Giuliani tries to fix disastrous interview tour, continues to make things worse – ThinkProgress

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After a series of disastrous media interviews, Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s newly minted lead attorney, issued on Friday afternoon a new statement which he promised would “correct” his previous comments.

The three-point statement clarifies precisely nothing.

JUST IN: Rudy Giuliani issues statement "intended to clarify the views I expressed over the past few days." https://t.co/usoHflZShm pic.twitter.com/cHKwDvhMnq

— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) May 4, 2018

Giuliani’s first point

Giuliani starts by making a a conclusory statement about campaign law. He then says the payment was made to Stormy Daniels to “resolve a personal and false allegation in order to protect the president’s family.” Giuliani claims the payment would have been made whether or not Trump was a candidate for president.

But on Thursday on Fox and Friends, Giuliani had a much different story. “Imagine if that came out of October 15, 2016, in the middle of the last debate with Hillary Clinton…Cohen made it go away. He did his job,” Giuliani said.

Giuliani did not explain why, yesterday, he claimed the payment was influenced by the election.

He also did not explain how he knows the purpose of the payment at all. According to Giuliani and others, the payment was made by Cohen without consulting Trump. Giuliani says he has not spoken to Cohen about the payment, so it’s unclear how he would know the actual motivation for the initial payment.

Giuliani’s second point

Giuliani claimed on Wednesday and throughout the day on Thursday that Trump first learned that he reimbursed Cohen for the Stormy Daniels payment a few days ago, even though Trump reimbursed Cohen in 2017. This was hard to believe.

Friday morning on MSNBC, advertising executive Donny Deutsch said that he spoke to Cohen on Thursday night and Cohen told him that Giuliani had no idea what he was talking about.

Then, Trump threw Giuliani under the bus and said he was not familiar with the facts.

Now Giuliani is saying his understanding of when Trump found out about the payments might be wrong. But he’s not saying it is wrong or what is right.

In other words, we still have no idea of when Cohen first discussed his payments to Stormy Daniels, or Trump’s reimbursement, with Trump.

Giuliani’s third point

Giuliani strengthened a potential obstruction case against Trump by offering a third, contradictory explanation for why Trump fired Comey. As ThinkProgress reported:

Early in the interview, Giuliani said that Trump fired James Comey as FBI director because “Comey would not — among other things — say that he wasn’t a target of the investigation.” Giuliani said Trump was “entitled to that.” 

This rationale was not mentioned either in the official memo explaining Comey’s dismissal or Trump’s statements to NBC’s Lester Holt. Avoiding an obstruction charge requires Trump to present a “a consistent, and legal, explanation for the firing.”

In his statement, Giuliani skirts around the issue by claiming Trump had the ability to fire Comey for any purpose, even if his motives were corrupt. This is a legal argument many experts reject.

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Anti-LGBTQ group claims Amazon is marginalizing Christians – ThinkProgress

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One of the nation’s largest anti-LGBTQ organizations claims that it’s been treated unfairly because of its homophobic, transphobic, and other derogatory positions.

This week, the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) became upset after learning that Amazon would not allow customers to make donations to the group through the AmazonSmile program, which gives a small percentage from the  purchase price of eligible products to a customer’s chosen charity.

ADF is using that complaint to fuel its ongoing conservative campaign to deligitimize the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which — among other things — tracks various hate groups. ADF is one of many organizations the SPLC has designated as an anti-LGBTQ hate group for its long record of demonizing queer people and advocating for discrimination against them.

Amazon has traditionally relied on SPLC’s designations to disqualify these hate groups from the AmazonSmile program. This isn’t new. The Family Research Council, another SPLC-designated hate group, complained about its own disqualification over three years ago. Last year, D. James Kennedy Ministries (DJKM), another hate group, sued Amazon along with GuideStar for relying on the SPLC’s designations. Guidestar had already relented, but Amazon didn’t.

Right-leaning Fox News was more than happy to give ADF a platform Friday morning to share its story of persecution, just as it did last year when ABC News identified the organization as a hate group. In neither case did Fox News attempt to parse why the SPLC designates ADF a hate group. Instead, the network simply described it as a “religious freedom” group and let ADF attorney Kristen Waggoner attack Amazon and the SPLC.

“Amazon needs to realize it’s marginalizing not just those of the Christian faith, but those of the Jewish, Islamic faiths who share similar beliefs,” Waggoner said. “We stand for the fundamental freedoms of all Americans, even those we disagree with and those from all walks of life.”

This is untrue. Indeed, Waggoner is the attorney who presented oral arguments to the Supreme Court on behalf of Jack Phillips, the Colorado baker who refused to sell wedding cakes to same-sex couples.

American Atheists noted this hypocrisy on Friday, tweeting, “Funny how the same people who think that they shouldn’t have to sell cakes to same sex couples seem to want to force a private business to give them money directly. Last I checked, Amazon will still sell stuff to ADF.”

ADF has a long record of advocacy against LGBTQ equality. A recent article in the Colorado Times Record, for instance, documented the extent to which ADF has been involved in anti-LGBTQ efforts in Colorado over the past year. Those efforts include:

• A so-called “Live and Let Live” bill like Mississippi’s that would allow discrimination on the basis of one’s beliefs in marriage. ADF not only drafted the language, but also submitted several witnesses to testify in its favor.


• A so-called “Children First” bill that would allow adoption agencies to discriminate against same-sex couples without risking their state funding — not unlike bills that passed this week in Kansas and Oklahoma.


• ADF is also continuing to pursue a lawsuit that would overturn Colorado’s LGBTQ nondiscrimination protections.

ADF also drafts policies for schools to discriminate against transgender students, drafts bills to mandate public discrimination against transgender people, has  represented parents who wanted to intervene when schools affirm transgender students, and has represented schools that wanted to maintain discrimination against transgender students.

And none of those actions are even among the top reasons the SPLC designates ADF a hate group:

Founded by some 30 leaders of the Christian Right, the Alliance Defending Freedom is a legal advocacy and training group that has supported the recriminalization of homosexuality in the U.S. and criminalization abroad; has defended state-sanctioned sterilization of trans people abroad; has linked homosexuality to pedophilia and claims that a “homosexual agenda” will destroy Christianity and society. ADF also works to develop “religious liberty” legislation and case law that will allow the denial of goods and services to LGBT people on the basis of religion.

Amazon, like many other big tech companies, has a history of supporting LGBTQ equality, and it may even be a factor in deciding the location of its new headquarters. The company has no obligation help a hate group raise money.

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V.A. Medical System Staggers as Chaos Engulfs Its Leadership

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Christopher Vojta, a health care executive with degrees from both the business and medical schools at the University of Pennsylvania, was helping run the department’s 1,200 hospitals and clinics until he quit abruptly last week.

Dr. Amy Fahrenkopf, a health care executive educated at Yale and Harvard, who had joined the department to streamline its $14 billion private sector Choice program, quit Monday.

Louis Celli, the national director of veterans affairs and rehabilitation for the American Legion, one of the largest and oldest congressionally chartered veterans organizations, said it was clear from his contacts within the department that there was a “corrosive culture building.”

“You have the majority of the 360,000 employees who go to work every day and perform the jobs they were hired to do,” he said. “What we are hearing, by and large, from the rank-and-file employees is that this is the worst it has ever been.”

The department planned to announce a major reorganization of its health care system administration this week, designed to avoid failures in care that have incited repeated scandals in the hospital system. It did not happen.

Department officials said nothing has been delayed, and the reorganization plan is being reviewed.

This week the left-leaning veterans group VoteVets sued the Trump administration, saying the appointment of Mr. Wilkie as acting secretary violated federal law, and that the sidelined deputy secretary should have automatically been given the acting position. If successful, the lawsuit could nullify all decisions the current acting secretary makes.

And relations between the White House and veterans policymakers on Capitol Hill — particularly the leaders of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee — have reached a low. Mr. Trump continues to savage Senator Jon Tester of Montana, the committee’s top Democrat, for his role in gathering and publicizing the allegations against Dr. Jackson. Privately, administration officials have also gone after the committee’s Republican chairman, Senator Johnny Isakson of Georgia, for supporting Mr. Tester.

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Coal and nuclear plant owners wrap themselves in ‘resilience flag’ to draw Trump’s attention – ThinkProgress

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Until 2017, the “resilience” of the electric power sector had referred to the power grid’s ability to withstand and recover from extreme weather and other threats.

But the Trump administration, as it has with so many other issues, succeeded in distorting the meaning of the word and changing the conservation to reflect the priorities of the president and his political benefactors. Integral to this effort was when President Trump’s Department of Energy began equating grid resilience to a region’s ability to ensure there would be a plentiful amount of coal and nuclear generating capacity.

A new report, commissioned by the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and the Natural Resources Defense Council, (NRDC), seeks to debunk claims made by the Trump administration about the relationship between grid resilience and coal and nuclear plants.

This comes at the same time as electric grid operator PJM Interconnection announced it will be conducting a study over the next few months “to understand the fuel-supply risks in an environment trending towards greater reliance on natural gas.”

One of the main takeaways from this week’s report by EDF and NRDC — “A Customer-Focused Framework for Electric System Resilience” — is that generation-related solutions, like keeping dirty coal and uneconomic nuclear plants online past their retirement dates, are the least-effective for improving resilience.

Generation and fuel supply shortages rarely cause customer outages and are not good at providing many essential reliability services, according to the report. Instead of wasting time and customers’ money using grid resilience as a reason to keep uneconomic coal and nuclear generators afloat, policy-makers should focus attention on creating more durable distribution systems, the report said.

In conjunction with the release of the report, John Moore and Gillian Giannetti, two attorneys at the NRDC, wrote Thursday in a blog post that coal and power plant owners have “wrapped themselves in the resilience flag” in an attempt to justify profit guarantees for their financially struggling resources.

Moore and Giannetti, who also work for the Sustainable FERC Project, said that issues with fuel supply — coal, uranium, natural gas, water, wind, and solar, for example — account for only 0.00007 percent of total grid disruptions. The Sustainable FERC Project is a coalition of state, regional, and environmental organizations pushing the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to support policies that benefit clean energy resources.

We agree — the study is a fantastic read. https://t.co/oASmcArltm https://t.co/6TAm08WqYP

— Gillian Giannetti (@GillianEnergy) May 3, 2018

So far, President Trump and his industry supporters have failed in their effort to reverse the fortunes of the coal and nuclear generation sectors. But Energy Secretary Rick Perry and the president still have certain powers at their disposal to help owners of coal and nuclear plants.

Perry, for example, could use his authority as head of the Department of Energy to spur emergency compensation for coal and nuclear plants run by FirstEnergy Solutions that may be at risk of shutting.

The Trump administration also reportedly has been exploring using the Defense Production Act of 1950 to help coal and nuclear plant owners. The law gives the president broad powers to require businesses to prioritize contracts for materials deemed vital to national security. In this case, electric grid operators and utilities could be forced to purchase power from coal and nuclear plants if Trump invokes the act.

As the administration ponders whether it should take drastic measures to help the owners of these power plants, the new report attempts to pull the conversation back to what it sees as the most relevant factors behind grid resilience.

Throughout the report, its authors emphasize that since most outages occur due to problems at the distribution level and since long-duration outages are caused primarily by severe weather events, measures that strengthen distribution and hasten recovery are highly cost-effective.

In contrast, measures to make power generation more resilient “are likely to have little impact on outage frequency, duration or magnitude,” according to the report.

The report was prepared by a trio of consultants: Alison Silverstein of Alison Silverstein Consluting, and Rob Gramlich and Michael Goggin of Grid Strategies LLC.

The authors seek to bring a “customer-centric framework” to the conversation on grid resilience, one that includes customer-sited energy efficiency and distributed generation and storage.

“Power system resilience should be measured from the end user’s perspective — how many outages happen (frequency), the number of customers affected by an outage (scale), and the length of time before interrupted service can be restored (duration),” the authors write. “And since long outages do occur, we should also consider customer survivability as an important element of resilience preparations.”

As the debate raged in 2017 over Perry’s proposal to get federal regulators to approve subsidies for troubled coal and nuclear plants, confusion emerged over the definition of grid resilience. The report’s authors aim to clear up any misunderstanding.

Power system reliability and resilience are deeply intertwined. According to the authors, reliability covers those long-term and operational steps that reduce the probability of power interruptions and prevent loss of customer demand, while resilience measures reduce damage from outages and hasten restoration and recovery to shorten outage durations.

Utility performance will define resilience

The primary factor defining grid resilience will not be the availability of coal or nuclear plants, according to the report. Grid resilience will be determined by the performance of electric utility operations at the distribution level.

Damage to power lines, poles, and transformers — major components of an electric distribution system — are what cause 90 percent of electricity service interruptions, according to DOE data.

Over a two-year period in the mid-2000s, for example, Florida was slammed by one major hurricane after another. The storms wreaked havoc on the state’s electric power system. In response, the state’s electric utilities made a commitment to hardening their systems to prevent similar widespread outages the next time a storm hit the peninsula.

Since 2006, Florida Power & Light has invested more than $3 billion to build a more resilient grid. After a decade of limited hurricane activity in the state, last year’s Hurricane Irma was the first major test for the company since Hurricane Wilma hit in 2005.

“Our investments were invaluable,” Florida Power & Light CEO Eric Silagy wrote in an article published in the January/February 2018 issue of the Edison Electric Institute’s Electric Perspectives magazine. “Fewer than half as many substations were affected and those that were impacted came back online more quickly.”

Even though Irma was a larger and stronger storm than Wilma, the company’s new automated switching system avoided nearly 600,000 customer interruptions. The fury of Irma knocked out power to 90 percent of FPL’s customers, but all of its customers had their power restored within 10 days compared to 18 days following Wilma.

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What the EPA exodus means for Scott Pruitt – ThinkProgress

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Staff departures from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have become so common that they rarely make news anymore — since Administrator Scott Pruitt took control of the EPA in 2017, more than 700 employees have left the agency.

But this week, as federal investigations surrounding Pruitt’s ethical scandals continue to mount, four departures in particular made headlines, as officials with close ties to the administrator announced they would be moving on from the agency.

The high-profile departures come at a time when Pruitt appears to be fighting for his job in both public and private arenas. The departures are especially notable because three of the top officials appear — at least in some way — connected to one of the ethical scandals that have dogged Pruitt over the last month.

“Administrator Pruitt has repeatedly and unapologetically blamed his own staff for the crisis of leadership that he has created at EPA,” Rep. Paul Tonko (D-NY), the ranking Democratic lawmaker on the House Energy and Commerce’s Subcommittee on the Environment and a vocal critic of Pruitt’s, said in a statement emailed to ThinkProgress. “I don’t know why senior officials are abandoning him now in such great numbers, but many of these departing staff have overseen or directly contributed to mismanagement that has undermined public trust and the agency’s ability to fulfill its mission to protect public health.”

On Tuesday, both Pruitt’s head of security Pasquale “Nino” Perrotta, and the head of the EPA’s Superfund program Albert “Kell” Kelly announced that they would be leaving the agency.

Perrotta’s resignation came just a day before he was scheduled to testify before the House Oversight Committee regarding Pruitt’s spending on first-class travel and other expenses that the EPA has defended as necessary for security. According to Politico, Perrotta was a “driving force” behind much of Pruitt’s lavish spending on security measures, “goading” him into spending more for security and travel.

Kelly, who came to the EPA after being banned for life from the banking industry by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, had also been facing scrutiny from Democratic lawmakers over his appointment to streamline the EPA’s Superfund program, which handles cleanup of polluted sites across the country. Kelly also declined to testify before Congress regarding the EPA’s Superfund cleanup program.

But Kelly has long been a loyal supporter of Pruitt’s. In 2003, Kelly helped Pruitt finance a mortgage on a house that Pruitt bought from a retiring telecommunications lobbyist. Kelly reportedly also cancelled a trip to West Virginia — where he was scheduled to visit a town contaminated by toxic chemicals — to stay in D.C. and help Pruitt handle fallout from numerous controversies.

During oversight hearings before two Congressional committees last week, Pruitt was repeatedly asked questions about Kelly’s appointment to the EPA and whether Kelly would agree to testify before Congress.

Two days after Kelly and Perrotta announced their resignations, Liz Bowman, the top communications official at the EPA, announced that she would also be leaving the agency to take a job as communications director for Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA).

Bowman was one of the agency employees who received a sizable raise last year via a provision in the Safe Drinking Water Act, which allows the EPA administrator to hire up to 30 employees without Congressional approval.

Pruitt has come under scrutiny for using the loophole to give raises to political appointees without approval from the White House. Initially, Pruitt said he did not know about the raises, but later admitted that he had given his chief of staff authority to authorize the pay increases. The raises are part of an ongoing investigation by the House Oversight Committee.

On Friday, an administration official told the Washington Examiner that John Konkus, the agency’s second highest-ranking communications official, would also be leaving the agency. Konkus was a political aide who had received approval to work as a media consultant for outside groups including a Republican firm.

Publicly, the EPA has been adamant that these departures do not reflect any kind of internal issues within the agency. Bowman, like Kelly and Perrotta, told reporters that her departure has nothing to do with the ongoing investigations and scandals surrounding her boss. But at least one Democratic representative — Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) — points to the stream of resignations as proof of Pruitt’s failures as an EPA administrator.

“Scott Pruitt’s toxicity has infected the upper echelons of EPA leadership, and the process of cleaning this mess must begin with Pruitt’s dismissal,” Beyer said in a statement on Friday.

But what if instead of signaling a weakening of Pruitt’s leadership, the resignations are in fact a gambit to secure his position?

During his Congressional oversight hearings, Pruitt made a point of placing blame for a number of scandals squarely on the shoulders of EPA employees, rather than taking the blame himself.

By shedding himself of people associated with these scandals — particularly Perrotta, who has been implicated in the issues with taxpayer funds being spent on security, and Bowman, who is part of the raise scandal — Pruitt is effectively creating a firewall between himself and controversy that, at certain points, has seemed to threaten both his future as EPA administrator and his well-documented political aspirations.

The string of high-profile departures might be bad optics for Pruitt, at least in the short term, but they will allow the administrator to further remove himself from culpability with respect to various ethical scandals. It’s certainly a gamble — especially when Pruitt is trying to impress a boss who appears concerned with appearances above all else — but one that could ultimately help Pruitt cement his position at the helm of the EPA for years to come.

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Michigan State determines that Larry Nassar’s decades of abuse didn’t run afoul of any NCAA bylaws – ThinkProgress

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Another day, another head-scratching move by Michigan State University as it continues to bungle the fallout from Larry Nassar’s sexual abuse.

This week, the Lansing State Journal reported that a law firm representing Michigan State sent a letter to the NCAA in March notifying them that Nassar, under the guise of medical treatment, sexually assaulted at least 25 MSU student-athletes between 1997-2016, including six student-athletes since 2014, when MSU botched its Title IX investigation into Nassar’s abuse.

Commendable transparency by Michigan State? Oh no: the letter was sent to make it clear that, despite rampant sexual assaults, “no violations of NCAA rules occurred with regard to the criminal conduct of Dr. Larry Nassar, a former employee at the University.”

Never mind that Nassar is a former MSU and USA Gymnastics doctor who sexually abused hundreds of people — primarily young women and girls — sometimes with their parents in the room. Never mind that a lot of his sexual abuse occurred on MSU’s campus, where he regularly saw patients, including student-athletes from across MSU’s athletics department. Never mind that MSU employees, including athletic department employees, were told about Nassar’s abuse multiple times over the last 20 years, and failed to take the allegations seriously.

Never mind the fact that the Michigan legislature concluded, with “absolutely no doubt,” that MSU failed to adequately protect students and patients — including the school’s NCAA athletes — who visited Nassar on campus. Never mind that former MSU gymnastics head coach Kathy Klages asked her team, which included survivors of Nassar’s abuse, to sign a card of support for him after he was fired from MSU due to the allegations of sexual abuse in 2016.

No, what really matters, according to MSU, is that Nassar refrained from buying lunch for any athletes during recruiting visits. Or that he declined to help pay an electricity bill for a family member of a Spartan athlete. Those, you see, would be clear violations of NCAA bylaws. Nassar isn’t a case that should concern the NCAA, according to Michigan State.

MSU’s letter was in response to an inquiry the NCAA began in January, when Nassar’s crimes gained wide attention thanks to the more than 150 survivors who provided victim impact statements at his sentencing hearings in Michigan.

But the NCAA has not shown urgency in its response to Nassar’s abuse. In fact, in mid January, after days of televised, heart-wrenching testimony by dozens of Nassar’s victims, NCAA president Mark Emmert told reporters he didn’t have an opinion on what occurred at MSU because he didn’t “have enough information on the details of what transpired at the school right now.” At that point, the allegations against Nassar had been public knowledge for 18 months, and Nassar had pleaded guilty to sexual abuse. Ignorance was not an excuse.

We’ll have to wait and see if the NCAA agrees with MSU’s claim that all NCAA guidelines were followed. Their argument hinges on technicalities — that Nassar didn’t provide any benefits to MSU student-athletes that were against NCAA bylaws; that he didn’t commit any recruitment violations; and that he didn’t violate the “unethical conduct legislation” bylaw, which deals specifically with banned substances and medications. MSU says it is “unaware of any evidence that Nassar provided banned substances, impermissible supplements, or medication to student-athletes contrary to approved guidelines and standards.”

MSU also told the NCAA that it could not find a case precedent that showed the “unethical conduct legislation” would apply to “sexually abusive conduct.” And, while there is an NCAA bylaw that “identifies the well-being of student-athletes as an imperative for Division I members,” MSU noted that particular bylaw was meant to serve merely as a guide, and is not subject to enforcement procedures.

“I trust that you will see that the University is in no way attempting to sidestep the issues facing it, and that if the University had any reason to believe the criminal conduct of Nassar also implicated NCAA rules violations, the University would accept responsibility in that area as well,” attorney Mike Glazier, of the law firm Bond, Schoeneck & King, PLLC wrote in the letter.

One thing is certain: if the NCAA agrees with MSU — that the sexual abuse of more than two dozen student-athletes by a team doctor, and multiple mishandled reports and investigations into that doctor’s behavior by MSU officials over an 18-year period, isn’t a violation of NCAA guidelines — then a new set of guidelines are decades overdue.

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Lawmakers demand answers over FEMA’s omission of climate change from key document – ThinkProgress

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The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) says its decision to omit any mention of climate change from the agency’s strategic plan was essentially an oversight. Lawmakers want to know if any experts were consulted in drawing up the document itself, which is meant to guide the agency’s work over the next four years.

In a letter sent Wednesday to FEMA Director Brock Long, Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) asked for more information regarding the agency’s 2018-2022 Strategic Plan. FEMA has come under fire for the document, which did not contain a single reference to climate change despite the agency being responsible for overseeing recovery from hurricanes and wildfires, both of which are being affected more and more by rising temperatures.

“What statistical, scientific, or mathematical analyses were used in formulating the plan?” asked Ellison. “What scientific frameworks were used to identify the strategic goals and strategic objectives?”

“What individuals or offices within FEMA or the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) were involved in the plan?” he continued, going on to inquire about White House involvement as well as any input from outside organizations or other individuals who may have consulted on the document.

“Did FEMA consult with any scientists or climate experts on the strategic plan?” he underscored.

The congressman requested a response to the queries by May 14.

Ellison’s Wednesday letter is the latest move in an ongoing back-and-forth. FEMA released its strategic plan on March 15 with no mention of climate change contained anywhere in the 37-page document. In an initial March 29 letter to FEMA, Ellison queried the agency tasked with coordinating disaster responses and mitigating such occurrences about why references to climate change did not appear in its strategic plan.

“Given the extraordinary devastation caused by natural disasters last year, I was surprised to find that FEMA removed all mentions of climate change from its 2018-2022 Strategic Plan,” Ellison wrote, going on to call the shift “inexplicable” in light of devastating catastrophes linked to climate change in 2017.

“It is puzzling to understand how FEMA could meet the emerging challenges of 21st century disasters while ignoring the mounting evidence of the link between climate change and weather events,” he continued.

FEMA director Long responded on April 12, essentially informing the congressman that the agency had simply forgotten to include any mention of the phenomenon, according to the Huffington Post.

“There was no decision, and no direction, to deliberately avoid or omit any particular term in the writing of the 2018-2022 Strategic Plan,” Long replied to Ellison.

Last year was the most expensive year on record for U.S. natural disasters since the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) first began monitoring such trends in 1980. In 2017, natural disasters racked up $306 billion in costs across the country.

Virtually every region in the United States suffered some form of natural disaster in 2017, ranging from hailstorms and drought in the Midwest to blazing fires on the West Coast. A series of devastating hurricanes also left numerous islands and the Gulf Coast reeling last fall.

Texas is still recovering from Hurricane Harvey and the island of Puerto Rico has endured the longest blackout in U.S. history. Puerto Ricans still do not have full access to electricity or many basic necessities following Hurricane Maria, which struck the island as a Category 4 hurricane on September 20 last year.

Scientists and climate experts have said that hurricanes like Maria and Harvey were likely made worse by climate change. They say warming waters allowed for the storms to gain power quickly, exacerbating the damage they caused. An onslaught of pouring rain, flooding cities, and destroying dams, has also been directly linked to climate change.

“While hurricanes are a natural part of our climate system, recent research suggests that there has been an increase in intense hurricane activity in the North Atlantic since the 1970s,” wrote the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) last December. “In the future, there may not necessarily be more hurricanes, but there will likely be more intense hurricanes that carry higher wind speeds and more precipitation as a result of global warming.”

The White House has downplayed the extent of the damage caused by hurricanes last fall, especially with regards to Puerto Rico. Before a month had even passed after Hurricane Maria, President Trump emphasized that FEMA’s workers could not stay “forever” to help the island recover. Traditionally, parts of the United States far more equipped to deal with hurricanes than Puerto Rico have taken many years to rebound after hurricanes less powerful than Maria.

FEMA has already faced considerable criticism over its handling of post-disaster relief in Puerto Rico. Island residents have slammed FEMA over food shortages as well as back-and-forth over food and water aid, which the agency indicated it would end in January only to walk back that decision after public outcry. In March, Puerto Ricans rallied at FEMA headquarters demanding increased aid to the island and accountability over the agency’s failures.

But the agency does seem to have acknowledged that flooding is a national problem. In April, FEMA asked Congress to make national flood insurance more affordable, addressing a large income gap prevalent in communities vulnerable to flooding. Of those areas in Texas hardest hit by Harvey, upwards of 80 percent of residents lacked flood insurance.

FEMA’s flood insurance request to Congress notably contained no reference to climate change, going only so far as to note that disaster costs are expected to rise in coming years due to “rising natural hazard risk, decaying critical infrastructure, and economic pressures that limit investments in risk resilience.”

Climate change skepticism is a theme which runs deep throughout the Trump administration. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) head Scott Pruitt has repeatedly denied and downplayed climate science, as has Sec. of the Interior Ryan Zinke. Newly-appointed Sec. of State Mike Pompeo has called the Paris climate agreement a “costly burden” and is himself a climate skeptic.

References to climate change have also disappeared from a number of government websites. A report released last month indicated that one EPA website has removed mentions of the phenomenon from its international priorities page. An EPA spokesperson told ThinkProgress at the time that the move was in keeping with “the current administration’s priorities” and that information from prior presidencies is still available through an archive on the website.

Congressional Democrats have also called on the Department of the Interior’s inspector general to look into whether the National Park Service (NPS) has violated its scientific integrity in removing mentions of climate change from a report on sea level rise. Zinke has claimed his department does not change so much as “a comma” in such reports.

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Black teens targeted by 4chan trolls win grant for NASA competition – ThinkProgress

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NASA officials intervened in the agency’s high school competition earlier this week, after racist 4chan trolls targeted three Black teens, in an attempt to stop them from winning. Now, Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser is giving those teens a grant to continue their work.

India Skinner, Mikayla Sharrieff, and Bria Snell, 11th grade students at Banneker High School, entered the NASA OPSPARC competition with their ingenious method for purifying lead-contaminated drinking fountain water in their school and others across the district: a simple and cost-effective filter that uses fans and filtering floss to extract metals and other impurities, like chlorine and copper.

“In older structured homes and buildings, lead pipes have been an issue in the media,” the trio — the only all-Black, all-girls team in the competition — explained in a statement last month. “In D.C. they’re currently renovating many public schools. As a result, we have a mission to be a part of the community activism and history in the making. Our water filtration system can help aid in that mission.”

The D.C. mayor’s office announced on Thursday that it would be assisting the students in their challenge, giving them a $4,000 grant “to build on their innovative project.”

“Through their brilliance and passion, Mikayla, India, and Bria are bringing our vision for In3 to life and making our city proud,” Bowser said in a statement, referencing the Inclusive Innovation Incubator, a co-working tech space housed at Howard University, where the three students first developed their idea and where they volunteer once a week.

She added, “Mikayla, India, and Bria are just the type of people and scientists our world needs more of and we are proud to support their dreams.”

The students’ engineering prowess was enough to carry them all the way to the final round of competition last month, along with seven other finalists. It was at that point that the trolls descended.

On 4chan, an anonymous internet forum and white supremacist haven, users were upset that Skinner, Sharrieff, and Snell had advanced to the OPSPARC finals. According to the Washington Post,

The anonymous posters used racial epithets, argued that the students’ project did not deserve to be a finalist and said that the black community was voting for the teens only because of their race. They urged people to vote against the Banneker trio, and one user offered to put the topic on an Internet thread about President Trump to garner more attention. They recommended computer programs that would hack the voting system to give a team of teenage boys a boost.

3 black D.C. students who faced racist comments when they used social media to encourage voting for them in a NASA competition have been awarded a $4,000 grant https://t.co/fZS1xEgRHl pic.twitter.com/VKAZuL3QxA

— CBS News (@CBSNews) May 4, 2018

The 4chan attack eventually lead NASA to intervene, shutting down the public vote early and issuing a statement on the official OPSPARC website, saying that officials had “decided to end public voting to protect the integrity of the results.”

“Before the voting ended, members of the public were using social media to generate support for particular teams in the public voting,” officials wrote. “…Unfortunately, it was brought to NASA’s attention…that some members of the public used social media, not to encourage students and support STEM, but to attack a particular student team based on their race and encouraged others to disrupt the contest and manipulate the vote, and the attempt to manipulate the vote occurred shortly after those posts. NASA continues to support outreach and education for all Americans, and encourages all of our children to reach for the stars.”

Skinner, Sharrieff, and Snell — who compared themselves to the protagonists of the 2016 film Hidden Figures, which tells the story of the Black female mathematicians working for NASA in the 1960s who calculated flight trajectories for the Apollo 11 mission to the moon — were popular on social media, winning a large portion of the public vote for the water filter system.

“In3’s trio…are proud to have made it to the [final round] on their first attempt, and proud of the thousands of votes they received from you all,” the group wrote in a statement last week. “Words cannot express how enjoyable this academic project has been from start til now. The ladies are extremely satisfied with their showing in their challenge, regardless of any final outcomes.”

The statement noted that the three students had also recently been inducted in the National Honor Society.

Thank you so much for your support ❤️ pic.twitter.com/NVBzyydmbj

— mikayla. (@Mmmikaylaaa__) April 30, 2018

Advancing to the final round of competition with the Banneker High School trio are teams from Texas, Nevada, and California, as well as one after-school program, responsible for creations like a self-cleaning phone protector; a process for cleaning microalgae and using it for fuel; a more effective cooler for transporting anything, from drinks and condiments, to human organs for transplant; a new method of aeroponic gardening; a film-spray capable of blocking UV rays; and a durable, lightweight, phone-skin case. One team also published the results of an experiment that showed extracting ethylene from plants provided more power than solar energy.

The winning team receives an invitation to the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, where they’ll participate in a two-day behind-the-scenes workshop with NASA scientists and astronauts, as well as a $4,000 stipend to cover their expenses.

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Kansas and Oklahoma vote to allow adoption agencies to discriminate against same-sex couples – ThinkProgress

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Lawmakers in Kansas and Oklahoma passed bills this week chipping away at marriage equality, approving legislation that would allow child-placement agencies to refuse placements based on their religious beliefs — such as discriminating against same-sex couples — without endangering state funding.

In Oklahoma, Senate Bill 1140 passed both the Senate (33-7) and the House (56-21) on Thursday. Notably, the House held no discussion or debate of the legislation despite Democratic lawmakers “literally standing and shouting and refusing to sit down” as the bill was brought up. One Democratic lawmaker was almost removed from the floor for refusing to take his seat.

The abomination of process & justice in the OK House of Reps makes me weep for democracy. The priorities of bigotry and hate, under the guise of religious freedom, are truly heartbreaking. I hope this is not the Oklahoma Standard they keep referring to. @KOCOBret @nytimes

— Cory Williams (@repcorywilliams) May 3, 2018

Kansas lawmakers also jumped through a few hoops to keep their bill alive at the last minute. Indeed, though the measure had previous been proposed as House Bill 2481, its language was substituted into Senate Bill 284, which the House approved Thursday night 63-58. It then had to go back to the Senate for reconciliation, and the Senate approved it 24-15 at 1:51 Friday morning.

Proponents of bills in both states argue that they have nothing to do with discriminating, but are just about protecting religiously affiliated adoption agencies.

Kansas Gov. Jeff Coyler (R), who has already promised to sign the measure into law, said in a statement early Friday that the bill “increases the opportunities for needy children to find loving homes.” Oklahoma Senate Majority Floor Leader Greg Treat likewise insisted the legislation in his state is necessary “to keep churches and faith-based organizations from being discriminated against.”

Some proponents were a bit more honest about the bills’ intentions. Kansas State Sen. Steve Fitzgerald (R), for instance, said the state’s legislation was important for protecting civilization from declining because of the gay agenda. “‘There is no homosexual agenda.’ I was told that…and now we find out there is an agenda,” he said. “And what was once tolerated is now becoming dominant and is intolerant. Totally intolerant.”

The Catholic Conferences in both states warned that without the bills’ passage, they would be forced to stop offering adoption services altogether. Conservative advocates in both states also indicated that other agencies considering offering child placement services have been holding out over fears they wouldn’t be able to discriminate against same-sex couples.

The reality is that in both cases, these religious organizations are holding children hostage and asking for the right to discriminate as their ransom.

Children who need homes are better off if there are more families available to place them with, whether that’s with same-sex couples, non-Christian families, single parents, or any other family singled out for discrimination. It does nothing to benefit those children for the state to fund agencies that are ruling out placement opportunities for such arbitrary reasons.

Moreover, as the Human Rights Campaign points out, LGBTQ youth are over-represented in the foster care system, thanks in large part to family rejection. By entrusting openly anti-LGBTQ organizations with finding families for them, it makes it all the more likely that they’ll only face more rejection.

Catholic Charities has shut down adoption services elsewhere — such as Massachusetts, Illinois, and the District of Columbia — to avoid serving same-sex couples. There’s been no evidence that the closures had any impact on those locations’ abilities to continue placing children with families. The only change was that taxpayers were no longer subsidizing discrimination in the process.

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Trump Undercuts Giuliani About Payments to Stormy Daniels

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WASHINGTON — President Trump undercut his attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, on Friday, and said the former New York mayor will eventually get the facts right regarding a payment to a pornographic actress who said she had an affair with Mr. Trump.

Mr. Giuliani, who joined Mr. Trump’s legal team last month, “started a day ago,” Mr. Trump said, speaking to reporters on Friday as he left Washington to attend a National Rifle Association convention in Dallas.

“He’s a great guy,” Mr. Trump said. “He’ll get his facts straight.”

It was the first time the president addressed the inconsistent narrative about the payment made by his personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, to the actress, Stephanie Clifford, who goes by the stage name Stormy Daniels.

Mr. Giuliani kicked off the confusion with an interview on Fox News on Wednesday, surprising even some of Mr. Trump’s other attorneys.

In a series of Twitter posts the following morning, the president backed up what Mr. Giuliani said. But, on Friday, Mr. Trump said that everything said about the transaction “has been said incorrectly.”

“It’s actually very simple,” the president said, without elaboration.

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Michael Cohen reportedly breaks his silence, takes shot at Rudy Giuliani – ThinkProgress

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Rudy Giuliani, as part of a media blitz that began Wednesday night, has created a new narrative around the payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels from Trump’s longtime personal attorney Michael Cohen.

Giuliani claims that Trump, over the course of 2017, repaid Cohen for the $130,000 he sent to Stormy Daniels in 2016 as part of a hush money agreement struck just before the election. And yet Giuliani also claims Trump just found out that he reimbursed Cohen for the money a few days ago. It was Giuliani himself, according to this new narrative, who informed Trump.

Giuliani said he made @realDonaldTrump aware of paperwork that showed payments were actually reimbursements for Stormy. Trump replied: ‘Oh my goodness, I guess that's what it was for,’” Giuliani said.

— Kristen Welker (@kwelkernbc) May 4, 2018

This story is hard to believe. Michael Cohen himself, according to someone who spoke to Cohen directly, says not to believe it.

Donny Deutsch, an advertising executive who has known Cohen and Trump for years, revealed on MSNBC that he had a conversation with Cohen on Thursday. According to Deutsch, in that conversation Cohen said that the narrative Giuliani had constructed around the Stormy Daniels payment was false.

“I spoke with Michael Cohen yesterday, and his [comment] about Giuliani was that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He also said that, ‘Look, there are two people that know exactly what happened — myself and the president, and you’ll be hearing my side of the story,’” Deutsch said.

Deutsch described Cohen as “very frustrated” with Giuliani’s attempt to spin the facts.

Cohen is currently the target of a federal investigation in the Southern District of New York. His office, home, and hotel room were raided by the FBI on April 9. Based on the threshold of evidence needed to get authorization for such a raid, Cohen is in grave risk of being indicted.

There is reportedly concern among the Trump camp that Cohen will “flip” — provide damaging information about Trump to prosecutors in exchange for more lenient treatment. Cohen’s conversation with Deutsch yesterday, as reported, is unlikely to alleviate these fears.

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Puerto Ricans call out ‘disaster capitalists’ taking advantage of their suffering – ThinkProgress

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A government that fails to provide a plausible estimate of deaths from a disaster engenders little confidence in its ability to help the survivors. That’s the predicament Puerto Ricans find themselves in after their government put the official death toll from Hurricane Maria at 64 people.

More than seven months after the hurricane devastated the island, neither Puerto Rico’s government nor the federal government has released an updated figure. News organizations and independent researchers have attempted to fill the void by calculating death counts on their own.

“Time after humiliating time, Puerto Ricans have been sent that familiar message about their relative worth and ultimate disposability,” author Naomi Klein writes in her new book, The Battle for Paradise: Puerto Rico Takes on the Disaster Capitalists.

“Nothing has done more to confirm this status than the fact than no level of government has seen fit to count the dead in any kind of credible way, as if lost Puerto Rican lives are of so little consequence that there is no need to document their mass extinguishment,” Klein contends.

One independent researcher counted 1,085 more deaths than Puerto Rico’s certified count — and that number covers only the period from September 20, 2017 when Maria initially struck the island, through the end of October 2017. It’s highly likely that number has risen since November 1.

Still today, a humanitarian emergency exists in Puerto Rico. More than 50,000 people are still without power. Tens of thousands of people are still without water.

Even when these residents get their power and clean water restored, the future doesn’t look bright for Puerto Rico. Among many changes for the worse, the government wants to cut retirement benefits, loosen pro-worker labor laws, and close schools.

And if that wasn’t enough, the Atlantic hurricane season begins in less than a month — on June 1 — and Puerto Rico is still far from getting the lights back on for the entire island. Potentially even more troublesome are the recent major blackouts that have highlighted the fragile nature of Puerto Rico’s entire electric grid. A tropical storm, nowhere close to the magnitude of Hurricane Maria, could once again threaten the island’s entire grid.

Residents of Puerto Rico have demonstrated incredible patience over the past seven months since Hurricane Maria struck the island. On May 1, though, Puerto Ricans decided enough was enough. They protested the government’s botched recovery effort and the government’s proposed spending cuts on basic needs.

The residents — organized by unions, community, education, political, environmental, and religious organizations — also protested efforts to use the hurricane as an excuse to privatize government services on the island.

“The disaster capitalists, the Trump administration and even leaders in our own local government want to force the people of Puerto Rico to sell off our public assets in order to meet unjust debt obligations to international banks,” Jose Menendez, chair of the Puerto Rican chapter of the Sierra Club, said in a statement this week. “We will not allow Hurricanes Maria and Irma to be used as an excuse to rob the people of Puerto Rico of our most valuable assets.”

Certain members of Congress are supporting efforts by Puerto Rico Gov. Richard Rossello to use the devastation from the hurricane as a reason to privatize parts of the Puerto Rican economy. Rep. Rob Bishop (R-UT), chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, is traveling to Puerto Rico this week to survey the island’s recovery in the aftermath of Hurricanes Maria and Irma.

Even before Maria struck the island, supporters of privatizing government services were campaigning to turn the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA), the island’s government-owned electric utility, over to private investors.

Last summer, long before Hurricane Maria hit, members of the Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico — a board created by Congress to restore fiscal strength to the island — concluded that privatization was the only answer for lifting PREPA out of its financial hole.

Among bankers and many of Puerto Rico’s governing elite, the financial control board is viewed as an instrument for further cementing their power. Many ordinary Puerto Ricans, however, see the actions of Bishop and the control board — popularly known as “la junta” — as a threat to their democratic rights.

Proposals to privatize PREPA come on the heels of an initiative to weaken the powers of the Puerto Rico Energy Commission, the independent entity charged with oversight of PREPA. The proposed changes could turn the commission into a political entity and could strip any oversight of PREPA or a privatization process.

Opponents of privatization believe a prized asset such as PREPA should remain in the hands of Puerto Ricans and should not be sold off for far less than its true value in order to meet “unjust debt obligations to international banks.” The corruption that has plagued the electric utility can be rooted out without going private, they contend.

Since its inception almost 80 years ago, PREPA has been an entity owned and operated by Puerto Ricans. Many fear that selling the utility to a big investor-owned utility on the mainland or a European energy conglomerate would further erode the diminishing autonomy Puerto Ricans have over life on their island.

“As Puerto Rico’s past experiences have shown, savings promised by private operators do not always materialize. The priority now should be an overhaul of PREPA that establishes a strong and accountable regulator to oversee the process of rebuilding a more efficient and resilient electric grid to serve the people of Puerto Rico,” Lara Merling, a researcher at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, wrote in an analysis of PREPA privatization efforts for the NACLA Report on the Americas, a magazine that covers Latin America’s relationship with the United States.

Claims that privatization will create a quick fix to Puerto Rico’s economic and electrical woes are not backed by evidence, according to Merling. Puerto Rico’s Aqueduct and Sewer Authority has twice privatized the management of its water services, and both attempts had disastrous results, Merling wrote.

And yet, in a statement released earlier this year, Utah congressman Bishop believes the privatization of Puerto Rico’s government-owned electric utility will be a “key component” of the island’s future recovery.

Other lawmakers on the mainland don’t believe the devastation should be used as an excuse to race toward privatization of services and infrastructure. Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA), a member of the House Natural Resources Committee, noted it’s been nearly six months since Bishop’s committee, which has primary jurisdiction over recovery efforts in Puerto Rico, held a hearing on the disaster.

“Since Hurricanes Maria and Irma, the federal government has presided over one of the slowest and least effective post-hurricane recoveries in recent memory,” Beyer wrote in a letter on Tuesday sent to Bishop.

Since Hurricanes Maria and Irma the federal government has presided over one of the slowest and least effective post-hurricane recoveries of our time.

I am requesting a @NatResources hearing on Puerto Rico recovery efforts to provide the oversight Americans deserve. pic.twitter.com/S9wwKKK8cp

— Rep. Don Beyer (@RepDonBeyer) May 2, 2018

Beyer listed several issues that should be examined by the committee, including the exodus of residents from the island, the lack of access to housing, school closures, and the “unsupported” privatization of the PREPA.

In her book, Klein compares what’s happening in Puerto Rico to what happened in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina delivered a devastating blow to the city. New Orleans’ public school system and its low-income housing were dismantled in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina while the city was still largely empty of residents.

Last November, Puerto Rico’s Education Secretary Julia Keleher called New Orleans’ post-Katrina education reform a “point of reference” for the island.

"Puerto Rico’s Education Secretary Julia Keleher has already called New Orleans’s school reform efforts a 'point of reference'" — Horrifying. Using tragedy to further racist neoliberal policies in education. https://t.co/ZMsKowZNQy @aidachavez @rmc031

— Dana Bennis (@DanaBennis) November 17, 2017

Along with plans to find buyers for the island’s government-owned electric utility system, officials are talking about privatizing highways, bridges, ports, ferries, water systems, and national parks, Klein warned.

Puerto Rico even farmed out the counting of the number of people who have perished as a result of the hurricane. In February, Puerto Rico’s governor announced that a research team at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., will conduct a study to estimate the number of deaths tied to Hurricane Maria.

The governor signed an executive order in January for “a more factual, transparent accounting of the deaths tied to the hurricane,” the Milken Institute said in a news release. The study, with a new count of the number of people who died, is expected to be completed in June.

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