Thursday, January 30, 2025

New film claims 'Napalm Girl' photo credited to wrong journalist

Agence France-Presse
January 27, 2025 

Former photographer Nguyen Than Nghe attended the premiere of 'The Stringer' at the Sundance Film Festival (Maya Dehlin Spach/AFP)

by Andrew MARSZAL

The makers of a new documentary alleging the iconic "Napalm Girl" photo was deliberately credited to the wrong photographer -- claims denied by the Associated Press -- said Sunday that it is "critical" to "share this story with the world."

"The Stringer," which premiered at the Sundance film festival, chronicles an investigation into rumors that the devastating image which helped change global perceptions of the Vietnam War was actually taken by a little-known local freelancer.


Nick Ut, the AP staff photographer credited with the photo of a nine-year-old girl fleeing naked from a napalm strike, won a Pulitzer Prize. He has always said that he took the photo. Ut's lawyer attempted to block the film's release.

AP published a report last week detailing its own investigation into the controversy, which found "nothing that proves Nick Ut did not take the photo," but said it had not yet been granted access to the film's research.

"AP stands ready to review any and all evidence and new information about this photo," the organization said in an updated statement Sunday.

The new film was triggered when Carl Robinson, the photo editor on duty in AP's Saigon bureau on the day the image was captured, began speaking out about the provenance of the photo.

In the film, Robinson says he was ordered to write a photo caption attributing the photo to Ut by Horst Faas, AP's two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning chief of photos in Saigon.

"I started writing the caption... Horst Faas, who had been standing right next to me, said 'Nick Ut. Make it Nick Ut,'" says Robinson.


After interviewing Robinson, the filmmakers identified the long-lost name of a Vietnamese freelance photographer who is visible in other photos of the infamous scene at Trang Bang on June 8, 1972.

They eventually tracked down Nguyen Thanh Nghe, who states in the film that he is certain he took the photo.

"Nick Ut came with me on the assignment. But he didn't take that photo... That photo was mine," he says.

Executive director Gary Knight, a photojournalist who led the film's investigation, told AFP it was "critical" that members of the news media "hold ourselves to account."

"The photograph in question is one of the most important photographs of anything ever made, certainly of war," he said.

"Just getting that recognition (for Nghe)... it was always important for us as a film team to share this story with the world," added director Bao Nguyen.

- 'Speaking up' -

One question repeatedly raised in response to the new allegations is why it took so long for anybody to speak up.

Robinson says that, at the time of the photo being captioned, he feared for his job.


He added he consequently felt it was "too late" to speak out, until he learned the name of the freelancer decades later.

Ut's lawyer Jim Hornstein told AFP that Robinson had a "50-year vendetta against Nick Ut, AP and Horst Faas," and said "a defamation action will soon be filed against the film makers."

In the documentary, Nghe's family say he consistently spoke at home of his regret about losing credit for the photo.


Nghe says: "I felt upset. I worked hard for it, but that guy got to have it all. He got recognition, he got awards."

Nguyen, the film's director, said the idea that the family are "only now are speaking up... is sort of a fallacy.

"Within their own circles, they've been saying this for so long," Nguyen said.

Knight said there has always been "a huge power imbalance in journalism."


"It has been dominated by white, Western heterosexual males for as long as I've been in it, and before," he said.
- 'Investigating' -

The filmmakers also hired INDEX, a France-based non-profit that specializes in forensic investigations, which concluded it is "highly unlikely" Ut was in the right position to take the photo.


AP's latest statement repeats its request for the filmmakers to share evidence, including eyewitness accounts and the INDEX report.

"When we became aware of this film and its allegations broadly, we took them very seriously and began investigating," it says.

"We cannot state more clearly that The Associated Press is only interested in the facts and a truthful history of this iconic photo."


© Agence France-Presse
US court axes handgun sales ban to adults under 21

Agence France-Presse
January 30, 2025 

In its ruling, the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals says the law passed by Congress in 1968 banning handgun sales by licensed dealers to adults under the age of 21 violated the Second Amendment to the US Constitution. (AFP)

A conservative US appeals court ruled on Thursday that a law banning the sale of handguns by federally licensed firearms dealers to adults under the age of 21 is unconstitutional.

Federal law prohibits Federal Firearms Licensees from selling handguns to persons between the ages of 18 to 21, although parents can buy them for their children or they can purchase them themselves in private sales or at gun shows.

While Americans under the age of 21 cannot currently purchase a handgun from a federally licensed dealer, they can buy a rifle or shotgun.

In its ruling, the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals said the law passed by Congress in 1968 banning handgun sales by licensed dealers to adults under the age of 21 violated the Second Amendment to the US Constitution.

"The operative clause of the Second Amendment states that 'the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed,'" a three-judge appeals court panel said.

"There are no age or maturity restrictions in the plain text of the Amendment, as there are in other constitutional provisions" such as the requirement that members of the US House of Representatives be at least 25 years old, they said.

"This suggests that the Second Amendment lacks a minimum age requirement," they said. "Ultimately, the text of the Second Amendment includes eighteen- to twenty-year-old individuals among 'the people' whose right to keep and bear arms is protected."

The law was challenged by three nonprofit gun rights groups -- the Firearms Policy Coalition, the Second Amendment Foundation and the Louisiana Shooting Club -- along with several individuals between the ages of 18 and 21.

Everytown Law, a gun violence prevention organization, denounced the ruling, calling it "reckless and unfounded."

"The law that prohibits dealers from selling handguns to those under twenty-one is both constitutional and crucial for public safety," said Janet Carter, senior director of issues and appeals at Everytown Law.

"Firearms are the leading cause of death for children and teens, and 18-to-20-year-olds commit gun homicides at triple the rate of adults 21 and over, according to FBI statistics," Carter said, adding she hopes the federal government will contest Thursday's decision.

The Supreme Court, in June of last year, upheld a federal law prohibiting domestic abusers from possessing a firearm, reversing a ruling by the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals which had said the restriction was unconstitutional.



Paramount discusses settling Trump's '60 Minutes' lawsuit to preserve major merger: report

Daniel Hampton
January 30, 2025 
RAW STORY

FILE PHOTO: Paramount Global and Skydance logos are seen in this illustration taken December 17, 2024. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo

CBS's parent company Paramount is reportedly entering settlement discussions with representatives of President Donald Trump after he accused "60 Minutes" in a lawsuit of deceptively editing its interview with then Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.

Trump's lawsuit alleges that the interview with Harris was selectively edited and “
intentionally misled the public by broadcasting a skillfully edited interview” that was “aimed at causing confusion among the electorate regarding Vice President Kamala Harris’s abilities, intelligence, and appeal.” Lawyers for CBS and legal experts have blasted the suit as meritless, noting that not only did Trump not provide any evidence the interview was deceptively edited, but it's unclear that he would even have grounds to sue over it if it had been.

On Thursday, several people with knowledge of the matter told The New York Times that many Paramount executives believe settling with him will boost their chances that the Trump administration doesn't try to block or slow their planned multibillion-dollar merger with entertainment company Skydance.

Details of the settlement discussions weren't immediately known.

Among the people supporting a settlement: Shari Redstone, Paramount’s controlling shareholder, who would rake in billions of dollars if the sale goes through, according to the report.

This comes after ABC News settled a separate longshot lawsuit brought by Trump against the network, over anchor George Stephanopoulos stating that a jury had found him liable for the rape of E. Jean Carroll. A New York jury did find him guilty of sexual abuse and defamation, and a state judge disputed the legal distinction between sexual abuse and rape in this context; however, the network decided to pay out rather than face an expensive and drawn-out trial, a decision which enraged many employees.

After Meta's massive settlement with Trump, critics on social media blasted Trump for using lawsuits as a "workaround for bribes" and called the practice "open-air corruption."
Australia says reliance on coal-fired power drops to record low

Agence France-Presse
January 30, 2025 

Energy authorities say quick action is needed to fill the gap left by shuttered coal-fired power stations (DAVID GRAY/AFP)

Australia's reliance on coal-fired power stations has dropped to a record low, accounting for less than 50 percent of its electricity for the first time, the market operator said Thursday.

Overall electricity demand hit a record high in the final quarter of 2024 as temperatures rose and people shifted away from gas, the Australian Energy Market Operator said.

At the same time, roof-top solar output surged 18 percent and grid-scale solar climbed nine percent -- both reaching record levels, it said in an update on the National Electricity Market (NEM).

"The rise in rooftop solar output, coupled with record low coal-generation availability, resulted in coal-fired generation contributing less than 50 percent of the NEM's total generation for the first time," said Violette Mouchaileh, a senior official at the market operator.

Renewable energy sources supplied a record 46 percent of electricity in the quarter, she said, peaking at 75.6 percent on November 6.

That drove greenhouse gas emissions in the period to record lows, the market operator said.


Australia's government last week announced an extra US$1.2 billion in clean energy financing to speed a transition from coal and other fossil fuels to renewables.

The country -- one of the world's leading coal exporters -- has vowed to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050.

- Climate wars -


But energy authorities say quick action is needed to fill the gap left by shuttered coal-fired power stations.

Wholesale electricity prices surged 83 percent during 2024, the report noted, mostly due to high demand, the decline of available coal-fired power, and transmission constraints.

"The data confirms what we know -- unreliable coal is having a negative impact on energy prices, more renewables in the system bring wholesale prices down, and new transmission infrastructure is critical to keeping prices lower," said Chris Bowen, the minister for climate change and energy.

"We are building an energy grid so everyone, everywhere has access to the cheapest form of energy at any given time," he said in a statement to Australian media.

Over the past decade, an ideological brawl dubbed the "climate wars" has dominated Australian politics, repeatedly undermining attempts to reduce carbon emissions.

In the run-up to general elections that must be held by May 17, Australia's conservative opposition Liberal Party has announced plans to launch nuclear power so as to rely less on solar and wind.

The national science agency CSIRO said in a report last month that nuclear power would be 50 percent more expensive than renewables and would take at least 15 years to build.

Australia sits on bulging deposits of coal, gas, metals and minerals, with mining and fossil fuels stoking decades of near-unbroken economic growth.

But it has also begun to suffer from more intense bushfires and increasingly severe droughts, which scientists have linked to climate change.


© Agence France-Presse
Judge orders LSU to reinstate law professor sidelined for political comments

Piper Hutchinson,
 Louisiana Illuminator
January 30, 2025 

The LSU Law Center pictured on March 20, 2023, in Baton Rouge. 
(Matthew Perschall for Louisiana Illuminator)


A state judge has ordered LSU to allow its law professor Ken Levy to return to teaching duties. The university had removed Levy from the classroom pending an investigation into alleged criticism of Gov. Jeff Landry.

Levy, a tenured professor of constitutional and criminal law, sued the university earlier this week, saying it violated his First Amendment rights and its own policies regarding tenured faculty.

Judge Don Johnson of the 19th Judicial District granted Levy’s request for a temporary restraining order that would allow him to return to the classroom for at least the next week. Johnson set a hearing for an injunction on Feb. 10. Read the judge’s order below.

“Professor Levy is looking very much forward to his day in court,” Jill Craft, Levy’s attorney, said in an interview. “The rights that are at stake are critical to the foundation of this country.”

Levy alleged in his lawsuit that political comments made on the first day of his Administration of Criminal Justice course were reported to the governor, which he believes led to calls to the university administration about his comments.

In an affidavit to the court, Levy says that he brought up Landry’s reaction to comments of fellow law professor Nick Bryner during class. Levy asked his students not to record his lectures because he didn’t want to be targeted by Landry.

In November, Landry publicly asked LSU to discipline Bryner last year for his comments about President Trump the day after the presidential election. A video of Bryner’s comments were sent to the governor, who then circulated the video on social media.

“If Governor Landry were to retaliate against me, then f*** the governor and f*** that. — all of which was a joke and clearly said in a joking manner to highlight my no recording policy in class and the First Amendment,” Levy wrote in the affidavit.

Levy argues in the affidavit that the actions taken against him stifle not only his right to free speech and academic freedom but that of other faculty members. His lawsuit focuses not just on the First Amendment but on LSU’s own policies regarding tenured faculty.

Tenure provides an indefinite academic appointment to qualifying faculty members who have demonstrated excellence in their field. Academics with tenure can only be terminated for cause, but it typically only happens in extreme circumstances. College faculty view tenure as a key part of academic freedom at universities and a shield against political, corporate and religious intervention.

Levy attached a letter in his suit from LSU Director of Employee Relations Lindsay Madatic that informs Levy of his removal from the classroom “pending an investigation into student complaints of inappropriate statements.” Madatic writes his compensation will remain unchanged and that he is permitted on campus.

Jill Craft, Levy’s attorney, argues Madatic does not have the authority to discipline him.

In her request for a temporary restraining order, Craft said that LSU does not have a policy that allows for relieving a tenured professor of his or her duties.
LSU’s top attorney is leaving his position

LSU has several policy statements and permanent memoranda that address disciplining a tenured faculty member. These policies call for several layers of review, all of which require peer faculty input. None of this happened before Levy was removed from his classes, which Levy and Craft contend is a form of discipline.

“No matter how characterized by LSU, its actions in unilaterally relieving [Levy] of his teaching duties violate his substantive and procedural rights,” Craft wrote.

LSU Faculty Senate President Dan Tirone said the only time he was familiar with a professor being removed from the classroom pending an investigation involved Title IX allegations or other types of abuse. In those cases, the professor would also be prevented from accessing campus for safety reasons.

The removal of Levy from the classroom led to significant backlash from the public and from LSU law students, who staged a protest Tuesday in his defense. The students delivered a petition to university general counsel Winston DeCuir calling for Levy to be reinstated, apologized to and for complete transparency into the disciplinary process.

DeCuir has since tendered his resignation.
Measles cases reported in Texas as vaccine rates against the disease fall

Stephen Simpson,
The Texas Tribune
January 30, 2025 

A vial of the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine is pictured at the International Community Health Services clinic in Seattle, Washington on March 20, 2019.
 Credit: REUTERS/Lindsey Wasson

"Measles cases reported in Texas as vaccine rates against the disease has fallen" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

At least four cases of measles, including two involving school-aged children, have been reported in Texas in less than two weeks, putting state health agencies on alert.

For some communities, this is the first case of measles in more than 20 years.


Laura Anton, spokesperson for the Texas Department of State Health Services, said the agency sent out an alert to health providers statewide once measles were confirmed to be found in two adult residents in Harris County last week.

The alert stated that both individuals reside in the same household and were unvaccinated against measles. These were the first confirmed cases of measles reported in Texas since 2023, when two were reported.

Measles is a highly contagious airborne disease. General symptoms may include fever, cough, runny nose, watery eyes, and a full-body rash. This disease can cause serious health consequences and even death, especially for young and unvaccinated children.

About 1 in 5 unvaccinated people in the U.S. who get measles will be hospitalized, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Up to three of every 1,000 children who become infected with measles may die from respiratory and neurologic complications.

Houston Health Department officials say the cases of measles were associated with the pair’s recent international travel and released a list of possible locations and dates where members of the public might have been exposed.


The state health agency also confirmed two measles cases in the South Plains, both involving school-aged children who were not vaccinated. Anton said they were hospitalized and have since been discharged.

Katherine Wells, the Lubbock Health Department's health director, said the children were treated at a Lubbock health care facility. They were from the area, but not Lubbock residents. Wells said at this time, there are no known sites of exposure outside the health care facility where they were tested. Since Lubbock is the medical hub for the South Plains, they traveled to Lubbock for testing.

“We’re working with the South Plains Public Health District and our medical partners to work and identify where there could have been some community exposures,” Wells said. The state health agency is helping with the disease investigation in Lubbock and the South Plains region.

Wells said the community should be aware of the cases, as well as health care professionals who see rashes or high fevers from their patients.

“We want people to know there were some cases here,” Wells said. “So if they have concerns and are unvaccinated, call your health provider or the health department for more information.”

Wells said that the last measles case in Lubbock County was in 2004.

Austin Public Health has also sent an alert about the potential measles outbreak, urging residents to take proactive measures to protect themselves and their families. The last confirmed measles case in the city of Austin was in December 2019.

“Vaccination is our best defense against measles and other preventable diseases,” said Desmar Walkes, medical director and health authority for Austin/Travis County. “By staying up to date on vaccinations, we not only protect ourselves but also the most vulnerable members of our community.”

The recent upswing in cases statewide comes as the measles vaccination rate among kindergarteners has dropped, from almost 97% in the 2019-2020 school year to 94.3% in 2023-24. Texas is among the majority of states that have seen vaccination declines since the pandemic.

In March 2024, there were already more reported cases of measles than in all of 2023, according to the CDC.

A result of the country’s vaccination program, measles was officially eliminated from the United States in 2000, meaning the disease has not spread continuously for over 12 months.

Experts recommend that children get the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine in two doses: the first between 12 months and 15 months of age and the second between 4 and 6 years old. One dose is about 93% effective at preventing measles infection, and two doses are about 97% effective.

Other diseases considered long-forgotten are also now making a comeback.


Whooping cough is returning to pre-pandemic levels. Polio, another disease thought to be eradicated, was detected in New York State wastewater in 2022.

Vaccine proponents fear statewide disease trends will worsen as Texas lawmakers this legislative session try to weaken vaccine mandates and more families opt out of immunizations.

Since 2018, the requests to the Texas Department of State Health Services for an exemption form have doubled from 45,900 to more than 93,000 in 2024.


Lawmakers have filed more than 20 vaccination-related bills, including a House joint resolution proposing an amendment to the Texas Constitution to preserve Texans’ right to refuse vaccination.

President Donald Trump’s re-election and his selection of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as his choice for U.S. Health and Human Services secretary has boosted the vaccine choice movement. Kennedy has previously made controversial comments about vaccines, which include linking them to autism in children.

During his confirmation hearing this week, U.S. Senators questioned his trip to Samoa in 2019, months before 83 people, mostly children, died of a measles outbreak there.


Kennedy has recently walked back some of his statements during the hearing, saying he is not “anti-vax” but “pro-safety” when asked to clarify his stance on vaccines.

“I support the measles vaccine. I support the polio vaccine. I will do nothing as HHS secretary that makes it difficult or discourages people from taking anything,” he said.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2025/01/30/texas-measles-vaccinations-schools/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.
Dirty white boys: Why the racist GOP made dismantling these initiatives their No. 1 target

D. Earl Stephens
January 29, 2025 
RAW STORY


REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/Pool


This is beyond horrid.”

Those four words were spoken from an old colleague of mine who now works under constant threat inside the Department of Interior. They illustrate better than I can in 1,000 words what we are watching right now as a racist, America-attacking, convicted felon puffs out his blubbery chest and takes a sledgehammer to our government to appease the billionaire oligarchy who are leading him around by his stuffy nose.

The tough guy from the yacht clubs of New York, is going full Mussolini while he saves America from all the pain he and his white collar gangs on Wall Street have inflicted on the working class for decades.


Let’s not confuse what is really going on here, people …

End of the day, this is nothing but a grotesque attack on the poor, and many of the programs that have been put in place to help, shelter, feed, and just give them a little hope that there is something better. Because if you can take a person’s hope and dignity away, you can hope they’ll just go away, too.

That’s how losers win, and democracies crumble.


Defenseless human beings in Red and Blue States are being scapegoated and blamed for what allegedly ails us, so the broken-heartless in America can feel superior about themselves after coming home from a job each day that never loves or pays them near enough. But, hey, at least while they’re groveling for an extra 50 cents an hour, and a few days of paid vacation, they can crack open a cold one, crank up Fox News, and look down on the “lesser” from their perch in some gutter.

President Lyndon Johnson described it best to then-White House staffer Bill Moyers after encountering overt racism during a trip to Tennessee after the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964:

"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."


And because Trump, who banged a porn star just weeks after his third wife gave birth to their only child, knows a thing or two about hurting people — I mean REALLY hurting them — he’s going hard after DEI programs that help good people and hurt complete lowlifes like him.

You see, by their rancid telling, long before we were ever a country, people of color have always been the problem here …

There’s absolutely nothing new in this repulsive, political play, because by definition the orange, little-fingered thug represents the Grand Old Party.


So let’s slam everything into reverse, and drill, baby, drill …

I typed all of this as a warning and a pretext for what’s coming next: A defense of DEI, and why it is absolutely vital we carry on with its worthy mission.

There’s a reason it is No. 1 on the mad king’s chopping block: Nothing threatens him more than an engaged, motivated, informed and diverse electorate.


There was a time I wasn’t fully convinced of the absolute need for DEI initiatives. I wrote about some of this a couple of years ago, so I apologize if you’ve come across it before.

The year was 2000. Bill Clinton was wrapping up his last year of the presidency, and looking back, it seems like we were in the final months of what passed for normalcy in America. The contentious Gore-Bush election was just around the corner (which was ironically and tragically decided by a Conservative Supreme Court), to be closely followed by 9/11, the Iraq War, the Great Recession, unhinged vitriol by the Right over President Obama’s tan suit, and finally ending with the election (and reelection) of a stone-cold traitor …

In the spring of that year, I was privileged to represent Stars & Stripes newspaper at American Society of Newspaper Editors Annual Managing Editors Conference in Reston, Virginia.


I had been with Stripes for nearly two years and had recently been promoted to managing editor of the important, editorially independent newspaper that serves our troops and their families overseas.

I was surrounded by my peers representing daily newspapers from Minneapolis to St. Louis, and from San Antonio to Denver. I reckon there were about 35 or 40 of us MEs at this thing, but it’s been long enough now that I can’t remember for sure.

For some reason I can, however, vividly recall looking at the schedule they handed us for the week while battling with a coffee and donut that first morning. On the afternoon of the fourth day we’d be talking about “Diversity in the Newsroom.”


“Uh-oh,” I mumbled to myself. “This is when we’re gonna catch hell from some well-paid, uninformed “expert” for failing to have enough diversity in our newsrooms. Can’t wait ...”

Before I tell you what happened in that session, and how it radically changed my thinking on the subject, I want to stop right here very quickly and pat myself on the back just a tiny bit.

At the time of this conference, I had 10 assistant managers reporting to me in the newsroom. Here was the makeup of these managers:Four white women
Three white men
Two African-American women
One Asian-American man


I’m not saying that I was staffing up the United Nations, but I am saying I worked with real intention to make sure my newsroom didn’t look like White Man’s Appreciation Day at the country club.

The overall makeup of our newsroom admittedly wasn’t as diverse, because getting and then keeping diverse journalists was a real challenge.

Because we were located in the National Press Building in downtown Washington, D.C., we were surrounded by two huge national newspapers: The Washington Post and USA Today.


Just as quickly as we were hiring and training up diverse talent, those papers were poaching them away from us. They, too, had diversity initiatives in place, and far bigger budgets at their disposal to lure away ambitious newspaper people from mid-sized papers like Stripes.

While it was a backhanded compliment that these newspapers were interested in our journalists, the constant churn presented a real challenge for us as we tirelessly pumped out seven editions of the paper to our readers all around the world 365 days a year.

By the time the Thursday afternoon diversity session of that conference rolled around I was feeling noble, haughty, and ready for what was coming at me.


The session was led by David Yarnold, the Managing Editor of the San Jose Mercury News. Turns out, I’d heard of Yarnold and his innovative initiatives to make diversity a key pillar in building a successful newsroom, but like any ornery journalist, I was skeptical as hell he really knew what he was talking about.

I was about to be schooled.

Yarnold opened by making light of the skepticism that wafted over the auditorium concerning this diabolical subject. He’d obviously done this a time or two, and slowly began winning us over, before he positively blew my mind.

Yarnold asked us what a good newspaper must do to be successful. There was some mumbling in the audience, before somebody finally piped up and said, “Accuracy! We must be accurate!”

“Good, good,” said Yarnold, “What else??”

Once again there was a murmuring, before somebody shouted, “Credibility! We must be credible!”

“Here, here,” we all shouted in agreement.

“OK, OK,” said Yarnold. “So … If a good newspaper has to be accurate … and a good newspaper has to be credible … Can a newspaper hope to be accurate and credible if the readers in its circulation area are comprised of 35 percent white people, 25 percent Hispanic people, 25 percent Black people, and 15 percent Asian people, while 85 percent of the newsroom is staffed with white people???????”

That’s when I said, “Whoa …”

I never looked at diversity in the newsroom, or any workplace, the same way again.

Look, all people are created equal in America, but not all people are treated equally. This has everything to do with gender, sexual orientation, the color of their skin and/or what station they started at in life.

Systematic and institutional racism abounds, and still holds far too many people down. If the majority of this reprehensible Supreme Court would rather ignore this undeniable fact, they can go straight to hell.

If a hardcore racist who sees “fine people on both sides” of a KKK rally wants to use that obscene ruling to inflict as much pain on people as possible, then he can most assuredly join them there.

How can we claim to be a credible, caring country, if we won’t do everything in our power to lift all of our citizens up to make sure everybody has a chance to shine and contribute to the American Experiment?

How can we claim that we are addressing this seismic issue accurately and get the results all of us deserve, if we can’t even have the decency and awareness to admit there is a problem in the first place?

If we are prepared to surrender this moral high ground, and what is most certainly good and right to the racist, authoritarian tyrants who are stepping on our necks without a fight, we will most assuredly join them in the low places they hide.

There will be no coming back from this, my friends, and it will be beyond horrid.


D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here, and follow him on Bluesky here.

D.C. air traffic controller was 'working 2 different tower positions' before crash: report
 AlterNet
January 30, 2025 

A plane flies next to an air traffic control near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, in the aftermath of the collision of American Eagle flight 5342 and a Black Hawk helicopter that crashed into the Potomac River, in Arlington, Virginia, U.S., January 30, 2025. 
REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein

One of the air traffic controllers at the Washington D.C. National Airport was reportedly doing the work of two employees before the deadly mid-air collision that killed dozens of people Wednesday night.

According to the New York Times, staffing at the airport's control tower on Wednesday was "not normal for the time of day and the volume of traffic." The paper cited an internal preliminary safety report from the Federal Aviation Administration (F.A.A.), which apparently mentioned that one unnamed air traffic controller who was communicating with helicopters was also "instructing planes that were landing and departing from its runways." Typically, those jobs are assigned to two controllers, rather than one.

CNN reporter Omar Jimenez corroborated that reporting on Thursday. He tweeted that an unnamed "air traffic control source" confided to the network's transportation reporter Pete Muntean: "there was one air traffic controller working two different tower positions at the time of the collision Wednesday night."


The Times reported that the reason there are usually two air traffic controllers handling communication between planes and helicopters is that pilots of those aircraft can sometimes use different radio frequencies. This means that sometimes helicopter and airline pilots may not be able to hear each other, which adds layers of complication if just one lone controller is handling that job.

As of September 2023, the D.C. National Airport had just 19 fully certified air traffic controllers on staff, whereas both the F.A.A. and the air traffic controllers' union have said there should be a target number of 30. Years of employee turnover and low federal spending levels have left both the D.C. airport tower and other airport control towers across the country chronically understaffed, with the Times reporting that many air traffic controllers work 10 hours a day, six days a week.

During a Thursday press conference, President Donald Trump suggested without evidence that diversity, equity and inclusion-based hiring practices (also known as "D.E.I.") by the administrations of former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden were to blame for the crash. Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) called Trump's comments "sickening" and suggested that they were a diversion from his January 22 decision to fire every member of the Aviation Security Advisory Committee, which had been out of commission for more than a week at the time of the crash.

Click here to read the Times' report in full (subscription required).



Human factors aviation psychologist identifies 'biggest red flag' in DC plane crash


Former National Transportation Safety Board investigator Alan Diehl on January 30, 2025 (Image: Screengrab via CNN / YouTube)
January 30, 2025
ALTERNET

67 people are feared dead after a fatal mid-air collision between a regional jet and a helicopter at the Washington D.C. National Airport on Wednesday night. Now, one former investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is offering one likely scenario that could have caused the crash.

On Thursday, Alan Diehl — a human factors aviation psychologist — joined CNN to discuss the fatal collision between an American Airlines flight from Wichita, Kansas and a Black Hawk U.S. Army helicopter. Diehl suggested that the fact that the Black Hawk pilots may have been wearing night vision goggles could have been a factor due to those goggles limiting their field of vision. However, he theorized that the helicopter pilots may have been distracted by something else entirely at the time of the crash.

"The biggest red flag that I've noticed so far is there was a third aircraft up there that night," Diehl told CNN's Brianna Keilar. "And when you look at that very painful video of the collision, you can see the lights of another aircraft. And the thing that the NTSB will have to sort out, is it possible that the Black Hawk crew — whether or not they had night vision goggles on — saw the other target, the other airplane, and thought it was the American jet.

READ MORE: 'Mass casualty incident': Video emerges of mid-air explosion that shut down DC airport

"And of course they were going well behind the other aircraft, but they may not have seen the American jet. It could have been hidden by part of the cockpit structure of the Black Hawk, whether or not they had the goggles on," he continued. "So that's the kind of thing that the NTSB will have to address."

Diehl, who worked on the NTSB's investigation into the 1982 Air Florida crash at the D.C. airport, went on to explain that in Black Hawk helicopters, there is a piece of metal that runs down the middle of the aircraft's windshield that is called the "A-pillar" in cars. He likened it to a driver's "blind spot" preventing them from seeing other vehicles on the road.

"If the American jet was behind that structure, it is possible ... by the time they realize that, 'oh my gosh, there's there's the American jet right in front of us,'" Diehl said. "'m a human factors aviation psychologist. So it takes several seconds for the human to respond. Plus the helicopter has got to respond. So it may well be that by the time they saw the American jet, they didn't have time to avoid it."

"Of course, the controllers are very busy, the pilots are busy. And normally this doesn't happen," he added. "But this night, things just went bad. Very, very badly. And that's what the the safety board will have to address. Now, what they'll do is they'll look at the eye position of the two pilots and the Black Hawk to see what structures might have been blocking their view of the American jet."

READ MORE: Trump's claim diversity and Democrats 'could have' caused deadly collision causes backlash

Watch the video of Diehl's segment below, or by clicking this link.


Trump reportedly drove out key aviation safety officials before crash — because of Musk


Musk had complained that Whitaker was blocking his goal of sending humans to Mars.

Travis Gettys
January 30, 2025
RAW STORY

Donald Trump and Elon Musk watch the launch of the sixth test flight of the SpaceX Starship rocket in Brownsville, Texas, U.S., November 19, 2024.
 Brandon Bell/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo


President Donald Trump fired or pushed out some of the relevant officials who would otherwise be responsible for looking into a collision between a passenger jet and a U.S. Army helicopter near Washington, D.C.

The Federal Aviation Administration currently has no Senate-confirmed leader after top administrator Michael Whitaker was forced out under pressure from Elon Musk, who had demanded his resignation in September for proposing fines of more than $600,000 for SpaceX over safety concerns, reported The Daily Beast.

“The FAA space division is harassing SpaceX about nonsense that doesn’t affect safety while giving a free pass to Boeing even after NASA concluded that their spacecraft was not safe enough to bring back the astronauts," Musk posted Sept. 17 on his X platform.

Aviation industry veteran Chris Rocheleau was sworn as deputy FAA administrator on Jan. 21, the day after Donald Trump was sworn in, and Whitaker resigned one year into his five-year term, so Rocheleau is currently in charge of responding to the worst air disaster since at least 2009.

“The United States is the safest and most complex airspace in the world, and that is because of your commitment to the safety of the flying public,” Whitaker wrote in an email to FAA employees when he announced his resignation in December.

Musk has complained that Whitaker was blocking his goal of sending humans to Mars.

“The fundamental problem is that humanity will forever be confined to Earth unless there is radical reform at the FAA!” the tech mogul tweeted at an Australian YouTuber who says the FAA “should not exist."

Trump also fired the heads of the Transportation Security Administration and all the members of the Aviation Security Advisory Committee the day after taking office, saying that the Department of Homeland Security was eliminating the membership of all advisory committees to eliminate the purported misuse of resources and ensuring that DHS activities prioritize our national security.”

The aviation security committee was mandated by Congress after the 1988 PanAm 103 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, so it technically still exists but won't have any members to carry out its responsibilities to oversee safety issues at airlines and airports.

Before the newly inaugurated president reportedly fired them, the panel included representatives from airlines, major unions and members of a group associated with the victims of the PanAm 103 bombing, and the vast majority of their recommendations for safety measures have been adopted over the years.

“I naively thought, ‘oh they’re not going to do anything in the new administration, to put security at risk — aviation security at risk,’ but I’m not so sure,” said Stephanie Bernstein, whose husband was killed in the bombing and served on the committee, eight days before the collision that killed 67 people in both aircraft.

The Trump administration also sent an email this week to 2.3 million federal employees from the Office of Personnel Management, which is now packed with Musk allies and loyalists, asking them to commit to the MAGA mission or accept a buyout.

Air traffic controllers were among the millions of government workers who received the email, which used similar language to a message sent to Twitter employees when Musk took over in fall 2022, even though the FAA has already been trying to manage a persistent shortage of those crucial aviation safety workers.

The investigation into the collision will be managed by the independent National Transportation Safety Board, which is chaired by Jennifer Homendy – who has also clashed with Musk over the safety of self-driving software in his Tesla vehicles.
Trump blames ‘diversity’ for deadly Washington airliner collision


By AFP
January 30, 2025

Part of the wreckage is seen as rescue boats search the waters of the Potomac River near Washington, on January 30, 2025 - Copyright AFP Andrew CABALLERO-REYNOLDS

US President Donald Trump — speaking as the bodies of 67 people were being pulled from Washington’s Potomac River — launched an extraordinary political attack Thursday, blaming diversity hires for the midair collision between an airliner and a military helicopter.

The Republican confirmed the deaths of all those aboard both aircraft, and also cited pilot error on the helicopter in the nighttime crash.

But he chiefly used a press conference to open fire at what he said were left-wing diversity practices under his predecessors Joe Biden and Barack Obama that he said kept out good employees at the Federal Aviation Administration.

“I put safety first. Obama, Biden and the Democrats put policy first,” Trump said. “They actually came out with a directive: ‘too white.’ And we want the people that are competent.”

As Trump spoke in the White House, police divers searched for more bodies in the water.

Wreckage of the Bombardier jet operated by an American Airlines subsidiary protruded from the surface, surrounded by emergency vessels and diving teams. It had been carrying 64 people.

The army Blackhawk helicopter, which had three soldiers aboard, was also in the river.

“We are now at a point where we are switching from a rescue operation to a recovery operation,” Washington Fire Chief John Donnelly said. Twenty eight bodies had already been found.


The trajectories and altitudes of a military helicopter and a passenger jet which collided midair in Washington on January 29. — © AFP

The collision — the first major crash in the United States since 2009 when 49 people were killed near Buffalo, New York — occurred late evening on Wednesday as the airliner came into land at Reagan National Airport after a routine flight from Wichita, Kansas.

Reagan National is a major airport located only a short distance from downtown Washington, the Pentagon and other major sites in the capital. The airspace is extremely busy, with civilian and military aircraft a constant presence.

Dramatic audio from air traffic controllers showed them repeatedly asking the helicopter if it had the passenger jet “in sight,” and then just before the crash telling it to “pass behind” the plane.

– Trump politicizes crash –




Multiple agencies responded to the reported collision of a passenger jet and military helicopter over the Potomac River in Washington. — © AFP

Trump opened his press conference by speaking of the nation’s “anguish” and said that the investigation would take time.

However, he then launched into an extended broadside against so-called diversity, equity and inclusion policies.


US President Donald Trump launched into a political attack on diversity hiring practices at a press conference on Washington’s deadly plane crash. — © AFP

Trump — who began his presidency a week ago with an onslaught against decades-old measures aimed at preventing sexism and racism in the United States — singled out Biden’s openly gay transport secretary Pete Buttigieg.

“He’s run it right into the ground with his diversity,” Trump said.

The message was hammered home as Trump’s vice president, JD Vance, and new defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, took turns at the podium to repeat that diversity measures kept capable Americans out of responsible jobs.

Asked again by reporters whether he was blaming workplace diversity for the crash, Trump answered: “It could have been.”

– Skaters among victims –




Two rescue boats pull debris from the water after a US passenger jet and a military helicopter crashed over the Potomac River near Reagan National Airport in Washington. — © AFP

Hundreds of rescuers were rapidly at the scene, but found themselves battling darkness and floating ice through the night. Some of the debris was found a mile downriver.

Among those on the airliner were several US skaters and coaches, US Figure Skating said. Officials in Moscow also confirmed the presence of Russian couple Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov, who won the 1994 world pairs title.

The violence of the collision soon made it clear that survivors were unlikely.

“I just saw a fireball and it was gone,” one air traffic controller was heard telling a colleague after communication with the helicopter was cut.

– What happened? –


Transport officials said both aircraft were on standard flight patterns on a clear night with good visibility.



Police continue to search the Potomac River but have given up hope of finding anyone alive from the collision between a passenger jet and a military helicopter – Copyright AFP ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS

Hegseth said the Black Hawk chopper had “a fairly experienced crew that was doing a required annual night evaluation.”

“Do I think this was preventable? Absolutely,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said.

Trump, in addition to blaming racial and other kinds of diversity policies, offered extended remarks on the flight paths.

The helicopter was “going at an angle that was unbelievably bad,” Trump said.

“The air traffic controller said, ‘Do you see… Do you see him?’ But there was very little time left when that was stated,” the president added, blaming a “confluence of bad decisions.”


Trump’s claim diversity and Democrats 'could have' caused deadly collision draws backlash


U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to reporters about Wednesday's deadly midair collision between a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter and American Eagle flight 5342 near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, in the Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House in Washington, U.S., January 30, 2025. REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY

January 30, 2025
ALTERNET

As first responders work to recover bodies from the freezing waters of the Potomac, President Donald Trump, without evidence, suggested that diversity hiring and Democrats were at least partly responsible for Wednesday night’s mid-air collision that claimed over 60 lives. His politicized remarks from the podium on Thursday have sparked widespread outrage, compounding the grief of many Americans grappling with the nation’s first fatal aviation disaster since 2009. In addition to “DEI,” Trump also baselessly pointed fingers at former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, as well as former U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg.

The NTSB has only just begun its investigation, which could take years to determine the cause of the deadly collision.

“Minutes after saying the airport collision shouldn’t be politicized, and that it should bring Americans together in common cause, Trump blames Democrats and DEI for the deadly incident,” The Wall Street Journal’s Alex Ward reported, which is in line with the paper’s reporting.

RELATED: ‘This Is His Responsibility’: Trump’s Response to Deadly Mid-Air Collision Stuns Critics

“I do want to point out that various articles that appeared prior to my entering office,” CNN reported Trump said, at a press conference to address the horrific disaster that has shaken many Americans. “And here’s one, the FAA’s diversity push includes focus on hiring people with severe intellectual and psychiatric disabilities. That is amazing. And then it says FAA says people with severe disabilities are most underrepresented segment of the workforce said ‘they want them in, and they want them, they can be air traffic controllers. I don’t think so. This was January 14, so that was a week before I entered office. They put a big push to put diversity into the FAA’s program,” Trump said



Trump claimed that during his first administration, “I changed the Obama standards from very mediocre at best to extraordinary.” He also claimed that when he “left office and Biden took over, he changed them back to lower than ever before.”

“I put safety first, Obama, Biden and the Democrats put policy first, and they put politics at a level that nobody’s ever seen because this was the lowest level,” Trump alleged, NBC News reported, adding, “their policy was horrible, and their politics was even worse.”


The President also lashed out at former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, calling him “a disaster,”

“He was a disaster as a mayor, he ran his city into the ground, and he’s a disaster now. He’s just got a good line of bullshit,” Trump announced live in-air, before alleging Secretary Buttigieg ran the Transportation Department “right into the ground with his diversity.”




Buttigieg quickly responded.

READ MORE: ‘Crisis Deepening’: Funding Freeze Remains White House Says After OMB Memo Pulled

“Despicable,” the former Transportation Secretary wrote on social media. “As families grieve, Trump should be leading, not lying. We put safety first, drove down close calls, grew Air Traffic Control, and had zero commercial airline crash fatalities out of millions of flights on our watch. President Trump now oversees the military and the FAA. One of his first acts was to fire and suspend some of the key personnel who helped keep our skies safe. Time for the President to show actual leadership and explain what he will do to prevent this from happening again.”

The New York Times’ Peter Baker observed, “Trump’s move to blame the crash on diversity reflects his instinct to immediately frame major events through his political lens whether facts fit or not. After the terrorist attack in New Orleans, he blamed immigration even though the attacker was a US citizen born in Texas.”

Constitutional law professor and political scientist Anthony Michael Kreis remarked, “The commander-in-chief should be offering condolences and competent solutions rather blaming women and people of color for everything that goes wrong. Racism and misogyny in response to a national tragedy.”

“This isn’t about making America great again,” commented Professor of Law and former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance. “It makes me profoundly sad that an American tragedy, which requires investigation to assess the cause and prevent future accidents has been politicized & shoehorned into Trump’s anti-inclusion policy for anyone who isn’t a sis [sic] white christian nationalist male or supporter. It makes me sadder that so many people still don’t understand that he’s trying to drive wedges in between us to accumulate more power for himself.”

DNC Chair Jaime Harrison added, “Words can’t express my disgust. In a moment in which you should lead the nation in mourning and navigating a tragedy this heartless imbecile finds ways to divide.”

“It’s one thing for internet pundits to spew off conspiracy theories, it’s another for the president of the United States to throw out idle speculation as bodies are still being recovered and families still being notified,” Senate Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said, as CBS News reported. “It just turns your stomach.”

Others pointed to a memo posted to the White House’s website, titled (in all-caps), “Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Ends DEI Madness And Restores Excellence And Safety Within The Federal Aviation Administration.”

Watch the videos above or at this link.


Crashing the economy: Inside Trump's blueprint for more grifting


Thom Hartmann,
 AlterNet
January 30, 2025 

Photo illustration: Christopher Sciacca/Shutterstock

Democrats are warning that Trump’s threats to increase our national debt by as much as $7 trillion (with new tax cuts for billionaires), shift billions of Treasury dollars into crypto, and impose tariffs on imported goods risk creating a financial crises and maybe even a second Republican Great Depression.

After all, tariffs will jack up inflation, crypto is incredibly volatile, and increasing the national debt will pull hundreds of billions out of the treasury in interest payments that could have otherwise been used to help the American people, rebuild our infrastructure, and upgrade our schools. Any of the three could trip off a national economic emergency: all three could be a perfect storm.

Trump, though, seems unconcerned, even though Republican economists are also signaling their alarm. Which raises the question: Why is he so willing to risk an economic crash on his watch with these risky policies?

To the average person, the idea of a recession or even a crash like we saw under Bush in 2008, Reagan in 1981/82, or Hoover in 1929 seems grim. Millions are laid off work, businesses are in crisis as bankruptcies erupt across the nation, and poverty explodes during a time when more than half of American families live paycheck-to-paycheck.

To understand why a billionaire like Trump — and the billionaires who put and keep him in office — might be not just willing but enthusiastic about creating an economic crisis, you first must view it from a rightwing billionaires’ point of view.

— First, a time of economic disaster is a great excuse to gut government programs or reduce taxes with the excuse that federal tax revenues have cratered along with the economy. Both Reagan and George W. Bush used recessions as an excuse to “stimulate the economy” by cutting trillions from the taxes of billionaires and big corporations.

Reagan’s Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1981 used that year’s severe recession as an excuse to reduce funding for social programs including food stamps, Medicaid, and Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). George W. Bush used his recession as the justification to try to cut Social Security, although that plan died in the face of widespread public opposition.

— Second, times of economic crisis increase the tolerance for strongman governments. FDR, for example, pushed through a number of then-radical programs using the Republican Great Depression as his excuse. Rightwing politicians were beside themselves, calling him a tyrant, communist, and usurper of constitutional authority, but the majority of Americans at the time were largely with him.

In Europe, Hitler used the Depression to his advantage when he came to power in 1933, demanding — and receiving — massive emergency powers including the ability to rule by decree and outlaw his political opponents.


Trump could similarly use a severe economic crisis to consolidate his power and ram through the authoritarian Project 2025 wish-list as a starting point to take America down the road to an America First form of neofascism.

His billionaire social media backers are already seeding the ground. The US and the UK both embraced neoliberalism (destroy unions, cut taxes on the rich, embrace free trade) around the same time (Thatcher/Reagan) with similar consequences for the middle class of each country.

A new study by Channel 4 in England, reported in The Times, found:

“Most young people are in favour of turning the UK into a dictatorship, according to a ‘deeply worrying’ study, which has revealed an acceptance of authoritarianism and radicalism among Generation Z.
“Fifty-two per cent of Gen Z — people aged between 13 and 27 — said they thought ‘the UK would be a better place if a strong leader was in charge who does not have to bother with parliament and elections.’
“Thirty-three per cent suggested the UK would be better off ‘if the army was in charge.’”

Where did they get these ideas? From social media, it turns out, including the feeds of accused racists, misogynists, and neofascists like “Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson,” who were “trusted” by 42 percent of British young men.

Fifty-eight percent said they trusted social media posts more than traditional news sources. And 45 percent believe women have gained too many rights, echoing Tate’s argument that, as young British men told Channel 4, “We have gone so far in promoting women’s equality that we are discriminating against men.”

Here in America, the percentage of young men who believe women have acquired too much power has increased from 32% to 45% in just five years, while fully 52% say they trust what they read or see on social media.


— And third, billionaires often make the most money when there’s a crash. They absolutely love market collapses because they are, uniquely, in a position to profit from the same economic downturns that wipe out average working people or those who’ve invested their 401Ks in the market.

This is a story as old as capitalism. During the Republican Great Depression of the 1930s, for example, some of America’s greatest fortunes were made or massively expanded.

My (late) friend Gloria Swanson once told me over dinner in her apartment how her former manager and lover Joe Kennedy, who’d made a pile of money manipulating the stock market in the 1920s, bailed out as the market began its slide in 1929 and even shorted the market, increasing his wealth. But once it had crashed, when everybody was broke, she said, he bought stock with a vengeance.


“Cash is king” was the phrase of the day, and Kennedy was well stocked in cash (he even bought a movie studio). By the end of the Depression, he was one of the richest men in the nation.

J. Paul Getty’s favorite phrase was, “Buy when everyone else is selling, and hold on until everyone else is buying.” It’s something you can only do at scale if you’re fabulously rich to begin with.

The afternoon of the Great Crash — October’s Black Tuesday under Republican President Hoover in 1929 — Getty skipped his parents’ golden wedding anniversary to head to Wall Street where he began buying stocks, particularly in small oil companies that were in trouble.


“It is the opportunity of a lifetime to get oil companies for practically nothing,” Getty later wrote. Out of that, he became one of the richest men in the world.

Flash forward to the modern era.

When Wall Street banks — exploiting Republican-demanded deregulation of banking and investment rules — crashed the American economy in 2007, home prices (and, thus, homeowner equity) collapsed by 21%. Over 10 million Americans lost their homes to banking predators like “Foreclosure King” Steve Mnuchin, and tens of millions of others were underwater.

The stock market plummeted by over 50% in the last year of Bush’s presidency. On October 9, 2007 the Dow was at its all-time peak of 14,164 but by March 5, 2009 it had collapsed to 6,594.


While over 8 million Americans lost their jobs and were wiped out as the Bush Crash started today’s homelessness crises, the top 1 percent (and the Bush and Cheney families) saw it as a buying opportunity.

Working-class people were desperately unloading stocks in their 401Ks at a loss just to pay the bills, as wages plummeted in the face of a collapsing labor market.

But the morbidly rich were doing great.


Between 2009 — the bottom of the Bush Crash — and 2012 when the recovery really began, the top 1 percent of Americans saw their income grow by over 31 percent. Fully 95 percent of all the income increases in the country were seized by the top 1 percent of Americans during that period.

As the economy recovered, rich people who’d used their increased income to buy stocks at the market bottom rode the S&P 500 up by 462 percent to 2020. A billion dollars invested in 2009 became $4.62 billion in just 11 years, a period during which the combined wealth of American billionaires went up by over 80 percent.

Then they did it again 10 years later!


The Trump/Covid Crash of 2020, for example, presented America’s morbidly rich with another brand new and huge opportunity to get richer on top of a crisis brutalizing the rest of America.

Once again the market collapsed, this time under Republican Trump, and working people, now out of work, were selling their stocks at a loss just to pay the mortgage and buy food.

But for the wealthy, it was a gift from God.

March 16, 2020 — just after Trump declared a pandemic and lockdown — the Dow sustained the largest single-day crash in its entire history. For the investor class, Trump, and his billionaire buddies, this was an even better opportunity than the Bush crash of 2007!

Fewer than three months later, on June 4th, we learned that the seven richest people in America had seen their fortunes increase by fully 50 percent.

And with Trump’s massive tax cut for his fellow billionaires, they could keep most all of it: by that time the average American billionaire was paying less than 4 percent in income taxes (a situation that persists to this day).

Just during that one single terrible “crash” year of 2020, the Institute for Policy Studies documents, the world’s 2,365 billionaires saw their wealth increase by a full 54%, as U.S. billionaires saw their net worth surge 62 percent by $1.8 trillion. Average billionaire wealth worldwide increased 27% in that one year alone.

And now it begins anew: Republicans are meeting at Trump’s Doral golf resort in Miami today to plan strategy.

Don’t expect them to argue that it would be a bad thing if his plans provoked an economic crisis: To the contrary, that may well be exactly what they — and their billionaire owners — are hoping for.
THAT'S A DISQUALIFIER 
They're both dangerous': Senators worried Patel and Gabbard refused constitutional pledge

Sarah K. Burris
RAW STORY
January 30, 2025


President-elect Donald Trump said he would nominate former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (R-HI) to serve as the Director of National Intelligence, but critics and analysts aren't certain that will actually happen. (Photo credit: lev radin)




This article was paid for by Raw Story subscribers. Not a subscriber? Try us and go ad-free for $1. Prefer to give a one-time tip? Click here.


WASHINGTON — Senators questioned two appointees from President Donald Trump who aim to oversee top national security posts on Thursday and some of those members have serious concerns.



Kash Patel, nominated to serve a 10-year term as the head of the FBI, faced a combative committee where he was forced to explain his conspiracy theories and pledge of retribution against his enemies list.

Tulsi Gabbard, nominated to lead the intelligence community as the director of national intelligence, similarly was forced to answer for her proposed legislation to pardon Edward Snowden and her relationships with Syrian and Russian leaders.
























































Speaking to Raw Story, Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) said that one of the most disturbing answers Patel gave was when he asked who the FBI works for.

ALSO READ: 'Worried and confused': GOP senators say their phones are blowing up over Trump budget freeze

"I think I asked this two or three different ways," the senator recalled. "And he said, 'Well, we report to,' — and I said, 'Okay you're part of the Department of Justice. I agree with that, but I asked Attorney General [Pam] Bondi this question. Who do you work for? And [Patel] said basically, the White House."


Coons said Bondi cited the American people and the Constitution.

The second question he took issue with was Patel's response to questions about how he would respond if Trump asked him to do something illegal, unethical, or unconstitutional.

Coons took issue with Patel's answer: "If directed to do — I would never break the law."


"You have to be willing to refuse an order and resign," Coons said, recalling that he asked the same question of Christopher Wray and his two previous predecessors.

"He just wouldn't..." Coons said, trailing off. "It gives me real pause because he's not — Bill Barr answered easily. Pam Bondi answered easily. Merrick Garland answered easily. I do that with every nominee."

ALSO READ: Trump Cabinet pick raises alarm on unchecked domestic terrorism


Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) said there are issues with Gabbard's "qualifications and experience" to lead the intelligence community, which oversees 18 intelligence agencies.

When it comes to Patel, she said she has "Serious concerns about his ability to do the job in an objective and fair way and not [be] driven by an ideological desire to go after people, including the media."

Raw Story noted that Patel said that Democrats are "making up lies."


"Well, we are using his own words," Hirono quipped.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) agreed Patel and Gabbard "are both dangerous."

"It's unpleasant to be told we're making up lies when we're using his actual words and when we're using the actual words of his Trump-appointed colleagues who work with him. So, there's a disconnect with his defense, which I think is for the TV and for Trump and the actual facts of the matter," he continued.


"Honesty is not the watch-word here," Whitehouse noted.

ALSO READ: Kash Patel's top enemy probably isn't who you think it is

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) criticized Gabbard for being glib when he asked about her how she would respond to an illegal order from Trump.


Gabbard said, "I don't believe for a second that President Trump would do anything to break the law." Trump was found guilty on 34 felony counts in the state of New York.

"You know, that's a constitutional question," Wyden said, calling that question "the ball game." He called her answer "very disappointing."

"This is constitutional lawlessness, let me use that word specifically," said Wyden. "If they say we're just going to blow off illegal orders.