Politico reporter Marc Caputo did an update for MSNBC's Ari Melber about Wednesday's developments in the ongoing saga of Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and whether he is or isn't being indicted.
The news this morning was that the Justice Department asked Gaetz for his cell phone, which he handed over. More information has been revealed about the Bahamas trip with hand-surgeon and marijuana entrepreneur Jason Pirozzolo who made the invitation and paid for the trip. There were at least five women on the trip and according to one of them, they were all over 18 and no prostitution was involved.
"Yeah, it's a big problem for Matt Gaetz if the feds got his phone and that went in to get cleared through a judge, that kind of surveillance," said Melber. "Marc, this story has really accelerated with the reporting of the New York Times and your reporting in Politico. I don't know if you will answer this question, but I'm going to ask it. Does your reporting reflect that Matt Gaetz may have a legal/criminal problem or does your reporting at this point reflect a lot of stuff around him that the feds are looking at but that he may not be in things that are chargeable?"
Caputo confessed he was going to dodge the question a little, noting instead that it depends how "problem" is defined.
"When the federal government is seizing your phone, you got a problem," he said simply. "When your allies are saying, 'Hey, yeah, maybe he had sex with her, but it was when she was 18 and a half. When you are measuring people's ages in fractions, that's a problem. Is he going to be indicted? That's a whole other matter. The teen or former teen who is now 21, the question is what has she said to the federal government if anything. And what evidence is there that she can back up or shed more light on. Then obviously, there is the Joel Greenberg matter that he might have some problems as a witness against Gaetz. This is a guy who not only had sex with a 17-year-old but falsely smeared as a pedophile."
Republican Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) said that there wouldn't be any action on Gaetz until "something formal" took place. The Nation's Joan Walsh explained that when the DOJ takes your phone, it's a pretty formal act. Indeed it mandates a subpoena approved by a judge.
She noted that there seem to be a lot of witnesses involved in the scandal and that it will be difficult for Gaetz to deny if something happened.
Melber called out Fox News and other conservative outlets who aren't reporting much of the Gaetz story, other than the disastrous Tucker Carlson interview with Gaetz.
See the conversation below:
When the DOJ has your phone -- you've got a problem
www.youtube.com
Fox News continues to prop up Donald Trump as the leader of the Republican Party, but he hasn't appeared on the network for months.
The conservative network has been giving two potential 2024 challengers, Mike Pence and Ron DeSantis, plenty of airtime, including two recent prime-time interviews, although coverage of the former president remains overwhelmingly positive, reported The Guardian.
“You were allowed to attack Donald Trump during the primaries in 2015 and 2016 on Fox News," said Angelo Carusone, Media Matters’ president and chief executive. "That doesn’t happen now, at all -- ever."
The media watchdog conducted a recent study that found Fox News continues to talk about Trump far more than any of his potential rivals -- 8,556 mentions of Trump from January to July, with 1,083 for DeSantis and 589 for Pence -- but the network has been less willing to carry his speeches live to avoid the sort of false election claims that got them served with a $1.6 billion lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems.
“The debate among the liberal media on this topic is the very reason Fox News exists and is the most watched cable news channel in the country with more viewers of every political persuasion than any other network," said a network spokesperson.
Although the twice-impeached former president hasn't been interviewed on Fox News for more than 100 days, the network's hosts still daydream about how Trump would handle various challenges and praise his record in office.
“They’re still fetishizing and fantasizing, it’s just that there’s no longer an audience of one,” Carusone said. “There are other people in the audience that they care about.”
Explaining that conservatives embracing the militant Christian stance -- with its overtones of racism -- are "wolves in sheep's clothing," Episcopal Rev. Nathan Empsall claims that the far-right conservative is guilty of the "bastardization of the Christian faith."
In a recent interview, the controversial lawmaker was asked about her embrace of the movement and she replied, "We need to be the party of nationalism. And I'm a Christian. I say it proudly we should be Christian nationalists. And when Republicans learn to represent most of the people that vote for them, then we will be the party that continues to grow without having to chase down certain identities or chase down, you know, certain segments of people."
Empsall bashed her exclusionary view of acceptance as un-Christian.
"It’s not the first time she has embraced the label. And it’s a dangerous turn of events that requires active, loud opposition from all of us, especially from American Christians, for whom Greene and her allies claim to speak," he wrote. "As a pastor, if there’s one thing I understand, it’s that Christian nationalism is unchristian and unpatriotic. Academic researchers define the authoritarian ideology as a political worldview—not a religion—that unconstitutionally and unbiblically merges Christian and American identities, declaring that democracy does not matter because America is a 'Christian nation' where only conservative Christians count as true Americans."
To illustrate his case he added, "The clear goal of Christian nationalism is to seize power only for its mostly white evangelical and conservative Catholic followers, no matter who else gets hurt or how many elections have to be overturned. This is the unholy force that incited the failed coup of Jan. 6, 2021, brought us the recent spate of theocratic Supreme Court opinions, and has inspired multiple wave upon wave of dangerous misinformation about elections, climate change, and COVID-19—all in direct contrast to Jesus’ teachings of love, truth, and the common good."
According to the religious leader, Greene "would have you believe that all of her critics “hate America [and] hate God,” but this ignores the fact that most Christians are appalled at the way she hijacks the Gospel to justify attending white nationalist rallies and spreading anti-Semitic conspiracy theories," adding, "They don’t speak for American Christians. And it's up to us to finally deflate their claims of a monopoly and thus their hold on power, reclaim our religion and its prophetic voice for the Gospel’s true values of love, dignity, equality, and social justice."
The Fagradalsfjall volcano in Iceland began erupting again on Wednesday after eight months of slumber – so far without any adverse impacts on people or air traffic.
The eruption was expected. It’s in a seismically active (uninhabited) area, and came after several days of earthquake activity close to Earth’s surface. It’s hard to say how long it will continue, although an eruption in the same area last year lasted about six months.
Climate change is causing the widespread warming of our land, oceans and atmosphere. Apart from this, it also has the potential to increase volcanic activity, affect the size of eruptions, and alter the “cooling effect” that follows volcanic eruptions.
Any of these scenarios could have far-reaching consequences. Yet we don’t fully understand the impact a warming climate could have on volcanic activity.
The Fagradalsfjall volcano is located some 30km from Iceland’s capital, Reykjavik.
Cold volcanic regions
First, let’s take a look at volcanic regions covered in ice. There’s a long-established link between the large-scale melting of ice in active volcanic regions and increased eruptions.
Research on Iceland’s volcanic systems has identified a heightened period of activity related to the large-scale ice melt at the end of the last ice age. The average eruption rates were found to be up to 100 times higher after the end of the last glacial period, compared to the earlier colder glacial period. Eruptions were also smaller when ice cover was thicker.
But why is this the case? Well, as glaciers and ice sheets melt, pressure is taken off Earth’s surface and there are changes in the forces (stress) acting on rocks within the crust and upper mantle. This can lead to more molten rock, or “magma”, being produced in the mantle – which can feed more eruptions.
The changes can also affect where and how magma is stored in the crust, and can make it easier for magma to reach the surface.
Magma generation beneath Iceland is already increasing due to a warming climate and melting glaciers.
The intense ash-producing eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull volcano in 2010 was the result of an explosive interaction between hot magma and cold glacial melt water. Based on what we know from the past, an increase in Iceland’s melting ice could lead to larger and more frequent volcanic eruptions.
The Eyjafjallajokull is an active volcano covered by an ice cap. Back in 2010, an explosive eruption led to flights across Europe being halted. (Arnar Thorisson/AP)
Weather-triggered eruptions
But what about volcanic regions that aren’t covered in ice – could these also be affected by global warming?
Possibly. We know climate change is increasing the severity of storms and other weather events in many parts of the world. These weather events may trigger more volcanic eruptions.
On December 6 2021, an eruption at one of Indonesia’s most active volcanoes, Mount Semeru, caused ashfall, pyroclastic flows and volcanic mudflows (called “lahars”) that claimed the lives of at least 50 people.
The Semeru eruption left nearby villages covered in ash – forcing residents to flee. (Antara TV/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY)
Local authorities hadn’t expected the scale of the eruption. As for the cause, they said several days of heavy rain had destabilised the dome of lava in the volcano’s summit crater. This led to the dome collapsing, which reduced pressure on the magma below and triggered an eruption.
Signals of volcanic unrest are usually obtained from changes in volcanic systems (such as earthquake activity), changes in gas emissions from the volcano, or small changes in the shape of the volcano (which can be detected by ground-based or satellite monitoring).
Predicting eruptions is already an incredibly complex task. It will become even more difficult as we begin to factor in risk posed by severe weather which could destabilize parts of a volcano.
Some scientists suspect increased rainfall led to the damaging 2018 Kīlauea eruption in Hawaii. This was preceded by months of heavy rainfall, which infiltrated the earth and increased underground water pressure within the porous rock. They believe this could have weakened and fractured the rock, facilitating the movement of magma and triggering the eruption.
But other experts disagree, and say there’s no substantial link between rainfall events and eruptions at Kīlauea volcano.
Rain-influenced volcanism has also been proposed at other volcanoes around the world, such as the Soufrière Hills volcano in the Caribbean, and Piton de la Fournaise on Réunion Island in the Indian Ocean.
Changes to the ‘cooling effect’
There’s another layer we can’t ignore when it comes to assessing the potential link between climate change and volcanic activity. That is: volcanoes themselves can influence the climate.
An eruption can lead to cooling or warming, depending on the volcano’s geographical location, the amount and composition of ash and gas erupted, and how high the plume reaches into the atmosphere.
Volcanic injections that were rich in sulphur dioxide gas have had the strongest climatic impact recorded in historic times. Sulphur dioxide eventually condenses to form sulfate aerosols in the stratosphere – and these aerosols reduce how much heat reaches Earth’s surface, causing cooling.
As the climate warms, research shows this will change how volcanic gases interact with the atmosphere. Importantly, the outcome won’t be the same for all eruptions. Some scenarios show that, in a warmer atmosphere, small to medium-sized eruptions could reduce the cooling effect of volcanic plumes by up to 75%.
These scenarios assume the “tropopause” (the boundary between the troposphere and stratosphere) will increase in height as the atmosphere warms. But since the volcano’s eruption column will stay the same, the plume carrying sulphur dioxide will be less likely to reach the upper atmosphere – where it would have the largest impact on the climate.
On the other hand, more powerful but less frequent volcanic eruptions could lead to a greater cooling effect. That’s because as the atmosphere gets warmer, plumes of ash and gas emitted from powerful eruptions are predicted to rise higher into the atmosphere, and spread rapidly from the tropics to higher latitudes.
One recent study has suggested the major Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcanic eruption in January may contribute to global warming, by pumping massive amounts of water vapor (a greenhouse gas) into the stratosphere.
Heather Handley, Associate Professor of Volcanology and Geoscience Communication, University of Twente and Adjunct Associate Professor, Monash University
