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Russia Threatened to Shut Down the "Deconfliction" Hotline. Here’s Why That’s Terrifying.

by ArcherNZPM Posted on April 7, 2017

Mother Jones

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Following the US attack on a Syrian airbase overnight, Russian officials expressed outrage. Russia, which is allied with Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, denounced the missile strikes as a “violation of the norms of international law.” Russia also took an even more ominous step, announcing that it would be shutting down the “deconfliction” hotline it shares with the United States.

The deconfliction hotline may sound obscure, but it’s actually a key channel through which the two countries communicate about their military activities in Syria. The US and Russia are backing different sides in Syria’s civil war; the US and its allies are attacking ISIS (and now Assad), while Russia is attacking Syrian rebels. This creates the potential for an unintended incident between US and Russian forces to escalate into a larger conflict between the two powers. The hotline helps prevent that from happening by allowing both sides to coordinate their planes in Syria’s crowded airspace, avoiding collisions.

After the US missile strikes—which President Donald Trump ordered in response to Assad’s latest chemical weapons attack on civilians—Russia declared that it was suspending the hotline. “While previous initiatives of this kind were presented as efforts to combat terrorism, now they are clearly an act of aggression against a sovereign Syria. Actions undertaken by the US today inflict further damage to the Russia-US relations,” said a statement issued Friday morning by the Russian Foreign Ministry. “Russia suspends the Memorandum of Understanding on Prevention of Flight Safety Incidents in the course of operations in Syria signed with the US.”

But on Friday afternoon, US military officials speaking anonymously to the Associated Press said that Russia and the US were still in regular communication. Referring to the deconfliction line, a senior official told reporters at the Pentagon that for now, it remained operational. “Our communication line is still open and they are answering on the other end,” the official said, according to The Hill.

It is unclear what will happen with the hotline in the coming days. But experts says that if it does shut down, it could lead to heightened conflict between the US coalition and Russia.

“How this actually evolves remains to be seen, but the risks of escalation are pretty huge,” said Olga Oliker, the director of the Russia and Eurasia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

That’s especially true now that the US has positioned itself in direct opposition to Russia in Syria, says Oliker. Prior US airstrikes in the war-torn country had been directed at ISIS. But the latest US strike, which involved 59 cruise missiles fired at a Syrian airbase, was a direct attack on the Russia-backed Assad regime.

“When both sides were saying they were going after ISIS, deconfliction made it possible for them to collaborate. If you’re on the same side, deconfliction also has that important purpose,” Oliker says. “But if you’re on opposite sides, then it prevents things from getting worse.” (Russia initially claimed it was entering the Syrian conflict to fight terrorist groups; US officials have said the vast majority of Russia strikes have targeted moderate anti-Assad rebels rather than ISIS.)

In addition to the escalation issue, gutting the deconfliction agreement could hurt US efforts in Syria to target ISIS, a top goal of the Trump administration.

Having to operate with constant concerns about potential collisions or other run-ins with Russian forces would complicate US missions, says Nicholas Heras of the Center for New American Security.

“It boxes in the US ability to move against targets of opportunity,” Heras said. “This would have a very real impact on the US strategy against ISIS in Syria.”

Heras calls the US missile strikes a “red line” event that has created a “delicate dance” for the administration going forward as it tries to mount the counter-ISIS campaign that Trump has long prioritized.

“President Trump has said that the US wants to conduct a counter-ISIS campaign with Russian and Assad buy-in,” Heras says. “So how do you send messages in one area of the country in the context of that civil war, while being allowed to have a relatively free hand in another part of the country that you’ve stated is your policy priority?”

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Russia Threatened to Shut Down the "Deconfliction" Hotline. Here’s Why That’s Terrifying.

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168 Hours of Syria Policy in the Trump Administration

by LuigiLandseer Posted on April 6, 2017

Mother Jones

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Let’s roll the tape on the past few days:

Last Friday: Sean Spicer confirms remarks by Secretary of State Tillerson that Trump is OK with leaving Bashar al-Assad in power in Syria. “There is a political reality that we have to accept,” he says.

Tuesday: Trump learns the downside of haphazard policy changes driven mostly by a desire to be different from Obama. Assad, feeling more secure after learning the United States accepts his leadership of Syria, launches a chemical attack on rebels in the town of Khan Sheikhoun.

Wednesday: Trump, apparently shocked to find out that Assad is a butcher, says Assad has “crossed many, many lines.”

Today: Trump tells reporters about Assad, “I guess he’s running things, so something should happen.” Tillerson translates this into English: “It would seem there would be no role for him to govern the Syrian people.”

Later today: We learn that the Pentagon is preparing recommendations for military action in Syria.

A few minutes after that: Regime change is once again official policy. “Those steps are underway” for the US to lead an international effort to remove Assad.

So in the space of a week, we’ve gone from Assad can stay to Assad must go to let’s bomb Syria. This is quite the crack foreign policy team we have in Washington these days.

I can hardly wait for Trump to launch a bombing campaign for a few days—something that’s a routine favorite of US presidents—and then declare it a massive, game-changing retaliation, “something that’s never been done before.” But at least that would be better than something that really was a game changer. Just remember: whatever John McCain recommends, do the opposite.

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168 Hours of Syria Policy in the Trump Administration

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With Nunes Out, the New Guys Running the Trump-Russia Probe Ain’t Much Better

by GiseleDRTxuhaxi Posted on April 6, 2017

Mother Jones

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On Thursday morning, the inevitable happened: Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), the chairman of the House intelligence committee, announced he was yielding the reins on his panel’s derailed investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election. Nunes claims the reason for his retreat is that the House ethics committee is investigating whether he publicly revealed classified information—a charge he insists is “baseless.” Whatever happens with this ethics inquiry, his departure does not guarantee the investigation will fare any better than it has.

In his statement, Nunes curiously said nothing about Vladimir Putin’s secret political attack on the United States. Nor did he mention the question of contacts between Trump associates and Moscow. He only discussed one aspect of the committee’s probe: the leaking of classified information (mainly about Michael Flynn, who was fired from the national security adviser post after news reports showed he had lied about his conversations with the Russian ambassador to the United States during the transition). “The charges…are being leveled just as the American people are beginning to learn the truth about the improper unmasking of the identities of US citizens and other abuses of power,” Nunes declared. So even as he said bye-bye to the probe, the congressman—who served on the Trump transition team and who delegitimized himself while trying to provide cover to President Donald Trump for his fact-free charge that Barack Obama had wiretapped him—was still promoting Trump’s distraction of choice: The big story is what happened when Trump and his team were possibly picked up by “incidental” intelligence collection, not Putin’s attempt to subvert an American election or the FBI’s investigation of Trump associates for possibly coordinating with Russia.

And the committee members Nunes designated as his heirs have been champions of the same diversionary tactic.

Nunes, who is retaining his post of committee chairman, assigned the task of running the Russia investigation to Rep. Mike Conaway (R-Texas). He also noted that Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) and Rep. Tom Rooney (R-Fla.) will assist Conaway. At the committee’s first hearing for its Russia probe—before Nunes ran the investigation into a ditch—his three designees, as they questioned FBI chief James Comey and National Security Agency head Mike Rogers, focused on the narrow issue of leaks and unmasking. (“Unmasking” is the term of art for when a senior US official cleared to handle top-secret reports based on intelligence intercepts of foreign targets requests an intelligence agency to disclose to him or her the identity of a US citizen referenced in a report.) Or they asked questions designed to raise doubts about the intelligence community’s assessment that Putin meddled in the election to assist Trump. That is, they stuck to the GOP’s political script.

Moreover, in early January, Conaway dismissed the issue of Russian involvement in the campaign with a wacky comparison. Speaking to a Dallas newspaper, he compared the Russian hacking-and-leaking assault to standard campaign moves: “Harry Reid and the Democrats brought in Mexican soap opera stars, singers and entertainers who had immense influence in those communities into Las Vegas, to entertain, get out the vote and so forth. Those are foreign actors, foreign people, influencing the vote in Nevada. You don’t hear the Democrats screaming and saying one word about that.” As the Dallas Morning News reported, “Asked whether he considers that on par with Russian cyber-intrusions that aimed to damage Hillary Clinton’s campaign, Conaway said: ‘Sure it is, it’s foreign influence. If we’re worried about foreign influence, let’s have the whole story.'”

This attitude was on full display during the hearing with Comey and Rogers—at which Comey declared the FBI had no evidence to support Trump’s Obama-wiretapped-me claim and revealed the FBI had been investigating Trump-Russia contacts since July. When Conaway was granted time for questioning, he dwelled on when and why the FBI and the NSA had reached the conclusion that the Russian operation was designed to help Trump. Conaway tried to make an issue out of the fact that the FBI hit this conclusion with more certainty a few weeks before the NSA did late last year. Comey had to point out, “To be clear, Mr. Conaway, we all agreed with that judgment.” And Rogers echoed him.

Conaway’s intent was clear: to attempt to show this damaging-to-Trump assessment was still iffy. This led him into a bizarre exchange with Comey over rooting for college football teams and whether a person can cheer for one team to lose and not really desire the other team to win. (Conaway referenced his wife’s favorite team, the Red Raiders of Texas Tech.) Comey noted that “logically, when Putin wanted Hillary Clinton to lose,” he wanted Trump to win. Conaway then tried to discredit a Washington Post story by noting that the anonymous sources who provided the newspaper information about the US intelligence community’s assessment of the Russian operation (before that evaluation was made public) had probably broken the law. It was not obvious what he was driving at. But Conaway had not bothered to express any outrage over the Russian intervention or to encourage the FBI’s ongoing investigations. He was in Trump-damage-control mode.

Rooney used his grilling time to pose to Rogers a long and detailed series of questions about incidental collection and unmasking. These are not unimportant subjects. But they have nothing to do with how Putin and Russian intelligence intervened in the election. (Rogers noted that only 20 senior-ranked officials at the NSA, including himself, are authorized to approve unmasking requests.) Then came the money shot. Rooney asked, “If the NSA obtained the communication of General Flynn while he was communicating with the surveillance target legally, would you please explain how General Flynn’s identity could be unmasked based on the exceptions that we discussed?” So this was all about targeting those current or past US officials who had leaked information on Flynn’s conversation with the Russian ambassador. Rooney was more concerned about the leaking than Flynn’s deceptions and back-channel communications (for which Flynn was fired). Rogers replied, “I’m not going to discuss even hypotheticals about individuals, I’m sorry.”

Nevertheless, Rooney decried the “serious crime” that had apparently been committed via a presumed act of unmasking. He noted he was worried that the intelligence community had broken a “sacred trust” with the American people. (There was not a word about Flynn violating any trust.) He did not once address the Russian intervention.

When Rooney was done, Gowdy picked up this line of questioning. Gowdy is best known for running the House special committee on Benghazi that went on endlessly—after other House committees had scrutinized the matter and blown apart the various anti-Clinton conspiracy theories of the right—and was marred by partisan moves and, yes, leaks from the GOP side of the committee. (Gowdy also declared during the campaign that he believed Clinton should be prosecuted for how she handled her official email when she was secretary of state.) Citing several newspaper stories about Flynn’s calls with the Russian ambassador—which referred to classified intercepts that had captured these communications—Gowdy said to Comey, “I thought it was against the law to disseminate classified information. Is it?” Comey replied, “Yes, sir. It’s a serious crime. I’m not going to comment on those particular articles because I don’t want to, in any circumstance, compound a criminal act by confirming that it was classified information, but in general, yes, it’s a serious crime.”

Gowdy subsequently followed up with this question: “Is there an exception in the law for reporters who want to break a story?” Comey answered, “Well that’s a harder question as to whether a reporter incurs criminal liability by publishing classified information and one probably beyond my ken.” But Gowdy suggested that a reporter could be prosecuted for publishing a story containing classified information. “You’re not aware of an exception in the current dissemination of the classified information statute that carves out an exception for reporters?” he asked the FBI chief. No, Comey said: “I’m not aware of anything carved out in the statute. I don’t think a reporter’s been prosecuted certainly in my lifetime, though.”

Gowdy did not ask anything related to how the Kremlin had targeted a political party and presidential campaign to subvert an election. Instead, he fixated on leaks and locking up journalists who receive and report classified secrets. He pressed Comey to investigate the Flynn leak, and he ticked off a list of Obama officials who might have had access to unmasked names—James Clapper, John Brennan, Susan Rice, Loretta Lynch, Sally Yates—as if to suggest one or more of them deserved to be investigated for the Flynn leak.

Toward the end of the hearing, Gowdy did speak one sentence about the FBI’s Russia investigation. He told Comey, “I want you to go find every single witness who may have information about interference, influence, motive, our response, collusion, coordination, whatever your jurisdiction is, wherever the facts may take you. Though the heavens may fall, go do your jobs because nature abhors a vacuum.” But Gowdy then cautioned people not to confuse “evidence” with “facts” and to be wary of hearsay. This seemed to be an indirect way of questioning media reporting regarding the Russian intervention in the election and the contacts between Trump associates and Russia. In any event, Gowdy had tried to turn the hearing into an inquiry about the Flynn leak and the once-obscure subject of unmasking—which matched the agenda of Trump defenders.

Acting in a partisan and puzzling manner, Nunes made a hash of the House intelligence committee’s investigation of the Trump-Russia scandal. After his botched stunt, his credibility was shot. Stepping aside was the correct action. Yet he has placed this important exercise in the hands of men who have indicated they are not fully concerned with the main issues, which, of course, are rather inconvenient for their party and its president. Conaway, Rooney, and Gowdy have not yet demonstrated they can mount an independent and vigorous investigation on this politically sensitive terrain. Nunes may be gone, but the challenges facing the committee remain.

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With Nunes Out, the New Guys Running the Trump-Russia Probe Ain’t Much Better

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Jared Kushner Is Puzzled That CNN Hasn’t Fired All Its Anti-Trump Commentators

by SilviaAshmore44 Posted on April 4, 2017

Mother Jones

Jonathan Mahler has a piece in the New York Times Magazine today about the love-hate relationship between Jeff Zucker, the president of CNN, and Donald Trump, the president of the United States. It’s mainly about how both men thrive on politics as gossip, entertainment, and conflict, but it includes one interesting tidbit at the very end. It’s about a breakfast meeting Zucker had last December with Ivanka Trump’s husband, Jared Kushner, who has become an increasingly important Trump advisor in the White House:

Kushner wanted to know why CNN still hadn’t fired anti-Trump commentators like Van Jones and Ana Navarro, who said on CNN in October that every Republican would have to answer the question of what they did the day they saw a tape of “this man boasting about grabbing a woman’s pussy.”…Zucker tried to explain that even though Trump won, the network still needed what he described as “a diversity of opinion.”

I’m not sure if I’m supposed to take this literally or seriously. Did Kushner really think that this was how a news organization was supposed to work? That once Trump won, all the folks who didn’t like Trump would be fired in some kind of Stalinesque purge?

Apparently so. Welcome to the Trump Show.

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Jared Kushner Is Puzzled That CNN Hasn’t Fired All Its Anti-Trump Commentators

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The Washington Post Just Reported the Founder of Blackwater Tried to Set Up Trump-Putin Back-Channel

by KrystleHdh Posted on April 3, 2017

Mother Jones

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The Washington Post just published a story that, if corroborated, could be a pretty big deal:

The United Arab Emirates arranged a secret meeting in January between Blackwater founder Erik Prince and a Russian close to President Vladi­mir Putin as part of an apparent effort to establish a back-channel line of communication between Moscow and President-elect Donald Trump, according to US, European and Arab officials.

The meeting took place around Jan. 11—nine days before Trump’s inauguration—in the Seychelles islands in the Indian Ocean, officials said. Though the full agenda remains unclear, the UAE agreed to broker the meeting in part to explore whether Russia could be persuaded to curtail its relationship with Iran, including in Syria, a Trump administration objective that would likely require major concessions to Moscow on U.S. sanctions.

Though Prince had no formal role with the Trump campaign or transition team, he presented himself as an unofficial envoy for Trump to high-ranking Emiratis involved in setting up his meeting with the Putin confidant, according to the officials, who did not identify the Russian.

In addition to being the founder of Blackwater, Erik Prince is also the brother of Trump’s Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos.

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer told the Post that the White House had no knowledge of any such meeting and reiterated that Prince was not on the transition team. A Prince spokesman denied the story in a statement to the Post:

“Erik had no role on the transition team. This is a complete fabrication,” said a spokesman for Prince in a statement. “The meeting had nothing to do with President Trump. Why is the so-called under-resourced intelligence community messing around with surveillance of American citizens when they should be hunting terrorists?”

After the Post published its story, NBC reported that two sources confirmed a meeting occurred but that one of those sources disputed the claim that the meeting was about Russia:

One US intelligence official confirmed the Post’s account to NBC News, saying the meeting was with a Russian envoy. A second source said he believed the meeting was not about Russia. That source, a former intelligence official with close ties to Prince and the UAE, said the subject of the meeting was Middle East policy, to cover Yemen, Syria, Iraq and Iran.

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This story has been updated.

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The Washington Post Just Reported the Founder of Blackwater Tried to Set Up Trump-Putin Back-Channel

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The Trump Administration Just Suffered a Defeat on Voting Rights

by DarrellBarreiro Posted on April 3, 2017

Mother Jones

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In a significant rebuke of the Trump administration Monday, a federal judge in Texas rejected the Department of Justice’s request to halt a major voting rights case that had been filed during Obama administration.

The case in question dates back to 2013, when the Obama DOJ joined voting rights advocates, Democratic lawmakers, and a group of Texas residents in suing to block a draconian voter ID law in Texas. This coalition scored a major victory last year when a federal appeals court ruled that the law discriminated against minorities and needed to be softened. The Texas legislature is currently working on amending the law.

However, the appeals court left open a key question in the case: whether the discrimination was intentional. It sent the case back to federal district court for a determination on that issue. The question of intent is significant. The finding of a discriminatory effect necessitates altering the law. But if the court finds that Texas acted with a discriminatory intent, the judge could throw the law out entirely. What’s more, if Texas is found to have engaged in intentional voting discrimination, a judge could require the state to seek federal approval for future changes to its voting laws. In arguing that Texas lawmakers indeed sought to discriminate against minorities, critics of the law pointed out that it allows voters to prove their identifies with concealed carry permits, which are disproportionately held by white people, but excludes IDs issued to state employees and state university students, which minorities are more likely to have.

But after Trump was sworn in and Jeff Sessions became attorney general, the federal government changed course. In February, the DOJ requested to withdraw its claim that the law was enacted with discriminatory intent, arguing that the Fifth Circuit’s instructions were to let the legislature amend the law before the courts decided whether to resolve to the intent question. In March, the government urged the court not to issue any opinion until after the legislature had acted. On Monday, the court allowed the US government to withdraw from the case—but rejected its reasoning for trying to halt the case.

United States District Court Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos took issue with the idea that the state legislature’s action would remove the need to litigate the intent issue. “It is well-settled that new legislation does not ipso facto eliminate the discriminatory intent behind older legislation and moot a dispute regarding the violation of law,” the judge wrote. In her eight page order, she went on to dispute the logic the government’s lawyers presented in their briefs and cited multiple cases to explain why the case should proceed. The judge indicated she will issue a ruling on the discriminatory intent question this spring, without waiting on Texas lawmakers to act.

In a series of tweets, Gerry Hebert, an attorney representing the plaintiffs fighting this law, celebrated the judge’s order as “good news for voters seeking relief” and an “important victory.”

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The Trump Administration Just Suffered a Defeat on Voting Rights

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Cacti, Foxes, Solar Panels, and Other Bids to Unmake Trump’s Wall

by FanniePulsford Posted on March 31, 2017

Mother Jones

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This story was originally published in Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting.

Of all President Donald Trump’s promises, his signature wall along the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border has drawn especially creative opposition.

Mexicans formed a human barrier in protest. Architects drafted a design for a powerful 1,000-mile energy-generating barrier outfitted with solar panels and wind turbines.

And then there’s Sarah Zapolsky and her friend April Linton, two Washington, D.C.-area social scientists. Their quaint concepts include a wall of cacti and a barrier of affordable homes.

But they had more in mind than quirky commentary.

Their ideas are part of a quiet, slightly subversive strategy. A bureaucratic pothole for the border speed bump. Call it guerrilla bidding.

The two women are federal employees who know something about government contracting—and how to potentially gum it up. Zapolsky, who gives her age as “old enough to know better,” works at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Linton, 56, is at the State Department.

Armed with an insider’s understanding of how procurement works, Zapolsky knows that the government must review and respond to legitimate bids and related questions. That can cause drag on the process—exactly their plan.

Approaching the deadline set by the Trump administration to submit “white papers” for 30-foot-tall concrete and “other” border wall prototypes, the two women prepared their pitches. On Tuesday, the agency pushed back its deadline for submissions a third time—to April 4.

Getting past the stringent requirements for competitive bidders—who must have completed within the past five years similar projects of at least $25 million—poses a challenge to their plot. In a nod to these unusual political times, the agency also made the uncommon request for details about prospective contractors’ experience with “politically contentious design-build projects.”

But that hasn’t discouraged Zapolsky and Linton from dropping rumble-strip questions on the agency, to which it is supposed to respond:

“Our design includes stovepipe cacti. Would it be okay to use fake ones for the prototype?”
“Could we build a wall of solar panels, which meets the proposed border wall requirement, sell the energy generated back to Mexico, and have that count as that country paying for the wall?”
“Prototype demolition: Does this refer to taking down the wall after it is built should the administration change and decide the Wall is a ridiculous idea?”

On Tuesday, Customs and Border Protection posted its responses to questions. The agency reposted a truncated version of one of Zapolsky’s questions: “Does this refer to taking down the wall?” Its response: “Yes, if the line item is exercised.”

One proposal for a border barrier would include fennec foxes to aid security forces. Gil Cohen Magen/ZUMA

Trump’s champions have complained of so-called Deep State defiance from within the federal bureaucracy to undermine his efforts. Zapolsky and Linton, who met while working at the Department of Homeland Security, swear to no such membership. Their resistance stems from their concerns about the impact a wall may have and how their taxpayer money is spent. The two are acting as private citizens, not public employees, they say.

“This isn’t ‘deep’ government,” Zapolsky said. “Never confuse dissent with disloyalty. I’m all about making this country remaining great. This (wall) isn’t the way to do it.”

Solicitation saboteurs

By law, these would-be solicitation saboteurs can’t work for the government and win a federal contract. But they’re not interested in getting a dollar out of the border wall design bids, which could total $600 million.

The goal is to draw a formal complaint on the agency request that could slam the brakes on the bidding process. The daughter of a “government girl” who opposed McCarthyism, Zapolsky took umbrage that Customs and Border Protection initially planned to give the public just four days to create and submit designs for a border wall.

“I was so annoyed that it had to be a big ugly concrete wall,” she said. “I had to do something, but it had to be something creative—and legal.”

Then it came to her: clog the system. She gave it a name—#ArtThatWall—and registered as an “interested vendor” on the federal contracting website, fbo.gov. She turned next to Facebook to share her strategy.

A wave of creativity streamed back: Bead curtains. Baseball diamonds every quarter-mile with Fenway-like Green Monster walls (which match the Border Patrol’s green uniforms). A giant line of theater stages; one version includes, at random intervals, actors performing the Act V “Wall” scenes from Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Zapolsky’s 12-year-old son proposed building a wall out of Legos.

Zapolsky’s 12-year-old son proposed building a wall out of Legos. Reveal created a Lego model (not to scale). Andrew Becker/Reveal

With a nod to her current job at HUD aiming to end childhood homelessness, Zapolsky chose a wall of houses along the border. And, because, you know, barging through someone’s living room is rude.

Linton, who has studied immigration, saw the Facebook post and got busy, too. Her expansive “Beautiful Borders” vision is a wall of stovepipe cactus—which can grow to 30 feet. Landscaped with hiking trails and nearby interpretive centers jointly staffed by bilingual park rangers from Mexico and the United States, the wall would be patrolled by security forces aided by fennec foxes. The vulpine desert dwellers would have training “to identify the scent and body language of smugglers, terrorists and haters.”

“It’s big. It’s beautiful. Everybody will love it. Mexicans will build it,” a draft proposal ends.

As required, it offers a “concrete” solution.

If Zapolsky knows how many potential guerrilla bidders she’s encouraged with her Facebook call to submit designs, she isn’t saying. The two think they’ve already played a part, however minor, to stall Trump’s wall.

Caught off-guard by the level of what Customs and Border Protection deemed “industry” interest after its late February notice, the agency delayed its original March 6 target date to release its requests for proposal. About 725 construction companies, engineers, consultants and would-be vendors registered their interest in the project, Zapolsky and Linton included. The agency has outlined a two-month time frame to review and select winning bids with contracts to be awarded in early June, about two months later than first announced.

The women claimed the delays as a “joyful and respectful” but small victory, Zapolsky said, though what effect they had on the decision to push back the release of requests is unclear.

Customs and Border Protection declined to comment. Rowdy Adams, a retired Border Patrol agent involved in earlier fence projects, said Customs and Border Protection had no choice but to slow down with all the public interest.

“That’s why the brakes were pumped,” he said.

Linton waxed optimistic that, once submitted, their proposals might get some attention.

“Maybe somebody from DHS actually wants to hear from me,” Linton said before the agency posted the requests. “It feels like we’re winning and we haven’t even submitted our concept yet.”

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Cacti, Foxes, Solar Panels, and Other Bids to Unmake Trump’s Wall

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Senator Aims to End Phone Searches at Airports and Borders

by ElkeCulpepper Posted on March 29, 2017

Mother Jones

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More than a month after Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) requested information about US Customs and Border Protection’s practice of searching cell phones at US borders and airports, he’s still waiting for answers—but he’s not waiting to introduce legislation to end the practice.

“It’s very concerning that the Department of Homeland Security hasn’t managed to answer my questions about the number of digital searches at the border, five weeks after I requested that basic information,” Wyden, a leading congressional advocate for civil liberties and privacy, told Mother Jones on Tuesday through a spokesman. “If CBP were to undertake a system of indiscriminate digital searches, that would distract CBP from its core mission, dragging time and attention away from catching the bad guys.”

Wyden’s request to DHS and CBP came on the heels of a February 18 report from the Associated Press of a “fivefold increase” in electronic media searches in fiscal year 2016 over the previous year, from fewer than 5,000 to nearly 24,000. It also followed Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly’s suggestion that visitors from a select group of countries, mainly Muslim, might be required to hand over passwords to their social media accounts as a condition of entry. (That comment came a week after President Donald Trump first orderâ&#129; banning travel from seven majority-Muslim countries.)

The Knight First Amendment Institute, which advocates for freedom of speech, sued DHS on Monday for records relating to the seizure of electronic devices at border checkpoints. Wyden requested similar data on CBP device searches and demands for travelers’ passwords.

“There are well-established legal rules governing how law enforcement agencies may obtain data from social media companies and email providers,” Wyden wrote in the February 20 letter to DHS and CBP. “By requesting a traveler’s credentials and then directly accessing their data, CBP would be short-circuiting the vital checks and balances that exist in our current system.” The senator wrote that the searches not only violate civil liberties but could reduce international business travel or force companies to outfit employees with “burner” laptops and mobile devices, “which some firms already use when employees visit nations like China.“

“Folks are going to be less likely to travel freely to the US with the devices they need if they don’t feel their sensitive business information is going to be safe at the border,” Wyden said Tuesday, noting that CBP can copy the information it views on a device. “Then they can store that information and search it without a warrant.”

Wyden will soon introduce legislation to force law enforcement to obtain warrants before searching devices at the border. His bill would also prevent CBP from compelling travelers to reveal passwords to their accounts.

A DHS spokesman said in a statement that “all travelers arriving to the US are subject to CBP inspection,” which includes inspection of any electronic devices they may be carrying. Access to these devices, the spokesman said, helps CBP agents ascertain the identity and admissibility of people from other countries and “deter the entry of possible terrorists, terrorist weapons, controlled substances,” and other prohibited items. “CBP electronic media searches,” the spokesman said, “have resulted in arrests for child pornography, evidence helpful in combating terrorist activity, violations of export controls, convictions for intellectual property rights violations, and visa fraud discoveries.”

In a March 27 USA Today op-ed, Joseph B. Maher, DHS acting general counsel, compared device searches to searching luggage. “Just as Customs is charged with inspecting luggage, vehicles and cargo containers upon arrival to the USA, there are circumstances in this digital age when we must inspect an electronic device for violations of the law,” Maher wrote.

But in a unanimous 2014 ruling, the Supreme Court found that police need warrants to search cell phones. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the opinion that cell phones are “such a pervasive and insistent part of daily life that the proverbial visitor from Mars might conclude they were an important feature of human anatomy.” In response to a Justice Department argument that cell phones were akin to wallets, purses, and address books, Roberts wrote: “That is like saying a ride on horseback is materially indistinguishable from a flight to the moon.”

The law, however, applies differently at the border because of the “border search doctrine,” which has traditionally given law enforcement wider latitude under the Fourth Amendment to perform searches at borders and international airports. CBP says it keeps tight controls on its searches and is sensitive to personal privacy.

Wyden isn’t convinced. “Given Trump’s worrying track record so far, and the ease with which CBP could change its guidelines, it’s important we create common-sense statutory protections for Americans’ liberty and security,” he says.

CBP provided data that confirmed the device search numbers reported earlier by the Associated Press but later told Mother Jones that the numbers are slightly off due to an “anomaly” in their tabulation. The agency has not yet provided corrected figures. “Despite an increase in electronic media searches during the last fiscal year,” the CBP spokesman said, “it remains that CBP examines the electronic devices of less than one-hundredth of one percent of travelers arriving to the United States.”

Sophia Cope, a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation who has written extensively about searches of electronic devices, says that searches of mobile devices appear to be on the rise. “They realized that people are carrying these devices with them all the time, it’s just another thing for them to search,” she says. “But also it does seem that after the executive order that they’ve been emboldened to do this even more.”

Wyden says that the data collection creates an opportunity for hackers. “Given how frequently hackers have stolen government information,” he says, “I think a lot of Americans would be worried to know their whole lives could be sitting in a government database that’s got a huge bull’s-eye on it for hackers.”

This story has been updated to include CBP’s claim that the device search numbers are slightly inaccurate.

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Senator Aims to End Phone Searches at Airports and Borders

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Trump just took a sledgehammer to Obama’s climate legacy.

by NUDElverackj Posted on March 28, 2017

When Rebecca Burgess was working in villages across Asia, she saw the impacts of the clothing industry firsthand: waste, pollution, widespread health problems. But in these same communities, from Indonesia to Thailand, Burgess also saw working models of local textile production systems that didn’t harm anyone. She was inspired to build a sustainable clothing system — complete with natural dye farms, renewable energy-powered mills, and compostable clothes — back home in the United States.

The result is Fibershed, a movement to build networks of farmers, ranchers, designers, ecologists, sewers, dyers, and spinners in 54 communities around the world, mostly in North America. They are ex-coal miners growing hemp in Appalachia and workers in California’s first wool mill. In five years, Burgess plans to build complete soil-to-soil fiber systems in north-central California, south-central Colorado, and eastern Kentucky.

People have asked her, “This has already left to go overseas — you’re bringing it back? Are you sure?” She is. Mills provide solid, well-paying jobs for people “who can walk in off the street and be trained in six months,” Burgess says. “This is all about dressing human beings at the end of the day, in the most ethical way that we can, while providing jobs for our home communities and keeping farmers and ranchers on the land.”

Meet all the fixers on this year’s Grist 50.

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Trump just took a sledgehammer to Obama’s climate legacy.

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In Mosul, Yet Another Botched Operation

by ClaribeVPSZ Posted on March 26, 2017

Mother Jones

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A US airstrike in Mosul last week appears to have killed upwards of 200 civilians. The New York Times reports:

American military officials insisted on Friday that the rules of engagement had not changed. They acknowledged, however, that American airstrikes in Syria and Iraq had been heavier in an effort to press the Islamic State on multiple fronts.

….Col. John J. Thomas, a spokesman for the United States Central Command, said that the military was seeking to determine whether the explosion in Mosul might have been prompted by an American or coalition airstrike, or was a bomb or booby trap placed by the Islamic State….Iraqi officers, though, say they know exactly what happened: Maj. Gen. Maan al-Saadi, a commander of the Iraqi special forces, said that the civilian deaths were a result of a coalition airstrike that his men had called in, to take out snipers on the roofs of three houses in a neighborhood called Mosul Jidideh. General Saadi said the special forces were unaware that the houses’ basements were filled with civilians.

….Before, Iraqi officers were highly critical of the Obama administration’s rules, saying that many requests for airstrikes were denied because of the risk that civilians would be hurt. Now, the officer said, it has become much easier to call in airstrikes. Some American military officials had also chafed at what they viewed as long and onerous White House procedures for approving strikes under the Obama administration.

This may simply be an appalling incident not related to any change in policy. Even with the best preparation, sometimes horrible things happen when you’re at war. Still, in the past two months we’ve had a botched raid in Yemen; two attacks in Syria with heavy civilian casualties; and now an airstrike in Mosul that left hundreds of civilians dead. It’s fair to wonder if a guy whose idea of military strategy is to “bomb the shit out of ISIS” has also decided that he doesn’t much care about civilian casualties while he’s doing it.

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In Mosul, Yet Another Botched Operation

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