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Republicans wage war on environmental investing rules

A groundswell of Republicans in states across the U.S. are waging a war against environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing, framing the fight against the economic strategy as a stance against what they call liberal policies interfering in the free market.

Prominent GOP figures including former Vice President Mike Pence and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, both potential 2024 contenders, have latched onto the issue. 

But so have state-level Republicans, who are implementing restrictions that blacklist certain firms from doing business with their state, usually because of what they perceive as unfavorable stances toward an industry that is the main driver of the global crisis of climate change: fossil fuel.

“I am leading the charge on this, but there is an army behind me,” West Virginia State Treasurer Riley Moore said in an interview with The Hill. 

In July, Moore barred five of the largest banks in the country, including BlackRock and Goldman Sachs, from receiving state banking contracts. He says the banks are involved in “boycotts of fossil fuel companies” — a notion both companies denied.

Goldman touted in a letter to the state that month the more than $118 billion it had given to fossil fuel companies since 2016. A Blackrock spokesperson told The Hill the bank does not boycott energy companies.

“We disagree with Treasurer Moore’s determination,” the spokesperson said. “We do not pursue divestment from sectors and industries as a policy.”

Over the last two years, Republican lawmakers in at least 12 states have announced plans to introduce bills that aim to strictly curb ESG investing, ranging from the West Virginia-like practice of blacklisting banks to barring state money managers from considering ESG factors when investing.

ESG requires investors to make capital decisions based not only on likely financial return, but also with an eye on the company’s impact on the environment, wider society and its own employees. 

The burning of fossil fuels, especially carbon dioxide, is the main driver of climate change, causing a worldwide crisis that is altering the earth’s ecosystems and is causing health problems for people as well as subjecting them to worse floods, droughts, food insecurity and sometimes death.

In May, the Securities and Exchange Commission proposed rule changes aimed at cracking down on what is known as ESG “greenwashing,” the misleading marketing of unsustainable investments under the ESG label.

The backlash goes beyond the state level.

House Republicans said they expect GOP lawmakers to overturn the agency’s proposed rule if they take the chamber after November’s midterms.

Rep. John Rose (R-Tenn.) and a bipartisan group of 117 lawmakers, mostly Republicans, sent a letter to SEC Chair Gary Gensler last month saying the new rules would place too great a regulatory burden on farmers to report the required data, potentially squashing small farms and worsening supply chain issues.

ESG investing has accelerated in the last decade, as banks have listed more and more funds under the category, capitalizing on the growing demand from investors. 

Pence recently pressured states to curb the use of ESG investing factors at a speech in Houston in May. 

“[Democrats] have weaponized the Securities and Exchange Commission… to choke off financing for traditional energy sources through capricious new ESG regulations that allow left wing radicals to destroy American energy producers from within,” Pence said during the speech.

DeSantis announced plans in late July to push Florida lawmakers to effectively ban the consideration of ESG factors when investing state money. This includes money in the state’s pension system. 

“Our investment funds should be for the best interests of our beneficiaries… it should not be a vehicle to impose an ideological agenda,” DeSantis said.

While some states have smaller financial assets stowed away in state retirement funds, others have massive pension systems, according to Josh Lichtenstein, a partner at law firm Ropes & Gray. When these states make moves to regulate investments, the market goes on alert.

“When a state like Texas or Florida does something, or a state like California or New York … people pay more attention,” Lichtenstein said. “These are really significant and important institutional investors.”

But as state officials maneuver against ESG practices, experts warn the counterpunches may only muddy the waters more for investors and money managers. Some ESG factors, experts say, are conventional factors of risk for investors, and outlawing their consideration could make managing decisions difficult.

Lichtenstein believes there is a risk the new rules are interpreted so broadly that they actually shut down consideration of ESG factors all together. Asset managers have a duty to maximize return for investors, and Lichtenstein said the rules may mandate managers to ignore what they think are important sources of risk, a situation he deemed “untenable.” 

But Moore and other Republicans categorically deny that environmental considerations mean anything when it comes to return on investment, asking, “How do greenhouse gas emissions affect the bottom line and financial outcomes of a given financial institution?”

Support for the fossil fuel industry is central to the Republican party’s concerns about ESG investing. 

Utah State Treasurer Marlo Oaks, a critic of the investing strategy, said ESG has driven money away from fossil fuel projects in the U.S. He argues underinvestment in domestic energy projects has contributed to high energy costs.

“We have coercion happening in the capital markets to try and drive a political agenda,” said Oaks in an interview with The Hill. “The result is the misallocation of capital … underinvesting in oil and gas so we have a serious lack of supply.”

But climate activists are quick to point out that the banks continue to be major financial backers of fossil fuels. Ben Cushing, campaign manager of the Sierra Club’s Fossil-Free Finance campaign, said “Wall Street is the largest center of fossil fuel financing in the world.”

Cushing characterized the front against ESG investing as the GOP realizing that the free market is moving away from fossil fuels, with coal and oil company-backed politicians trying to stop the trend.

“This bizarre notion that banks are ‘boycotting’ fossil fuels is really just a talking point cooked up by right wing politicians and the fossil fuel industry to prevent the free market from moving against them,” Cushing said.

Republicans can claim some early victories on the issue. US Bank, which was originally on West Virginia’s blacklist, changed their lending policies to no longer boycott the fossil fuel industry, according to Moore.

US Bank’s ESG policies do not prohibit relationships with fossil fuel companies, according to a spokesperson for the bank. While it is “​​pleased to not be excluded from doing business in West Virginia,” its ESG policies were in place prior to the state’s law, the spokesperson said.

Some banks have even publicly trumpeted the amount of financing they have given fossil fuel companies, an attempt to convince state officials they have not gone too far in subscribing to ESG regulations.

And while Republicans have just begun their crusade against ESG, Moore is adamant there is more coming down the pike.

“I’m working with states all around the country … to get this legislation introduced in the next legislative session,” Moore said. “I think that it’s going to be a lot more palatable rolling into 2023 and you’re going to see a lot more states do this.”

Source: TEST FEED1

Discovery execs flex their muscles as Stelter, Toobin shown the door at CNN

Discovery’s purchase of CNN earlier this year promised changes at the struggling network, and now those changes appear to be coming to fruition. 

The big, albeit not surprising, media news earlier this week entails CNN media critic Brian Stelter leaving the network not long after publicly criticizing one of the power brokers at Discovery. And unless career self-destruction was the goal, it’s hard to see why Stelter thought it was a good idea to say the following about Discovery’s largest shareholder, John Malone. 

“The people who say the Zucker-era CNN was lacking in real journalism clearly were not watching CNN directly,” Stelter proclaimed earlier this year after then-CNN President Jeff Zucker was shown the door. “My best guess is that they were watching talking heads and reading columnists complain about CNN. And yes, I’m including John Malone in this.”

Yep, you read that correctly. The network’s top media reporter publicly accused one of his new bosses of being misinformed while defending his former boss, who ran the network into the ground both from a ratings and credibility perspective.

CNN’s viewership is down more than 75 percent since Joe Biden took office. This collapse was predicted by none other than former ABC “Nightline” anchor Ted Koppel in 2018, when CNN was enjoying relative success as an anti-Trump network. 

“The ratings are up, it means you can’t do without Donald Trump. You would be lost without Donald Trump,” Koppel told Stelter at the time. 

“Ted, you know that’s not true,” Stelter said.

“CNN’s ratings would be in the toilet without Donald Trump,” Koppel said as the audience at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., laughed.

“You know that’s not true. You’re playing for laughs,” Stelter retorted. “I reject the premise that these networks are making so much money off of Trump,” Stelter said.

No, Koppel wasn’t playing for laughs but making an obvious point. And on cue, after Trump left the stage in January 2021, CNN’s ratings fell to lows not seen since the beginning of the century. The precipitous drop included Stelter’s show, which in June saw its lowest ratings since 2001. 

Zucker’s replacement, Chris Licht, was brought in to change the company’s fortunes and overall culture.

“This is a time of change, and I know that it’s unsettling,” Licht told staffers on Friday, according to the Daily Beast. “There will be more changes and you might not understand it or like it all.”

This wasn’t about just ratings, of course, but also credibility. During the Biden era, Stelter’s fawning interviews with Biden administration officials revealed how hyperpartisan the once-serious show analyzing the crossroads between media and politics had become. 

“What does the press get wrong when covering Biden’s agenda? When you watch the news, when you read the news, what do you think we get wrong?” Stelter once asked then-White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, a former CNN employee, during a Reliable Sources interview. 

“Do you fear that given the craziness we’re seeing from the GOP, do you fear that for our kids, your kids and mine?” he asked Psaki later in the interview. 

The media reporter’s departure comes a week after Jeffrey Toobin announced he wouldn’t be rejoining the network. In 2020, Toobin was infamously seen pleasuring himself during a work Zoom call as female coworkers looked on. For this breach of journalist ethics (if that’s what it can be called), The New Yorker, where Toobin had been employed for nearly 20 years, fired him. But CNN merely put him on paid vacation for a few months before bringing him back. Again, credibility matters — and Discovery execs and Licht appear to be trying to clean things up. 

Brian Stelter will be just fine. He’ll probably jump to MSNBC or return to a job he once had as a media reporter for The New York Times.

CNN is undergoing change. The changes, we’re told, will continue. More employees, unfortunately, will be axed. 

The question is: Can CNN return to the network it was in the days of Bernard Shaw? In a media environment that increasingly values sizzle over steak and partisan opinion over straight reporting, that may be a very difficult task. 

Joe Concha is a media and politics columnist and a Fox News contributor.

Source: TEST FEED1

Midterm elections to put misinformation policies to the test

Social media platforms’ plans to tackle election-related misinformation will be put to the test as congressional candidates ramp up online activity in the final months of midterm campaigns. 

Since the 2020 election, mainstream platforms like Twitter and Facebook have been more liberal in applying measures to block, label and remove politicians — including their watershed decisions to suspend former President Trump’s accounts last year. 

But as more politicians test the boundaries of the platforms’ rules with incendiary posts, especially after an uptick in violent rhetoric following last week’s FBI search of Mar-a-Lago, critics warn that tech companies need to do more than dust off their 2020 playbooks to follow through on their commitments to block misinformation and hate speech. 

New York University researcher Laura Edelson said to get at the core of the issue, platforms need to reassess the algorithms recommending content to users. 

She compared taking content down after amplifying it to a wide online audience — the approach most platforms use, and plan to use ahead of November based on their public posts — to creating a car with no brakes and only airbags. 

“By the time those are useful, the car’s crashed,” she said. 

Meta, Twitter and TikTok released their plans to moderate midterm election-related content in the past two weeks. Largely, the companies plan to deploy the same tactics as they did in 2020. All three said they will label such posts and point users to their respective election centers with authoritative voting information from partner organizations and local officials.

TikTok gained more widespread appeal since the last election. And despite some warnings about national security concerns over its parent company ByteDance being based in China, which TiKTok has refuted, more candidates are using the platform to reach voters — especially young ones.

TikTok does not allow paid political advertising, meaning the content it’s moderating will mostly be organic posts. The company said it will label all posts related to midterm elections, regardless of if there’s a disputed comment.

Facebook, now under the parent company name Meta, took that approach in 2020, but the company signaled a shift for this season. Meta President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg said in a blog post if labels are deployed, they will be used in a “targeted and strategic way” after feedback from users that the 2020 labels were “over-used.” 

According to a Meta fact sheet, the company has “hundreds of people focused on the midterms across more than 40 teams” and spent $5 billion on global safety and security last year. But reports indicate the company is cutting back on content moderation to a degree. About 60 contract workers at Accenture working for Facebook for services like content moderation would be losing their jobs, Insider reported Thursday.

A Meta spokesperson declined to comment about the report. 

Facebook has been criticized over its handling of misinformation in the 2020 election, with critics saying the company didn’t do enough to stop the spread of false narratives casting doubt on election results or false claims about voter fraud. 

“Facebook again hasn’t fundamentally changed anything and they have defunded their own program of whack-a-mole,” Edelson said. 

She said the lack of change is worrying due to a spike in conspiracy theories about local elections and federal law enforcement. 

“And now they’re being tied together as if this is some grand conspiracy,” she said. 

Twitter said in a blog post last week it would label posts with misleading content or claims about voting, including false information about the outcome of the election. 

The election-specific policies from social media giants appear focused on claims of voter fraud or suppression, referencing the Stop the Steal movement casting doubt on President Biden’s win that gained steam online in 2020, despite platforms’ efforts to fight such misinformation. The false narrative, amplified by Trump and his allies, gave rise to the violent riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6 of last year.

After the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago, there’s been an increase in violent rhetoric on mainstream and fringe sites that are casting the move as politically motivated against Trump. The posts are raising alarms about potential real world attacks. 

Jacqueline Maralet, an assistant director at the Digital Forensic Research Lab, said the platforms’ election policies address far-right extremism “mostly insofar as, ‘This type of speech is already not allowed under our content moderation policies.’”

They may take actions against specific candidates that “push too far into” the edge of “clearly inciting violence,” she said, but it’s not yet clear how strictly platforms will enforce their guidelines.

Facebook and Twitter have been taking stricter action against politicians than they did before the 2020 election, including cutting elected officials off from their accounts. 

In addition to the suspensions of Trump — Twitter’s permanent and Facebook’s lasting until at least 2023 — over the past year the companies have suspended various lawmakers, mostly for violations of their COVID-19 misinformation policy. 

Twitter, for example, permanently suspended Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-Ga.) personal account in January for that reason, although her official congressional account remains active. 

Martin Rooke, a research fellow at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center, said moderating content for medical misinformation is “far simpler” than it is for posts linked to events like the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago which are “inherently political,” however.

Regarding medical misinformation, “there are scientific authorities that can be consulted with,” he said. 

“But with this Mar-a-Lago event, when does content moderation really start to step on freedom of expression around being critical of law enforcement agencies, being critical of the government as well? I think that’s where the more mainstream social media platforms are really going to run up against their limit of what they are prepared to do or what they can legally do,” Rooke said. 

That can be just as challenging around campaign-centered language, he said. 

“You could say, ‘Alright, well, we’ll try and tamper down on sort of jingoistic expressions.’ But almost every election there’s language about it being a contest, a battle, a flight for freedom, fight for the future — stuff like that,” Rooke said. “That combative language is embedded in our very modern way of discussing politics. So unless the social media platforms are going to be hiring people to sit there and monitor and observe these networks on an almost consistent basis it’s going to be very, very hard to pick up.”

Another challenge is the “gray area” posts being spread by some Republican officials on mainstream platforms, Maralet said.

She characterized these as part of a “call and response” type of relationship in which a post from a Republican official on Twitter or Facebook may not explicitly call for violence, but leads to a more direct call from users on fringe sites. 

Beyond incendiary posts about the FBI search, advocacy groups are also raising concerns about how social media platforms are handling other forms of hate speech, including a rise in anti-LGBTQ posts identified after the passage of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay or Trans” bill.

A report released by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) and the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) earlier this month found that just 10 Twitter accounts drove 66 percent of impressions for the 500 most viewed anti-LGBTQ tweets using “groomer” as a slur between January and July. 

Among them were the accounts of Reps. Greene and Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), who are both seeking reelection in November. 

The posts seemingly violate Twitter’s policy. A Twitter spokesperson confirmed that use of the term “groomer” is prohibited under the hateful conduct policy when used as a descriptor in context of discussion of gender identity. 

“We agree that we can and must do better. Our mission and our responsibility is to proactively enforce all of our policies, and to do so as quickly as possible. We continue to invest in our automated tools and teams of specialist reviewers, to identify and address gaps in our enforcement,” the spokesperson said in a statement. 

Through Meta’s Ad Library, researchers found 59 paid ads served to Facebook and Instagram users that shared a dangerous narrative that the LGBTQ community and allies are “grooming” children, according to the report. 

“Are social media companies prepared for the impact of this dangerous rhetoric in the wake of the 2022 elections? As we approach 2022 midterm elections, are social media companies prepared to enforce their policies and prevent some of the real life consequences we’ve seen in association with this language being used in previous elections,” Justin Unga, director of strategic initiatives at HRC, said. 

A spokesperson for Meta said, “We reviewed the ads flagged in the report and have taken action on any content that violates our policies.”

To mitigate the issues, HRC officials said the platforms need to do a better job at enforcing the policies they already have in place. 

“This has real world consequences. It has political consequences. But we’re really worried about the actual danger they’re putting people in,” Jay Brown, senior vice president of programs at HRC, said.

“These platforms need to do better enforcing their own policies,” he added.

Source: TEST FEED1

Let’s talk about the next CHIPS Act

President Biden and lawmakers from both sides of the aisle gathered recently in the Rose Garden to sign the CHIPS and Science Act into law. Heralded by supporters as a significant investment in U.S. competitiveness and innovation, this legislation has been the cause for recent bipartisan praise — and rightfully so. The bill injects more than $280 billion into U.S. manufacturing and research of semiconductor chips, but it’s only a first step toward solving global chip production issues. 

Tensions with Russia and China have disrupted supply chains already weakened by two years of the pandemic and strained economies. As a result, these overburdened supply chains continue to hamstring companies’ yearly targets.The CEO of Lucid Group, a U.S.-based electric vehicle (EV) manufacturer, cited “extraordinary supply chain and logistics challenges” as the reason for their halved production forecast, primarily due to a limited supply of semiconductors from China. The five major automakers were not spared, either; this year, Toyota marked a drastic 42 percent drop in profit after struggling with rising materials prices.

None of this is news in global manufacturing. The funding earmarked in the CHIPS and Science Act seeks to reduce these vulnerabilities by incentivizing U.S. production of semiconductors. But what about the critical metals and minerals needed to make these semiconductors and revive other U.S. manufacturing? The materials required to build the parts are not addressed at all in the bill, and that supply chain is almost as dire, if not more so, than the one for semiconductors. 

Today, the U.S. relies almost entirely on foreign sources to supply critical metals such as titanium, lithium and rare earths. Without access to these materials, there can be no advanced American manufacturing. Furthermore, these metals and their mineral feedstocks are essential parts of the technologies required to reduce our carbon emissions and secure our national defense. It’s a matter of U.S. national security.  

Take titanium, for example. Titanium metal is widely used, most notably in the global aerospace, medical, and defense sectors. Its excellent resistance to corrosion and high strength-to-weight ratio make titanium a formidable and lasting material in everything from airplanes to electric vehicles, medical devices, and even consumer goods such as watches, phones and computers. Lighter weight and longer lasting than steel, titanium also plays a critical role in the production of U.S. military equipment like fighter jets and missiles. 

Yet, despite America’s increasing demand for titanium, we no longer produce almost any of it in the United States. The last titanium metal sponge plant closed in Nevada over two years ago, and now the U.S. relies on a titanium supply chain largely controlled by Russia and China. With so much of our defense and national infrastructure dependent on titanium, the U.S. cannot afford to delay investing in its own domestic titanium supply infrastructure. 

In addition to the funds set aside to re-shore semiconductor production, the CHIPS and Science Act pumps billions of dollars into cutting-edge research and development for technologies that will help the U.S. produce semiconductors and other advanced materials. 

Some of these technologies already exist, including our technology, the Hydrogen Assisted Metallothermic Reduction (HAMR) process developed by metallurgist Dr. Zhigang Zak Fang of the University of Utah, with support from the U.S. Department of Energy. This technology can transform almost any form of titanium mineral or titanium scrap feedstock into low-cost, low-carbon titanium metal. The technology can use scrap metal that is sitting in landfills to make essential components for space exploration, defense and electric vehicles.  

The CHIPS and Science Act deserves its place among landmark legislation of the past quarter-century, but the government should act quickly to catalyze targeted investment in U.S. critical metal and mineral production. If we take advantage of the resources under our feet and scale up domestic innovative production technologies, U.S. industry can outpace foreign competitors and reshore supplies critical for a stronger America. 

Anastasios “Taso” Arima is the co-founder and CEO of IperionX, a developer of U.S.-based sustainable critical minerals, including titanium, and critical material supply chains. The company holds the rights to the Titan Project, a critical mineral project in west Tennessee. 

Source: TEST FEED1

Trump pushes for un-redacted affidavit’s release, despite the risks

Former President Trump is pushing for the full, unredacted release of the affidavit that led to the search warrant for his Mar-a-Lago estate, a move that carries risks for both Trump and the Justice Department.

“Pres. Trump has made his view clear that the American people should be permitted to see the unredacted affidavit related to the raid and break-in of his home,” Taylor Budowich, a spokesperson for the former president, said Thursday after Federal Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart said he may be willing to unseal portions of the document.

Reinhart ordered Justice Department officials to suggest redactions to the document by next Thursday.

“Today, magistrate Judge Reinhard rejected the DOJ’s [Justice Department’s] cynical attempt to hide the whole affidavit from Americans,” Budowich continued. “However, no redactions should be necessary and the whole affidavit should be released, given the Democrats’ penchant for using redactions to hide government corruption, just like they did with the Russia hoax.”

Trump and his supporters have for years believed the FBI and Justice Department are biased against the former president, arguing that the bureau improperly surveilled his 2016 presidential campaign.

Trump separately posted on Truth Social, his social media platform, calling for the “immediate release” of the unredacted affidavit, citing the need for transparency. He also called for Reinhart to recuse himself from the case without giving a clear reason.

The rhetoric from Trump and his camp follows a similar playbook, experts say, in which the former president demands the release of potentially sensitive information.

If the government and judge decline to release the full, unredacted document, it allows Trump and his allies to claim federal law enforcement is hiding something, further fueling distrust among Trump supporters.

“It certainly is consistent with a project of delegitimizing law enforcement and law enforcement targeting him in particular,” said Dan Richman, a law professor at Columbia University. “Because he knows, as everybody knows, the government will regardless of the case be averse to the disclosure of search warrants as an institutional matter.”

The affidavit, which was used to convince Reinhart that there was enough evidence to support the probable cause needed to obtain a search warrant, contains information about the federal law enforcement investigation into Trump’s handling of material marked classified following his departure from the White House.

The Justice Department has argued that released the affidavit could jeopardize an ongoing investigation, as well as the sources of information in the case. Releasing identifying information about those sources could lead to threats. Reinhart, for example, has been subjected to threats since signing off on the warrant for the Mar-a-Lago search.

Beyond the risks for the Justice Department, there could be some risks for Trump should the full affidavit come out.

“There is a risk if it seems like he was sharing intel with unauthorized parties while out of office,” said one former Trump adviser, who noted that such details could ultimately be redacted by the government.

Experts also pointed out that the affidavit could reveal exchanges between the Justice Department and Trump’s team discussing the need to return sensitive materials, ultimately showing the government had made multiple good faith efforts to secure the documents in question before resorting to a search warrant.

The release of the affidavit could also carry political risks for Trump if it bolsters the case that Trump mishandled classified information.

Polling has already showed a significant percentage of voters believe Trump may have broken the law as president. 

A Politico-Morning Consult poll released days after the Mar-a-Lago search found roughly half of registered voters approved of the raid, though only 15 percent of Republicans approved. And 58 percent of voters said they believe Trump definitely or probably broke the law as president.

While calls to release the affidavit are likely to galvanize his hardcore supporters, it could ultimately create further concerns for the broader public. Trump will have to win over a broader base to win the White House if he runs for president in 2024.

Richman, the Columbia law professor, said he would not expect it to be the end of the matter if the judge opts to release the affidavit with limited or no redactions, saying the government would likely appeal such a decision.

“I would expect that central to the appeal would be the broader institutional question of whether this ought to be done,” Richman said. “It could set a really poor precedent for high profile searches in the future.”

Source: TEST FEED1

Clyburn voices concern of redistricting ‘adversely affecting the lives of Black people’

House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) said in an interview that while he did not have an issue with Republicans or Democrats using redistricting to provide a partisan advantage, he noted that “I do have a problem when it comes to the result adversely affecting the lives of Black people.”

“Aggressive redistricting efforts, that’s one thing. To be suppressive of Black voter strength, that’s another thing,” Clyburn told CBS News’ Robert Costa. 

“Yes, Democrats look for partisan advantage. Republicans look for partisan events. I don’t have a problem with either one of those parties doing that. I do have a problem when it comes to the result adversely affecting the lives of Black people.”

The top Democrat warned that the consequences of not addressing the impacts of redistricting on communities of color could be dire.

“What I think is taking place today is the beginning of a process, not the ending of one. And the question is, ‘Where will it end?’ Will it end with the intervention from the voters in 2022? Or will it get a second breath and continue until we go back to a dark place that none of us thought we would ever revisit again,” he told Costa.

Clyburn’s comments come as both parties have been criticized for gerrymandering congressional maps in their states. 

The House majority whip, whom CBS News noted has seen a decrease in the percentage of Black voters he represents since redistricting, said while he viewed redistricting as “keeping balance,” he also said there is not enough of a “will” to change the process.

“Sometimes that’s because people fear for their own safety, some people fear for their own security and some people would just rather have favor than freedom,” Clyburn said during the interview. 

Source: TEST FEED1

Zelensky calls for strength ahead of Ukrainian Independence Day, fears of Russian escalation

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called for strength in an address to the nation on Saturday amid fears of a possible escalation by Russia and as the country nears its Independence Day.

“We must all be strong enough to resist any enemy provocations – as much as it takes to make the occupiers answer for all their blows and terror – for Kharkiv and Donbas, for Azovstal and Mykolaiv, for the filtration camps, for Bucha, Irpin for all cities… We must all be strong enough to endure and go all the way to Ukrainian victory,” Zelensky said.

Ukraine will be approaching its 31st anniversary of their Independence Day on Aug. 24, which also marks six months since Russia began its invasion into Ukraine. 

The Strategic Communications Directorate, Office of the Chief of Defense, Armed Forces of Ukraine warned in a post on Thursday that “Russia is concentrating a large number of anti-aircraft missiles near the borders with Ukraine and in the occupied territories from the S-300 air defense system.”

“The threat of massive shelling of the territory of Ukraine, at least, with S-300 missiles is obvious. Taking into account the arrival of a number of echelons by the 20th, it is also obvious that they are concentrated until August 24,” it added.

Zelensky in his address suggested that Russia could try to do something “particularly nasty, something particularly cruel” this week.

“One of the key tasks of the enemy is to humiliate us, Ukrainians, to devalue our capabilities, our heroes, to spread despair, fear, to spread conflicts… Therefore, it is important never, for a single moment, to give in to this enemy pressure, not to wind oneself up, not to show weakness,” the Ukrainian president said.

Zelensky’s remarks come as the Biden administration announced on Friday it would be sending another $775 million dollars-worth of military aid in Ukraine in a situation that Western officials assess as close to an operational standstill on both sides.

Source: TEST FEED1

The case for more IRS funding

Though the Inflation Reduction Act is enormously popular, some politicians and pundits are trying to generate hysteria about one feature: Funding for the IRS. All the false claims are distracting us from two important things: how necessary the funding increase is to reverse the longstanding underfunding of this critical government agency, and how this funding will directly help average Americans get money owed to them while cracking down on billionaire tax cheats. Bonus: It will generate about $200 billion that we can re-invest in green energy, health care, and a cleaner climate. 

Over the last decade, budget cuts have shrunk IRS staff by 20 percent, leaving the agency with fewer auditors than at any time since World War II. That means they’ve been fundamentally unable to do even the basics of their job, which involves the important task of collecting funding for the whole of government. Unable to process tax returns efficiently, unable to answer calls from confused taxpayers and unable, especially, to get money owed by the extremely wealthy, who have ways of circumventing the IRS.  

Despite what Republican lawmakers would have you believe, most middle-class and poor people pay their taxes, and when there are errors, they are tiny in comparison to the aggressive tax-dodging of the elite. Most Americans have income withheld from every paycheck and they have W-2s that their employer fills out and submits to the Social Security Administration and the IRS. They don’t have convoluted offshore accounts and grantor trusts to invite scrutiny from IRS examiners. 

Not so true of the rich: One recent study concluded that more than one-third of all federal income taxes unpaid are attributable to the top 1 percent. But rich people are simply harder to audit. People who own multiple businesses and have different types of investments that are not reported automatically to the IRS have far more opportunities to hide income.  

Republicans’ cuts to the IRS budget are the reason why the agency has done fewer and fewer of the difficult audits — audits of rich people and big corporations — and focused more on the easier audits, which are audits of poor and middle-income people. From 2010 through 2018, audit rates for those with income between $1 million and $5 million fell by 67 percent. Audits of low-income working people who receive the Earned Income Tax Credit fell by only 40 percent.  

Funding in the Inflation Reduction Act would reverse this dynamic, allowing the IRS to re-hire specialists who know how to go after the complex and convoluted schemes used by the very well-off. Congressional Republicans, it seems, would rather keep the IRS focused on auditing EITC recipients. 

Because this bill is so popular, Republican politicians are making some pretty ludicrous claims in the last few days. So just to be clear: the audits will be focused on wealthy tax cheats and corporate tax evaders, routine audits are done through the mail (not by armed agents as Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) hilariously claims), the 87,000 new IRS staff are to be added over a decade (meaning many will simply replace folks who are retiring), and most Americans want billionaires to follow tax law, just like most Americans do. 

In addition to increased enforcement, the new IRS funding would upgrade the agency’s technology and efficiency, helping average Americans get their tax refunds quicker. It’s clear underfunding is a problem: In the last three years alone, the number of unprocessed tax returns nearly doubled, according to the Congressional Research Service. At the same time, the number of calls from taxpayers that IRS agents were able to address dropped to less than 1 in 5 calls answered. Ouch.  

A recent Washington Post article described how the IRS cafeteria filled up with unprocessed paper tax returns that IRS staff were forced to enter by hand into computers running on the COBOL language from the 1960s — a language that coders today don’t even know — because the agency has not been given the funding to invest in contemporary technology. And when the IRS can’t catch wealthy tax evaders, who pays the price? All of us who actually follow the rules and pay what we owe. We are paying for their tax evasion. 

A well-funded IRS is an IRS that goes after the right people — the very wealthy who aren’t paying their fair share of taxes — and protects those of us who are. 

Jon Whiten is a tax policy expert at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy  

Source: TEST FEED1

World Food Programme increasing support for Horn of Africa as drought lingers, famine threat looms

The World Food Programme (WFP), the food-assistance branch of the United Nations, is expanding its aid to the eastern Horn of Africa as the region continues to face intense droughts that are increasing the threat of famine. 

The WFP said in a release on Friday that 9 million additional people have fallen into severe food insecurity in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia, creating a total of 22 million who are struggling to have enough food to eat. 

The region is in the easternmost part of the continent and includes those three countries plus Eritrea and Djibouti. 

The release states that the WFP is tripling the number of people reached with food assistance in the Baardheere area, located in Somalia, which hosts tens of thousands of people who have fled their homes due to drought or conflict. 

WFP Executive Director David Beasley finished a visit to Somalia on Thursday, according to the release. He met with malnourished children and their mothers who needed to leave their homes and travel long distances to receive help. 

“People here have been waiting years for rain – but they cannot wait any longer for life-saving food assistance,” Beasley said. “The world needs to act now to protect the most vulnerable communities from the threat of widespread famine in the Horn of Africa.” 

The release states that a drought is expected to continue across the region for months, as a fifth consecutive poor rainy season is forecasted for this year. The WFP is specifically targeting assistance efforts on 8.5 million people across the region, up from 6.3 million at the start of this year. 

The need for food from the people in the region will remain high into next year, and famine is especially a serious risk in Somalia. 

The WFP said in April that effects of the ongoing war in Ukraine have exacerbated the issues in the Horn of Africa, with food and fuel prices skyrocketing.

Source: TEST FEED1

Trump endorses Gaetz ahead of Florida primary

Former President Trump said on Saturday he would be endorsing Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) ahead of Florida’s primary next Tuesday.

“@RepMattGaetz is a relentless Fighter for the incredible people of Florida’s 1st Congressional District!” Trump said on his Truth Social.

“Matt is a Champion of our MAGA Agenda, who tirelessly works to Drain the Swamp, Secure the Border, Support our Brave Veterans and Law Enforcement, Defend the Second Amendment, Stand Up to the Woke Mob, and Fight the Never-Ending Witch Hunts from the Radical Left that are destroying our Country!”

Trump’s endorsement of Gaetz was among a few he announced on Saturday, which also included Reps. Neal Dunn (R-Fla.), John Rutherford (R-Fla.) and Scott Franklin (R-Fla.). 

Gaetz, who is running for reelection in the state’s 1st Congressional District, has two GOP primary challengers: retired military officer Greg Merk and former FedEx executive Mark Lombardo. 

Merk previously ran against Gaetz in the GOP primary in 2020, but overwhelmingly lost to Gaetz, who is a member of the House Freedom Caucus. Gaetz received more than 80 percent of the vote. 

Considered a key ally to Trump, Gaetz has been embroiled in an investigation regarding possible sexual relations with a minor and paying for her travel, though Gaetz has denied having done such a thing. The Justice Department is conducting the inquiry.

Source: TEST FEED1