https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPiYnpheVCs
Thursday, September 10, 2020
With 'Irreparable Damage' Looming, 15 State AGs File Suit to Block Trump From Fossil Fuel Assault on Arctic Refuge
"Hard to say what's worse—destroying the nation's largest wildlife refuge, or further inflaming the climate crisis with new oil and gas drilling so a few fossil fuel companies can profit at the people's expense."
by
Andrea Germanos, staff writer
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/09/09/irreparable-damage-looming-15-state-ags-file-suit-block-trump-fossil-fuel-assault
A coalition of 15 attorneys general filed a lawsuit Wednesday to block the Trump administration's plan to allow fossil fuel drilling in the Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
"Hard to say what's worse—destroying the nation's largest wildlife refuge, or further inflaming the climate crisis with new oil and gas drilling so a few fossil fuel companies can profit at the people's expense," Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said in a statement. "This is a moral, environmental, and economic disaster," he added.
The lawsuit, co-led by Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson and Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska and accuses the administration of violating the National Environmental Policy Act, the National Wildlife Refuge System Administration Act, the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, the Administrative Procedure Act, and the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 in its oil and gas proposal for the area.
According to Ferguson, Trump's plan for ANWR is merely "the latest egregious example of his administration's four-year assault on our environment."
"President Trump and [Interior] Secretary Bernhardt—a former lobbyist for Big Oil—unlawfully cut corners in their haste to allow drilling in this pristine, untamed wildlife refuge to oil and gas development," Ferguson said in a statement announcing his plan to "hold the Trump administration accountable to the rule of law and block this unlawful drilling plan."
The Coastal Plain, the lawsuit states, "is a 1.56 million-acre national treasure, unparalleled in its biological significance for hundreds of species, including caribou, threatened polar bears, and millions of birds that migrate to and from six continents and through all 50 states."
It also represents "an area sacred to the Gwich'in people" and "is particularly vulnerable to environmental stressors, including climate change, which has caused thinning sea ice and thawing of permafrost in the region," the filing states.
The administration's actions, the lawsuit adds, "severely underestimate the avoidable and irreparable damage to vital habitat and pristine waters, imperil wildlife already struggling to thrive in a rapidly changing ecosystem, and increase greenhouse gas emissions at a time when our nation and the world drastically need to reduce emissions to mitigate the most extreme harms of climate change."
Joining Ferguson and Healey in the legal action are Xavier Becerra of California, William Tong of Connecticut, Kathleen Jennings of Delaware, Kwame Raoul of Illinois, Janet Mills of Maine, Brian Frosh of Maryland, Dana Nessel of Michigan, Keith Ellison of Minnesota, Gurbir Grewal of New Jersey, Letitia James of New York, Ellen Rosenblum of Oregon, Peter Neronha of Rhode Island, and TJ Donovan of Vermont.
The administration's decision to allow drilling in the refuge was already hit with a lawsuit last month from environmental advocacy groups and the Gwich'in Nation—who deem the Coastal Plain "the sacred place where life begins."
The drilling plan has also come in for scrutiny from the United Nations.
The Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) last month called for a probe into the Trump administration's drilling plan, citing allegations that it threatens the human rights of the Gwich'in and "would exacerbate the already disproportionate impact of climate change on indigenous peoples, in particular in Alaska."
Emails Show How Trump Official at HHS Tried to Get Fauci to Downplay Covid-19 Threat to School Children
"This sort of story will be recalled years from now as an example of the government interfering with science, with predictably disastrous results."
by
Andrea Germanos, staff writer
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/09/09/emails-show-how-trump-official-hhs-tried-get-fauci-downplay-covid-19-threat-school
Reporting from Politico Wednesday revealed that a Trump-allied official within the Department of Health and Human Services tried to censor Dr. Anthony Fauci from communicating to the press dangers the coronavirus may pose to school children.
According to Politico, the messaging directives came from Paul Alexander, a Trump administration appointee at the Department of Health and Human Services. Alexander is a senior adviser to Michael Caputo, a Trump ally and assistant HHS secretary for public affairs.
Politico obtained multiple emails from Alexander that reflect his responses to what Fauci—director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)—planned on telling outlets including Bloomberg and HuffPost. They included messages that "are couched as scientific arguments" but "often contradict mainstream science," according to the reporting.
The outlet cited as one example an Aug. 27 email in which Alexander wrote that he continues "to have an issue with kids getting tested and repeatedly and even university students in a widespread manner…and I disagree with Dr. Fauci on this. Vehemently."
In another email from Tuesday, Alexander suggested children have "essentially zero" risk if they are exposed to the coronavirus and pushed Fauci's press team to make sure Fauci told MSNBC that children should not wear masks at school. From Politico:
"Can you ensure Dr. Fauci indicates masks are for the teachers in schools. Not for children," Alexander wrote. "There is no data, none, zero, across the entire world, that shows children especially young children, spread this virus to other children, or to adults or to their teachers. None. And if it did occur, the risk is essentially zero," he continued — adding without evidence that children take influenza home, but not the coronavirus.
Alexander's repeated efforts at push Fauci to parrot the adminsitration's anti-science line, however, may have been for naught.
"No one tells me what I can say and cannot say," Fauci said. "I speak on scientific evidence."
It did not, however, mark Alexander's first attempts at controlling the narrative from federal health experts.
The Washington Post reported in July that he made similar efforts with CDC officials. In a June email to CDC officials, Alexander wrote that the agency's warning about Covid-19 impacts on women "reads in a way to frighten women . . . as if the President and his administration can't fix this and it is getting worse."
Virologist Dave O'Connor weighed in on the new reporting on Twitter, writing, "This sort of story will be recalled years from now as an example of the government interfering with science, with predictably disastrous results."
Shannon Watts, founder of gun control advocacy group Moms Demand Action, also shared Politico's new reporting, and had harsh words for the Trump administration.
"They don't care if our kids die. They don't care if we die," wrote Watts. "They just want power."
Remembering 9/11/1973: Salvador Allende's Socialist Government in Chile and the US-Backed Coup
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTaCAnQcIdA
'Reckless Homicide': Audio Tapes Reveal Trump Knew Covid-19 Was 'Deadly Stuff' for Months While Publicly Downplaying Threat
Critics reserved some outrage for veteran journalist Bob Woodward, who learned the president was lying to the public about the pandemic in March.
Julia Conley, staff writer
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/09/09/reckless-homicide-audio-tapes-reveal-trump-knew-covid-19-was-deadly-stuff-months
Though unsurprised at the news that President Donald Trump deliberately lied about and downplayed the threat posed by the coronavirus pandemic, political observers on Wednesday were outraged following the release of audio recordings of interviews veteran journalist Bob Woodward conducted with the president in February and March in which Trump openly admitted he didn't share with the public his own understanding that the pandemic was "deadly stuff."
Ahead of the release of his new book about Trump's presidency, "Rage," Woodward leaked audio interviews from February 7 and March 19, in which the president shared his knowledge that the pandemic was a serious threat to Americans' lives—and his intention to keep that a secret.
Trump told Woodward in February—10 days after being told by his national security team that the coronavirus was "the biggest national security threat" he would face—that the coronavirus was an airborne virus and "more deadly than even your strenuous flu."
"You just breathe the air and that's how it’s passed," Trump said. "This is deadly stuff."
Publicly at the time, the president vehemently denied that the coronavirus was something Americans needed to worry about. On February 24, he tweeted that the virus was "very much under control in the USA." On March 11, when the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus outbreak a global pandemic, Trump told the public that for "the vast majority of Americans, the risk is very, very low"—a month after telling Woodward the virus was easily spread through aerosols.
On March 19, Trump again spoke with Woodward, telling him he had learned "some startling facts" about Covid-19, including that "it's not just older people, it's plenty of young people" who are vulnerable to the disease.While the president understood Covid-19 to be airborne days after being warned about the pandemic in January, he allowed confusion and debate over how to prevent the spread of the disease to persist for months. Trump downplayed the CDC's recommendation, released April 3, that Americans wear face coverings to prevent transmission; he told the public, "You don't have to do it... It's only a recommendation." The president himself didn't wear a face mask in public until July 11, and his campaign has not required masks at his campaign rallies.
"I wanted to always play it down," Trump said. "I still like playing it down, because I don't want to create a panic."
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden quickly went on the offensive after the audio recordings were released, summarizing the newly-confirmed information:
"While a deadly disease ripped through our nation, he failed to do his job—on purpose," Biden tweeted. "It was a life or death betrayal of the American people."
Others added their condemnation of the president:
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.)—one of the hundreds of thousands of Americans who have lost a loved one to the pandemic—shared personal grief as well as anger over the confirmation that nearly 200,000 people "lost their lives to Covid-19 as a result of this president's gross negligence and lies."
While White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany blatantly lied to reporters Wednesday after being asked at a press conference about the recordings, saying, "The president never downplayed the virus," Trump attempted to defend his choice to hide his knowledge of the severity of the pandemic from the public, saying he "didn't want to create panic."
The excuse ran counter to the president's recent penchant for claiming that violent riots led by radical left-wing agitators are overtaking cities across the U.S. and will continue to do so if Biden is elected president, some noted on social media.
"A guy whose entire re-election campaign is based on engendering fear and panic is saying that he lied to prevent panic is an interesting plot twist," said Esquire columnist Charles Pierce.
Meanwhile, critics noted that while Trump chose to lie to the public about the pandemic, he had help from Woodward. On March 19, when the president told Woodward he was intentionally downplaying the coronavirus crisis, 200 people in the U.S. had died of Covid-19 in the United States. Six months later, as the recordings were made public on Wednesday, the death toll approached 190,000.
Rev. Dr. William Barber expressed hope that now that Trump's months-old knowledge of the severity of the pandemic has been confirmed, voters will resoundingly reject him in the November election.
"If Woodward's on-tape revelations don’t persuade the nation to turn its political back on Trump, McConnell, and those who have enabled them, Lord help this nation," Barber tweeted. "It will reveal more about who we are than who Trump is."
Joe Biden HACKS freak out at Susan Sarandon and Ryan Knight for no reason
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FYlo2Ni_RQ&ab_channel=ChristoAivalis
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