India budget ignores farmers' plight, protest leaders say

Mayank Bhardwaj
Updated Mon., February 1, 2021, 

Security personnel stand guard next to barricades outside the Parliament 

where annual budget is being presented in New Delhi

By Mayank Bhardwaj

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Indian farmers angry at agricultural reforms said on Monday the annual budget failed to address their concerns, with no mention of raising incomes or generating jobs, and vowed to press on with their protests.

Tens of thousands of farmers have camped out on the outskirts of New Delhi in protest against the laws introduced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government in September.

The government says the new laws will open up opportunities for farmers. Protesters say the laws benefit large private buyers at the expense of growers.

In her annual budget, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman raised healthcare spending by 135% and lifted caps on foreigners investing in the insurance sector.

She raised the target of agricultural credit to 16.5 trillion rupees ($225.74 billion) from 15 trillion rupees and said the government would raise 300 billion rupees in the next fiscal year with a new tax to boost agricultural infrastructure.

"Forget about these targets," protest leader Kirankumar Visa said. "There is not even one measure to either raise farmers' income or generate jobs in the countryside. She didn't talk about her government's promise of doubling farmers' income by 2022."

Police and paramilitary forces dug ditches and spread razor wire across main roads into New Delhi to prevent farmers entering the capital as Sitharaman prepared to deliver the annual budget in parliament.

Internet and messaging services were blocked in several neighbourhoods.

"Although the government has tried to isolate farmers by using barricades, razor wire and shutting down the internet, we are determined to carry out our peaceful protests," said Rakesh Tikait, president of one of the largest farmers' unions, the Bharti Kisan Union.

A farmers' procession turned violent on Republic Day on Jan. 26, when some protesters broke away from a rally of tractors to storm the historic Red Fort complex.

($1 = 73.09 rupees)

(Reporting by Mayank Bhardwaj; additional reporting by Devjyot Ghoshal; Editing by Nick Macfie)
Originally published Sun., January 31, 2021, 11:17 p.m.

Once united in support of Biden, environmentalists and unions clash over pipelines

Laura Sanicola and Nia Williams 
Reuters
Updated Sun., January 31, 2021

FILE PHOTO: Nathan Phillips marches with other protesters out of the main opposition camp against the Dakota Access oil pipeline near Cannon Ball

By Laura Sanicola and Nia Williams

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Environmentalists and labor unions that threw their support behind U.S. President Joseph Biden now find themselves on the opposite sides of a battle over the construction of big pipeline projects between Canada and the United States.

The United States is the world's largest producer of oil and gas. Biden's administration aims to transition the U.S. economy towards net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, and his initial moves towards that goal included cancelling a permit for the Keystone XL crude oil pipeline (KXL) and reducing oil-and-gas leasing.

The reaction from Biden's supporters, however, illustrates the challenge of managing the impact of the energy transition on different communities.

While climate activists celebrated KXL's demise, labor unions, reeling from the global oil downturn, have mobilized to keep ongoing projects from being derailed.

Mike Knisely, secretary and treasurer of the Ohio State Building and Construction Trades Council, which endorsed Biden, said he has been leaning on state officials to talk to the president about how his rapid-fire climate announcements are affecting his union membership's support.

"I tell them they need to get back with Biden and ask if this all really has to happen on Day Two of the new administration," Knisely said. "I just get so frustrated that there's almost no common ground (on pipelines) with the environmental community."

Climate groups have had successes in recent years, persuading large investors to reduce holdings in fossil fuel industries, as well as lobbying banks to shun investment in Arctic drilling.

But Biden was endorsed by a number of key labor unions that work on pipelines, refineries and other energy installations, including the International Teamsters and North America's Building Trades. Those unions celebrated the victory of a pro-labor president, but opposed the Keystone move, and are lining up against threats to the other pipelines.

Environmentalists see Biden as an ally in the battle to wean the United States off fossil fuels and stymie imports of carbon-intensive heavy crude from Canada's vast oil sands. They are intensifying efforts to shut three other pipelines: Enbridge Inc's Line 3 and Line 5, and Energy Transfer's Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL).

Unlike KXL, these three lines are all currently in service. The Enbridge lines deliver crude oil and fuels from Canada, while DAPL sends crude from North Dakota to the Midwest and Gulf Coast.

Legal and regulatory battles threaten all three pipelines.

A White House spokesman said the Biden administration is reviewing a court decision last week that upheld orders for a lengthy environmental review for DAPL. He declined to comment on the two Enbridge pipelines.

Enbridge is more than doubling Line 3's capacity to 760,000 barrels per day (bpd), a project supported by Minnesota's Governor Tim Walz, a Democrat.

To be sure, not all unions backed Biden. Phillip Wallace, business representative for Pipeliners Union 798 in Minnesota, said his union, which supported former President Donald Trump, was concerned the new administration may try to stop the project.

"We have got full construction going right now in Minnesota and I am worried that this new administration could throw a monkey wrench in our gears," Wallace said. His union is planning on rallies to support construction once COVID-19 restrictions ease.

On Friday, environmental protesters halted construction on a Line 3 work site in Minnesota by locking themselves to each other between barrels of concrete, one of several disruptions so far this year that has resulted in dozens of arrests.

"If KXL can't pass the climate test for Biden, Line 3 certainly can't," said Winona LaDuke, executive director of Honor the Earth, an indigenous environmental group.

Unions are also ramping up support for Enbridge's Line 5 pipeline, which runs under the Straits of Mackinac, where Lakes Huron and Michigan meet, and ships 540,000 bpd of light crude and propane. Activists want to decommission the 68-year-old line, while Enbridge is trying to upgrade it to protect the straits.

Enbridge last week received a state permit to build a tunnel to house the line; it still needs permission from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

In November, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer revoked the pipeline's easement in the straits and ordered the pipeline shut. The United Steelworkers, who endorsed Biden, have been trying to drum up support with legislators to keep the line running.

"The USW strongly supports both the Line 5 replacement segment project and the continued operation of the existing pipeline," it told Reuters in a statement. "Hundreds of USW members and their communities depend on the good, family-sustaining jobs Line 5 supports."

(Reporting by Nia Wiliams in Calgary and Laura Sanicola in New York; Additional reporting by Valerie Volcovici in Washington and Devika Krishna Kumar in New York; Editing by Marguerita Choy)

Originally published Sun., January 31, 2021, 11:06 p.m.

Climate change disasters in B.C. likely to increase if industrial logging continues unchecked: report

Updated Mon., February 1, 2021

A report commissioned by Sierra Club B.C. says keeping healthy, mature forests safe from industrial logging will help protect the province from catastrophic flooding, wildfires, droughts and heat waves caused by climate change.

The report, released publicly Monday morning and authored by Peter Wood, who holds a PhD in Forestry at the University of Toronto, is the latest push from conservationists to spur the province into swift action in providing increased protection for what remains of B.C.'s biodiverse forests.

"Old intact forests act as a moderating influence on the landscape, supporting ecosystem function and resilience, and lowering risk to surrounding communities," Wood said in a release from Sierra Club B.C.

Wood has built a career working on the impacts of sustainable forest management certification in Canada.
TJ Watt

His report, entitled Intact Forests, Safe Communities, says at least nine of 15 climate risks assessed by the province in 2019 — such as increased wildfires, drought and landslides — are influenced by industrial logging.

It says the province has not considered the ways that logging could worsen catastrophic events from climate change, presenting "a major blind spot that could undermine the effectiveness of the province's response to global heating."

According to the report, forests with large old trees have dense canopies, thick tough bark, extensive roots systems and space between them, which helps prevent the spread of forest fires, landslides, and flooding — along with protecting water sources.

Mya Van Woudenberg/Sierra Club BC

It also says that dead branches and slash materials left in clear-cuts with no canopy can act as fuel for wildfires and that second-growth forests aren't as resilient against wildfires due to the thinner bark on trees and proximity to one another.

"B.C. has entered a new era of climate emergency that is marked by risks to communities, and forest management must be adapted to mitigate these," says the report.

The province is in the middle of a process to better understand climate-related risks in B.C. and develop appropriate measures to address them.

The Preliminary Strategic Climate Risk Assessment for British Columbia has few mentions of logging in it, other than to say the industry, which accounts for around $9 billion in annual revenue, could face significant losses due to climate change.

The province is considering changes to how logging is done following an independent report released in September that outlined 14 recommendations, including short- to long-term goals for revitalizing the forestry sector involving old growth trees over a 36-month timeline.

The new report from the Sierra Club of B.C. calls for the province to move faster in meeting those recommendations, including working in lock-step with First Nations to overhaul forest management, which it says will address the climate risks from logging.

Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, president of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, supports the findings in the Sierra Club report.

He said in a statement that the climate crisis impacts all British Columbians, but particularly marginalized people, including First Nations, who may have few resources to respond to climate disasters.

The union is also calling on the province to move quickly to implement the 14 recommendations from the old growth strategic review, which include involving Indigenous people in decisions related to forestry management.

"As they not only have a vested interest in protecting and stewarding the land that they have maintained spiritual and cultural ties to since time immemorial, but many Nations depend on forestry for their livelihoods and must be able to help guide B.C.'s transition to more sustainable and conservation-based practices," he said.
TJ Watt/Ancient Forest Alliance

The Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development said in a statement it welcomes the report and is considering its findings.

It said the province is focused on science-based reforestation to ensure sustainable forest management and address climate change. The ministry said 300 million trees were planted in 2020 and it plans to plant 300 million this year.

The ministry also said it is working with First Nations, industry stakeholders and communities "to ensure practices and management in B.C.'s forest sector continue to evolve and reflect the values British Columbians hold today and what they want for the future."

March 11 will mark six months since the old growth strategic review was released and the province deferred the logging of old growth trees for two years in nine different areas across the province as a first step.

Originally published Mon., February 1, 2021

CBC

Changing vehicles to save the planet

Updated Mon., February 1, 2021

The bottom line for the future is to develop new methods to preserve our environment, slow down global change, reduce carbon emissions and drastically reduce our greenhouse gases. Years of scientific studies and research point the finger at humans for being the main contributor, causing greenhouse gas emissions to skyrocket over the past few decades. The pollutants at the top of the list are burning fossil fuels like oil and gas, whether used for electricity, heat or transportation. To preserve our environment and the atmosphere, companies have shifted their focus on reducing their footprint and coming up with new technology that steers away from the need for fossil fuels.

The race was on as researchers and inventors create solutions and develop technology to become a sustainable society. Different ways to reduce greenhouse gases are renewable resources such as wind, geothermal heat, the sun and nuclear power. According to Environment Canada, each of these natural resources can provide electricity, heat and is responsible for approximately 17 percent of gas emissions. The largest emissions producer comes from our transportation at 22 percent, as they burn gasoline and diesel. Six harmful gasses escape through the exhaust pipe of a vehicle and pollute the atmosphere. As of 2019, there were 35,742,412 vehicles on the road in Canada, so combine that with the various gases each one produces, and it’s no wonder it ranks the highest for greenhouse gas emissions. As vehicles are the worst pollutants, vehicle manufacturers have been developing eco-friendly vehicles. The latest one to hit the market is the electric vehicle.

The new electric vehicles come with a hefty price tag of around $42,000 to $60,000, albeit you do get rebates for being environmentally friendly. Ford, Chev, BMW, Nissan and Honda are a few familiar names that have jumped on board to design their own electric vehicle version. There are many options to consider besides the hefty price. Each EV model has its own set maximum speed limit, travel distance and charging time to consider. On average, no matter which EV you choose, it will get you to Edmonton, but it won’t get you all the way home without having to stop and recharge. They may be efficient on the road, environmentally safe, but if there’s nowhere to recharge, you won’t be leaving town anytime soon.

Organizations such as the Community Energy Association (CEA), headquartered in British Columbia, are hoping to change that within the next year. The non-profit has been the facilitator with the B.C. government and other partners to have municipalities host EV charging stations. Regional governments have had great success in setting up a network of stations throughout B.C. As the facilitating organization, Community Energy Association collaborated with several Advisory Committees in southern Alberta, which prompted the Peaks' success to Prairies EV network of charging stations. Acting as a facilitator for the project aims to have all municipalities support recharging stations set along the major traffic routes and tourist destination regions. To make travelling in Alberta possible for electric vehicle owners, stations would need to be set up in the municipalities along highway 43, 40,16, 11, 22, and along highway 1 down south and over to B.C. The estimated budget for Alberta is $3 million. Significant financial contributions have been requested from the Government of Alberta, Natural Resources Canada, Federation of Canadian Municipalities and private industry. To date, both the City of Grande Prairie and the MD of Greenview have approached the CEA and discussions are underway regarding the latest project, EVenture Northwest. The aim is to break ground later this year for the northern part of Alberta with the construction of charging station sites completed by the summer of 2022. The long-term plan is to have all municipalities and through-routes set up with one or more EV charging stations to enable electric vehicle owners to travel throughout Alberta.

As more charging stations for electric vehicles are installed, the feasibility of buying a car may be more appealing and predicted to cost near the same as a regular vehicle in the next five years. Researchers for clean energy and advanced transport are predicting by 2030, more than 28 percent of vehicles sold will be electric and reach 80 percent in the next 30 years. Global analysts have added that by 2050 all vehicles must be electric to save our environment and the global crisis; otherwise, it will be too late. Those interested to learn more about the charging station projects can visit https://acceleratekootnays.caor https://peakstopairies.ca

Vicki Winger, 

Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Whitecourt Press

Originally published Mon., February 1, 2021, .

ITS ALL ABOUT MINING
How growing global electric car sales could be a boon for Alberta

Updated Mon., February 1, 2021

It may sound paradoxical, but electric cars could soon be an economic driver for oil-rich Alberta.

Global sales of electric vehicles grew by 43 per cent in 2020, according to numbers recently released by sales database EV Volumes. A key component of their batteries is lithium, a mineral found in Alberta — if you know where to look.

"There's a lot of opportunities for lithium in Alberta," said Roy Eccles, a senior consultant with Apex Geoscience in Edmonton, in an interview with CBC's Radio Active.

Eccles says exploration in the last decade by companies of the Devonian-aged oil and gas reservoirs — between 1,600 and 3,330 metres below the surface — has confirmed the accompanying salt-water brine is enriched with lithium.

The Leduc Formation, the source of Alberta's first big oil boom, is also a rich lithium deposit. There are about 10.6 million tonnes of lithium carbonate equivalent identified in the province, according to the Canadian Lithium Association, and the potential could be even higher.

LISTEN | Geologist explains the potential for lithium in Alberta:

London-based commodity researcher and market consultant Roskill released an August report that notes demand will grow for the mineral at least until 2030.

Eccles says current major lithium extraction areas in arid climates near the equator use evaporation pods that can take months to years and leave a large environmental footprint.

That's not possible in Canada's climate, he said. Instead, companies are attempting to develop new technology that will rapidly extract lithium from the brine.

CBC

Existing infrastructure

The Alberta advantage is that it can use already existing oil operations and technologies.

"It's essentially using infrastructure that's already in place," Eccles said, adding that petroleum production is measured in short timelines, pumping up hydrocarbons before reinjecting the brine back underground.

There is also an environmental feature to the process, according to University of Alberta associate professor of earth sciences Daniel Alessi.

"They're taking something that's already being produced, essentially, and adding value to that with very little carbon footprint," Alessi said.

"It's exciting because there's certainly a green aspect to it."

Alessi said it would also be advantageous for Canada to have its own internal source of lithium.

The limiting factor is technology to convert the brine into a usable product.

"We're at the point right now where the technology is, I would say, holding back the commercialization of the process," he said. Alessi added that some key players have reached the pilot stage with aims to reach an industrial scale process in two to five years.

Audrey Neveu/Radio-Canada

Canadian companies developing processes

In December, Vancouver-based Lithium Standard announced it had successfully completed a proof-of-concept to extract lithium from a brine in Arkansas.

There are a number of companies in Alberta developing their own processes, including Summit Nanotech.

The Calgary-based startup delayed plans for testing in 2020 due to the pandemic but further developed its process, which CEO Amanda Hall says resulted in improved operating expenses and reduced end-to-end greenhouse gas emissions.

"The opportunity to grow a sector that supports the future of renewable energy storage and electromobility while in parallel continuing efforts to create a low carbon barrel of oil sets Alberta apart in the energy landscape," she said in an email.

"We are excited to be a part of this."

Hall said a pilot is on schedule to be commissioned in Chile this year.

Reducing greenhouse gas output

Calgary-based E3 Metals was founded in 2016 and hopes to run a pilot of its own lithium extraction process by the end of this year. It aims to eventually drill its own project into the Leduc Formation.

CEO Chris Doornbos said the eventual operation's greenhouse gas output will be mitigated by using electricity from its own gas-fired power plant, creating a net zero emission for the product.

He also said that compared to mining a more traditional lithium operation, the model uses only about three per cent of the land use and will not consume fresh water or leave tailings.

"When you look at it from that perspective, producing lithium in Alberta is much more environmentally responsible than most other production of lithium in the world."

Doornbos said lithium extraction presents an opportunity for expertise already present in Alberta's energy sector to be put to a new use.

"At the end of the day, it's still putting Albertans back to work — it's nothing we don't know how to do or haven't done before."

E3 Metals' current roadmap aims for commercial operations by 2024.

Originally published Mon., February 1, 2021, 7:00 a.m.

Alberta promises close watch on new mines 

but cuts oversight of coal-polluted rivers

#NONEWMINES 

CLEAN UP COAL POLLUTION

Updated Mon., February 1, 2021


EDMONTON — Alberta government documents show repeated cuts to environmental monitoring despite contaminants in some waterways that exceed thresholds that are supposed to trigger increased scrutiny.

The province's 2019 five-year monitoring plan shows stations on two rivers and a creek polluted with selenium from coal mines were mothballed. That was despite more than two decades of readings that Alberta Environment guidelines suggest should have led to closer attention.

The only station still operating is on the McLeod River about 200 kilometres downstream of the old Cheviot mine.

The United Conservative government has pointed to "strict regulatory standards" in an increasingly heated debate over its plan to increase coal mining in the Rocky Mountains.

"It's quite clear the government is undercutting the very protections they claim to have in place," said Opposition New Democrat environment critic Marlin Schmidt.

An independent analysis of government data has shown that the McLeod and Gregg Rivers and Luscar Creek in the Rocky Mountain foothills east of Jasper, Alta., were heavily contaminated downstream from coal mines with selenium, which is toxic at elevated levels.

They were nearly nine times higher in the Gregg River and 11 times higher in Luscar Creek, despite years of reclamation. They were six times higher in the McLeod River.

Bill Donahue, Alberta's former executive director of science, found that selenium levels in all the samples from Gregg River and Luscar Creek greatly exceeded Alberta Environment's so-called "alert" level.

Nearly half the McLeod River samples also crossed that line, which is supposed to trigger enhanced oversight as per the province's 2018 environmental quality guidelines:

"Exceedance of the Alert concentration in sensitive environments indicates the need for increasing monitoring of water and other ecosystem components to support early detection of selenium bioaccumulation."

Alberta Environment did not respond to a request for comment.

Environment Minister Jason Nixon and other members of the UCP caucus have repeatedly said any new mine will be subject to close scrutiny.

"The environment remains protected by the Environmental Protection and Enhancement Act, including our treasured headwaters," says a UCP website titled Coal Hard Facts. "Alberta’s water supply is not at risk.

"All coal projects go through a strict regulatory and consultation process."

Schmidt called those statements a distraction.

"It's desperate spin to avoid talking about the real issues with coal mining," he said.

"It looks like the government is wilfully ignoring the problem and wants it to go away."

The stations were shuttered after years of monitoring cuts at Alberta Environment under both conservative and NDP governments. 

(FALSE EQUIVALENCY 44 YEARS VS 4 YEARS IN POWER)

Budget documents show money spent on keeping track of what's happening in Alberta's air, land and water peaked in 2015-16 at $28 million and has been declining ever since. After another five per cent cut in the most recent budget, spending now sits at $22.5 million.

The cuts are bigger than they seem, said Donahue, who left government in 2018, because the monitoring department has fixed costs that don't change.

"The only funds that are available for monitoring and science are what's left after all of those fixed costs are paid," he wrote in an email. "What those cuts to monitoring and science budgets ... mean is that there is less and less funding available for in-house monitoring."

The last budget also cut funding by 22 per cent to the Alberta Energy Regulator, responsible for overseeing energy development.

Donahue said there is less monitoring happening now than there was six years ago when he joined the department.

"Annual budget cuts absolutely resulted in reduced monitoring and science," he said.

The government has already sold exploration leases for about 1.4 million hectares of land that holds the headwaters of rivers on which all of southern Alberta depends. Hundreds of drill sites and kilometres of roads have been approved.

The province points to hundreds of jobs and millions of dollars in royalties for provincial coffers.

More than 100,000 signatures have been gathered on protest petitions and at least six area municipalities have spoken in opposition. Popular Alberta entertainers from Jann Arden to Corb Lund have added their criticism.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 1, 2021

— Follow @row1960 on Twitter

Bob Weber, The Canadian Press

Fox News editor dismissed after defending Biden prediction says US suffers from ‘informational malnourishment’

Chris Riotta 
The Independent

Updated Sun., January 31, 2021

Trump supporters storm the US Capitol in his name (EPA-EFE)

A former Fox News editor who claims he was recently ousted from the conservative network after being the first to predict President Joe Biden’s election victory in Arizona has said the US is suffering from “informational malnourishment” in an Op-Ed published on Thursday.

Fox News said that the editor’s dismissal was part of a restructuring.

Chris Stirewalt had previously served as a politics editor for the network, where he helped forecast the latest election results and made the call for Arizona – which had not voted to elect a Democratic presidential candidate since 1996 – well before the Associated Press and other major news outlets.

“I was proud of our being first to project that Joe Biden would win Arizona, and very happy to defend that call in the face of a public backlash egged on by former President Trump,” Mr Stirewalt wrote in the article published by Los Angeles Times. “Being right and beating the competition is no act of heroism; it’s just meeting the job description of the work I love.”

Though he and his team were proven right, Fox News audiences and prominent conservatives attacked Mr Stirewalt and Fox News’ decision desk director Arnon Mishkin for defending the announcement as former President Donald Trump and his allies promoted false conspiracy theories of a rigged vote.

“The rebellion on the populist right against the results of the 2020 election was partly a cynical, knowing effort by political operators and their hype men in the media to steal an election or at least get rich trying,” he continued. “But it was also the tragic consequence of the informational malnourishment so badly afflicting the nation.”

He added: “When I defended the call for Biden in the Arizona election, I became a target of murderous rage from consumers who were furious at not having their views confirmed.”

As Election Day turned into a weeks-long event last year – in part due to an historic surge in mail-in voting, which delayed official vote counts in many states for several days – Mr Stirewalt and his former colleagues took to the airwaves and asserted their assessment of Arizona’s election results were solid.

“Arizona was a state that we thought early, very clearly was going into Biden's column. We held off for a while until we finally called it," Mr Mishkin told Fox News’ Neil Cavuto at the time, adding: “We remain confident and we have not changed the call."

Bill Sammon, a senior vice president and managing editor at Fox's Washington bureau, also announced his retirement earlier this week. Mr Stirewalt’s dismissal from the company was reported by the Associated Press as “part of a restructuring of Fox's digital operations”. Mr Mishkin, who also faced criticism in the wake of the election results, is not a Fox News employee.

“I remain confident that the current depredations of the digital revolution will pass, just as those of the telegraph, radio and broadcast television did,” Mr Stirewalt wrote. “What tugs at my mind after seeing a mob of enthusiastic ignoramuses sack the Capitol, though, is whether that sophistication will come quickly enough when outlets have the means to cater to every unhealthy craving of their consumers.”

Trump’s own lawyers ‘secretly drafted’ Texas lawsuit challenging election results, report says

Shweta Sharma 
The Independent
Updated Mon., February 1, 2021


The Texas lawsuit tried to throw out the vote counts in four states that the Donald Trump lost: Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.(Reuters)

The long-shot lawsuit from Texas, which sought to invalidate the results in four swing states, was not drafted by Republican attorney general of Texas, Ken Paxton, but by Donald Trump’s own lawyers, revealed a new report.

The extensive New York Times report examined Mr Trump’s attempted coup to subvert the 2020 elections and the “77 democracy-bending days” when the former president propagated the voters fraud theory.

The efforts by Mr Trump’s campaign to help prevent alleged voters fraud were red-flagged by several Republican attorneys general and their senior staff lawyers, the report said.

Republican leaders were also concerned about Mr Trump’s problem in facing the reality of an electoral defeat.

The report revealed that Mr Paxton, who is said to have filed the Texas lawsuit, hired Lawrence Joseph as a special outside counsel through an “unusual contract” on 7 December.

Mr Joseph had earlier intervened in a US court to support Mr Trump’s efforts to block the release of his income-tax returns.

“The same day [7 Dec] the contract was signed, Mr Paxton filed his complaint with the Supreme Court. Mr Joseph was listed as a special counsel, but the brief did not disclose that it had been written by outside parties,” said the report.

Mr Paxton, however, was not the first choice for Trump’s team to overturn Joe Biden’s victory in swing states as he had criminal investigations going on against him.

An appeal was also made to Louisiana’s attorney general, Jeffrey M Landry, but he had declined.

"For every lawyer on Mr Trump's team who quietly pulled back, there was one ready to push forward with propagandistic suits that skated the lines of legal ethics and reason," the report said.

"That included not only Mr [Rudy] Giuliani and lawyers like Sidney Powell and Lin Wood, but also the vast majority of Republican attorneys general, whose dead-on-arrival Supreme Court lawsuit seeking to discount 20 million votes was secretly drafted by lawyers close to the White House, The Times found."

The Supreme Court on 12 December unanimously dismissed the baseless lawsuit filed by Texas that tried to throw out the vote counts in four states that Mr Trump lost — Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Days before the court’s decision, Trump allies continued to mount pressure to pull support for the Texas lawsuit. Representative Mike Johnson of Louisiana sent an email requesting congressional Republicans’ support for the Texas lawsuit.

The letter with the subject line “time-sensitive request from President Trump” said that the president “specifically asked me to contact all Republican Members of the House and Senate today and request that all join.”

The amicus brief gained support from two-thirds of the Republican attorneys general despite several senior officials raising red flags.

The Jan. 6 rally that fed the deadly Capitol siege was reportedly a Trump White House production

Peter Weber  The Week
Updated Mon., February 1, 2021


In the wake of the deadly Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of former President Donald Trump, "a picture has emerged of entropic forces coming together on Trump's behalf in an ad hoc, yet calamitous, crash of rage and denial," The New York Times reports in a detailed look at "the 77 democracy-bending days between election and inauguration" of President Biden. "But interviews with central players, and documents including previously unreported emails, videos, and social media posts scattered across the web, tell a more encompassing story of a more coordinated campaign," ultimately "summoned and directed by the departing president" in "one final norm-defying act of a reality-denying presidency."

The Jan. 6 rally at the Ellipse that led to the mobbing of the Capitol was originally organized by a pro-Trump group called Women for America First. After Trump decided on Dec. 18 that trying to get Congress to overturn his loss on Jan. 6 was his last best hope, the group, founded by Tea Party veteran Amy Kremer and led by her daughter, Kylie Jane Kremer, put together a multi-state bus tour to Washington, D.C.

Two activists with close ties to Stephen Bannon — Jennifer Lawrence and Dustin Stockton — helped organize the effort, the Times reports, with funding from Bannon's "War Room" podcast and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell. Trump tweeted on Jan. 2 that he would be at the event, and though "Kremer held the permit, the rally would now effectively become a White House production," the Times reports. Publix supermarket heiress Julie Jenkins Fancelli donated $300,000 and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones chipped in another $50,000; Caroline Wren, a former deputy to Kimberly Guilfoyle, and Trump campaign adviser Katrina Pierson joined the organizing of the event.

Stockton, a hard-right gun activist, told the Times "he was surprised to learn on the day of the rally that it would now include a march from the Ellipse to the Capitol. Before the White House became involved, he said, the plan had been to stay at the Ellipse until the counting of state electoral slates was completed."

The violent assault on the Capitol, followed by Congress certifying Biden's victory, spelled the end of Trump's post-election campaign, the Times reports, but "the same cannot be said about the political staying power, the grip on the Republican faithful, of the lie he set in motion," that the election was stolen from him. 

Read more at The New York Times.

Legal costs low, fundraising totals high after Trump's false claims of voter fraud

As Trump aked In Cash Denying His Loss, Little Went to Actual Legal Fight

Shane Goldmacher and Rachel Shorey

The New York Times

Updated Mon., February 1, 2021

Former President Donald Trump and the Republican Party entered this year having stockpiled more than $175 million from fundraising in November and December based on his false claims of voter fraud, spending only a tiny fraction on lawyers and bills for his effort to overturn the presidential election, according to new campaign finance reports filed Sunday night.

The picture that emerges in the new Federal Election Commission reports is of Trump mounting a furious public relations effort to spread the lie and keep generating money from it, rather than making a sustained legal push to try to support his conspiracy theories.

His campaign’s single biggest expense in December was a nearly $5 million media buy paid to the firm that bought his television advertisements. His second-largest payment, $4.4 million, was for online advertising. And the Republican National Committee pocketed millions of dollars in donations — collecting 25 cents for every dollar Trump raised online — in the final weeks of the year as it spent relatively little on legal costs

All told, Trump’s campaign spent only $10 million on legal costs — about one-fifth of what it spent on advertising and fundraising, according to an analysis of Federal Election Commission filings from Nov. 4 through the end of the year.

During that period, Trump’s conspiracy-fueled accusations that votes had been miscounted or misappropriated repeatedly fell flat in the courts. Joe Biden was elected president by voters on Nov. 3, confirmed by the Electoral College on Dec. 14 and ratified by Congress on Jan. 6 — the same day that Trump incited a mob that stormed the Capitol.

But while Trump’s efforts to delegitimize the election did not keep him in power, they did spur millions in contributions from loyal supporters and provided both him and the party with an enormous infusion of cash.

The Republican National Committee ended the year with more than $80 million in the bank after the fundraising blitz, and Trump had $31 million in the new political action committee he formed in November for his post-presidential political ventures.

That accounts for just some of their haul. The party and the former president had roughly $63 million more in two shared accounts waiting to be distributed between them, with Trump’s PAC entitled to 75% of the money raised in December, giving him an estimated $70 million PAC war chest.

Most of the money appears to have come online and from smaller contributors, with relatively few five- and six-figure checks, especially once the calendar turned to December. One $100,000 check in early December came from Elaine J. Wold, a major Republican donor in Florida.

Though his race was over, Trump’s voracious online fundraising from Nov. 24 through the end of the year even outpaced that of the two Republican senators, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, who were competing in the Georgia runoff elections that would determine control of the chamber.

During those 39 days, Trump and his shared committees with the RNC raised $80 million online; Loeffler and Perdue combined for closer to $75 million. Both lost.

Trump did incur some legal costs from more than a dozen law firms.

He paid $1.6 million to Kasowitz Benson Torres, more than $500,000 to Jones Day and about $600,000 to Dechert. The law firm of Kurt Hilbert, who was on Trump’s phone call pressuring the Republican secretary of state in Georgia, Brad Raffensperger, to “find” votes to overturn the election outcome, was paid more than $480,000. A $3 million payment went to the Wisconsin election commission to pay for a recount.

One major Republican donor, C. Boyden Gray, who contributed more than $2 million to Republicans in the 2020 cycle, also provided legal consulting for Trump, earning $114,000.

The man who made so many public appearances on behalf of Trump as his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, reported no payments by the former president’s campaign. His firm was reimbursed for $63,423 in travel in mid-December.

An associate of Giuliani’s had asked that he be paid $20,000 a day for his work for Trump, which Giuliani initially denied. He later acknowledged the request to The New York Times, but he has continued to publicly deny making money for his work, including in a radio appearance Sunday.

“I haven’t made a penny on it,” Giuliani said.

The Trump campaign also spent $20,130 in mid-December for what were described as travel reimbursements to the Kerik Group, led by former New York Police Commissioner Bernard B. Kerik, whom Trump pardoned last year for his 2010 conviction on eight felonies. Kerik is a close ally of Giuliani’s.

The Trump operation continued to spend on fundraising, pouring millions more into a secretive limited liability company, American Made Media Consultants, for online and text-message advertising. Family members of Trump and Vice President Mike Pence once served on the board of that company, which had more than $700 million in spending flow through it during the 2020 campaign.

One of Trump’s shared committees with the Republican National Committee spent $237,000 on books through a company, Reagan Investments, that has also done work for a PAC controlled by Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas. The Trump campaign offered signed copies of Cruz’s book last fall to donors who gave $75 or more.

And, as they have since the beginning of his candidacy in 2015, Trump’s campaign accounts patronized his businesses in the postelection period.

The Trump Victory committee paid $34,000 to the Trump Hotel Collection in its final 2020 filing. The same committee also paid a Trump-owned limited liability company that operates a private plane, DT Endeavor, $39,200 on Nov. 24.

Another Trump campaign committee paid $75,000 in rent to the Trump Tower building in December.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

© 2021 The New York Times Company
Originally published Mon., February 1, 2021