Washington (AFP) - The Covid-19 pandemic forced Adeola Oyekola to shut down her home childcare business, and after reopening at half-capacity in February, the fast-spreading Delta variant may force her to close again.
That would force her clients to find other options so they can continue working.
"I have my own children, and no one really knows what is going to happen next," Oyekola told AFP.
The arrival of Covid-19 vaccines has allowed US businesses to rehire more than half of the 22 million workers laid off as the pandemic began, but many mothers are not returning to the workforce, according to experts and data.
Women accounted for less than half of the 850,000 jobs the world's largest economy added in June, according to Labor Department data.
At the current rate, it will take more than nine months "to recover the nearly 3.8 million net jobs they lost since February 2020," the National Women's Law Center (NWLC) said in an analysis.
While total US unemployment has dropped from the double-digit level hit during the worst of the pandemic to 5.9 percent in June -- and is expected to fall further in July -- Black and Hispanic women face much higher jobless rates of 8.5 percent and 7.9 percent, respectively.
The widespread closures of schools and daycare centers, as well as fears of the fast-spreading Delta variant, are seen as factors behind the slow job gains for these groups, even as unemployment for white women has fallen to just 5.0 percent.
The Labor Department is due to release the July employment report on Friday.
"Childcare certainly has a massive role to play in ensuring women can return to work," NWLC press secretary Gillian Branstetter said.
"Our economy is still out a net loss of 115,00 childcare workers, forcing many providers to cut the number of children they can serve and increasing the cost for any given childcare slot," she told AFP.
Concerns about how to care for children were laid bare last year when many schools shifted to virtual learning due to pandemic restrictions.
As a result, women between the age of 25 and 44 were three times more likely than men to be unemployed due to childcare demands, according to US Census Bureau data.
"I was laid off from my job last March when Covid hit, but we were lucky," said Stephanie Shipman, a Washington-area resident whose husband worked from home while she focused on raising their toddler son.
In June, Shipman returned to working as a customer support specialist, but is considering keeping her child out of preschool due to virus concerns.
As the highly infectious new variant takes hold amid stagnant vaccination rates, there are rising fears that schools may close again just as the school year is about to begin, forcing working mothers to make hard choices.
"We have failed to think about the service public schools provide," said Rhonda Vonshay Sharpe, president and founder of the Women's Institute for Science, Equity and Race.
And childcare is not the only issue facing working women.
Prior to the pandemic, Christina Ho, a 49-year-old data science consultant, worked in an office full time while being the lone caregiver to an eight-year-old daughter and an elderly mother.
"It was high stress, but I set boundaries," she told AFP.
When the pandemic hit, Ho said she and her daughter initially adjusted fairly well because she was able to work at home and her daughter had a "temperament that allowed her to stay focused with school."
But work felt "nonstop" as she alternated between her paid job and taking care of her family.
With her daughter currently at summer camp, Ho says life has become less stressful. However she still cares for her mother, who is afraid to leave the house due to incidents of anti-Asian violence.
"I am extending my work window," Ho said, in order to accommodate both work and family needs.
"In the end I produce more in order to make up the work time lost."
President Joe Biden has proposed universal pre-kindergarten program and other forms of "childcare stabilization" assistance, that Branstetter said could help "ensure women can return to work knowing their children are receiving affordable, high-quality care."
"If Congress fails to take action now, it is women who will continue to pay the price," she said.
More "revelations" about the Trump regime's crimes against democracy and the American people continue.
Last Friday, it was reported that last December Donald Trump tried to order the Justice Department to declare the 2020 presidential election "illegal" and "corrupt," paving the way for nullifying or overturning it completely.
CNN reports that Trump pressured then-acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen to make a false declaration "in an attempt to help Republican members of Congress try to overturn the election result, according to notes of a December 2020 call Trump held with Rosen and acting deputy attorney general Richard Donoghue":
"Just say that the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me and the R. Congressmen," Trump said on the call, according to Donoghue's notes.
Donoghue's contemporaneous notes were provided to the House Oversight Committee ... [and] are the latest evidence of Trump's efforts to pressure the Justice Department to support his false claims of election fraud as he tried to overturn his November loss to Joe Biden.
On Twitter, Robert Reich recently wrote, "We have become so inured to Donald Trump's fascism that we barely blink an eye when we learn that he tried to manipulate the 2020 election. This should frighten every American to their core."
Trump's attempt to force Department of Justice officials to be co-conspirators in his attack on democracy and the rule of law is part of a much larger picture. What do we now know?
Trump's coup attempt cannot be described as "amateurish" or hypothetical: it was a concerted effort by the former president and his operatives to keep him in power indefinitely over and against the will of the American people. Contrary to the narrative that has been offered by many in the mainstream news media, he came close to succeeding.
In addition, Trump's attack force also came much closer to achieving their goal of stopping Joe Biden from becoming president by killing members of Congress on Jan. 6 than was previously known. U.S. military commanders were sufficiently concerned that Trump would invoke the Insurrection Act and order martial law as part of his coup attempt that they considered mass resignations and other means in response to his "deranged" and "Hitler-like" behavior in the weeks following the 2020 election.
Trump's coup attempt in response to his electoral defeat was just one of several moments — also including last summer's protests in response to the police murder of George Floyd — when he considered invoking the Insurrection Act and declaring martial law, which might have permitted him to remain in power indefinitely.
There has also been new reporting about the Trump regime's connections to Russia, and the Russian campaign to manipulate and undermine American democracy, using Trump as a type of "useful idiot" and chaos agent.
Trump and the Republican Party's coup attempt is ongoing. On the state level, Republicans continue to enact new laws aimed at preventing Black and brown people from voting and making it more difficult for Democrats to win elections. Trump's allies and servants have reportedly created some form of shadow Cabinet, in an apparent effort to further delegitimize Biden's presidency and encourage more right-wing violence and societal discord.
Unfortunately, the American people and the mainstream news media are becoming increasingly disengaged from these "revelations" about Trump and his regime's crimes and overall wrongdoing and evil. Media coverage follows a basic rule: if it bleeds, it leads — until it doesn't. Reporting on Trump's crimes and putting them in full context as part of a larger attempt to protect democracy is not a high priority in the 24/7 news cycle. Instead, too many of the leading media outlets thrive on false equivalencies between Republicans and Democrats through the obsolete habit of "both sides" journalism.
Even faced with one party (and its associated political movement) that poses an existential threat to American democracy, the mainstream media is still, for the most part, afraid to state that plain truth for fear of being labeled as "liberal" and "biased."
As for the larger public, it generally takes its cues from their political and other opinion leaders. And to this point, Biden and the Democrats are not treating the Trump regime's crimes as an emergency.
The millions of Americans trapped in the MAGAverse and TrumpWorld are most likely lost to reality. They have internalized Trump and the neofascist movement's false claims about the "Big Lie" and that Donald Trump is somehow still the "real" president. As members of a political cult, they are either indifferent to Trump's crimes or see them as admirable. In this perception of the world, the rule of law does not apply to Trump because he is fighting for "people like them" and their vision of America.
Perhaps most important, since the specter of Trump has not been magically vanquished by Biden and the Democrats, many Americans, now exhausted and traumatized, have begun to surrender to malignant reality. The overnight salvation many Americans hoped would arrive with Trump's defeat at the ballot box has not arrived
This indifference to Donald Trump's crimes and the growing power of neofascism can also be explained by willful denial. When a society is in crisis, people find ways to convince themselves that somehow everything will be fine, because to face the dire reality of the situation is too painful.Talia Lavin, author of "Culture Warlords: My Journey into the Dark Web of White Supremacy," explores the power of denial among Democratic leaders in a recent essay at MSNBC:
Millions stand in readiness, whipped further into anger each day, ready to breach as many walls as possible to make good their vision of a paradise on earth in which their opponents are given swift and thorough retribution: an earthly crusade, laid out in the language of salvation and damnation, preached from the pulpit and in the public square.
On the federal level, there is a yawning chasm between how the Republican and Democratic Parties are responding to this din outside the gates — and in turn how they view the past, present and future of American politics. Many liberals are prone to state that in contrast to the right-wing worldview, Democratic officials are near-universally tethered to facts, fundamental and evident truths, and less willing to descend into the deeps of paranoiac fantasy. In a broad sense, this is the case.
But there is a widespread delusion among the ranks of Democratic senators and representatives. Their shared belief in bipartisanship, as not only a moral good in its own right but something necessary and, above all, feasible, is one that bears as tenuous a relation to reality as any pizzagater's convictions.
Denial is not an effective tactic in the life-or-death struggle against Trumpism and neofascism. Instead, it will lead to the death of democracy.
In a recent interview with the Los Angeles Times, political scientist Tom Mann sounded a dire warning about America's democracy crisis, telling reporter Mark Barabak, "We're on a precipice. We're actually potentially so close to losing our democracy." America has long had right-wing extremist groups (as well as some on the left), Mann continued, "but they've always been marginalized or co-opted to become more moderate. This is the first time an extreme set of forces like this has actually won the White House and tried to steal it a second time."
Mann concludes that if Donald Trump had managed to "win" the 2020 election, "We'd have passed Hungary pretty quickly in moving to an autocratic world and a dangerous world. So it could be worse."
A medical analogy may be helpful in understanding America's current democracy crisis. At present, Trumpism and neofascism are a chronic disease that is becoming more acute. The patient is in extreme pain but continues to deny the seriousness of the ailment, and moreover is losing the capacity for normal function. At some point in the near future, the patient is likely to collapse, and will require long-term institutional care if they are to have any hope of surviving, let alone returning to any normal quality of life. In this analogy, the patient can still choose to get better at this point — but only by accepting the seriousness of the disease and accepting medical treatment. If they choose to ignore the dire prognosis, then the end is in sight.
In his recent book "Our Malady: Lessons in Liberty From a Hospital Diary" — partly a memoir of his own serious illness — historian Timothy Snyder uses medical and therapeutic language to great effect. He writes:
Our malady goes deeper than any statistic, deeper even than a pandemic. There are reasons why we are living shorter, unhappier lives. There are reasons why a president thought he could keep Americans ignorant during a pandemic, and exploit our confusion and pain. Our malady leaves us isolated, uncertain where to turn when we hurt.
America is supposed to be about freedom, but illness and fear render us less free. To be free is to become ourselves, to move through the world following our values and desires. Each of us has a right to pursue happiness and to leave a trace. Freedom is impossible when we are too ill to conceive of happiness and too weak to pursue it. It is unattainable when we lack the knowledge we need to make meaningful choices, especially about health.
The word freedom is hypocritical when spoken by the people who create the conditions that leave us sick and powerless. If our federal government and commercial medicine make us unhealthy, they are making us unfree.
Do the American people want to heal their democracy and body politic, or are they resigned to seeing it succumb to a deadly disease — of which Trumpism and neofascism are only the latest and most urgent symptom?
The fate of the country and its democracy is in the hands of the American people. Will they bestir themselves to action, or simply shrug their shoulders and accept what is already happening? The world will soon find out.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is determined to declare the novel coronavirus pandemic over, even as his state this week shattered its own records for COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations.
Bloomberg reports that DeSantis's refusal to re-declare a state of emergency over the pandemic is leaving Florida hospitals scrambling to secure enough oxygen to treat COVID patients who are struggling to breathe.
Essentially, unless DeSantis declares a state of emergency, then there are limits to how long medical support transport drivers can be on the road.
Because hospitals are now getting flooded with COVID-19 patients, this means that there simply are not enough drivers who have enough time to deliver the needed oxygen supplies.
Soumi Saha, vice president of advocacy for hospital supply purchasing group Premier Inc., said that waiving limits on transportation restrictions is the single best way to get oxygen supplies where they're needed.
"Hospitals are fighting with a hand tied behind their back and don't have the same chance that they did when states had the public health emergencies declared," she explained to Bloomberg.
DeSantis has been lashing out in recent days as criticism has mounted of his refusal to do more to fight the pandemic. On Tuesday he accused President Joe Biden of "singling out" his state for its surge in COVID infections, which he baselessly blamed on infected migrants entering the country.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has spent the past several days playing the victim over criticism for his handling of the COVID-19 crisis in his state.
Last month Florida accounted for 1 in 5 of every COVID cases in the United States, and this week the state shattered its own records for COVID cases and hospitalizations.
DeSantis snapped at a reporter who asked about the increase of hospitalizations in the state and the uptick of children getting the virus, even though school hasn't begun yet.
"You know, I'm just sick of this judge – I'm sick of the judgment, the judgmental stuff on some of this stuff, nobody's trying to, to, to get ill here, okay?" DeSantis complained to reporters.
DeSantis' latest complaint is that President Joe Biden is making his state the villain of the COVID crisis.
"Joe Biden has taken to himself to try to single out Florida over COVID," the governor said.
Press secretary Jen Paski responded with actual facts, explaining, "23 percent of new COVID hospitalizations in the U.S are in Florida, and their hospitals are being overwhelmed again. We are doing everything we can to help the people of Florida, and they're stepping up by getting vaccinated – we hope Gov. Ron DeSantis joins us in this fight."
DeSantis has banned mask mandates, vaccine passports and other tools businesses are using to keep down exposure to the virus.
See the tweet below:
Lauded nationwide last year for his no-nonsense coronavirus briefings, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo was clinging to his political life Wednesday as prosecutors opened criminal inquiries into sexual harassment allegations against the powerful Democrat.
As Donald Trump sowed chaos last spring, Cuomo's televised pandemic press conferences comforted Americans and even led to clamor for a presidential run, but the 63-year-old now finds himself a political pariah.
New York state assembly Democrats are poised to complete an impeachment inquiry soon while three district attorneys are pursuing criminal investigations after Tuesday's bombshell report found Cuomo sexually harassed multiple women.
"If you assault a woman, you do something against her will sexually, that's criminal. I think he should be charged," New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, told CBS on Wednesday.
The investigation concluded that Cuomo engaged in "unwelcome and non-consensual touching and making numerous comments of a suggestive sexual nature that created a hostile work environment for women."
It detailed allegations by 11 women that painted "a picture of a pattern of abusive behavior by Cuomo and his senior staff," said state Attorney General Letitia James said, announcing the findings.
The three-term governor came out fighting. He insisted he never touched anyone inappropriately or made inappropriate sexual advances and suggested he would not step down in a pre-recorded statement.
But pressure continued to build on Cuomo Wednesday as prosecutors in Manhattan and Westchester County joined those in Albany in opening a criminal inquiry and requesting documents from James's investigation, which was only civil in nature.
The Westchester case relates to an allegation that Cuomo inappropriately touched a state trooper assigned to his protective detail on her stomach and hip.
A statement from the Albany District Attorney late Tuesday called on any alleged victims to come forward.
Cuomo has politics in his blood -- his father Mario Cuomo served three terms as the Democratic governor of New York state between 1983 and 1994 -- and is unlikely to go quietly.
He has long been part of the Democratic Party's moderate establishment: in 1990, Cuomo married Kerry Kennedy -- daughter of the late US Attorney General Robert Kennedy. They divorced 15 years later.
Cuomo received praise for pushing through the legalization of same-sex marriage in New York in 2011 and for raising the state's minimum wage to $15 in December 2019.
But he has increasingly clashed with left-wing progressives in the party in recent years who have long accused him of governing with hectoring, bulldog-like tactics.
- Impeachment -
Allies, including President Joe Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and New York City's likely next mayor, Eric Adams, quickly deserted him following the explosive report.
And on Wednesday The New York Times editorial board called on him to quit.
"He wants to survive because the only thing that matters to Andrew Cuomo is being governor of New York," Lincoln Mitchell, politics expert at Columbia University, told AFP.
"But he's going to have a tough time when the President of the United States, who is the leader of your party, says that he should no longer be in office."
After Cuomo made it clear he had no plans to step down voluntarily, the Democratic speaker of New York's state assembly, Carl Heastie, said an impeachment investigation would be concluded "as quickly as possible."
"He can no longer remain in office," Heastie said.
If the lower house assembly approves impeachment articles, which now seems all but certain, Cuomo would become the first New York governor to be impeached in more than a century.
Cuomo would likely have to temporarily step down as members of the senate and several judges preside over the trial. At least two thirds of jurors must vote to convict to permanently remove him from office.
Although he has not officially announced a run, Cuomo is believed to covet a fourth term as governor, to surpass his father.
Florida governor Ron DeSantis complained on Wednesday that President Joe Biden was "singling out" his state for criticism after it smashed its own record for COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations this week.
Speaking with reporters, DeSantis falsely claimed that the reason for the COVID-19 surge in his state was due to immigrants flooding in through the southern border, when in reality the major reason for the virus's resurgence has been the refusal of millions of Americans to take a free vaccine to protect themselves against the disease.
"Joe Biden has taken to himself to try to single out Florida over COVID," he complained. "He's imported more virus from around the world by having a wide-open Southern border."
DeSantis then told Biden he didn't want to hear anymore complaints about COVID in Florida until he stopped migrants from entering the country.
"Why don't you do your job?" DeSantis said. "Why don't you get this border secure? And until you do that, I don't wanna hear a blip about COVID from you, thank you."
According to data compiled by the New York Times, Florida is now averaging more than 17,000 cases a day and has more than 10,000 people who have been hospitalized with the disease -- and both figures have more than doubled in size over the past two weeks.
DeSantis's poll numbers have slipped as a result of the COVID surge, as he has repeatedly signaled that he will do nothing to mitigate the spread of the deadly disease that so far has killed more than 600,000 Americans.
Watch the videos below.
A South Carolina man who posed for a photo in front of a statue of the vehemently pro-slavery John Calhoun has pleaded guilty in the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Andrew Hatley reached a plea agreement Wednesday with federal prosecutors after apologizing to a judge for his role in the deadly U.S. Capitol riot and will plead guilty to the federal misdemeanor charge of parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building, reported The Post and Courier.
"I am sorry for everything that happened that day and all the vitriol and division it's caused within our country," Hatley told Judge Thomas Hogan on July 20. "I feel that it has put us on a bad road that doesn't lead to anything good for anyone."
The Newberry man wore a cowboy hat and gas mask when he joined other Donald Trump supporters as they stormed the Capitol intending to stop the certification of Joe Biden's election win, and he stopped for a selfie in front of the South Carolina senator's statue.
The slave-owning senator vigorously defended slavery as a "positive good" in an explicitly white supremacist 1837 speech on the Senate floor, and his nullification theory held that states had the right to reject federal policies they deemed unconstitutional -- and helped spark an 1832 crisis that nearly sparked a civil war.
Hatley agreed to pay $500 in restitution, but a judge will decide whether he must serve all six months in jail as outlined by federal sentencing guidelines.
As Democratic members of Congress and President Joe Biden are working to extend the eviction moratorium enacted to help Americans during the coronavirus pandemic, Fox News' Peter Doocy went to bat, too – for landlords.
"There's been a major push here recently to protect tenants from being evicted right now, why isn't more being done to help the landlords who are struggling to pay their bills because they're not being paid?" Doocy, apparently ignorant that there are federal funds to compensate landlords for lost rental income, asked White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki.
"Well actually the landlords can benefit from exactly the same emergency rental assistance that renters can benefit from," she replied.
"Right now, as we understand it, many states are not distributing that money," Doocy said. "The Washington Post says that this measure could drive thousands of minor landlords to bankruptcy."
"Well that's exactly why," Psaki explained, "and I'm happy to have you as a partner in this effort, we are trying to advocate for states, localities to get this money out. There's no reason it's not going out to landlords, to renters, no reason that people who are eligible are not benefiting, and we've seen a number of states – red states and blue states – do this very effectively. Texas, as an example I used yesterday, Virginia is one I highlighted today. This is why we're doing as much of this outreach and engagement as we're doing."
Watch:
Doocy: Why isn't more being done to help the landlords…. pic.twitter.com/CcLRmaowus
— Acyn (@Acyn) August 4, 2021
Barack Obama has scaled back plans for a big 60th birthday party this weekend, paring down a guest list of the rich and famous numbering in the hundreds due to the spread of the Delta variant of the coronavirus, a spokeswoman said Wednesday.
"The outdoor event was planned months ago in accordance with all public guidelines and Covid safeguards in place," Hannah Hankins said in a statement issued a day after the planned bash drew criticism, mainly from conservatives.
"Due to the new spread of the Delta variant over the past week, the president and Mrs Obama have decided to significantly scale back the event to include only family and close friends," Jenkins said.
The celebration is to take place Saturday on the upscale island of Martha's Vineyard, and it had been expected to draw hundreds of former Obama administration officials, Democratic donors and celebrities, reportedly including George Clooney, Steven Spielberg and Oprah Winfrey, according to The Washington Post.
It is to be held outdoors at an oceanside estate in full compliance with guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with all guests needing to be vaccinated and test negative for the virus, news reports said.
Still, conservatives lashed out at Obama.
Republican congressman Jim Jordan, a loyalist of Obama's successor Donald Trump, took to Twitter to joke that "if this was President Trump's birthday," Democrats would be saying "How can someone be so reckless?" or "They're killing people."
"Is there an exception for parties attended by rich liberal celebrities?" demanded Ronna McDaniel, the Republican National Committee chairwoman.
The Trump administration made headlines on numerous occasions for organizing maskless events in the White House or in government departments, or holding campaign rallies, including at the height of the pandemic and before vaccines were widely available.
Barack Obama, pictured riding his bike on Martha's Vineyard in August 2015, will celebrate his 60th birthday on the upscale island BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI AFP/File
In particular, a ceremony in honor of Amy Coney Barrett, whom Trump appointed to the Supreme Court, was suspected of being a superspreader event that led to the infection of a dozen people, including Trump himself.
Eighteen Trump campaign rallies were the source of more than 30,000 coronavirus cases and likely led to more than 700 deaths, according to a December 2020 study by researchers at Stanford University.
President Joe Biden -- who served as Obama's vice president -- was not expected to attend the Obama party.
© 2021 AFP
The aftermath of the United States' 2020 presidential election was unprecedented in U.S. history; never before had a president who was decisively voted out of office refused to concede, made false and debunked claims of widespread voter fraud, and tried to overturn the election results in states that he lost. One of those states was Georgia, and according to new reporting from ABC News, officials for the U.S. Department of Justice rejected a fellow DOJ official's request to possibly overturn now-President Joe Biden's victory in that state.
In an article posted on ABC News' website on August 3, journalists Katherine Faulders and Alexander Mallin report that "e-mails dated December 28, 2020 show the former acting head of DOJ's civil division, Jeffrey Clark, circulating a draft letter — which he wanted then-acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue to sign off on — urging Georgia's governor and other top officials to convene the state legislature into a special session so lawmakers could investigate claims of voter fraud."
The draft letter, which has been posted on ABC News' website, was addressed to three Republicans: Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, Georgia House Speaker David Ralston and Georgia State Senate President Pro Tempore Butch Miller. And it reads, "The Department of Justice is investigating various irregularities in the 2020 election for President of the United States. The Department will update you as we are able on investigatory progress, but at this time we have identified significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election in multiple States, including the State of Georgia."
The draft letter also says, "While the Department of Justice believe[s] the Governor of Georgia should immediately call a special session to consider this important and urgent matter, if he declines to do so, we share with you our view that the Georgia General Assembly has implied authority under the Constitution of the United States to call itself into special session for [t]he limited purpose of considering issues pertaining to the appointment of Presidential Electors."
In December 2020, Trump was furious when Kemp and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, both conservative Republicans, rejected his claim that widespread voter fraud had occurred in Georgia. Both Kemp and Raffensperger acknowledged that Biden legitimately won Georgia, which was heavily Republican in the past but has evolved into a swing state. Biden's victory in Georgia in November 2020 was followed by two more statewide Democratic victories when the Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff won special U.S. Senate races in Georgia in January 2021, giving Democrats a narrow Senate majority and making Chuck Schumer Senate majority leader rather than Senate minority leader.
Other prominent Republicans who rejected the Big Lie — Trump's false claims of widespread voter fraud — in December 2020 included then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and former U.S. Attorney General William Barr. Although Barr had been one of Trump's most outspoken loyalists and defended him vigorously during the Ukraine scandal and Trump's first impeachment, he rejected Trump's bogus voter fraud claims. And Trump was furious when Barr told the Associated Press that he had "not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome of the election."
Donoghue, according to Faulders and Mallin, flatly rejected Clark's request to send out the draft letter — saying, "There is no chance that I would sign this letter or anything remotely like this. While it may be true that the Department 'is investigating various irregularities in the 2020 election for President' (something we typically would not state publicly) the investigations that I am aware of relate to suspicions of misconduct that are of such a small scale that they simply would not impact the outcome of the Presidential Election."
Donoghue quoted Barr in his response to Clark, saying, "Given that, I cannot imagine a scenario in which the Department would recommend that a State assemble its legislature to determine whether already-certified election results should somehow be overriden by legislative action."
On Tuesday, amid President Joe Biden's press conference on efforts to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, Donald Trump Jr. tried to mock him on Twitter, suggesting that he was struggling to speak.
But the attack didn't go the way that he might have hoped. Swarms of commenters on social media flooded his mentions with clips and quotes from his father stumbling and bumbling through press conferences, often garbling his comments to the point of near unintelligibility — including his excessive slurring, his discussion of "Yo-Semites" National Park, and his inability to pronounce words like "coronavirus" or "contingency."
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Fixing Texas' power grid was about the only thing Republicans and Democrats in the legislative session seemed to agree on earlier this year. Power companies were in the hot seat, as millions of Texans who endured a week of subfreezing temperatures with no power demanded sweeping, multibillion dollar improvements to prevent another deadly disaster — and lawmakers promised action.
But by the end of the legislative session, if Texas' top power companies were aggrieved by the way they were treated by the Legislature or any of the new laws passed targeting their industry, they didn't show it.
Texas elected officials can't receive campaign donations during the session, but after it ended in May, they were showered in cash by the energy industry — even more than usual for a group known for its deep pockets and generous campaign giving.
From June 21 to June 30, after the legislative fundraising blackout ended, five of the largest and most prominent companies in the Texas power grid supply chain — Calpine, Centerpoint, NRG Energy, Oncor and Vistra — or their top executives collectively donated about $497,000 to state elected officials and political groups. That's more than twice the $207,000 they gave during the same period when the legislative session ended in in 2019, according to a Texas Tribune analysis. A large chunk of that cash was driven by Oncor, Texas' largest transmission and distribution electric company, with many big donations coming from the company's executives.
Over that same short stretch in June, 11 prominent oil industry leaders, including billionaires Kelcy Warren, S. Javaid Anwar and Douglas Scharbauer — all three whom could not be reached for comment — combined to contribute about $3.2 million to Texas elected officials, up from about $2.2 million over the same period following the previous legislative session in 2019. Warren's company Energy Transfer declined to comment on his behalf.
For some energy experts, the increase in donations for the officials at the close of the session looks like a reward for not passing more stringent regulations and raises questions about whether lawmakers let the oil, gas and the broader energy industry off easy for its massive failures.
"Gas producers got a pass by Texas policymakers," said Michael Webber, professor of energy resources at the University of Texas at Austin. "Making a million-dollar political donation to reward the government for its light touch and encourage the government to continue turning a blind eye to price gouging and windfall profits while hundreds of people die seems like a good return on investment."
"Making a million-dollar political donation to reward the government for its light touch and encourage the government to continue turning a blind eye to price gouging and windfall profits while hundreds of people die seems like a good return on investment."
— Michael Webber, professor of energy resources at the University of Texas at Austin.
A spokesperson for Oncor said the company "believes in actively participating in the political process." CenterPoint said: "In this case, CenterPoint Energy Political Action Committee made public contributions to support members of the Texas Legislature who had announced their intention to run for re-election, regardless of party affiliation." A Calpine representative said its CEO, who made up the bulk of contributions tied to the company, donated money "as he develops relationships with these members directly." The other two companies did not respond to requests for comment.
Gov. Greg Abbott, who is heading into a reelection year in 2022, benefited most from the flood of June campaign donations from the energy industry.
Abbott received about $4.6 million from oil, gas and broader energy interests, his largest haul ever from those groups in the post-legislative session fundraising period following the four regular legislative sessions during Abbott's tenure as governor.
Those donations included $1 million from Warren, cofounder of a pipeline company that made $2.4 billion from the winter storm, according to a report from Bloomberg. Warren has given Abbott $250,000 donations almost every year since he won the governor's office in 2014.
"Governor Abbott represents all Texans, and that's what he takes into account every day as he works on behalf of the Lone Star State," spokeswoman Renae Eze said.
Other lawmakers who saw some of the largest spikes in funding from the energy industry were those who authored the power grid legislation and chaired the committees that heard the bills.
State Rep. Chris Paddie, R-Marshall, chair of the powerful state affairs committee in the House, was among those lawmakers.
Just 6%, or $1,141, of his overall campaign contributions in the brief June fundraising period after the 2015 legislative session came from the energy industry. During the same stretch after the two subsequent legislative sessions in 2017 and 2019, fewer than 9% of Paddie's contributions came from energy interests.
After the 2021 regular legislative session, energy industry donations totaling $26,000 for the period made up 88% of Paddie's campaign contributions over just the last 10 days of June.
"Absent that storm, his contributions would have been different," said Bill Miller, a longtime Texas political consultant and lobbyist. "The storm, as bad as it was, helped him on his bottom line for contributions."
Paddie received contributions from Oncor; Vistra, the state's largest power generation company; and NuStar Political Action Committee, an oil and gas group. Paddie has received thousands in contributions from these entities in election years, but never this amount immediately after a legislative session.
A spokesperson for Paddie did not respond to questions.
Paddie was among a chorus of elected officials from the governor on down demanding answers and solutions for why Texas' grid was on the brink of total collapse in February. There was a series of finger-pointing and falsehoods from state elected officials who wouldn't accept responsibility and falsely shifted blame to renewable energy sources as they vowed to fix the grid.
The Legislature ultimately passed a bill — shepherded by Paddie in the House and state Sen. Charles Schwertner, R-Georgetown, in the Senate — that requires power generation companies to prepare to withstand extreme weather conditions. But the bill didn't set a hard deadline for when the upgrades need to be complete and it stopped short of detailing how the state would enforce and incentivize the process called weatherization.
Critics said this and other storm response bills spearheaded by these lawmakers also failed to provide direct assistance to people harmed by February's power crisis or to help Texans reduce electricity use to take pressure off the grid during extreme weather.
Schwertner went from receiving 3% of his overall campaign contributions from the energy industry in the fundraising period after the 2015 legislative session to the industry making up about 32% of his contributions in 2021. The amount of money the senator fundraised from energy interests jumped from $1,000 to $44,500, the Tribune found. A Schwertner spokesperson did not respond to questions for this story.
State Sen. Kelly Hancock, R-North Richland Hills, who led much of the upper chamber's response to the storm that left millions of Texans without electricity for days in subfreezing temperatures, also got a boost in funding.
More than a quarter of Hancock's contributions in June came from energy interests, about $53,500 — the most he has ever received in a post-legislative session period. This is up from 19% after the 2019 session. Hancock also has ties to the energy industry in his full-time job as a business owner. His chemical logistics company serves the oil and gas industry, among others. He did not respond to a request for comment.
Oil and politics have been entwined in Texas for more than a century, since wildcatters hit the first gusher at Spindletop back in 1901. Oil grew to become the state's signature industry, rich oilmen and companies started showering politicians with money and a romance blossomed. Oil and gas taxes now boost the state budget.
"The twisted roots between the oil and gas industry and Texas lawmakers is almost as old as the Capitol building itself," said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston.
The Bush family's origin story in Texas revolves around oil and gas, and money from the industry has funded much of the family's political fortunes in the state ever since they arrived in West Texas.
While former Gov. George W. Bush was heavily funded by his family's well-established energy network, his successor, former Gov. Rick Perry, worked to cultivate a wide base of financial support from energy interests, Rottinghaus said.
Abbott has run a similar playbook as Perry and has taken it to a different level, Rottinghaus said.
Overall since 2014, Abbott has received about $30 million from oil, gas and other energy interests, which is about 18% of his $166 million total raised in that time. Four out of the top 10 individual donors to Abbott are oil and gas men.
Just before the energy donations poured in for Abbott in June, the power grid operator asked Texans, mid-heat wave, to conserve power and turn their thermostats to 78 degrees for a week in order to reduce electricity demand because significant power generation was unexpectedly offline.
The warnings led to renewed calls for the Legislature to take more urgent action to fix the power grid. During that week, Abbott assured Texans the grid was in better shape than ever.
Not long after, Abbott released a list of issues lawmakers needed to address in July during a special-called legislative session. The power grid was not included.
Leading up to Abbott's decision, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick pressured Abbott in public statements that issues related to the grid needed to be on the agenda. Patrick's calls came after he tried to assert himself prominently in responding to the winter storm by demanding leadership changes at state regulatory agencies and sparring with one Abbott-appointed regulator on the senate floor.
About 26% of Patrick's contributions in June came from energy interests, more than $1.3 million, his most ever in the post-session stretch. That amount is up from 12% of his contributions coming from energy interests after the 2019 session, about $383,000.
Most of Patrick's energy industry money received in June was driven by oil executives.
Patrick spokeswoman Sherry Sylvester said: "No one has been tougher on the energy sector and more proactive for ratepayers this session than Lt. Governor Patrick, who moved immediately following the February storm to call for the resignations of both the PUC board and ERCOT, both of which were fully reformed through Senate Bills 2 and 3."
Disclosure: Calpine, CenterPoint Energy, NRG Energy, Oncor, University of Texas at Austin and University of Houston have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
Reza Pahlavi, the son of Iran's last shah, believes the clerical state that toppled his father is on the brink of crumbling. What Iranians need now, he says, is stronger support from the West.
As ultraconservative Ebrahim Raisi was sworn in Tuesday as the eighth president of the Islamic republic, Pahlavi, who lives in exile near Washington, pointed to an election turnout rate of 48.8 percent, the lowest since the 1979 revolution, as well as demonstrations first triggered by serious water shortages.
"Is the regime fragmented, is it fragile, is it bordering on the precipice? Yes it is, but like anything else, if you throw them a lifeline, they'll catch a second breath and survive a bit," he told AFP in an interview.
"We have an opportunity to put the final nail in the coffin. And we're not asking the world to do that for us; the people of Iran want to do it, but they need some help."
He said Western nations should support technology to circumvent internet restrictions in Iran, disinvest from the state and develop a "strike fund" to support workers who wage nonviolent civil disobedience.
Pahlavi, like many others, has spoken before of the regime crumbling. But he insisted this time was different as forces are "just killing people," including "young people who are thirsty and seeking their rights."
"This isn't a response that shows confidence or stability. It's like a last effort to put out the flames," he said.
Pahlavi described Raisi, born six weeks after the prince in 1960, as a "butcher" and "perhaps one of the darkest and most sinister individuals that the Islamic Republic has ever produced."
As a prosecutor, Raisi is linked to the mass executions of Marxists and other leftists in 1988.
"What's the most shocking to us is not so much how (Iranian) people are responding, but it's rather Western democracies, of whom we had the most expectation, seem to be stabbing the people in the back," Pahlavi said.
He pointed to the decisions, notably of the European Union, to attend the inauguration as "almost like a slap in the face, to say the least," by legitimizing Raisi.
US President Joe Biden's administration, while criticizing Raisi on human rights, engaged in months of fruitless indirect talks with the previous, more moderate administration of Hassan Rouhani on reviving a 2015 nuclear accord.
Biden argues that the accord, which was trashed by Donald Trump as he imposed punishing sanctions, would serve US interests by containing nuclear work by Iran, which since 1979 has been an arch-enemy of the United States and its regional allies Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Sporting a crisp suit with a lapel pin the shape of Iran bearing the imperial-era lion emblem, Pahlavi speaks with a relaxed smile, and in exile has pursued passions for nature photography and playing drums. His priorities do not include restoring the 2,500-year-old monarchy.
Social media footage in recent years have shown demonstrators voicing nostalgia for the Pahlavi dynasty, an era when oil-producing Iran was rapidly developing and enjoyed warm relations with the West, although few see a groundswell of support for monarchists.
Pahlavi said he was "republican in nature" and that Iranians should decide whether they need a "symbol above the fray" -- who could be elected rather than inheriting a throne.
The position could be "something totally new that still is true to the spirit and the fabric and the culture of a nation, but it is adapted to today's rules of democracy and self-governance," he said.
Pahlavi voiced hope for a conference soon of the Iranian opposition and said the future should eventually be decided by a constituent assembly of "secular, democratic forces."
Pahlavi said he is not advocating regime change led by the US military -- an idea that has little support in Washington as it seeks to exit Afghanistan and Iraq. But he said the United States needs a dialogue with the opposition.
"We're not saying don't talk to Islamic Republic. You need to have a channel of communication for the sake of diplomacy, we all understand that," he said.
"But thinking that those who are part of the problem are going to offer you a solution is madness."
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