Flies in the Kitchen

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Zombie pipelines, an EPA under attack, and that’s just Week One

by FerminCockrell Posted on January 28, 2017

Did someone say carnage? The environment — and government agencies charged with protecting it — saw a lot of that this week. Still, some headlines mattered more than others. Here’s a rundown of President Trump’s first week in the White House and which actions should worry you the most.

Rise of the zombies:
Pipelines resurrected

What happened? On Tuesday, Trump revived both the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines. He invited TransCanada to reapply for a border-crossing permit for Keystone — which the company promptly did just two days later — and told the State Department to make a decision on that application within 60 days. (KXL, in case you’ve forgotten, would transport dirty Canadian tar-sands oil across the American farm belt and one of its most important drinking water sources and encourage the further development of one of the most climate-threatening fuel sources on the planet. President Obama rejected it as “not in the national interest.” That’s an understatement.)

Trump also directed the Army Corps of Engineers to hurry up with review and approval of a permit for the disputed segment of the Dakota Access Pipeline, which the Standing Rock Sioux say threatens their sacred land and water, and to skip additional environmental review if possible. Trump also signed an executive order that would speed up environmental reviews and approvals for other “high-priority infrastructure,” which could include still more pipelines and fossil fuel projects.

How much should you worry? Some. There are still procedural, legal, and financial hurdles in the way of the KXL and DAPL pipelines, but both pipelines are now a lot closer to getting built than they were a week ago. At the same time, environmentalists and Native American activists are riled up and ready to use every possible tool to try to stop the pipelines, from lawsuits to direct action. Obama’s rejection of KXL and reconsideration of DAPL were two of the highest-profile victories for environmental justice and the “keep it in the ground” movement under the previous administration, and activists aren’t going to give those wins up without a monumental fight.

It’s hammer time:
EPA under attack

What happened? The Trump team is hammering particularly hard on the Environmental Protection Agency. At the start of the week, the administration froze EPA grants and contracts, which fund everything from cleanup of toxic sites to testing of air quality, though most grants and contracts have now been unfrozen. The admin is vetting all external meetings and presentations that employees are planning to give over the next three weeks, reviewing studies and data that have already been published by EPA scientists, and has put a “temporary hold” on the release of new scientific information.

Myron Ebell, who until recently led Trump’s EPA transition team, said on Thursday that his “aspirational” goal would be to see the agency’s staff slashed by two-thirds, from about 15,000 people down to 5,000, and that Trump could be expected to cut about $1 billion from the agency’s annual budget of roughly $8 billion. Ebell is not part of the administration, but his views sound like what you’d expect from Scott Pruitt, Trump’s nominee to head EPA.

How much should you worry? A lot. The EPA is responsible for implementing federal laws that protect air and water, and determining what the latest science tells us about protecting human health. The agency is involved in everything from helping to fix the Flint water crisis to overseeing cleanup of toxic sites. Weakening the EPA, let alone eviscerating it, would directly and negatively affect Americans’ health.

404: Climate not found:
Website wipeouts

What happened? On Trump’s first day as president, his administration deleted information on climate change from the White House website and replaced it with a page on Trump’s “America First Energy Plan.” Most climate change mentions were deleted from the State Department’s website, as well. On Wednesday, Reuters reported that the Trump team had ordered the EPA to erase the climate change section of its website, but after some bad press, the team backed off, so as of this writing, the section is still up. An EPA webpage on common questions about climate change is gone, though.

How much should you worry? Not that much. “The full contents of the Obama administration’s White House and State Department websites, including working links to climate change reports, have been archived and are readily available to the public,” the New York Times reports, and the EPA’s climate section has been preserved too. But these kinds of moves do make it a little tougher for the public to get accurate information on climate change. More troublingly, they’re an ominous sign of what’s to come. As Trump starts wiping out climate-protecting programs and regulations, that will be the real cause for worry.

History retweets itself:
Social media blackouts

What happened? Hours after the inauguration, Trump ordered the National Park Service to stop using social media because his pride was wounded by an NPS tweet comparing the size of his inauguration crowd to Obama’s in 2008. Over the next few days, gag orders also went out to EPA, the Department of Energy’s renewables team, and the departments of the Interior, Agriculture, and Health and Human Services, telling them to stop communicating with the public via social media, press releases, and/or new website content.

The Twitter restrictions backfired: Former and current National Park Service employees tweeted out climate messages from various official accounts as well as new “alt” accounts, which just served to highlight how uncomfortable the Trump team is with scientific statements about climate change.

How much should you worry? Not that much. The Obama administration put similar restrictions in place right after he took office in 2009, putting communications on hold until they got their people in place at departments and agencies. But once the tweets and press releases do start flowing from the Trump administration, you can expect them to be devoid of #ClimateFacts.

The big chill:
Frozen rules

What happened? On Trump’s first day as president, his administration put a freeze on new or pending regulations. This included 30 EPA regulations; four Energy Department rules that would require portable air conditioners, walk-in freezers, commercial boilers, and other equipment to be more energy efficient; and regulations from other departments governing everything from hazardous waste transportation to endangered species protections.

How much should you worry? Not that much. Obama also froze new and pending regs after he took office in 2009. A number of these rules could still go through; industry supports some of the efficiency ones, for example. But this is just one step in what will be a long process of the Trump team halting and dumping rules it doesn’t like. The EPA will be a particular target. On Tuesday, Trump said environmental regulations are “out of control,” and on Thursday, Ebell said the administration might revisit decades’ worth of EPA rules.

The writing’s on the wall:
Blocking the border

What happened? On Wednesday, Trump issued an executive order kicking off the planning process for building his much-hyped wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. This is obviously an attack on immigrants. Less obviously, it’s an attack on our climate, threatened species, and fragile ecosystems. Building a 1,300-mile-long, 40-foot-tall wall would require massive amounts of concrete, which would result in a lot of additional greenhouse gas pollution, E&E News points out. And it would exacerbate the problems caused by existing border fences, like blocking the migration of animals such as wolves and jaguars, and triggering flooding.

In building a wall, Trump and his allies would also be ignoring one of the root causes of migration: climate change. We need to be helping people affected by global warming, not creating new ways to shut them out — especially since Americans caused such a big part of the climate problem in the first place.

How much should you worry? Some. There are a lot of stumbling blocks to be overcome before such a huge project could get rolling, but if it does, rare species and their habitats might be permanently devastated, and migrants trying to escape climate chaos and other hardships would suffer.

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Zombie pipelines, an EPA under attack, and that’s just Week One

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LG, ONA, ProPublica, PUR, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Zombie pipelines, an EPA under attack, and that’s just Week One

The First Big Fight Over Sanctuary Cities Pits a Latina Sheriff Against Texas’ Governor

by AmbroseHoneycutt Posted on January 27, 2017

Mother Jones

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In the Democratic hotbed of Austin, Texas, newly elected Travis County Sheriff Sally Hernandez announced last Friday that her department would join hundreds of counties around the country in reducing its cooperation with federal immigration officials. Unless presented with a warrant or court order, the sheriff’s department would no longer comply with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement requests to hold inmates suspected of being undocumented or notify the agency ahead of their release.

Hernandez’s decision, which goes into effect February 1 and makes the county Texas’ first designated sanctuary, has prompted considerable backlash from Texas Republicans. And now, perhaps inspired by President Donald Trump’s threats to strip federal funding from “sanctuary jurisdictions,” Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has demanded that Hernandez reverse course—or risk millions of dollars in state funding.

In an interview on Fox & Friends on Wednesday, Abbott called Hernandez’s actions “outrageous” and vowed to ban sanctuary cities in Texas. He promised to cut off state grants to cities, pursue legislation that would remove officials that promote the practice, and impose criminal and financial penalties. The Texas Tribune reported on Friday that Abbott’s office had requested a list of federal and state funding to Travis County from the state’s budget office.

In a letter to Hernandez, the governor noted that the county sheriff department received $1.8 million in grant money from the state’s Criminal Justice Division in 2015. Still, Hernandez—who promised during her campaign to cut cooperation with ICE—has so far refused to stand down, telling the Texas Tribune that she would not let “fear and misinformation” dictate her actions.

This isn’t the first time the state government has had a rift with a county sheriff over immigration enforcement. In 2015, Abbott vowed to withhold state funds from Dallas County Sheriff Lupe Valdez when she said she would assess ICE hold requests on a case-by-case basis. (She later said her remarks were taken out of context and promised to comply with federal immigration officials.) In November, state Sen. Charles Perry introduced a bill that required county jails to comply with federal immigration officials and effectively banned sanctuary cities in Texas. The bill is currently in the Senate Committee on State Affairs and slated for a public hearing on February 2; a similar attempt at enacting a ban faltered in 2015.) And in December, when students at several Texas universities called on administrators to establish safe havens for undocumented immigrants on campus, Abbott promised on Twitter that he would slash funding for state universities that became sanctuary campuses.

Just this week, Trump signed an executive order that would slash federal funding to cities and counties that opted not to cooperate with federal deportation efforts. In Austin’s case, that would amount to $43 million in federal grants. It’s unclear to what extent the White House will be able to carry out the order, which will likely face stiff challenges in court.

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The First Big Fight Over Sanctuary Cities Pits a Latina Sheriff Against Texas’ Governor

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This Rookie Chicago Politician Is Ready to Resist Donald Trump’s Deportation Fervor

by GSCClarita Posted on January 26, 2017

Mother Jones

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Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel held a press conference Wednesday to assure anxious residents that Chicago would remain a “sanctuary city”—meaning local law enforcement won’t help federal agents with President Donald Trump’s plan to deport millions of immigrants, a plan that just got a lot more real. In December, Emanuel told Trump to his face that he should rethink his proposed policies—specifically, that he should retain the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which has allowed undocumented immigrants who were brought here as young children (and for all practical purposes are Americans) to stay in the United States.

Yet even as Emanuel gets recognition as a mayor willing to stand up to Trump on immigration, 27-year-old rookie Alderman Carlos Ramirez-Rosa has been pushing for stronger legal protections in the city—especially given the White House’s reported intent to engage state and local police in its deportation efforts. “What we really need,” the alderman told local reporters “is less symbolism and more action.”

Ramirez-Rosa is a Chicago native, the son of a Puerto Rican dad and a Mexican-born mom. He grew up in the Lakeview neighborhood on the city’s North Side and went to a magnet high school before attending the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. After graduating, he become an aide to Illinois Rep. Luis Gutierrez, running his boss’ social-media efforts and working directly with families facing deportation. Just two years later he managed to unseat Rey Colon, the four-term 35th Ward incumbent, to become one of the youngest members of the City Council and its first openly gay Latino.

As an alderman, Ramirez-Rosa has made immigrants’ rights his main focus, and the overwhelming message he hears from affected families is that the city hasn’t done enough to protect them. “I’ve been fighting this mayor since before I took office,” Ramirez-Rosa told me. “I wasn’t elected to cozy up with the rich and powerful. I was elected by my constituents to represent their interests.”

Chicago’s 2012 sanctuary city law, the Welcoming City Ordinance, prevents city police from detaining undocumented immigrants on behalf of federal authorities. But the law contains several exceptions: for immigrants who have a criminal warrant out on them, who have been convicted of a serious offense, who are defendants in a criminal case, or who have been identified as part of a gang. Some of these carve-outs mean that people who haven’t been found guilty of a crime could be refused sanctuary. A Chicago Police Department spokesman told me that, to his knowledge, the police have not acted on any of the exceptions, and that they were intended for extreme circumstances. Still, Ramirez-Rosa and his constituents want those carve-outs removed to give legal backup to the city’s commitment to not cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Ramirez-Rosa wants Chicago, with its 183,000 undocumented immigrants, to be a model for immigrant protections. While Chicago’s law is already stronger than those of many sanctuary cities, it falls short of Philadelphia (which has no exceptions, barring extreme circumstances) and Los Angeles, New York City, and San Francisco (which have only a couple). He has been busy organizing and educating immigrant communities to be ready for the Trump administration. “The focus right now,” he said, “is preparing the community.”

Back in 2015, Ramirez-Rosa and more than a dozen local immigrants’ rights groups joined forces to create the Chicago Immigration Working Group, which has come up with six key policy goals. Bolstering the Welcoming City ordinance is one of them. They’ve also persuaded the city to launch an ID program that’s open to undocumented immigrants and helps them access city services. Emanuel has committed just over $1 million to a legal defense fund for would-be deportees, although Ramirez-Rosa points out that San Francisco, with a fraction of Chicago’s undocumented population, has just proposed a $5 million legal-defense fund. The alderman also co-sponsored an amendment that makes it illegal for police to threaten people with deportation during a confrontation, or to verbally abuse them. (During a 2013 raid, a Chicago cop famously yelled at a naturalized Chinese American man that he’d “put you in a UPS box and send you back where the expletive you came from!”)

This week, Trump signed orders to begin construction on a Mexican border wall and add detention centers and federal agents to the deportation effort. He also doubled down on his threat to rescind federal funding from sanctuary cities that won’t cooperate with the feds on deportations. If Trump follows through, Chicago stands to lose an estimated $1.3 billion—Congress would need to approve the cut. Trump’s attorney general pick, Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, is in favor of repealing DACA and opposes a path to citizenship to undocumented immigrants. Democrats in the Senate have delayed his confirmation vote, which is now expected to take place in February.

Given all the uncertainly about what will happen, Ramirez-Rosa and his office are making it a priority to educate the immigrant community. Earlier this month, he started a door-to-door outreach effort and “know your rights” trainings to teach undocumented families what they can do to fight deportation attempts. Next up: a “cop-watch” type network in his ward so neighbors can alert one another if federal immigration agents are in their area. In an act of solidarity, Ramirez-Rosa has even declared his office a sanctuary location, a move he hopes other aldermen will copy.

Ramirez-Rosa was in talks with Emanuel’s office last year. The mayor wasn’t always such a full-throated defender of immigrant rights, the alderman notes; as chair of the House Democratic Caucus, Emanuel once called immigration the “third rail of American politics,” and he actually pushed to ramp up deportations while working under President Bill Clinton in the mid-1990s. “We know the history of this mayor,” Ramirez-Rosa says. “He just wants the sound bite on TV where he says ‘I’m your champion.'”

But the alderman is feeling more hopeful of late. The talks with the mayor have gone well, he says, and Emanuel even asked for a memo outlining the working group’s proposals. Emanuel’s office wouldn’t comment on plans to alter the carve-outs. But it pointed out in a statement that the mayor started a task force (“Chicago Is With You”) with Rep. Gutierrez and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) late last year to provide legal and mental-health services to immigrants and others in need, and he’s involved in other efforts to help immigrants.

But Chicago leaders have to do much more, Ramirez-Rosa insists. The measure of progress, he says, “is in the actual ordinances and resources that the city is bringing to bear. And we’re nowhere near the other cities that are actually national leaders on this.”

Original article – 

This Rookie Chicago Politician Is Ready to Resist Donald Trump’s Deportation Fervor

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It’s happening: Climate change starts disappearing from government websites.

by KelleePulido Posted on January 20, 2017

That’s according to a new study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

You’re probably used to hearing about how denser cities cut transportation emissions, thanks to reduced driving. This study looks at a different impact: how density affects greenhouse gas emissions from buildings.

The researchers projected emissions from buildings under different potential urban densities between now and 2050. They found that denser development patterns lead to lower emissions because people live and work in smaller units that consume less energy. Attached buildings are also more efficient for heating and cooling.

So the PNAS study finds that greater density has the potential to substantially reduce building emissions, more so than other efforts to improve energy efficiency like better weather-proofing.

Unfortunately, global trends are moving in the wrong direction. Cities around the world are growing, but at the same time, urban density is decreasing, as cars enable cities and their suburbs to sprawl outwards.

Governments can adopt policies to make their cities and towns denser, and they’ll need to — not just in the relatively sprawling cities of North America and Europe, but in the fast-growing cities of Asia and the rest of the developing world.

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It’s happening: Climate change starts disappearing from government websites.

Posted in alo, Anchor, Casio, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, mixer, ONA, organic, PUR, Ringer, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on It’s happening: Climate change starts disappearing from government websites.

Your Day-One Guide to President Trump’s Conflicts of Interest

by CarmelPacker60 Posted on January 20, 2017

Mother Jones

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Donald Trump takes office today as the most conflicted and ethically problematic president in the nation’s history. He refuses to divest from his global business holdings. His company continues to make foreign deals even after he promised to halt them. He owes hundreds of millions of dollars to domestic and overseas banks and other financial institutions. And Trump has yet to release his tax returns, making it impossible to know the full extent of his business dealings, liabilities, and other potential conflicts in the US and around the world.

On the first day of Trump’s presidency, here is a guide to the conflicts and ethical questions that will dog him from the moment he steps foot in the White House.

Trump’s Other Home on Pennsylvania Avenue

There was a joke during the presidential campaign: Win or lose, Trump would still have a presence on DC’s iconic Pennsylvania Avenue. The Trump International Hotel opened last year in the historic Old Post Office Building four blocks from the White House, charging $850 a night for a room and $26 for a hamburger. Trump’s unexpected victory, however, presented a new problem for the incoming president: He will violate the Trump International’s lease the moment he takes office.

Trump’s lease with the General Services Administration—the landlord of the federal government—bans any elected official, including the president, from having a financial stake or gaining a financial benefit from the property. Congressional Democrats argue that Trump, under the terms of the lease, must legally divest himself from the 263-room hotel before taking office. If he chooses not to divest, Democrats say the GSA should evict Trump.

The conflicts here are many. Trump’s administration will oversee the GSA and handpick its leader, and the agency will in turn be tasked with negotiating with Trump Organization officials over rent, lease terms, and so on. GSA officials have hedged their comments about the fate of the hotel. The agency said in a statement in December that it “plans to coordinate with the president-elect’s team to address any issues that may be related to the Old Post Office building.” Trump’s transition team stayed mum about the lease controversy while Trump himself has refused to cut ties with the hotel. The Trump International, meanwhile, has courted foreign dignitaries, raising questions about whether the new administration was pushing foreign governments to patronize the hotel. This week, Trump spokesman Sean Spicer gave a shout-out to the hotel: “It’s a stunning hotel. I encourage you to go there if you haven’t been by.”

The Foreign Connection

The Emoluments Clause was an obscure provision of the US Constitution—until Trump arrived on the scene. The clause prohibits any government official from receiving money, gifts, and anything else of value from a foreign government. In the view of many constitutional experts, Trump stands in violation of the Emoluments Clause from the first day of his presidency. “Applied to Mr. Trump’s diverse dealings, the text and purpose of the Emoluments Clause speak as one: this cannot be allowed,” wrote Norm Eisen, a former chief ethics lawyer under President Obama, and Richard Painter, a former chief ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush.

A foreign state-owned bank rents space in a Trump-owned building. Trump has loans via a partnership with the Bank of China. Foreign diplomats and governments are paying to stay at the Trump International Hotel in DC, which is largely owned by Trump and run by his company. And then there are the many Trump-owned and -branded hotels across the globe—deals that in some cases involve partnerships with questionable characters. (A project in Azerbaijan with the son of the country’s transportation minister is one glaring example.) All of these sources of money—and many more—run afoul of the Emoluments Clause, according to Eisen and Painter.

Trump has responded to questions about his conflicts with flat denials. “The law is totally on my side,” he said in late November, “meaning the president can’t have a conflict of interest.” Ethics experts say this isn’t true. In an analysis for the Brookings Institution, Eisen and Painter studied legal and historical precedent and came to the conclusion that evidence “compellingly” supports “the longstanding and near-unanimous consensus among lawyers and legal scholars that the Emoluments Clause applies in full to the President.”

At a press conference earlier this month, Trump said he was turning control of his company over to his sons and declared that the Trump Organization would pursue no new international business during his presidency. He also said the company would terminate many foreign projects (like the Azerbaijani project, which has long been dormant anyway) that the Trump Organization had in development. But, just this week, one of his Scottish golf courses announced plans to expand and Trump projects in Indonesia appear to be moving forward. While Trump bragged at the press conference about turning down a deal with Dubai-based property development company DAMAC, he did not address the fact that he has an ongoing licensing deal with company worth between $2 million and $10 million a year.

It’s Not What You Own—It’s What You Owe

Trump, as Mother Jones has reported, will enter the White House as the most indebted president in history. And the new president’s debtors, which include foreign financial institutions, raise a whole slew of questions.

According to Trump’s financial disclosure forms, his largest single lender is Deutsche Bank, which he owes $364 million. The German bank and US law enforcement officials have sparred in recent years, with the bank agreeing to pay a $7.2 billion fine for its role in the 2008 mortgage crisis. The Justice Department has an ongoing investigation into the bank for allegedly helping to funnel money out of Russia.

The fact that Trump will enter office with his biggest lender under investigation by his administration is one of the most obvious conflicts his debts pose. But there are other ethical issues: What happens if one of his lenders wants to renegotiate the loan’s terms? How can the public be sure that the bank isn’t using its leverage to curry favor or that Trump isn’t using his position to seek special treatment? Although Trump has said he is separating himself from the daily operations of his company, he has personally guaranteed a number of his loans. Will Trump recuse himself if a decision directly involving one of his lenders lands on his desk?

Trust Isn’t Blind

During his press conference earlier this month, Trump laid out his plan to insulate himself from conflicts of interest: He would place all of his assets in a trust controlled by his sons, who would not discuss any of the Trump Organization’s business dealings with him. An “independent ethics adviser” would vet any new Trump Organization deals. And Trump would donate any hotel profits derived from foreign governments to the US Treasury.

Ethics experts were aghast. They had been nearly unanimous in their advice that Trump place his assets in a blind trust run by an independent trustee who oversees the assets and can sell off those that pose a conflict. Trump’s plan was so far outside the boundaries of what past presidents and cabinet members typically do that the usually press-shy director of the Office of Government Ethics publicly blasted the proposal. Trump’s transition team did not even consult with the OGE, according to Walter Shaub, the office’s director. “We would have told them that this arrangement fails to meet the statutory requirements,” he said.

For Trump, however, the issue appears to be settled—even if that means entering the White House as the most conflict-ridden President in US history.

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Your Day-One Guide to President Trump’s Conflicts of Interest

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Riveting Moments From Donald Trump Inauguration Protests—Updated

by BarbaraNewcomer Posted on January 19, 2017

Mother Jones

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In the coming days, crowds of Donald Trump supporters will take to the streets to welcome the new president, including at Thursday’s Make America Great Again rally at the Lincoln Memorial and Friday’s inaugural parade outside the White House.

But a whole lot of people are organizing to protest Trump, including more than 1 million people who are expected to participate in women’s marches around the world.

Here are highlights from some of the protests. Come back here for more news as we update this story.

January 20

Mother Jones reporters are on the scene covering the protests ahead of today’s swearing-in ceremony:

January 19

Tensions are high as protesters confront Trump supporters attending the “Deploraball,” an inauguration celebration at the National Press Club in Washington, DC.

Protesters rally outside the Trump International Hotel in New York, joined by New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, filmmaker Michael Moore, actor Alec Baldwin, and other high-profile speakers.

January 18

Hundreds gather for a “Queer Dance Party” outside of Vice President-elect Mike Pence’s Chevy Chase house. Firas Nasr, founder of WERK for Peace, tells DCist that the event is meant to show that “homophobia and transphobia is wrong and should be resisted.” As Indiana’s governor, Pence had a poor record on LGBT rights, signing a bill to protect businesses that discriminated against gay people.

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Riveting Moments From Donald Trump Inauguration Protests—Updated

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The Press Corps We Deserve

by StevieFusqpw Posted on January 19, 2017

Mother Jones

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“FAKE NEWS—A TOTAL POLITICAL WITCH HUNT!” President-elect Donald Trump’s Twitter account blared last week, after CNN reported that US intelligence officials had briefed him and President Barack Obama on an alleged Russian operation to co-opt him and gather compromising information.

The allegations, summarized in a memo that a former foreign intelligence official passed to the FBI last summer, were not new. They were first reported by MoJo‘s David Corn on October 31. That was, to state the obvious, eight days before the election; it was also three days after FBI Director James Comey announced that the bureau had discovered what might be a new batch of Hillary Clinton’s emails. Though those emails hadn’t yet been reviewed (and turned out to reveal nothing) Comey thought they were significant enough to bring them to the world’s attention. He did not make a similar announcement about this other trove of information. Make of that what you will.

Nor, it should be noted, did the rest of the press devote even a fraction of the attention it lavished on the email announcement to the Russia story; some even speculated that a batch of Russia-related stories that broke that day had to be the result of an “oppo dump,” suggesting that the journalists were covering this issue simply because Clinton forces were pushing it. (This assumption is still poisoning the debate, but that’s for another day.)

Let’s be absolutely clear: David’s story was the result of enterprise reporting and fact-checking. Mother Jones did not choose to publish the memos themselves or detail the specific allegations because we were not able to independently verify them. (As David noted on Twitter, “even Donald Trump deserves journalistic fairness.”)

What we were able to verify, though, was that the former intelligence professional was who he said he was, that he had the respect of many others in his field, that he’d taken his information to the FBI, and that the bureau had followed up.

That an authoritarian foreign power might be seeking to compromise the next president of the United States was news, and it deserved further investigation by the FBI as well as the press. (Mother Jones will definitely stay on the beat—just a few hours ago, David published his latest scoop on this matter.) That neither institution drew sufficient public attention to it may prove to be an error of historic consequence. But that moment has passed. Now, with Trump taking office as the 45th president, the urgent task is to learn from it.

One lesson is that fearless, independent reporting is more critical than ever. If you believe that, consider supporting our nonprofit newsroom. Your donation goes directly to the work that David and his fellow reporters and editors do every day.

Another lesson is that journalists’ reflexive instinct to undercut or ignore each other’s work—standard competitive point-scoring in a normal environment—may have a cost. Because we are no longer in a normal environment. That was chillingly demonstrated in Trump’s response when the Russia dossier story finally became blew open last week.

First came those tweets calling it fake news—a term, don’t forget, that came into use to describe made-up stories intended to boost Trump. (Trump isn’t alone with this rhetorical sleight of hand. Lots of people, on the right and the left, now use “fake news” as a synonym for “news I disagree with.” That’s a perversion of the concept.)

Then, with the press corps assembled at his tower the next morning, Trump sent out his spokesman and his vice president to slam and humiliate the outlets that had made the story big news again, lumping together CNN, which had been careful not to publish the memos or details, and BuzzFeed, which had made the controversial choice to run the documents in full. “Sad” and “pathetic” were some of the kinder terms used.

Finally, Trump went in for the kill. He called BuzzFeed a “failing pile of garbage.” He refused to take a question from CNN’s Jim Acosta, calling CNN “fake news.” His spokesman later told Fox News that he would “remove” Acosta if he demanded the right to ask a question again.

This response deserves a little unpacking, because it is a dry run for what we can expect going forward. In just a couple of tweets and a handful of comments, Trump sought to (a) discredit all of the press for the decisions of some; (b) neutralize a term that describes, in part, propaganda ginned up by Moscow to help his candidacy; (c) use that term to dismiss a story of enormous concern to the public; and last but not least, (d) play a divide-and-conquer game with the press itself.

The president-elect had started the news conference by complimenting some news outlets (that he did not name) for the “professional” manner in which they handled the Russian intelligence story. But then, as Acosta asked him to “give us a chance to ask a question, sir,” he shook his head: “Not you. Your organization is terrible. Quiet!”

Sorting the press into “good” and “bad” is a tried-and-true tactic of media manipulation. It aims to push reporters to conduct themselves in a way that will land them on the good list, to be rewarded with access, and to fear ending up on the bad list that may come in for punishment and exile. Quiet. Or else.

(What that punishment could look like is already becoming apparent, with Trump demanding that Congress investigate NBC’s decision to report a leak of another element of the Russia story.)

The president-elect and many of his supporters have long made clear their contempt for reporters who pursue inconvenient stories. When they impugn real reporting as “fake news” and use that slur to dodge vital questions, it’s an attack on all journalists—and on the audience. On you.

As citizens, as participants in democracy, you deserve journalists who ask hard questions and refuse to back down when the president tells them to shush. You deserve a press that doesn’t wave off conflicts of interest and possible ties to foreign autocrats as just another wrinkle in the who’s-up-who’s-down of political competition. You need a Fourth Estate that goes exactly where powerful people don’t want it to go.

But the economics of media are such that we are not assured that kind of watchdog press unless we build an alternative to a model where newsrooms are owned by entertainment corporations and financed by cheap advertising. Those corporations and advertisers have lots of interests; a vigorous and unrestrained press is not necessarily the first one. If you sign up as a sustaining donor to Mother Jones, you become part of building the alternative.

Journalists don’t always talk about the backstory to our reporting, and that’s been to our disadvantage. Here at MoJo, we have been seeking to jump-start that conversation with our series of articles on the media business and our own campaign to build a reader-supported model. In the coming year, we hope to roll out more ways for you to participate in that conversation, and in the journalism itself. But don’t be shy to jump in right now: What did you think of how Trump characterized the press? Do you think MoJo should have published the Russia memos? Tell us in the comments, on Facebook, on Twitter, or by sending us an email.

P.S. Just have to add this other bit of news that broke just as we were about to publish: Mother Jones has been nominated for three National Magazine Awards (the Oscars of our industry), for general excellence, reporting (for Shane Bauer’s prison investigation), and Magazine of the Year. That’s a huge honor to the insanely hard-working team here—and to you, our readers, who make it all possible. Thank you.

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The Press Corps We Deserve

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Climate Change Means Fewer Days of Perfect Weather

by Jane Adams Posted on January 19, 2017

Mother Jones

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Picture the perfect picnic day: It’s neither too hot nor too cold, neither too humid nor too dry. The sun is shining, and there’s little chance of rain. For many of our outdoor activities, these are the days we care about and plan for. And yet, in the last few decades of climate research, scientists haven’t spent much time researching these “mild weather” days.

“In standard climate science research, we either focus on changes in the mean climate—what is the average annual temperature globally and how does that change in time, or what is the average annual rainfall amount and how does rainfall amount change in a region—or we look at extreme weather and storms, so hurricanes or floods or droughts,” says Sarah Kapnick, a climate scientist at the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). But today, Kapnick, along with two colleagues at NOAA and Princeton University, have released the very first study on global shifts in “mild weather” over the next century, and the results are not looking good.

Annual number of mild weather days right now.

Changes in annual mild weather days in years 2081-2100.

Using a climate simulation model to analyze mild weather days worldwide, the scientists found that today a person, on average, experiences 89 mild days—but by 2100 she will only experience 78. Moreover, though the latter half of the century will see the fastest decline in mild days, we will begin to see the effects within the next twenty years. The model projects that by 2035, our global average of mild days will fall by four. To put this into perspective, El Niño—one of the largest natural climate-changing events—only chips off one mild weather day per year from the global average.

Of course, these mild weather changes are not evenly distributed around the world. For example, the majority of Africa, as well as, parts of Asia, eastern Latin America, and northern Australia—regions most hard-hit by other studied climate change impacts—will also suffer the greatest losses in mild weather, upwards of 25 fewer days, over the next century. That isn’t to say that the US will ride through the upcoming decades unscathed. A table published along with the study shows exactly what key American cities should expect within the next twenty years. Take two examples: Miami, which currently experiences 97 mild weather days per year, will lose 16 of those days by 2035; DC, currently tallied at 81, will lose 7.

Changes in annual mild weather days for key cities in the US. Karin van der Wiel, lead author of the study

Ticking off a couple of days here and there doesn’t sound too bad when you’re planning for picnics or hikes. But, as Kapnick points out, mild weather days also affect critical economic activities, including construction, infrastructure projects, agriculture, and air and rail travel. Such shrinking and shifting of mild weather could lead to significant negative economic consequences, not to mention a threat to our global food supply. Even for the handful of regions around the world where mild weather is predicted to increase, there could be unexpected consequences. “People in sunny California know that just because you have sunny, lovely weather, mild weather, doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily a good thing for your water resources,” says Kapnick.

Now that a model exists for studying the everyday impacts of climate change, Kapnick hopes other scientists will build off of her team’s work. She says, “We have started with mild weather, but future work can look at other ranges of climate that interest people for specific purposes or activities.”

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Climate Change Means Fewer Days of Perfect Weather

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