Arizona Republican Kelli Ward, photo by Gage Skidmore.
The husband of former Arizona Senate candidate Kelli Ward (R) has been accused of spitting on a former campaign volunteer after he became a supporter of opponent Martha McSally (R).
On Nov 6, police in Paradise Valley were called to the Arizona Republican Party's election-night gala, where 29-year-old Scott Robert Johnston claimed that he was spit on by Michael Ward, The Arizona Republic reported. Police took statements from both men and an unidentified witness.
Johnston told the paper that he was wearing a McSally shirt when he was approached by Michael Ward.
"Mike Ward came up to me after a friend of mine had gone up to say hello to him," he recalled. "(Ward) started yelling profanities because we were supporting McSally. It was at that point that he said, 'We unfriended you on Facebook because you were supporting McSally. You have no idea what Kelli has done to help McSally,' and some other expletives. It was then that he spit in my eye."
In his statement to police, Michael Ward denied touching or spitting on Johnston.
The report comes amid Kelli Ward's bid to become the chairwoman of the Arizona Republican Party.
Arizona Republican Party Executive Director Kyle Pierce slammed the former candidate over the incident.
"It is extremely disappointing to learn about the assault that occurred at the election night watch party hosted by the Arizona Republican Party," Pierce insisted. "On a night meant to celebrate with our dedicated volunteers who had united behind our Republican candidates, the Wards decided to settle political scores. Her recent calls for unity ring hollow given the attacks on those who unified behind our Republican nominee."
It was not immediately clear if Paradise Valley police had closed the case.
WASHINGTON — Another grueling summer disaster season is arriving, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency is under intense pressure even as its portfolio balloons, it pleads for more money from Congress and criticism comes on several fronts.
The agency manages more than 300 disaster declarations a year, a dramatic increase from the average of 108 disasters it responded to just a decade ago. For 2022, the disaster outlook is daunting.
Wildfires are expected to burn through millions of acres as Western states struggle with another spring drought, with so-called prescribed burns by the U.S. Forest Service slammed after they were blamed for devastating New Mexico fires this spring. A busy Atlantic hurricane season is on track to wreak havoc well into the autumn.
Tornadoes are forecast to continue destroying homes and businesses throughout the Central Plains as COVID-19 numbers, once again, tick up, adding another complicated layer to disaster response.
“That is the world we’re living in now. The storms are more frequent. The storms are more intense. And we need to be ready,” FEMA Deputy Associate Administrator for Response and Recovery David Bibo told States Newsroom in a late April interview.
Hurricane season
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s annual Atlantic hurricane forecast, released Tuesday, predicts another above normal season.
NOAA administrator Rick Spinrad noted while discussing the forecast that the United States has “just experienced two extremely active hurricane seasons, marking the first time on record that two consecutive hurricane seasons exhausted the list of 21 storm names.”
This year’s Atlantic hurricane season, he said, would likely bring at least 14 named storms with a minimum of six of those turning into hurricanes and at least three of those hurricanes turning into major storms that reach Category 3 or above.
FEMA pays close attention to NOAA’s forecast when predicting hurricanes’ effects.
The agency prepositions supplies like food, water and generators that communities typically need immediately following a natural disaster. But Bibo noted that people should have emergency supplies of their own and know what natural disasters are most likely to hit them, so they can have a plan in place.
Americans should know how they’ll get information about evacuation orders, where they’ll evacuate to and how they’ll reach loved ones in an emergency, he said.
“It only takes one hurricane or one wildfire in your community to really have a dramatic effect on people’s lives,” Bibo said.
Wildfire recovery
Helping Americans recover after a wildfire is a significant part of the FEMA mission, though combating wildfires on federal lands falls to the U.S. Forest Service, which is part of the Department of Agriculture, and Interior Department.
Randy Moore, chief of the Forest Service, told members of Congress in late April the agency was “preparing for another long and arduous fire year made worse by continuing severe drought across the West.”
“Last year we had 29,000 firefighters fighting fires, primarily in the West, and it still wasn’t enough,” he said. “We have to be really aggressive and forthright in trying to reduce the conditions that are a root cause of these fires out there.”
The U.S. Forest Service is using a new 10-year strategy to try to address what it calls a “full-blown wildfire and forest health crisis.”
The proposal suggests a “paradigm shift” for the agency, moving towards logging and prescribed burns to deal with the build-up of forest density that has contributed to worsening wildfires.
“We need to thin Western forests and return low-intensity fire to Western landscapes in the form of both prescribed and natural fire, working to ensure that forest lands and communities are resilient in the face of the wildland fire that fire-adapted landscapes need,” the report said.
Moore cautioned the Forest Service, responsible for 193 million acres of forests and grasslands, needs at least $20 billion more in the years ahead to hire sufficient firefighters, pay them well enough to ensure wildland firefighting as a career and to address a maintenance backlog that can exacerbate wildfires.
The bipartisan infrastructure law from last year provided about $3 billion for wildfires, but Moore said that’s just a “down payment” on the work that needs to be done.
“This is just not nearly enough to really get at the problem,” Moore said.
But Ohio Republican Rep. David Joyce, the ranking member on the House panel in charge of funding the Forest Service, said he had “serious concerns about the scale of increase.”
“As the nation faces record inflation, we must be extremely cognizant of the financial decisions we are making, as to not saddle our future generations with unnecessary economic burdens and debt,” Joyce said. “Like all Americans, the federal government must live within its means and doing so will require us to make difficult choices and discern wants from actual needs.”
Prescribed burns
The Forest Service’s use of prescribed burns has also come under scrutiny in recent months.
New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said the agency was remiss when it ignited a prescribed burn in her state on April 6 that later turned into the Hermits Peak fire.
“For me, it’s negligent to consider a prescribed burn in a windy season, in a state that’s under an extreme drought warning statewide,” she said. “So I think that it is likely that Congress and most of our federal partners accept that there is significant federal liability.”
Federal officials have opened a review of the prescribed burn, but have so far declined to publicly release the plan that’s supposed to be put together before intentionally lighting a wildfire.
Lujan Grisham said there wouldn’t be any more prescribed burns in New Mexico while the wildfires continue to burn.
Financial strain
FEMA is also asking Congress for more money in the coming years to address the ever-increasing number of disasters it responds to annually.
U.S. lawmakers provided the agency with $23.9 billion for the current fiscal year, a $2.19 billion boost from the prior year.
But still more is needed, officials say, leading FEMA to request Congress increase its funding during the next fiscal year, slated to begin in October, to $25.1 billion in discretionary spending.
FEMA officials have yet to testify on Capitol Hill about the request, though some lawmakers are questioning the way the agency responds to natural disasters and how it revised the National Flood Insurance Program.
A handful of Democratic lawmakers have introduced legislation they say would address “systemic inequities” in who receives FEMA support.
“For decades, we have seen low-income communities and communities of color left behind after a disaster strikes,” said Rep. Bennie G. Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat. “It’s past time that the federal government — and particularly the Federal Emergency Management Agency — makes disaster assistance equity a real priority to reduce barriers to recovery.”
FEMA has taken some steps under the Biden administration to address how it distributes federal disaster relief. That includes broadening the types of documents individuals could use to prove they owned or rented a house ahead of a disaster.
FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell told U.S. House lawmakers in April that policy changes made last year when FEMA was heading into hurricane season led to “42,000 homeowners being eligible for disaster assistance from us that we would have previously denied.”
“I think making these simple policy changes that we did last year made a tremendous difference,” Criswell said, adding FEMA is looking at making other long-term changes to continue building equity into disaster response.
The new policy allows homeowners or renters to use state motor vehicle registration forms and utility bills to prove where they lived ahead of a natural disaster.
Thompson, chair of the U.S. House Homeland Security Committee, said that while he’s glad the Biden administration has made “many positive changes,” he wants to see the new programs made permanent and for FEMA to expand on its efforts.
The bill would require the FEMA Administrator to work with the Housing and Urban Development secretary and Small Business Administration administrator to create and implement “a process to ensure equity” throughout all programs.
Flood risk
FEMA has also tried to improve equity by overhauling how the National Flood Insurance Program determines a home’s flooding risk and what it charges homeowners for a policy.
The program, known as Risk Rating 2.0, is the most significant update to flood insurance premiums since the NFIP began in 1968.
The updated pricing, which took effect April 1, calculates a homeowner’s flood insurance premium by their property’s specific risk, not the flood zone they’re in.
Under the former system, FEMA said “policyholders with lower-valued homes [were] paying more than their share of the risk while policyholders with higher-valued homes [were] paying less than their share of the risk.”
“Because Risk Rating 2.0 considers rebuilding costs, FEMA can equitably distribute premiums across all policyholders based on home value and a property’s unique flood risk,” the agency said.
The change led to an increase in monthly costs for 77% of people with flood insurance with 7% of people paying between $10 – $20 more a month and 4% paying more than $20 more per month, according to FEMA.
But the new system has infuriated some U.S. lawmakers, including Louisiana Republican Rep. Garret Graves.
During a hearing with the FEMA administrator last month, Graves said he believed the agency was discriminating against people in several states due to the “huge surge in flood insurance rates.”
He noted some of his constituents had their annual flood insurance costs go from around $600 to $7,000, $8,000 or $9,000 per year.
“I’m having a lot of trouble understanding how you can be talking about equity and addressing marginalized or underserved communities, when FEMA is administratively thrusting these types of actions on our constituents,” Graves said.
FEMA Administrator Criswell said that the new flood insurance premiums ensure that “individuals that have homes that are in lower risk areas are not subsidizing homes that are in higher risk areas.”
What’s more important than that, Criswell said, is that now “homeowners truly understand what their risk is, which means that they have a better idea of how they can plan to protect their family.”
Weather and climate disasters
Last year the United States dealt with 20 billion-dollar weather and climate disasters that led to 688 direct or indirect deaths, according to a report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Centers for Environmental Information.
The storms caused about $145 billion in damages, with Hurricane Ida, which made landfall in Louisiana in August, contributing to $75 billion, the mid-February winter storm and cold accounting for $24 billion and the Western wildfires causing $10.9 billion.
The frequency and severity of extreme weather events during 2021 was “concerning because it hints that the extremely high activity of recent years is becoming the new normal.”
Three broad factors are leading to the increase in weather and climate disasters, including more assets at risk, vulnerability and “the fact that climate change is increasing the frequency of some types of extremes that lead to billion-dollar disasters,” the report said.
The report, published in January, notes that climate change is “supercharging the increasing frequency and intensity of certain types of extreme weather that lead to billion-dollar disasters — most notably the rise in vulnerability to drought, lengthening wildfire seasons in the Western states, and the potential for extremely heavy rainfall becoming more common in the eastern states.”
Rising sea levels are also exacerbating storm surge flooding from hurricanes.
Wisconsin Examiner is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Wisconsin Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Ruth Conniff for questions: info@wisconsinexaminer.com. Follow Wisconsin Examiner on Facebook and Twitter.
Judge Stephanie Dawkins Davis of Michigan was confirmed on Tuesday to serve on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit with a bipartisan U.S. Senate vote.
She is the first African American woman from Michigan, and the second African American woman in history, to serve on the Sixth Circuit. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has appellate jurisdiction over the federal district courts in Michigan, Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee. The Senate voted 49-43 on the Davis nomination.
President Joe Biden nominated Davis to the appeals post in February. Davis currently serves as the U.S. District Court Judge for the Eastern District of Michigan and has been based in Flint. The Wichita State University and Washington University School of Law graduate was appointed to the district court by former President Donald Trump.
Both of Michigan’s U.S.senators backed Davis’ nomination.
“Judge Davis will be an outstanding judge on the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. Her time at the Eastern District of Michigan has demonstrated her excellent work as a thoughtful and fair judge. Judge Davis has spent her entire career serving the people of Michigan. I know she will continue this work on the Sixth Circuit,” said U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Lansing).
U.S. Sen. Gary Peters (D-Bloomfield Twp.) described Davis as having “exemplary legal mind” and being a “qualified jurist.”
“I’m confident her commitment to upholding the rule of law will continue to serve our state and nation well in our federal judicial system,” said Peters.
Davis has served as a federal judge on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan since December 2019. She previously served as a magistrate judge for the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan from 2016 to 2019. She also served in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Michigan as executive assistant United States attorney from 2010 to 2015.
Davis began her career as an associate at Dickinson Wright PLLC in Detroit from 1992 to 1997.
Michigan Advance is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Michigan Advance maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Susan Demas for questions: info@michiganadvance.com. Follow Michigan Advance on Facebook and Twitter.
He was once described as a "greased piglet", with an uncanny knack of wriggling free from politically perilous situations -- usually of his own making.
Now Boris Johnson could again need his powers of political escapology, after an internal report blamed his leadership for a culture of lockdown-breaking parties at Downing Street.
Even before civil servant Sue Gray's verdict, Johnson had become the first British prime minister to be fined by police for breaking the law while in office.
The 126 penalties issued to 83 people at his office, for partying while the rest of the country was in lockdown, made it Britain's most fined address.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine saved Johnson's bacon and he wriggled free of a leadership challenge, when calls mounted for his resignation in January.
But his own MPs -- chastened by the Conservative party's roasting in recent local elections -- will be closely watching the public mood before making a move.
'Cavalier attitude'
With his tousled blond hair and disheveled appearance, Johnson has been a vote-winner for the Tories, despite his unconventional style.
In December 2019, he was the conquering hero who landed a thumping 80-seat general election victory on a single-issue promise to "Get Brexit Done". The UK left the European Union just over a month later.
But his flagship domestic plan to address regional inequalities and promise to take the UK to the "sunlit uplands" after Brexit was soon upended when coronavirus struck in early 2020.
Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson took a conventional Conservative route to prominence, from the elite Eton College to Oxford University.
At both he displayed many of the traits by which he has become known -- and not just the flashes of rhetorical flair that made him an entertaining, if often controversial, newspaper and magazine columnist.
In 1982, one of his teachers at Eton wrote to his father, bemoaning Johnson's "disgracefully cavalier attitude" to his study of Greek and Latin.
"I think he honestly believes that it is churlish of us not to regard him as an exception, one who should be free of the network of obligation which binds everyone else," he wrote, according to the biographer Andrew Gimson.
At Oxford, the man whose sister said he wanted to be "world king" became president of the Oxford Union, a backstabbing den of student politics where his cohort provided many leading Brexiteers.
After Oxford, he was sacked from The Times for making up a quote but still bagged a job as Brussels correspondent for its rival, the Daily Telegraph.
From EU headquarters, he tapped into the growing Tory Euroscepticism of the 1990s, feeding the party grassroots and MPs popular, if dubious, scoops about Brussels bureaucrats' purported plans to standardize the sizes of condoms and bananas.
Exasperated rivals charged with matching Johnson's questionable exclusives described some of his tales as "complete bollocks".
Shopping trolley
Brussels -- and television quiz show appearances -- gave Johnson a high profile, and he entered politics in 2004, but was sacked from the Conservative front bench for lying about an extra-marital affair.
Shifting shape into a self-styled, pro-European "one-man melting pot", he served two terms as mayor in left-leaning London from 2008 before returning to parliament in 2016.
By the time the EU referendum came around that year he was torn, but threw his weight behind the "leave" campaign and became its figurehead.
Much of its success was based on Johnson's own particular brand of relentlessly upbeat boosterism, appealing to emotions but with often little foundation in fact.
His former boss at the Telegraph, Max Hastings, called him a witty raconteur but said he was "unfit for national office because it seems he cares for no interest save his own fame and gratification".
Familiarity has bred more public contempt, polling suggests, yet he has survived repeated claims of cronyism and corruption "like a cat with nine lives", as one reporter put it recently.
Johnson's disgruntled former chief aide and strategist Dominic Cummings has likened his chaotic governing style to an out-of-control shopping trolley.
But Johnson -- a father of seven children to four women, including two born to his third wife Carrie -- refuses to believe the wheels have fallen off.
