A ‘little thumb sticking out in the Everglades’ has cost taxpayers millions in flood control

Jenny Staletovich MIAMI HERALD
Tue, January 19, 2021

On the edge of the Everglades, less than a couple thousand feet from a backdoor entrance to the national park, the Las Palmas neighborhood teeters like a forlorn scheme to conquer the marshes.

Perfectly gridded lots are filled with heavy equipment, plant nurseries and a handful of houses. Goats and dogs wander fenced yards. And after a good rain, there’s water everywhere.

“I left for work in the morning before 8 a.m. and we had puddles. No big deal,” resident Raul Arrazcaeta said in November after a downpour the night before. “When I got home at 5:30, I had five inches of water on my driveway. Right now, I’m sitting on my porch and the only thing that doesn’t have any water is my porch.”


More than just another South Florida neighborhood with a flooding problem, Las Palmas has come to symbolize what happens when water managers try to negotiate with the Everglades — and the price they pay: Flood control for the neighborhood that sits in the footprint of Everglades restoration has so far cost about $180 million, according to estimates by the national park.


WLRN · 8:33 am - 'It's A Little Thumb Sticking Out In The Everglades' — And It's Cost Taxpayers Millions

“It’s a little thumb sticking out in the Everglades,” Bob Johnson, a hydrologist and director of Everglades National Park’s natural resources center, said during a tour of the area last year. “It just shows you how anomalous this one area is, how hard it is for us to try to keep an area like this dry.”

Now, water managers are back trying to work out a new deal for a neighborhood that some see as blocking billions spent to repair the River of Grass and restore Everglades National Park.

At their last meeting, the South Florida Water Management District governing board wrestled with two options: Construct seepage walls that could extend 65 feet underground to keep water out, or try to buy out land owners. Again.

“We’ve spent a billion dollars,” said board member Ron Bergeron. “And we have this obstacle in our way. “

Water flooded Raul Arrazcaeta’s Las Palmas yard in November.

What the district decides could have implications for work to come since water leaks from wetlands up and down the park’s borders. Another study being conducted by the district is examining the use of underground seepage walls from Kendall to Florida City.

“We’ve been full of water for almost three months now,” Jorge Luis Garcia complained last month. Garcia bought his four bedroom house that backs up against sawgrass marshes in 1978. “They say they want to control the water. But they didn’t control the water. It’s worse.”

Since Miami-Dade County first zoned the cheap swamp land for industrial use in the 1950s, the swath of land, also known as the 8.5 Square-Mile-Area west of Kendall, has been plagued by flooding.

When the state of Florida and federal government got serious about restoring the Everglades in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers — which oversees federal restoration work — tried to buy out landowners, knowing efforts to restore Shark River Slough in the newly expanded park borders would worsen flooding.

Property owners fought the effort, pushed for flood control and ignited a bitter fight.

“The parties traded accusations of stupidity, insensitivity, extremism and racism,” wrote author Michael Grunwald in his book “The Swamp.”

South Florida water managers are considering buying out 119 properties that include 18 homes on the western edge of Las Palmas neighborhood, also known as the 8.5 Square-Mile-Area.

“But there was one point on which they all agreed: This was a bad sign. If an $80 million Everglades restoration project that affected 350 families over eight and a half square miles was hopelessly bogged down, what would happen to an $8 billion [now estimated at $16 billion] Everglades restoration project that affected millions of people over 18,000 square miles.”

So Congress struck a compromise. When it agreed to let the park expand and restore Shark River, it ordered the Army Corps to provide protection from additional flooding caused by restoration efforts.

That compromise ended up laying the groundwork for years of feuding.

“There are all kinds of flood control fights in South Florida because we’ve gotten rid of half the Everglades and the other half is an ecological mess,” Grunwald said. “But what’s so maddening about the 8.5 Square-Mile-Area is that it’s in the Everglades. It’s on the wrong side of the levee. It’s not the part that’s supposed to have flood control.”

It’s also the kind of compromise that has complicated restoration all over the Everglades — from the farmers and ranchers who need to water and drain their fields, and wind up polluting Lake Okeechobee, to the gated communities, shopping malls and other development that paved over marshes.

Jorge Luis Garcia’s house backs up to sawgrass marshes in the Las Palmas neighborhood.

“It’s this kind of inevitable result of politicians who want to make everybody happy and don’t want to gore anyone’s ox, which is sort of admirable and understandable, but is not the way to restore the Everglades,” Grunwald said.

Flooding is getting worse now because Everglades restoration is picking up speed after decades of plodding along.

Two new bridges over the Tamiami Trail and other projects are putting more water than ever before in Everglades National Park and down Shark River and Taylor Sloughs — the shallow channels that connect the southern Everglades to the River of Grass fed by Lake Okeechobee.

Johnson said the restoration work isn’t necessarily adding more water, but it is keeping more water in the park.

After his tour with scientists from the National Academies of Sciences, he said water seeping from the park remained one of the thorniest problems.

“The limestone aquifer that we sit on is one of the most porous aquifers in the world,” he said. “So while we’re moving forward with restoration and trying to raise water level, if we raise the water level and we don’t treat the seepage, then we’re just going to increase the loss to the eastern areas, increase the risk of flooding, but also just lose our ability to retain water.”

A back entrance to Everglades National Park is less than a half mile from the neighborhood.

In December, the South Florida Water Management board gave its staff until March to contact landowners to inquire about buying 119 properties, which staff said could cost just over $25 million. They also want to hear more details about constructing flood walls, estimated to cost between $11 million and $15 million, and a fraction of the $16 billion restoration price tag.

As restoration moves forward, Grunwald said the 8.5 Square-Mile Area stands as a stark lesson.

“The concessions that were made to politics to try to keep everybody happy 20 years ago are showing up now in the way that scientists warned about 20 years ago,” he said. “You know, nobody’s going to lose their flood control. Nobody’s going to lose their water supply. We’re not going to have any requirements for water conservation or smart growth. Instead, we’re going to just ask the Army Corps of Engineers, which is not exactly Picasso, to paint this restoration masterpiece. At the same time, we’re shrinking the canvas every day.”

Meanwhile in Las Palmas, Garcia said after 40 years, he’s fed up and ready to strike a deal.

“If they want to have a meeting or whatever, I’m ready to talk to them. I’m willing to work everything out,” he said. “The way that we are right now, we can’t live like that. There’s water everywhere and the water doesn’t go away.”

This story was produced in partnership with the Florida Climate Reporting Network, a multi-newsroom initiative founded by the Miami Herald, the South Florida Sun Sentinel, The Palm Beach Post, the Orlando Sentinel, WLRN Public Media and the Tampa Bay Times.

 

One of a kind': calls to protect Alabama's 60,000-year-old underwater forest

Paola Rosa-Aquino

Wed, January 20, 2021, 3:30 AM

When divers jump into a particular stretch of water off the coast of Alabama, they travel back to a time before humans arrived in the new world.

Submerged below the waters are the remains of a cypress tree forest that grew 60,000 years ago, but was inundated by the Gulf of Mexico and preserved from decomposition beneath sediment. Nothing like Alabama’s underwater forest, in terms of age or scale, has ever been found.

Now efforts are underway to protect the expanse of tree stumps from exploitation by designating the site a marine sanctuary – some firms have sought to salvage the wood for commercial use – and to see if the underwater forest harbors new compounds for medicine.

It took giant waves driven by Hurricane Ivan in 2004 to exhume the forest from its seafloor grave. In 2012, environmental journalist Ben Raines went in search of the arboreal seascape after he was tipped off by a savvy source in the local diving community.

One of Raines’s articles about “swimming with dinosaurs” caught the attention of Kristine DeLong, a paleoclimatologist at Louisiana State University (and an avid scuba diver herself). She immediately called asking if she could carbon date some samples from the site.

After sending samples out to a colleague for dating, she received an email saying the trees were – to her surprise – ‘radiocarbon dead’. “Essentially, that means they’re older than 50,000 years,” DeLong said. “We did it three times to make sure.” She then turned to a team of geologists who collected core samples from the seafloor and confirmed the results.

With that, Raines and DeLong formed a partnership to extract as much knowledge from the site as possible while also preserving it. “From a scientific perspective, it’s a gold mine of information that we just don’t have access to anywhere else,” Delong says. She has worked with a cadre of scientists – from dendrochronologists to geologists and marine biologists – using only non-invasive instruments to collect rare information on Ice Age-era climate, rainfall, insects and plants.

The forest’s bald cypress trunks are teeming with life, including shipworms – types of clams that like munching on wood so much they’re known as the “termite of the sea”. Researchers are collecting these and other marine creatures from the depths to study their chemical potential to produce life-saving medicines on the surface.

But the site is at risk from salvage companies seeking to dig up the ancient logs and sell them. According to DeLong, the Army Corps of Engineers had received a permit request in 2020 from a furniture company seeking to salvage wood from the site.

With a wealth of potential information and research, it’s no wonder scientists have worked for years to stop the valuable 50,000-year-old wood from becoming high-end coffee tables. In October, a Republican representative from Alabama, Bradley Byrne, proposed the creation of a national marine sanctuary encompassing the ancient underwater forest.

“The underwater forest is another unique Alabama gem with global importance. As the only known site where a coastal ice age forest this old has been preserved in place, we must take action now to protect it,” Byrne said in a statement when he introduced the bill.

“This is a one of a kind natural wonder, like Yellowstone National Park, or the Grand Canyon,” Raines told AL.com in October. “ It should be protected from exploitation and saved for the American public, just like those amazing sites on land.”

Under this designation, the sunken forest would stay open to tourists, fishermen and research groups, but it would be protected rom logging, peat harvesting and other disruptive activities. Though Congress didn’t pass the underwater forest bill before Byrne left office earlier this month, he told NBC he’s very hopeful the next Congress will.

With President-elect Joe Biden’s prioritization of environmental issues, and his nomination of public lands advocate Deb Haaland to lead the interior department, experts are hopeful about the forest’s prospects.

DeLong added that the forest hints at how the contours of our world are delicate and impermanent, giving us a glimpse into ancient climate change during a period in which they suspect sea levels may have been rising as quickly as eight feet every 100 years.

“As the climate continues to change, what’s today land could very well be ocean,” said DeLong. “I think it’s a really powerful message.”

108 years after racially motivated trial, court docket for Black heavyweight champ Jack Johnson goes public



Jason Meisner, Chicago Tribune
Wed, January 20, 2021


CHICAGO — The building hasn’t seen a trial in months, so to have a jury verdict suddenly pop up on the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse docket last week was unusual enough.

Then there was the date the verdict was returned: May 13, 1913.

That was the day an all-white jury in Chicago convicted Black heavyweight champion Jack Johnson of federal charges of transporting a white woman across state lines, a case that would later be held up as a deplorable example of institutional racism in early 20th century America.

Johnson was posthumously pardoned by President Donald Trump in 2018. But it wasn’t until Friday that the paperwork — along with images of some of the handwritten documents from Johnson’s trial — were officially entered into the court’s electronic court docketing system, marking a final chapter in a sensational saga that garnered international headlines 109 years ago.

U.S. District Court Clerk Thomas Bruton said presidential pardons are typically scanned and entered electronically onto a case when they come in, making it part of the official record. But in the case of Johnson, there was nothing to attach the pardon to, leaving the clerk’s office in a bit of a quandary.

The clerk’s ledger for federal Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis includes the case caption, “United States vs. John Arthur Johnson, alias Jack Johnson,” and a charge, "Vio of White Slave Traffic Act."

“When I got this from the White House there was nowhere to go with it,” Bruton told the Chicago Tribune on Tuesday. “I wasn’t going to just put it in a vault somewhere and sit on it.”

So Bruton instructed one of his deputies to do some research, and what he came back with was startling. At the National Archives center on the city’s Southwest Side, not only were there several digitized images of the trial court’s original handwritten ledger, but also an image of the jury verdict form and the scrawled signatures of the 12 people who convicted Johnson.

“It was pretty rare for them to have this from a case this long ago,” Bruton said.

Included in the ledger for federal Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis was the case number, 12-5066, a caption, written in flowing cursive, “United States vs. John Arthur Johnson, alias Jack Johnson,” and the charge, “Vio of White Slave Traffic Act.”

Below that were two pages of entries from various court dates in Johnson’s case, along with the clerk’s fees at the time, including 25 cents for the filing of the indictment and a dime for an attorney filing a notice of withdrawal.

Creating an electronic docket for Johnson’s case did come with one glitch. The system only counts the last two digits of the year a case was filed, so there was no way to distinguish it from cases filed in 2012, Bruton said.

He also hesitated — if only for a moment — posting the jurors’ signatures, which typically is not done because of privacy issues. In this case, the panel’s members are long dead.

“I don’t think jurors’ security is an issue anymore,” Bruton said.

Nicknamed the “Galveston Giant,” Johnson was a legendary boxing figure and became the sport’s first Black world heavyweight champion at the height of the Jim Crow era in 1908 when he knocked out Tommy Burns in Sydney, Australia. Two years later, after Johnson retained his title by beating a white former champion, Jim Jeffries, deadly riots erupted across the country.

Johnson was also a larger than life figure outside the ring, ruffling feathers with his flamboyant partying and dating white women in a time when interracial sexual relations were still taboo.

His legal troubles in Chicago began to ramp up in October 1912 after the mother of a white woman he was dating went to the police and complained that Johnson had brainwashed her daughter, the Chicago Tribune reported.

“How can I help it if the girl is crazy about me?” Johnson was quoted by the Tribune as saying. “I am going to pick my own girls, and nobody is going to dictate to me either.”

The stories soon led to ugly racist incidents. A huge crowd gathered at State Street and Walton Place, where a figure labeled “Jack Johnson” dangled from a telephone pole. “Nobody seemed to know who had hanged the negro pugilist in effigy,” the Tribune noted, “and no effort was made to remove it.”

The woman at the center of those allegations, Lucille Cameron, refused to cooperate with authorities. On Nov. 7, 1912, however, Johnson was arrested on a federal indictment for bringing a different white woman from Pittsburgh across state lines, an alleged violation of the Mann Act.

“Johnson Arrested, Weeps and Pleads When Handcuffed,” blared the Tribune headline.

Six months later, an all-white jury deliberated for just an hour and 38 minutes before finding Johnson guilty, according to the Tribune’s account. The story described Johnson as having an “air of indifference” during the trial, but that his “smile faded as the clerk pronounced the word guilty.”

The lead prosecutor on the case, Harry Parkin, told reporters the verdict would “go around the world” as an example of the dangers of “miscegenation.”

“This negro, in the eyes of many, has been persecuted,” Parkin said, according to the Tribune. “Perhaps as an individual he was. But it was his misfortune to be the foremost example of the evil in permitting the intermarriage of whites and blacks. Now he must bear the consequences.”

Johnson was later sentenced to a year and a day in prison, but fled to Canada with Cameron, whom he’d married while free on bond. He remained a fugitive for seven years, traveling from Europe to Mexico, where he fought bulls and ran a bar called the Main Event.

Johnson returned to the United States in 1920 and turned himself in. He served about a year in federal prison and was released in 1921. He died in 1946 in an auto crash in North Carolina, after storming out of a diner where he’d been asked to sit in a rear section reserved for Blacks.

The push for a posthumous pardon for Johnson, led by his great-great niece, gathered steam over a number of years, finally landing Trump’s attention in 2018 after actor Sylvester Stallone and other celebrities drew awareness to the case.

Bruton said Tuesday his office was thrilled to be able to add a final note to such a historic case. It’s also a reminder of how far the judicial system has come, he said.

“To lookat what the court was like then and now look at where we are today, it’s refreshing,” Bruton said.

TIGRAY DYING FROM LACK OF FOOD AND WATER

Wed, January 20, 2021

NAIROBI (Reuters) - Ethiopians in the war-scarred north are dying from lack of healthcare services, are suffering food and water shortages, and remain "terrified", according to aid agencies finally accessing remoter parts of Tigray region.

Just when people were harvesting crops in early November, the federal army launched an offensive against forces of the former local ruling party, the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), whom it accused of insurrection.

Thousands died and more than 300,000 fled their homes during battles and air-strikes, creating a humanitarian crisis in the already poor region of about 5 million people.


Though the government captured regional capital Mekelle and declared the war over by the end of the month, aid groups, the United Nations and some officials say reaching needy people has been hindered by violence, bureaucracy and logistical obstacles.

"The people are terrified, they have suffered a lot," Medecins Sans Frontieres' (MSF) emergency programme head Mari Carmen Vinoles told Reuters as the medical charity made first forays into rural areas near towns including Adrigat and Axum.

MSF said there was barely any healthcare provision beyond Mekelle and a handful of towns, meaning people were dying without life-saving help for conditions such as pneumonia or childbirth complications.

In Adigrat, MSF found doctors and nurses struggling to keep "hungry patients" alive, Vinoles said. The main hospital's ambulances had been stolen.

"Every time we reach a new area, we find food, water, health services depleted, and a lot of fear among the population. Everybody is asking for food," she added.

'PEOPLE ARE STARVING'

The United Nations' children's agency UNICEF said on Monday that malnutrition was the leading cause of death in clinics in the town of Shire, where the situation was particularly grave.

Many Tigrayans had relied on food aid even before the war, with locust plagues in early 2020 worsening their plight.

"Central Tigray is a black hole" because most people remain in villages and aid groups only have access to towns, said Action Against Hunger's (AAH) Ethiopia director Panos Navrozidis.

Fear of fighting appeared to be keeping people hiding in mountains unable to seek food and medical treatment, he said.

Health workers had not been paid for three months, both MSF and AAH said.

The state-run Ethiopian Press Agency quoted the Tigray Water Resource Management Bureau as saying clean water was running short for many because of damaged infrastructure, looted offices, stolen equipment and an inoperative dam.

With media access and communications to Tigray still difficult, Reuters was unable to independently verify the reports. Representatives for the TPLF, who said weeks ago they were still fighting from hideouts, could not be reached.

Mulu Nega, Tigray's government-appointed interim leader, told Reuters earlier this week that authorities had begun distributing aid last weekend after struggling to find cars to transport supplies around rural mountainous terrain.

The Ministry of Peace said on Tuesday that the government was working with humanitarian partners to rapidly deliver aid, with 1.8 million beneficiaries so far.

Even so, foreign disquiet remains.

The European Union last week suspended budget support for Ethiopia worth 88 million euros ($107 million) until aid groups had better access.

One Ethiopian official acknowledged that "people are starving" during a meeting with the United Nations and aid groups on Jan. 8, according to official notes of the meeting seen by Reuters and authenticated by two sources.

"If urgent emergency assistance is not mobilized, hundreds of thousands might starve to death," Berhane Gebretsadik, an administrator for the federally-appointed interim Tigray government, told the meeting.

Reuters was unable to reach Berhane directly for comment.

(Reporting by Nairobi newsroom; Writing by Maggie Fick; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne)

 

Trump's '1776 Commission' report excuses slavery, condemns legacy of civil rights movement

Matthew Brown, USA TODAY 
Tue, January 19, 2021, 

On the evening of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the White House released the final report from its “1776 Commission” – a document that excuses America’s history of slavery, derides the legacy of the civil rights movement and equates progressivism with totalitarianism.

The report, which comes after President Donald Trump's explicit condemnation of the New York Times’ 1619 Project in September, was released just two days before Trump leaves office, and on the national holiday honoring the foremost icon of the mid-20th century American civil rights era.

The commission was created by Trump as a response to the Times' 1619 Project, a Pulitzer Prize-winning collection that focused on America's history with slavery. In creating the commission, Trump condemned the Times' work as "toxic propaganda" and "ideological poison" that "will destroy our country."

The report compiles disparate references and quotations throughout American history to argue that the country must return to “patriotic education” in schools and for American families to “raise up morally responsible citizens who love America.”

The commission does not have the authority to enact any of its recommendations for American education.

More: First lady Melania Trump addresses Americans in farewell message

Echoing many of the themes and assertions of the report, outgoing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeted Tuesday morning criticizing multiculturalism. " Woke-ism, multiculturalism, all the -isms — they're not who America is. They distort our glorious founding and what this country is all about. Our enemies stoke these divisions because they know they make us weaker," Pompeo wrote.

The report defends the Three-Fifths Compromise and Fugitive Slave Clause, provisions in the Constitution that counted each enslaved resident of a state as three-fifths of a person and required runaway enslaved people to be returned to enslavers across states lines respectively, as “just that: compromises.”

History: How an accidental encounter brought slavery to the United States

Health: New survey finds many people don't believe systemic racism is a barrier to health

The document defends the Founding Fathers against accusations of hypocrisy for tolerating slavery by arguing that it was necessary to allow the practice to continue to build a “principle of consent as the ground of all political legitimacy," ignoring the rights of enslaved people in the country's new form of government.

The report laments that “Many Americans labor under the illusion that slavery was somehow a uniquely American evil,” arguing that chattel slavery must “be seen in a much broader perspective."

In an instance of circular reasoning, the authors excuse several of the Founding Fathers' ownership of slaves by citing their installation of universalist principles into the Declaration of Independence and Constitution as planting “the seeds of the death of slavery in America,” despite this being the same observation from critics who call the Founders hypocrites.

Fact check: Tipping began amid slavery, then helped keep former Black slaves' wages low

The report also contends that when the Framers gave primacy to theprinciple of “separation of church and state” that animates the Establishment Clause of the Constitution, they “did not intend to expunge religion from political life but to make room for the religious beliefs and free expression of all citizens."

The report claims that American progressives maintain a “false understanding of rights” that “created what amounts to a fourth branch of government called at times the bureaucracy or the administrative state,” and is more consistent with 20th-century Soviet-style communism or European fascism than ostensive American values.

This authoritarian "shadow government" purportedly operates without democratic oversight and "continues to grow around us."

The report equates the enslavement and racist policies advocated for by notable 19th-century white supremacist Sen. John C. Calhoun with modern “identity politics,” arguing that the civil rights movement led to a “system of explicit group privilege” based on race.

More: Capitol riot investigators focus on police officers, first responders in lawless fray

Legacy: How Donald Trump's tenure has changed America

The report contends that “identity politics” ultimately “teaches that America itself is to blame for oppression.”

The report also condemns American universities, which the authors see as “hotbeds of anti-Americanism, libel, and censorship that combine to generate in students and in the broader culture at the very least disdain and at worst outright hatred for this country.”

“Historical revisionism that tramples honest scholarship and historical truth, shames Americans by highlighting only the sins of their ancestors, and teaches claims of systemic racism that can only be eliminated by more discrimination, is an ideology intended to manipulate opinions more than educate minds,” the report reads.

The commission which authored the study does not include any academic historians who focus on American history.

The group was chaired by Larry Arnn, president of the conservative Hillsdale College and a close Trump ally. The commission includes high-profile conservative activists and pundits, as well as several Trump Cabinet officials as ex-officio members.

The report has already been criticized by historians for various historical falsehoods, arguing it promotes a reductive narrative of American history with a nationalist political agenda that, to quote one critic, "few professional historians would consider plausible.''

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump's '1776' report condemns legacy of civil rights movement

Trump Administration’s '1776 Report' Justifies Slavery, Three-Fifths Compromise


Sarah Ruiz-Grossman
·Reporter, HuffPost
Mon, January 18, 2021

On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, only two days before President Donald Trump leaves office, the Trump administration released a report from its “1776 Commission” that excuses slavery, justifies the racist Three-fifths Compromise and rails against socialism and “identity politics.”

The “1776 Commission” — formed by Trump in September in direct response to The New York Times’ 1619 Project on America’s deep roots in slavery and racial injustice — released a report Monday that was meant to provide a “definitive chronicle of the American founding.”

The 45-page report reads in places like a right-wing manifesto: It makes excuses for slavery and the Three-fifths Compromise that declared slaves counted as less than full humans. It decries socialism and “identity politics,” celebrates the right to bear arms and calls the anti-abortion movement one of the nation’s “great reforms.”

The report notably defends the country’s Founding Fathers, who owned slaves, arguing that slavery was not “a uniquely American evil” and urging that “the institution be seen in a much broader perspective.”

The report goes on to justify the Three-fifths Compromise — in which white lawmakers from Northern and Southern states in 1787 agreed to count Black people as three-fifths of a person for congressional representation — saying that this was “just that: compromises,” and that, “as a question of practical politics, no durable union could have been formed without a compromise among the states on the issue of slavery.”

Historian and slavery scholar Daina Ramey Berry said the report “advocates teaching a narrow ‘patriotic’ history” of America and aims to “muzzle those who seek to teach a full and accurate history of America, including journalists of The New York Times’ 1619 Project.”

“From a historian’s vantage point, the report cannot be taken as a solid piece of historical work: It seeks to justify slavery and its damaging aftermath in order to indoctrinate yet another generation of American students,” Ramey Berry, chair of the history department at the University of Texas at Austin, told HuffPost.

“The last four years, underscored by the last few weeks, have demonstrated how fragile our embrace of truth can be and the consequences of purposeful disinformation,” she added.

The Trump commission’s report says that the current political divisions among Americans “call to mind” those “between the Confederate and Union forces in the Civil War” — a war that was fought over slavery. It goes on to tout the right to bear arms, saying “an armed people is a people capable of defending their liberty no less than their lives and is the last, desperate check against the worst tyranny.”

Earlier this month, Trump incited an armed mob of his supporters to storm the U.S. Capitol, where lawmakers were voting to certify the results of the presidential election, which Trump lost and yet repeatedly lied about it being fraudulent. A week later, the Democratic-led House of Representatives impeached Trump for inciting an insurrection — making him the only president to ever be impeached twice.

Trump’s 1776 Commission report, which includes several photos of Martin Luther King Jr., criticizes affirmative action, calling it “preferential treatment,” and says today’s “identity politics” are “the opposite of King’s hope that his children would ‘live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin.’”

Just days earlier, Bernice King, the daughter of Martin Luther King Jr., shared a clip of the civil rights icon on Twitter in which King skewers America for freeing Black slaves in 1863, then giving them no land or resources to get started on, all while giving away land to white settlers.

“When white Americans tell the Negro to lift himself by his own bootstraps, they don’t look over the legacy of slavery and segregation,” King says in the clip. “It’s a cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps.”

The Trump commission’s report also rails against socialism as leading people down a “dangerous path” of wealth redistribution and cites “anti-Communism” and “the Pro-Life Movement” — or anti-abortion movement — as some of the “great reforms” of the country’s history.

It concludes that universities are “hotbeds of anti-Americanism, libel and censorship,” and warns against any teaching that “shames Americans by highlighting only the sins of their ancestors and teaches claims of systemic racism.” It also recommends K-12 schools “reject any curriculum” that demeans “America’s heritage.”

The administration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, who take office on Wednesday — when Harris becomes the first Black, first Asian American and first female vice president — will likely do nothing with the report. The incoming administration has repeatedly committed to “root out systemic racism.”

Related...

Elite College Admissions Scandal Shows Irony Of Affirmative Action Complaints

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These Textbooks In Thousands Of K-12 Schools Echo Trump’s Talking Points

This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated

FROM T-PARTY TO TRUMPARTY 

Trump ends term with ‘patriotic education’ report which makes excuses for slavery and calls anti-abortion movement ‘great reform’

 Gustaf Kilander

Tue, January 19, 2021

Donald Trump pulls off his protective face mask at the White House after returning from Covid treatment at Walter Reed Medical Center on 5 October, 2020 (REUTERS)

The White House has released a report by the 1776 commission that pushes for "patriotic education" that teaches the country's history with "with reverence and love" and says that slavery was not "a uniquely American evil".

The commission, which was created in response to The New York Times Magazine’s 1619 project which “reframes American history around the consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans”, released their report on MLK day.

The report attempts to defend slave-owning founding fathers against charges that they were hypocrites who “didn’t believe in their stated principles,” and that “the country they built rests on a lie". The report claims that "this charge is untrue, and has done enormous damage, especially in recent years, with a devastating effect on our civic unity and social fabric".

The commission argues in the document that the institution of slavery should be seen from "a much broader perspective" and that "the unfortunate fact is that the institution of slavery has been more the rule than the exception throughout human history".

The report criticises "identity politics," which is mentioned 39 times in the 45-page document. It says that socialism is "less violent than Communism," but that it "is inspired by the same flawed philosophy and leads down the same dangerous path of allowing the state to seize private property and redistribute wealth as the governing elite see fit".

It goes on to defend the second amendment, saying: "An armed people is a people capable of defending their liberty no less than their lives and is the last, desperate check against the worst tyranny."

Trump news – live: President ‘desperate’ for goodbye event numbers boost as he wakes up to last day in office

The White House website says that the report presents "a definitive chronicle of the American founding," and is "a rebuttal of reckless 're-education' attempts that seek to reframe American history around the idea that the United States is not an exceptional country but an evil one".

The report puts the movement to end abortions in America in the same group as the movement to end slavery, the civil rights movement, and the movement to achieve votes for women, under the banner of "great reforms".

"Great reforms—like abolition, women’s suffrage, anti-Communism, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Pro-Life Movement—have often come forward that improve our dedication to the principles of the Declaration of Independence under the Constitution," the report says.

American Historical Association president Jim Grossman called the report "a hack job. It’s not a work of history," according to The Washington Post.

“It’s a work of contentious politics designed to stoke culture wars," he said. Public historian Alexis Coe said, “This ‘report’ lacks citations or any indication books were consulted, which explains why it’s riddled in errors, distortions, and outright lies.”

Boston University historian Ibram Kendi tweeted that the report makes it seem as if "the demise of slavery in the United States was inevitable".

Eric Rauchway, a history professor at the University of California, Davis told The Washington Post that “It’s very hard to find anything in here that stands as a historical claim, or as the work of a historian. Almost everything in it is wrong, just as a matter of fact... I may sound a little incoherent when trying to speak of this because the report itself is not coherent. It’s like historical whack-a-mole.”

The report claims that affirmative action goes against everything Martin Luther King stood for. Princeton historian Kevin M. Kruse said that this "is simply ludicrous".

He told The Washington Post: “King was alive when the Johnson administration launched its affirmative action programs and publicly declared his support, specifically noting that it was a logical extension of the struggle for black equality. The document ignores King’s record of support for affirmative action, lamely pointing to the one line conservatives know from his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech and ignoring the rest of his radical record. The fact that this historical distortion of King’s life and work was released on MLK Day makes it even worse.”

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Parts of Trump’s controversial 1776 history project lifted from previous work, report says

Stuti Mishra
Wed, January 20, 2021


File image: Trump’s 1776 report is now accused of plagiarism after receiving strong criticism from historians(AFP via Getty Images)

A considerable chunk of Donald Trump’s 1776 commission project released by the White House, that pushes for “patriotic education” and attempts to defend slavery, is said to be plagiarised, according to a media report.

The 45-page report titled “1776 Report” that was released on Martin Luther King Jr Day, attacks liberal thought and teaches American history with "with reverence and love," and has been criticised by historians for its weak and one-sided arguments.

According to a report by Politico, a page in the report which talks about classroom discussion topics for teachers “appears to be copied nearly verbatim from an opinion piece” which was published in Inside Higher Ed in 2008 by Thomas Lindsay, one of the members of the 1776 commission.


The 2008 essay from Mr Lindsay contains several discussion prompts for teachers and features in the 1776 report on page 39 and 40 without attribution. The earlier essay was presented as a critique to a published book by former Harvard University president Derek Bok.

“The similarities are pronounced enough to raise questions about how much original work actually went into the construction of the 1776 report,” the Politico report said.

Apart from the discussion points, Politico noted, that the report copies five more paragraphs from Mr Lindsey’s 2008 article as well as adding other paragraphs specifically questioning the ways that the works of progressive politicians “differ from the principles and structure of the Constitution.”

Mr Lindsey, who was one of the 16 conservatives appointed to be part of the commission in December 2020, is an academic and served as president of Shimer college between 2009-2010. He is now a senior fellow at the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation.

The commission was created in September last year after Mr Trump signed an executive order to set up a “national commission to promote patriotic education” in the country. The move was considered an attempt to please his conservative voter base, as the polls showed Mr Biden leading, in the run-up to the 3 November elections.

Trump defends America’s 

founding on slavery with 

‘1776 report’

Biba Adams

Tue, January 19, 2021

The 1776 Commission’s report describes affirmative action as ‘more discrimination’ and ‘the opposite of King’s hope.’

In the waning hours of his presidency, Donald Trump continues to make racism its defining feature.

Trump created a 1776 Commission to study the idea that Americans are being indoctrinated with a false, liberal narrative about the country’s founding. The creation of the group came a year after the Pulitzer Prize-winning release of “The 1619 Project” from The New York Times, which detailed America’s creation as a slave-owning society.

On Monday, the 18-member 1776 Commission released its “1776 report” Monday, which defends slavery as part of America’s founding. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Formed in September — during his re-election campaign — and widely seen as a ploy to incite and inflame his base supporters, the 18-member advisory panel was reportedly to produce a pro-American curriculum. However, the president has no authority over what is taught in U.S. schools.

Instead, the 1776 Commission released their “1776 report,” which defends slavery as part of the nation’s founding and declares affirmative action “more discrimination.” It calls affirmative action “the opposite of King’s hope that his children would ‘live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin.’”

It is, as a whole, drawing intense criticism from historians.

The New York Times notes that Trump’s commission “did not include a single professional historian of the United States.”

To add insult to injury, the report was released on the holiday observing the birthday of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“This report skillfully weaves together myths, distortions, deliberate silences, and both blatant and subtle misreading of evidence to create a narrative and an argument that few respectable professional historians, even across a wide interpretive spectrum, would consider plausible, never mind convincing,” James Grossman, executive director of the American Historical Association, told The Times.

“They’re using something they call history to stoke culture wars,” he said.

In terms of U.S. history and slave ownership, the report insinuates that the American Revolution in 1776 created a “dramatic sea change in moral sensibilities” in the nation, which is patently false. Enslavement in America lasted nearly 100 more years after its founding

The commission was led by Larry Arnn, a Trump ally, and its co-chair is Carol Swain, a Black conservative. Further, the White House called the report “definitive,” yet it includes no scholarly citations or references.

The report concludes by recommending that K-12 schools “reject any curriculum” that demeans “America’s heritage.”

MyPillow dropped by retailers amid CEO’s support of baseless voter fraud claims

James Crump
Tue, January 19, 2021


US President Donald Trump listens as Michael J. Lindell, CEO of MyPillow Inc., speaks during the daily briefing on the novel coronavirus, Covid-19, in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, DC, on 30 March 2020((AFP via Getty Images))More

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell has revealed that several companies have stopped selling his brand, as he continues to support Donald Trump’s baseless claims of widespread fraud in November’s presidential election.

During an interview on Right Side Broadcasting Network with conservative commentator Brian Glenn on Monday evening, Mr Lindell revealed that Bed Bath & Beyond and Kohl's had stopped selling MyPillow products.

“Just got off the phone with Bed Bath & Beyond. They’re dropping My Pillow. Just got off the phone not five minutes ago. Kohl’s, all these different places,” Mr Lindell said in the interview on Monday.

“These [companies], they’re scared, like a Bed Bath & Beyond, they’re scared. They were good partners. In fact, I told them, ‘You guys come back anytime you want,’” he added.

While speaking to Fox 9 later in the day, Mr Lindell also revealed that furniture company Wayfair had decided to stop selling his company’s products.

Mr Lindell caused controversy on Friday when a picture of his notes brought to a White House meeting with Mr Trump suggested implementing “martial law if necessary”.

The notes, captured by a photographer as Mr Lindell entered the Oval Office, came after the businessman deleted tweets calling for the president to “impose martial law” in seven battleground states won by president-elect Joe Biden in the November election.

Despite Congress confirming Mr Biden’s election victory earlier this month, Mr Trump has repeatedly falsely claimed that widespread voter fraud took place in the election in favour of the Democrats, and Mr Lindell has publicly supported him in his efforts to overturn the results.

Mr Lindell, who was a public supporter and major donor to Mr Trump’s presidential campaigns, was sent a cease and desist letter by Dominion Voting Systems on Monday, in reaction to his baseless claims that they rigged their systems in the Democrats’ favour in 3 November’s election.

Dominion called Mr Lindell a “prominent leader of the ongoing misinformation campaign” in the letter, adding: “Despite knowing your implausible attacks against Dominion have no basis in reality, you have participated in the vast and concerted misinformation campaign to slander Dominion.”

In a follow-up statement, the company wrote: “Dominion has been forced to expend substantial monetary sums to protect the health and safety of its employees following innumerable death threats from the social media mob that your statements have agitated against Dominion.

“And your misrepresentations have required the company to incur substantial attorneys’ fees and to mitigate the damage you have inflicted upon Dominion’s reputation.”

In a response to Axios about the letters, Mr Lindell wrote: “I want Dominion to put up their lawsuit because we have 100 per cent evidence that China and other countries used their machines to steal the election.”

Additionally, when asked by CNN if he believes Mr Biden won 3 November’s election, Mr Lindell reiterated his claims, adding: “No, he didn’t win the election, because I’ve seen it.”

Despite repeated claims by Mr Lindell, Mr Trump and his campaign team that Dominion’s machines were rigged, there is zero evidence to back this up.

There is also no evidence to back up Mr Lindell and Mr Trump’s claims of widespread voter fraud in November’s presidential election.

Read More

Who is ‘MyPillow guy’ and Trump ally Mike Lindell?

Trump campaign, supporters sued for defamation by Dominion employee

Dominion threatens to sue MyPillow CEO over baseless claims of voter fraud


Catherine Garcia
Mon, January 18, 2021


MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell has received a letter from Dominion Voting Systems, warning him that litigation is "imminent" due to his false claims that the company's machines were rigged to change the outcome of the election.

Lindell, an enthusiastic supporter of President Trump, has been spreading baseless claims of widespread voter fraud for months. In the letter, Dominion's lawyers told Lindell, "You have positioned yourself as a prominent leader of the ongoing misinformation campaign. Litigation regarding these issues is imminent."

Lindell told The New York Times he would "welcome" Dominion to "sue me because I have all the evidence against them. They sent this letter a couple of weeks ago. They're lying, they're nervous because I have all the evidence on them." Lindell did not say why, if he has such evidence, he has kept it to himself this entire time, holding onto it as judge after judge rejected lawsuits filed in an attempt to overturn the election in Trump's favor.

AND AUSTERITY FOR ALBERTANS

The cancellation of Keystone XL would cost Alberta taxpayers just over C$1 billion ($785 million), Kenney said.

Keystone XL May Be Sold for Scrap If Biden Moves to Kill It

Robert Tuttle and Kait Bolongaro
Mon, January 18, 2021

(Bloomberg) -- The Canadian province that invested $1.1 billion of taxpayers’ money in the controversial Keystone XL project is now considering the sale of pipe and materials to try to recoup some funds.

“If the project ends, there would be assets that could be sold, such as enormous quantities of pipe,” Alberta Premier Jason Kenney said in a press conference Monday. “That would offset construction costs.”

With Joe Biden set to be sworn in this week, the U.S. president-elect’s campaign promise to cancel the crude pipeline’s license is haunting the Canadian oil sands industry. The decision may come via executive action on his first day in office, CBC News reported on Sunday, citing people it didn’t identify.

Meanwhile, the government of Justin Trudeau vowed to defend the project.

Alberta, home to the world’s third-largest crude reserves, has struggled for years with a lack of pipeline capacity to ship its crude to the U.S. Gulf Coast and other markets. TC Energy Corp.’s Keystone XL was one of the possible pipelines the industry was counting on to solve that.

The cancellation of Keystone XL would cost Alberta taxpayers just over C$1 billion ($785 million), Kenney said.

In March, Kenney’s government agreed to fund the first year of construction with a $1.1 billion investment and to guarantee $4.2 billion of loans as a way to jump-start construction.

The province and TC Energy have a “solid legal basis” to recoup damages through the courts, Kenney also said.

Canadian Energy Minister Seamus O’Regan said the federal government continues to support Keystone XL and will make the case for the project to the Biden administration.

“Canadian oil is produced under strong environmental and climate policy frameworks, and this project will not only strengthen the vital Canada-U.S. energy relationship, but create thousands of good jobs for workers on both sides of the border,” said O’Regan in an email.

Kenney stressed that the federal government had said the pipeline is the “the top priority” of Canada’s relationship with the U.S.

“Sit down and review the many facts that have changed since KXL was proposed a decade ago,” Kenney said, citing reduced carbon emissions from the oil sands, labor agreements and an indigenous stake in the pipeline.

More than a decade old, the Keystone XL project was first rejected by former-President Barack Obama due to concern about climate change, but his successor Donald Trump issued a new permit when he took office.

The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers said that canceling the project would kill thousands of jobs and offered to work with stakeholders to find a solution to complete the pipeline.