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Banking on clean energy instead of climate chaos

Congress passing the most ambitious climate bill in U.S. history is cause for celebration, which some estimates say can reduce the country’s emissions by as much as 40 percent. But even with this much-needed breakthrough, the U.S., other countries and the private sector have delayed reducing emissions for so long that the door to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, necessary to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, is still closing. Breaching this goal of the Paris Agreement means more extreme weather events displacing millions of people, costing hundreds of billions of dollars and exacting an unacceptable human toll. The Paris Agreement slipping out of reach is not an excuse to cease action now. Instead, the closing door on 1.5 degrees is a wake-up call to mobilize across the economy and redouble our work. This is especially true of policymakers at every level and the financial sector and will remain true even after adoption of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). 

As the new IRA law is enacted, a new climate pathway is needed that leads with action and tough choices from the government and private sector, rather than feel-good talking points. The private sector, and especially the banking industry, has begun to set the right targets but is still too heavily invested in activities and industries that are loading more carbon pollution into the atmosphere. The amount of capital finance from banks that gets allocated to fossil fuel projects is a major driver of the globe’s worsening climate predicament. The world’s 60 largest banks have loaned nearly $742 billion to 100 corporations expanding fossil fuel operations in just the last year and a total of $4.6 trillion to fossil fuels since 2015 (the year the Paris Agreement was adopted). Capital expenditures for upstream oil and gas are climbing and evaluation of more than 100 of the largest emitters shows that no companies in their analysis are meeting investor expectations for climate aligned capital allocation.

By foot dragging, society has lost the luxury of enacting a managed transition and must now confront a series of increasingly challenging decisions and trade-offs. Russia’s war on Ukraine should serve as an example of the economic and security damage caused by failing to transition away from fossil fuels quick enough, rather than as an excuse to double down on fossil fuels as some have argued. These trillions of dollars in fossil fuels translates into unjust global politics and climate-warming pollution that is putting the goals of the Paris Agreement out of reach. 

Changing the trajectory of billions of dollars in investments will require regulations from policymakers to establish standardized benchmarks for disclosure and correct for market inefficiencies like negative externalities. The Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) proposed climate risk disclosure law, which helps create more transparency on climate risks, is an example of policy that can help mitigate the risks and support capital formation for the transition we need to make. While many banks are on record in support of more transparency and disclosures, particularly in a voluntary context, very few have spoken out in public support of the SEC’s proposed rulemaking and many, in fact, have sought to weaken and delay a final rule. It’s easy to espouse the right sentiment. But we need big financial institutions to do a lot more. This includes explicit support for the Inflation Reduction Act.

How do we move forward? For starters, not all banks are investing in fossil fuels today, and many lenders are increasingly doubling down on the benefits of renewable energy. More banks need to establish transparent net-zero targets in their financing operations. Most importantly, these pledges must be met with transformative action that match the ambition of the pledges and detailed transition plans with short-term benchmarks to measure progress. Banks and financial firms must aggressively use their expertise and political capital to push policymakers for the big and bold policies that we need to decarbonize the economy.

Alarming new research from the Institutional Investor Group on Climate Change looking at 27 global banks is clear that “the banking sector needs to substantially accelerate its decarbonization efforts to align with a 1.5 [degree] pathway.” Banks who lead the way on the clean energy transformation are poised to reap economic benefits by embracing the transformation and get ahead of the decisions that will be made for us. Congressional action on climate change is encouraging and the news that the 1.5-degree target is slipping out of reach is sobering. It will increasingly be the source of anger, fear and frustration. But it should also fuel the impulse to double down on climate action. With the 1.5-degree door closing, another window can open: It’s time for us to change how we bank on the future of our planet.

Ivan Frishberg is the chief sustainability officer for Amalgamated Bank.

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America, are you alright? Asking for the world

America does not only belong to itself. The world, too, is a stakeholder in America’s fate. And so, these days, the world watches America with worry.

On every continent, there are thousands of political and business leaders, like me, who gaze upon the United States with admiring eyes. This is not just because history has made America the leader of the free world. It is because America’s leadership is essential to resolving many crises — from climate change and world hunger to Russia, China and the Middle East.

How will the world manage a transition to a carbon-neutral economy without America? After all, Russia earns most of its money by digging coal, pumping oil, and shipping gas and China is among the globe’s largest devourers of these three carbon-heavy energy sources. Neither looks like a natural partner for an energy transition. Only America can do that.

Only America can forge an international consensus on climate change and only America offers a large enough single market for clean energy production.

Starvation has already come to the continent where I live, Africa. The Middle East and the island nations of Asia will be next. Without grain and fertilizer from Ukraine or Russia, tens of millions can go hungry. Some of these hungry millions may take to the roads and the seas. Too many will drown in cold waters or fall dead in deserts or be preyed upon by traffickers.

The survivors will flood Europe with refugees. This imperils the NATO alliance and threatens the European economy, which is already suffering from record drought, electricity brownouts, gas shortages and a restive population.

Since soaring food and energy prices are slowing the world economy, the world is turning to the U.S. to protect food shipments, quiet energy markets, fight pandemics, restore growth and negotiate peace.

Faced with all these crises, all these disorders, America is divided by race, class and party. Protests, riots, arrests and search warrants dominate social-media conversations — even school board meetings on YouTube end with parents shouting at one another.

In conversations with diplomats and executives in Europe, Asia and Africa, I hear the same sentiment over and over: America has no right to lose itself in navel-gazing, to let the strife of internal debate divert it from its international responsibilities.

Seen from the outside, what impresses a friend of the United States like myself is that most American power comes from its institutions. We had clear proof of this. Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) trip to Taiwan is the embodiment of the separation of powers. This visit would be impossible in a parliamentary democracy, where legislative and executive functions are fused. Pelosi’s historic visit did not mean a change in executive policy but illustrated that Congress is free to interact with all the peoples of the world itself.

The tensions caused by China did not shake the functioning of American institutions. On the contrary, it made the United States more credible in the eyes of people around the world. Its institutions work as designed.

So far, the United States has overcome all crises, wars, rebellions and divisions because its institutions have held firm. Not only the elected political institutions, but the security agencies (from the FBI and the CIA to military intelligence and Homeland Security), the press, the justice system and the nonprofits fully play their part and allow this living democracy to remain a beacon for the world. This in no way prevents political debate or even the most intense disagreements. The Civil Rights struggle, the Vietnam War, the Iranian hostage crisis, the 2008 financial crisis and many other issues have divided America. Each time it was inside its institutions that it found a rebalancing, a way forward.

When you are a friend of the U.S., you cannot understand why much of the American public attacks the credibility of its institutions and are suspicious of their independence. We have not seen this in our professional lifetimes, and we worry about how it will end.

The moral authority of America — its soft power that allows it to release the tensions of the world — should stay awake. 

America needs to restore trust and transparency in its public institutions, as James Madison wrote in Federalist no. 37: “Energy in government is essential to that security against external and internal danger and to that prompt and salutary execution of the law, which enter into the very definition of good government.”

It must restore trust just as it has done before and after the Civil War, the Great Depression, World War II, the Civil Rights struggle and the financial crisis of 2008. Not just for America’s sake, but for the world’s. 

Ahmed Charai is a Moroccan publisher. He’s on the board of directors for the Atlantic Council and the board of Trustees for The International Crisis Group in Washington. 

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Afghanistan: An inconsequential anniversary

One year after the Taliban takeover of Kabul, the worst predictions for both Afghanistan and the United States have not happened. It is true that human rights and development under the Taliban have gone backward for many people, mainly urban women and girls, and that Afghanistan’s economy is a shambles. But most of the population is pleased the United States and its allies are gone and is resigned to life under yet another incompetent and self-serving government. For the majority, the past 12 months have been more about continuation than change.

In the United States, television images of the military withdrawal provoked widespread criticism of President Biden, but Afghanistan already had become a side-show by the time the last military elements left Kabul. Fears that U.S. prestige and influence would be irreparably damaged by the undignified withdrawal proved vastly overblown. NATO’s rally in response to Russia’s aggression against Ukraine did not happen spontaneously. Biden orchestrated it, and U.S. power, prestige and diplomacy made it work. What happened in Afghanistan was and is irrelevant to continued U.S. preeminence in global affairs. Afghanistan itself is largely irrelevant to the rest of the world as evidenced by the reluctance of any country to formally recognize the new regime.

There are, however, worthwhile lessons to be learned from the Afghanistan debacle, but the U.S. is not in the mood to learn them. Instead, military and intelligence officials likely will focus on the technical or tactical aspects of the conflict and will tweak doctrine and training that may elevate field performance but almost certainly will not improve the kind of decision-making that launched, expanded and prolonged the mission in the first place.

Reluctance to learn from the past is a national trait. It is built into the U.S. psyche. Thirty years after the end of the Cold War there still is no long-term goal or aspiration, no grand strategy, shaping U.S. foreign policy. Political leaders do not believe the U.S. needs one. Instead, a grab bag of congressional priorities and campaign rhetoric tends to shape U.S. external engagement into an extension of domestic politics, often with the same haphazard results. Presidential leadership becomes most obvious and consequential when it rises above the noise, as happened in Afghanistan last August.

The messy departure from Kabul revealed another uncomfortable truth about U.S. foreign policy, the tendency to equate it with conversion therapy. U.S. dogma demands institution-building and empowerment initiatives as the necessary components of almost all foreign assistance, even when delivered by force. It approaches heresy to suggest that values and interests sometimes diverge, that stability, for example, might be a more important outcome in a specific time and place than inclusion, or that elections might produce more suspicion than transparency. Self-awareness is not a high priority among U.S. politicians and policymakers.

But the flip side of U.S. self-confidence, no matter how misplaced at times, is that it works. Despite the setbacks, missteps and sniping of wannabe cynics, the United States remains what Madeline Albright infamously termed the world’s indispensable nation. It is the presence that always matters, the opinion that always counts, even without a coherent foreign policy. What happened in Kabul did not change that reality. Dysfunctional domestic politics and its celebration of division and ignorance, however, might.

 Ambassador David Robinson is a retired emissary to Afghanistan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Venezuela, Bolivia and Guyana.

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US calls for Navalny's release on second anniversary of his poisoning

The State Department called on Russia to release imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny on Saturday, the two-year anniversary of him being poisoned with a nerve agent. 

The department said in a statement that Russian government officers attempted to assassinate Navalny with the nerve agent in Russian territory. Navalny traveled to Germany to receive medical treatment, but he was arrested when he returned to Russia in January 2021 on what the department said were politically motivated charges. 

“We again condemn Russia’s use of a chemical weapon to poison a political opponent, and call on the Kremlin to fully declare and dismantle its chemical weapons program,” the statement reads. “We also join Navalny’s family, colleagues, and supporters around the world in calling for his immediate release.” 

Navalny was poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok in August 2020. Human rights experts and much of the international community have said that the Kremlin and Russian President Vladimir Putin are responsible for ordering the attack, as has Navalny himself, but the Russian government has denied being involved. 

Thousands of Russian citizens have been arrested over the past two years while participating in protests in support of the imprisoned Russian leader. 

Russia has continued to go after Navalny since he was imprisoned. He was sentenced to two and a half years in prison after returning to Russia for violating his parole and sentenced to nine years in March after being convicted on fraud charges. 

Russia labeled him as “inclined to commit crimes of a terrorist or extremist nature” in October, and his appeal of the label was denied in June. He has also been charged with creating an extremist group with the purpose of inciting hatred toward “officials and oligarchs” and could face an additional 15 years in prison. 

Navalny’s spokesperson said in June that he had been relocated from the prison he had been at to an unknown location. 

The State Department said Russia has escalated its crackdown on dissent and independent media through censorship laws since it launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February. It said the Russian government is trying to prevent its people from knowing about the “atrocities” that its soldiers are committing against Ukrainian civilians and “needless” Russian military casualties. 

The department said it reaffirms its solidarity with Navalny and other political prisoners in Russia and the thousands of Russians who “confront the Kremlin’s lies with truth.”

Source: TEST FEED1

Surely the Democrats have a backup plan to Kamala Harris

Between the embarrassing defeat of Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), about whom the partisan left couldn’t care less other than to employ her as a tool to hammer Donald Trump, to Hollywood slowly but surely walking away from box office-crushing woke dogma, my reading of the tea leaves tells me that the political ground is shifting around us. Is that shift more to the Republican/conservative right? Some say yes; others will scream no. We’ll soon find out who’s correct.

Regardless of who benefits, though, I see a political recalibration taking place. It seems to be an emergency reassessment convened by the nation’s most powerful special interest group: the American people. These are Americans — and more to the point, American voters — who are being crushed by the real-life problems that those currently in power are creating or not solving.

Going back to Hollywood for a moment, in the movie “The American President,” fictional President Andrew Shepherd, played by Michael Douglas, rightfully declares from the podium in the White House press room: “Everybody knows America isn’t easy. America is advanced citizenship. You gotta want it bad, ’cause it’s gonna put up a fight. … We have serious problems to solve, and we need serious people to solve them.”

Millions of voices on both sides of the political divide would agree that our country is burdened with some of the least-serious “leaders” in our history. Some of them are partisan political hacks who seem to be more concerned with their own reelection and the advancement of their party than with the welfare of their constituents.

But, like it or not, from within that political universe, we still have that ruling two-party system.  With regard to the 2024 presidential election, the Republican Party has all but inked in its dance card with the names of Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and possibly former vice president Mike Pence, along with a few outliers, such as former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who are trying to cut in.

Whoever does make up the final GOP ticket two years from now, most Republican voters are likely to eagerly vote for it. That begs two immediate questions: Who will make up the Democratic ticket? And will Democratic voters eagerly vote for it?

Some folks, including some Democrats, believe that the shifting political ground is tilting some once “guaranteed” Democratic voters more toward the Republican side of the landscape. If true, part of the reasoning for this is that voters have paid a real price for the past three years of pandemic and political turmoil and are quickly losing faith in not only President Biden — who even many in the left-leaning media now say should not run again — but also in Vice President Kamala Harris.

No matter your political affiliation or ideology, it would be foolhardy not to acknowledge that a seismic disturbance is taking place. One party not only seems ready for it but is hoping to capitalize upon it. The other may need to review the pros and cons of their expected presidential ticket, and also the issues that might appeal most to poor, working-class, and disenfranchised voters.

Some on the far left continue to push for the correct usage of pronouns and the recognition and punishment of microaggressions. Others from the more centrist, pragmatic wing of the Democratic Party are trying to identify commonsense solutions to help those going through tough times and to find the best standard-bearer to articulate their vision.

Is Harris that person? Some would say “yes,” but there may be a groundswell building within the party’s rank-and-file membership that a new slate must be presented in 2024 for the Democrats to have any hope of retaining the White House. And if that’s the case, what’s the backup plan to Kamala Harris?

Surely, the power brokers across the Democratic spectrum have a list of potential candidates, don’t they?

Douglas MacKinnon, a political and communications consultant, was a writer in the White House for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, and former special assistant for policy and communications at the Pentagon during the last three years of the Bush administration.

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GOP’s Senate outlook grows dimmer amid ‘candidate quality’ concerns

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is signaling more sharply than ever that Republicans’ performance in the midterm elections may not be as strong as the party had hoped, dampening GOP hopes for a Senate takeover.

During a stop in Kentucky on Thursday, McConnell conceded that the House has a better chance of flipping red than the Senate — a statement that, while in line with election forecasts, shows just how concerned Republicans are becoming about races in the upper chamber less than three months before the midterm elections.

“I think there’s probably a greater likelihood the House flips than the Senate,” McConnell told reporters when asked about his midterm expectations, according to NBC News.

“Senate races are just different — they’re statewide, candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome,” he added.

McConnell’s remarks were a clear reference to candidates endorsed by former President Trump in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Arizona and Georgia who are trailing their Democratic opponents in at least some recent polls.

On Thursday, the nonpartisan Cook Political Report changed its rating for the Pennsylvania Senate race from “toss up” to “lean Democrat,” signaling headwinds for Republican Mehmet Oz in his race against Lt. Gov. John Fetterman (D).

The shift came amid the crudité controversy in the Keystone State. Oz came under fire after Fetterman’s campaign recirculated a video the TV doctor posted in April showcasing him grocery shopping for crudité in an effort to show the effects of inflation.

The Democratic campaign seized on the video, with the candidate writing on Twitter “In PA we call this a… veggie tray,” the most recent move in his attempt to paint Oz as a carpetbagger from New Jersey.

Fetterman’s team said it raised more than $500,000 in the 24 hours after the video went viral. The lieutenant governor remains comfortably ahead of Oz in FiveThirtyEight’s average average, 49.1 percent to 37.7 percent.

Republican worries in Ohio’s Senate race also became clearer this week when the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported that the McConnell-aligned Senate Leadership Fund was dumping $28 million into the state for television and radio ads boosting “Hillbilly Elegy” author J.D. Vance, the Republican Senate candidate battling with Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio).

The investment marked a large jump from the roughly $5 million national Republicans had previously funneled into the race. Ryan has a slight edge on Vance, 43.9 percent to 42.7 percent, according to FiveThirtyEight’s average of polls.

In Georgia, GOP nominee Hershel Walker has struggled to pull ahead of incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock (D). Walker, a former college football Heisman Trophy winner, was forced into the spotlight for various falsehoods and amid revelations that he has more children than was publicly known.

In Arizona, Sen. Mark Kelly (D) has a polling lead on Republican Blake Masters, who is backed by Trump. Kelly is up 50.3 percent to 42 percent in the FiveThirtyEight average of polls.

McConnell — who in November said he was “optimistic” that the 2022 midterm elections would be “very good” for Republicans — has been managing expectations for months. In April, he said it was “actually possible” for Republicans to “screw up” in November, despite a perfect storm brewing for the GOP, including low approval ratings for President Biden and elevated inflation.

Earlier this month, he predicted during a television interview that the Senate race in November would be “very tight.”

“I think when this Senate race smoke clears, we’re likely to have a very, very close Senate still, with us up slightly or the Democrats up slightly,” he said.

Since then, the outlook has worsened for Republicans, with more candidate controversies and concerning polls plaguing the party.

And McConnell’s latest prognosis shows that he is taking note.

“Right now, we have a 50-50 Senate and a 50-50 country, but I think when all is said and done this fall, we’re likely to have an extremely close Senate, either our side up slightly or their side up slightly,” McConnell said in Kentucky on Thursday.

Democrats are favored to win the Senate 64 percent to 36 percent, according to FiveThirtyEight.

“I think what McConnell said is objectively true, but it has been objectively true,” Scott Jennings, who previously worked for the Kentucky Republican, told The Hill in an interview.

“Going back several months, it was pretty obvious that everybody, including the forecasters, said that it was gonna be a much easier and expected thing for the Republicans to take over the House,” he added.

The Senate map makes things tougher for Republicans in this cycle, despite positive national headwinds.

The handful of states that will ultimately determine control of the Senate are mostly contests in places where Biden won in 2020 over Trump. Republicans are also defending open seats in Pennsylvania and Ohio, while trying to take out Democratic incumbents in other swing states.

“The Senate map just wasn’t as good,” Jennings said. “Obviously the environment is good, but the Senate map just isn’t as hospitable to a takeover as it is in the House.”

“The midterms were always going to be challenging under the best of circumstances because of the nature of the map and how many of these competitive races were taking place, purple and blue states, like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin that have historically gone Democrat more often than Republican in the last 30 years,” Republican strategist Colin Reed told The Hill.

Strategists also noted that a number of these GOP nominees emerged from fierce primaries bruised, and are still reeling from the competition.

“It’s pretty apparent in the polling that they’re still suffering some hangover from the brutality of these primaries,” Jennings said, pointing to the fierce intraparty races won by Vance and Oz in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Zeroing in on Oz — who bested former hedge fund CEO David McCormick — Jennings said the primary race “took a real toll on his image.”

“It’s just gonna take some time to repair that, and get him back to a place where he can fundamentally operate,” he added.

Candidates also need to “tailor [their] message accordingly” following the GOP primaries, according to Reed. He emphasized the need for Republicans to move away from re-litigating the 2020 presidential election.

“Those folks who are unable to kind of make that pivot and make those adjustments are the ones that struggle,” the strategist said.

With just over 80 days to go until the elections, strategists noted that there is plenty of time for GOP candidates to course correct and gain steam in the polls.

But Republicans are still prepared for the fate of the Senate to come down to the wire.

“It’s very easy to see that the Republican majority in the Senate next year is a coin flip, at best, and far from a sure thing,” Reed said.

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Alabama PD temporarily disbanded after racist texts between officers surface

Vincent, Ala., adopted an ordinance on Thursday temporarily disbanding the city’s police department after the discovery of racist texts between officers.

An unidentified officer texted a joke about a “pregnant slave” to a co-worker in June, according to Birmingham-based news site AL.com.

Vincent Mayor James Latimer (R) claimed at a Thursday public hearing that the police officers involved in the situation could not legally be fired because of a policy requiring two formal complaints and a verbal warning before removal.

“Based on our personnel policies, we cannot terminate them,” the mayor said.

In addition to Latimer, 18 community members spoke out on the issue at the hearing, according to the local outlet.

However, the city council vote to disband the police department means that the officers who engaged in the racist conversation will be removed from the city payroll and are not required to be rehired once the department is reestablished.

The suspension of the whole police department was necessary for the officers to be kicked out, Latimer said. According to AL.com, the ordinance will be finalized on Friday, and the city will contract officers from the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office in the Vincent officers’ stead. Shelby County had previously provided replacement law enforcement to the city.

A motion for the dissolution of the Vincent Police Department was first made at an emergency city council meeting on Aug. 4, where the mayor and five council members voted unanimously in favor of drafting an ordinance to dissolve.

The Hill has reached out to the Vincent City Council for comment on the ordinance.

Updated 11:41 a.m.

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My journey from the cotton fields to the floor of Congress

An immigrant’s journey to the United States is one that countless generations have done before me and countless will do after me. My journey from Burgos, Tamaulipas, Mexico, to the cotton fields of South Texas was not a journey that was long in distance, but a journey that marked the beginning of a new life for me and my family. 

When I was six, my father told us we would be moving to “el otro lado” with the promise that we would have a better life. This idea is a driving force that has shaped the country we live in today and one that is especially tangible in South Texas, where generations of people decided to leave their homes and settle in the southernmost part of the Lone Star State.

In South Texas, this mix of cultures is what makes our region so unique. Folks hold onto their Hispanic roots through their food, music and language, yet also fully embrace and respect the culture and values of the country they now call home. Here, everyone strives to reach the coveted American Dream.

What does it mean to truly achieve the American Dream? My answer to that question has changed drastically throughout the years, but my 6-year-old self would have never dreamed that the answer to that question now is claiming the title: first Mexican-born congresswoman in United States history.

As a kid, my life revolved around my family, my community and my work, a way of life familiar to Hispanics. I learned early on that honest and hard work is the key to success and it was a trait that everyone in my family and my community emulated from sunup to sundown.

Being the child of migrant workers meant we were constantly on the road, constantly meeting new people and constantly adapting to new surroundings, but one thing that always stayed the same in my family was the ambition to succeed. I knew that succeeding in school and succeeding in life went hand in hand. My days consisted of working in the cotton fields to make sure I had enough money to buy my school supplies for the year.

For me, work, both in school and out, was the source of my integrity and was a trait that I saw drove my family and my community every single day and one that always paid dividends.

But today, achieving success has never been harder.

Our country is in dire straits. We have remained near 40-year high inflation, gas prices have broken historic records and the Bureau of Economic Analysis declared that the U.S. economy shrank two quarters in a row, indicating the country has officially entered into a recession while our leaders have resorted to blog posts with ambiguous explanations of a recession to confuse the American people. 

On top of the abysmal state of the economy, the low morale and enthusiasm for our country is palpable as we continue to see our nation’s leaders abandon Americans at every turn.

During their botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Biden administration left Americans and many of our allies behind. In eastern Europe, they created a crisis in Ukraine that has cost the lives of thousands and in our very own backyard they deserted our border communities.

Now, we are seeing a former president of the United States be villainized and targeted as a result of political motives. Washington liberals continually weaponize our democratic institutions against Republicans and their actions have assaulted the morale and trust of the American people in our institutions and in their leaders.

But neither Joe Biden nor his administration care. They continue to insult us by using derogatory words to describe us, they compare us to tacos and undermine our culture and they continue to peddle a woke agenda that suits coastal white liberals instead of working to alleviate the pressure and pain that so many American families are feeling.

Joe Biden’s failure as president is an important reminder that elections have consequences and turning out to vote in November to halt his leftist agenda has never been more important.

Congresswoman Mayra Flores represents Texas’ 34th congressional district.

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President Biden: Please honor this Army hero

In today’s American political scene, a haunting question keeps coming to mind: “Is this really who we are?”

It arose last week after an AR15-toting assailant invaded the FBI’s Cincinnati office. It arose this week after Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) suffered election defeat because she stood for country over party.

President Joe Biden now has a chance to offer a different answer to a different American who, like Cheney, is a profile in courage: Army Col. Yevgeny “Eugene” Vindman, who — along with his twin brother Alex — blew an important whistle on former president Donald Trump’s infamous July 25, 2019, phone call to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky. His Army fate since has not been kind.

How a government treats whistleblowers like Vindman reveals a lot about who we are. Are we a country that protects those who follow the rule of law or a country where those who dare to challenge strongmen get battered?

Biden can offer a redemptive answer, one that honors Americans — like Eugene Vindman — who speak truth to corrupt power. Biden can grant Vindman the honor of retiring as a full colonel, through a waiver for “extraordinary circumstances,” though he has not served the full three years required to retire at rank.

The honor is purely that. Retiring as a full colonel has no effect on his Army pension for a 25-year career. It’s an honor easily bestowed in recognition of his extraordinary act of courage and service to country.

Recall that his twin, Alex, was on Trump’s (not) “perfect” call to Zelensky. That call got Trump impeached (the first time) for abusing presidential power by trying to strong-arm a foreign leader to serve Trump’s personal wishes for re-election.

Immediately after the call, Alex went to his twin, Eugene, who was a national security expert and ethics counsel on the NSC. Following military protocol, they then spoke to their NSC superiors and reported their concerns about Trump’s apparent violation of national security and the law.

For adhering to their oaths to support and defend the constitution, the Vindmans were frog-marched out of the White House on Feb. 7, 2020, two days after Senate Republicans acquitted Trump.

Both men returned to the Army where their promotions to colonel were delayed. Seeing the handwriting on the wall, Alex retired in 2020.

Meanwhile, Eugene received a devastating performance evaluation from his NSC superiors, the kind that stops careers in their tracks. Curiously, that review was the polar opposite of the previous year’s evaluation where the same reviewer found that Eugene Vindman was “the best [lt. colonel] with whom I have ever served.”

He filed an August 2020 whistleblower complaint over the negative review. In March 2021, the Army announced that his delayed promotion to colonel would occur that spring. In May 2022, an Inspector General’s investigation found that Trump’s NSC had improperly retaliated against him.

But quietly, the Army posted him to a national security expert’s Siberia —  as a legal adviser at the Aberdeen Proving Ground where his national security training, skills and experience were of no use to the nation.

The Army was sending a message: If you want to continue rising, keep your head down and your mouth shut. The Army IG Report described Vindman’s fate: “The retaliatory actions taken [against Vindman] could prove to be detrimental to [him] for the remainder of his career.”

In the world of military officers, if you are not moving up, you’re getting passed up.

Eugene Vindman reluctantly faced the music and announced his retirement effective Aug. 31, 2022. All he had wanted was to contribute to the country by serving in a position that made use of his experience and expertise.

Indeed, Vindman would not have requested retirement if he could have served in such a position. For example, he could have been billeted to the State Department to help investigate Russian war crimes in Ukraine.

In an Aug. 16 letter to Vindman, the Army Secretary denied his request to the president via the chain of command for a waiver that would allow him the honor of retiring as a full colonel. In fact, it is not the Army but only the president who can issue the waiver for an officer in Vindman’s position.

Vindman’s heroism and mistreatment are “extraordinary circumstances.”

The president should send all military officers, indeed all government officials, his own message: Those who do the right thing for the country at personal risk shall be honored.

That is who we are.

Dennis Aftergut is a former federal prosecutor, currently of counsel to Lawyers Defending American Democracy.

Source: TEST FEED1

Kinzinger says Pompeo 'did all of Donald Trump's bidding' while serving as secretary of state

Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) said on Friday that former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo “did all of [former President] Donald Trump’s bidding” while serving in the role. 

Kinzinger told CNN’s Jake Tapper that he and Pompeo, who previously served as a congressman from Kansas, are friends and worked together while they were both in Congress, and they agreed on foreign policy issues. He said Pompeo did “a good job” while serving as director of the CIA but completely committed himself to Trump after he joined the Cabinet. 

Kinzinger, who is one of two Republicans serving on the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, made his remarks following Pompeo meeting with the committee last week. 

Pompeo said in an interview with Fox News’s Laura Ingraham that the committee asked him about Cabinet discussions of invoking the 25th Amendment to the Constitution, which would declare the president incapable of fulfilling the responsibilities of the office. He said the committee was “chasing witches,” and he did not have any “serious” discussions about using the amendment. 

Reports indicated that multiple members of Trump’s Cabinet discussed invoking the 25th Amendment in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 attack. 

Kinzinger said Pompeo is trying to run for president but knows he cannot attack Trump and run, so he is hoping that Trump does not run, and he can take Trump’s place. 

“So, he’s trying to walk a tightrope,” he said. “That is somebody without a moral center, and he had a moral center. So, I don’t know what happened when he went off to the administration.”

Source: TEST FEED1