"BAT SHIT CRAZY"

Trump Supporters at Iowa Rally See 'Civil War Coming,' Say He Will 'Save the World'

Fatma Khaled 4 hrs ago

© Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images As Trump supporters rally in Iowa to back the former president, some attendees believe that Republicans are the same as Democrats, while other see violence will escalate in the country. Above, Trump stands at a campaign rally at Dubuque Regional Airport on November 1, 2020 in Dubuque, Iowa.

Donald Trump supporters at the Iowa rally on Saturday, waiting for the ex-president to speak, worried about "a civil war coming" and said he "will save the world."

Trump will address today's rally, being held at the Iowa State Fairground in Des Moines, at about 8 p.m. ET. Polls show he's more popular in the state than President Joe Biden. Trump had a 53 percent approval rating, according to a recent a Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll, the highest he's ever received in Iowa. Biden languished at 31 percent.

Attendee Lori Levi told MSNBC that Republicans are about "as weak as they possibly could be in Congress." She said that in her mind GOP lawmakers are like Democrats, except for senators Ted Cruz, Mike Lee and Rand Paul and few others.

Thousands in line for this evening’s Trump Rally in Iowa pic.twitter.com/1n6oE2MMi1— Benny (@bennyjohnson) October 9, 2021

"They're establishment. They don't care about the American people because they're in their elite little tower," she said. "So we're just sick of it, you know, and we're not going to take it anymore. I see a civil war coming. I do. I see civil war coming."

Another attendee said that her entire family "turned liberal" and that they hate Trump. But, she hoped that this would turn around, adding that she has "complete faith that this man [Trump] is going to basically save the world. Not just us. Everyone."


Woman at Trump rally today says her whole family has “turned liberal” and they hate Trump. Then breaks down crying and says, “I have complete faith that this man is going to basically save the world. Not just us, everyone.” pic.twitter.com/Z5g0YXC54m— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) October 9, 2021

Meanwhile, one Trump supporter said that she decided to move from Alaska to Iowa after she learned that the former president will be holding a rally in Des Moines.

"He tells everything straight as it is, no BS, and that's what this country needs. No lies," she said of Trump.


Des Moines Iowa!!!

Trump Rally Today!!🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸Making America Great Again Again‼‼‼‼ pic.twitter.com/wSi3GI4onP— JamieLynn_TrumpGrl💋 (@2jamielynn) October 9, 2021

Rich Thomas, another rally attendee, said that he came to the rally to give "documents" to Trump's legal team. "Our king, Jesus Christ, has spoken to put you back in your office at the White House now," he said.

A video circulating on Twitter showed flags and "Trump won" banners installed along the route leading up to the rally, with one supporter saying "Iowa is Trump country."


IOWA IS TRUMP COUNTRY!🇺🇸

Patriots in Des Moines, Iowa

line an overpass with TRUMP WON flags along the route to President Trump’s rally at the Iowa State Fairgrounds.pic.twitter.com/SuIVcv7BOQ— DrConservaMom🇺🇸🐸🌐 (@ConservaMomUSA) October 9, 2021

In another clip, three Trump supporters said that they were at the rally because "he is the greatest president, best we have ever had" and described Biden as "dead."

"I support him, he supports us," one attendee said of Trump.

Rally organizers told We Are Iowa they expect tens of thousands of attendees on Saturday. Though doors didn't open until the afternoon, some attendees were seen camping out overnight on Thursday and Friday.

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Donald Trump accuses Democrats of supporting 'killing babies after birth' in misleading Iowa rally speech about the reconciliation bill, video shows

Joshua Zitser

Sun, October 10, 2021, 

Former President Donald Trump speaks to supporters during a rally at the Iowa State Fairgrounds on October 09, 2021 in Des Moines, Iowa Scott Olson/Getty Images

• Former President Donald Trump inaccurately accused Democrats of killing babies "up until the moment of birth" at a rally in Iowa.

• He also falsely claimed that Virginia's governor supports executing babies "after birth."

• Fact-checkers have noted that both of these assertions are false.

Speaking to thousands of supporters at a rally in Des Moines, Iowa, former President Donald Trump baselessly accused the "far-left" of aborting babies right up until the moment of birth and misleadingly alleged that one Democrat governor supports infanticide.

Trump told the crowd that the $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill, officially known as the Build Back Better Act, would force "taxpayers to fund the far left's extreme abortion agenda."

The bill, he said, would abolish the Hyde amendment. This controversial provision bars federal funds from being used for most abortions, except in cases of rape, incest, or when the pregnant person's life is in danger.

There is a lack of consensus among Democrats about including the Hyde amendment in the reconciliation bill. Some moderates, including Sen. Joe Manchin, demand that it be a part of the package.

Progressive Democrats, like Rep. Pramila Jayapal, have said that they would not support a bill that includes the Hyde amendment, and President Joe Biden told reporters that he would sign it either way.

The abolition of the Hyde amendment, Trump claimed at the rally, would see Democrats "ripping babies from their mother's womb, right up until the moment of birth."

The amendment's focus is on funding and accessibility to abortions and does not refer extreme late-term abortions.

Trump has repeated the claim several times at campaign rallies that Democrats "rip" babies from the womb at the "moment of birth," and fact-checkers have consistently noted this as false.

Most abortions are performed in the earlier stages of pregnancy, with a minuscule percentage (about one percent) happening after the fetus reaches the point of viability. "The president is describing something that rarely happens and that no Democrat is calling for anyway," said The Washington Post.

At the Iowa rally, the former president went on to make an even wilder assertion about Democrats and their abortion positions. He said that some Democrats are "killing babies after birth," and falsely alleged that Virginia Governor Ralph Northam supports infanticide.

"You saw that?" In Virginia, the governor of Virginia, after birth," Trump told the crowd.

The former president previously made the misleading assertion during his State of Union address in 2019 and at a 2019 rally in El Paso, Texas, but fact-checkers have repeatedly debunked it then.

The accusation refers to Northam's comments on "third-trimester abortions" that are done in cases "where there may be severe deformities. There may be a fetus that's nonviable," Reuters said.

Northam, a physician, never said he would sanction the execution of newborns, according to Politifact. The fact-checkers said: "What he did say is that in rare, late-pregnancy cases when fetuses are nonviable, doctors deliver the baby, keep it comfortable, resuscitate it if the mother wishes, and then have a 'discussion' with the mother."

During the rally, Insider reported that Trump also spread misinformation about widely disproved claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election.

Almost a Year Since Trump Was Soundly Defeated, Republican Leader Still Won’t Admit the Truth

Peter Wade
Sun, October 10, 2021, 


Steve Scalise - Credit: FoxNews/Screencap

Appearing on Fox News Sunday, House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) refused to say whether he believed the election was “stolen” from former President Donald Trump, who resurrected those claims at an Iowa rally Saturday night.

“I want to ask you a specific question,” host Chris Wallace said. “Do you think the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump [who is] continuing to make that charge?”

Wallace added, “Not having states do election reforms, but specifically making this charge that the election was stolen? Do you think that that hurts undermines American democracy?”

Scalise replied but did not answer the question, claiming states violated the constitution when they made changes to election law due to the pandemic. “Well Chris, I’ve been very clear from the beginning,” he said. “If you look at a number of states, they didn’t follow their state passed laws that govern the election for president. That is what the United States Constitution says. They don’t say that the states determine what the rules are, they say the state legislature determined that.”

Wallace interjected, “So you think the election was stolen?”

Scalise continued to evade — even though it’s clear where he stands since he voted against certifying Biden’s win in January — and essentially repeated what he had just said about states not following their own rules, the same thing he said in January.

Wallace tried for a third and final time to get Scalise to give a straight answer: “Do you think the election was stolen or not? I understand you think there were irregularities and things that need to be fixed. Do you think the election was stolen?”

But Scalise refused to budge and replied as if Wallace hadn’t even asked a question and instead talked about how he doesn’t like that Democrats refer to Georgia’s new election law as being similar to Jim Crow era laws.

It was at that point that Wallace likely realized he will never get a straight answer, so he gave up and ended the interview.

Surprise labor shortage hits US schools



Courtenay Brown
Fri, October 8, 2021, 3:56 PM·1 min read

School is back, but the workers — teachers, bus drivers and more — are not.

Why it matters: The education hiring slowdown (which helps explain Friday morning’s weak jobs report) is partially a byproduct of the biggest hurdles to labor market recovery.

Get market news worthy of your time with Axios Markets. Subscribe for free.

Education workers tend to be women, who have left the workforce in droves. They are also older, so they may be more concerned about contracting COVID-19.

By the numbers: Local government school districts lost 144,000 jobs last month and another 17,000 at the state level.

Private education jobs fell by 19,000.

One caveat: A data quirk makes the hiring drop-off more dramatic.

The agency in charge of the jobs report makes adjustments to smooth out seasonal volatility, which education is prone to.

But hiring in the sector was weaker than it usually is in prime back-to-school season. That “wreaked havoc” on the seasonal formula, and that overstates the decline, RSM chief economist Joe Brusuelas tells Axios.

Anecdotes across the country show there aren’t enough of the people who make local school systems work.

In Philadelphia, the bus driver shortage is so bad that a school district is paying some families up to $300 to drive their kids.

In Minneapolis, one district canceled 12 bus routes. It can't find fill-ins when regular drivers are out.

In Charlotte, a school system is offering bonuses to entice special education teachers and other tradespeople.

What to watch: “If kids are back at school and there are far fewer staff, the quality of education is suffering,” ZipRecruiter chief economist Julia Pollak tells Axios.

Axios Local's Taylor Allen, Torey Van Oot and Katie Peralta Soloff contributed reporting.

Air India: The iconic maharajah returns home

Soutik Biswas - India correspondent
Sat, October 9, 2021

Air India has a fleet of more than 140 planes and employs hundreds of pilots and crew

The story of Air India began at a tiny airfield in Karachi in undivided India on a balmy morning in October 1932 when JRD Tata, the 28-year-old scion of a well-known business family, took off for Bombay in a single-engine plane.

The Puss Moth - one of the two that Tata purchased from England - was beginning a modest weekly mail service.

The plane cruised at 100mph (160km/h), battling headwinds in what was a "bumpy and hot flight". A bird flew into the cabin and had to be killed.


After a refuelling stop - a bullock cart ferried fuel to the airline in Ahmedabad - the plane landed on a mud flat in Bombay (now Mumbai) in the late afternoon. After offloading some of the mail, the second, waiting plane took off with the remainder of its cargo to two cities in southern India.

Struggling national carrier sold to Tata Sons

The planes had to be started up by swinging the propeller by hand, flew without navigational or landing aids, and had no radio communication.

They routinely took off from the mud-flat near the beach in Bombay where the "sea was below what we called our airfield, and during the high tide of the monsoon, the airfield was at the bottom of the sea," Tata recounted later.

When the place got flooded, the airline - two planes, three pilots and three mechanics - moved to a small airfield in the city of Poona (now Pune), 150km to the south-east.

Geneva" poster depicting the company mascot – the Maharaja – relaxing at a ski resort and toasting a large beer with his ski partner while balancing on a broken leg and crutches, designed for Air India, 1965.

"Scarcely anywhere in the world was there an air service operating without support from the government. It could only be done by throwing on the operator the financial risk. Tata Sons were prepared to take the risk," Sir Frederick Tymms, the then chief of civil aviation in the region told a newspaper in 1934.

Over the years, the mail service expanded to other cities. A lone passenger was also accommodated. In 1937, two Tata planes began a service between Delhi and Bombay, each plane carrying 3,500 letters and one passenger. Within six years of starting up, the airline owned 15 planes, an equal number of pilots and three dozen engineers. It claimed a punctuality of 99.4%.


Air India plane stuck under bridge in viral video

"It took Tata pilots some time to get accustomed to a human riding in the seat behind them," the tycoon's biographer, Russi M Lala, noted. "One day a skipper consuming a leg of chicken is reported to have thrown the bone out of the cockpit. It was carried by the wind into the lap of his startled passenger".

An aviation buff - he had flown his first solo flight as a 25 year old - Tata had always wanted to build a global airline. In the early 1940s, he spoke presciently about the impending "air age" and how air travel would become "as widely available as railway and steamer facilities today". By 1946, his fledgling airline was carrying one of every three passengers in India and owned nearly half of the roughly 50 planes operating in the country.

American rock group The Doors flew the airline

Two years later, Air India went international. A brand new Lockheed Constellation plane christened the Malabar Princess took off from Bombay on a flight to London. Tata told the BBC that the flight was the "first by an Asian airline to link the East and West by a regular service". By the end of that year Air India was making profits.

Air India quickly gained a worldwide reputation and a well-known brand. By 1968, 75% of its passengers came from foreign countries. George Harrison and The Doors flew on it; and Salvador Dali designed and gifted the airline with a special ashtray.

Can the national carrier finally find a buyer?

Tata, a domineering businessman, was punctilious about in-flight service: he once pointed to the colour of tea served on the flight as "indistinguishable" from the colour of coffee; stopped cabin attendants from smoking in the galleys while on duty; and complained that the bacon and tomatoes were often served "stone cold" in the first class breakfast.

He also ticked off his crew for not being properly groomed. "We must know where to draw the line between the odd, the ridiculous and the attractive. Some of your pursers grow sideburns right into their collars! Some have grown drooping moustaches, that make them indistinguishable from Fu Manchu. Some hostesses have buns bigger than their head… please do pay special attention to make-up and appearance" he wrote in a note to one of his managers in 1951.

JRD Tata, the founder of the airline, was an aviation buff

In June 1953, Air India was taken over by the government. India's aviation industry had flown into heavy weather: profits were falling, too many aeroplanes had been bought, at least two airlines had shut down. The government proposed merging nearly a dozen airlines - only Air India was the standout operator - in a single state-owned corporation. Tata had mixed feelings about it.

For the next three decades Air India continued to shine. The diminutive maharajah, the airline's world-famous mascot, became one of India's most recognisable symbols. In bright destination-driven promotional posters he appeared as a Brit with a bowler hat and umbrella; a Frenchman with a beret; and a ruddy, alpine climber from Switzerland.

The planes were named after royalty and Himalayan peaks. By the 1970s Air India had 10,000 employees in 54 countries. "[Even in the 1980s) it was a brand to reckon with. It was one of the few Indian organisations at that time with a global footprint. It had an aura of glamour and excitement," noted Jitender Bhargava, a former executive director of Air India and author of the book, The Descent of Air India.

Things began to go downhill from the 1990s. Competition became fiercer. Air India began making heavy losses after merging with the state-owned domestic operator Indian Airlines in 2007. It relied on taxpayer-funded bailouts to stay operational, and became the butt of jokes.

Air India's in-flight service was among the best in the world

The carrier was making a loss of nearly $2.6m (£1.9m) a day and was racked by debts worth more than $8bn. The airline still had some of the best pilots, but its on-time performance plummeted and service deteriorated.

Now, Air India has returned to the Tata Group, India's biggest conglomerate. In an emotional note, Ratan Tata, chairman emeritus and cousin of JRD Tata, said the airline under JRD had "gained the reputation of being one of the most prestigious airlines in the world".

"Tatas will have the opportunity of regaining the image and reputation it enjoyed in earlier years," he said.

Fasten your seat belts.

How the worst drought in 3 decades could exacerbate Afghanistan's national crises — and create new ones

Tim O'Donnell, Contributing Writer
Sun, October 10, 2021

Afghan village in Shadyan desert. 

FARSHAD USYAN/AFP via Getty Images

Amid all its political upheaval, Afghanistan is also facing its "worst drought in 35-36 years," Richard Trenchard, the country director for the Food and Agriculture Organization in Afghanistan, told The Wall Street Journal.

Farmers, naturally, are struggling and most lack the technology and money needed to implement more climate-resistance agricultural methods. In short, economic disaster looms, and because the Taliban has not presented any plan to create jobs or provide Afghanistan's population with financial system, there's a chance of unrest in the countryside. "We will wait for six months," Mohammad Amir, a 45-year-old farm from Wardak province, told the Journal. "If things don't get better, we will stand against the Taliban."

The fallout could also include rising tensions with neighboring Iran, which receives water from the Helmland River and has often accused Afghanistan of keeping more water than it was supposed to under the terms of a 1973 water treaty between the two nations, the Journal notes. Oli Brown, a senior research associate with Berlin-based environmental think tank Adelphia, said the drought could also accelerate migration from Afghanistan, or force farmers in some areas to switch to growing opium poppies, which require less water to cultivate than other crops and are more lucrative. Of course, their production comes with its own consequences. 

Read more at The Wall Street Journal. BEHIND PAYWALL

Fossil fuel companies paying top law firms millions to ‘dodge responsibility’

Isabella Kaminski
Sat, October 9, 2021

Photograph: Ina Fassbender/AFP/Getty Images

The world’s biggest corporate law firms have been making millions of dollars representing fossil fuel companies but, as the climate crisis intensifies, this work is coming under increasing scrutiny.

Over the last five years, the 100 top ranked law firms in the US facilitated $1.36tn of fossil fuel transactions, represented fossil fuel clients in 358 legal cases and received $35m in compensation for their work to assist fossil fuel industry lobbying, according to a “climate scorecard” published in August.

Related: Biomass is promoted as a carbon neutral fuel. But is burning wood a step in the wrong direction?

The scale of law firms’ work for the fossil fuel industry is huge, said Tim Herschel-Burns, a third year student at Yale Law School and co-founder of Law Students for Climate Accountability, which developed the scorecard. “As we started digging we realised how holistic this is. Everything fossil fuel companies want to do, they need lawyers to accomplish.”

Fossil fuel companies rely heavily on armies of lawyers to advise on projects, lobby, negotiate contracts, secure permits and navigate an increasing number of climate lawsuits. Law firms’ fossil fuel industry work has increased compared with the previous year’s scorecard, even as climate warnings become more dire and the International Energy Agency has warned new fossil fuel development is incompatible with the target of net zero emissions by 2050.

The climate scorecard awarded firms grades based on their involvement in lawsuits “exacerbating climate change”, their support for fossil fuel transactions and fees received for lobbying on behalf of the fossil fuel industry.

Paul Weiss, a top 10 US firm according to Vault Law’s rankings, was one of 37 to receive the lowest F grade. The firm, which has its own sustainability practice, has acted for fossil fuel companies in 30 cases over the last five years, according to the scorecard. Among the most high-profile was the firm’s work representing ExxonMobil in a landmark trial where the company was accused of having misled investors about the risks of climate change to its business. The court ruled in favour of Exxon in 2019. Paul Weiss did not respond to a request for comment.

Climate protesters in October 2019 outside the New York county courthouse, where the trial against Exxon took place. 

Photograph: Justin Lane/EPA

Only 12 law firms were rated an A or B in the scorecard, which meant they did not conduct work for fossil fuel clients. Three firms – Cooley; Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati; and Schulte Roth & Zabel – have actively addressed the climate crisis through renewable energy transactions, lobbying or pro-climate litigation, according to the scorecard report.

“We definitely agree that the law can be this force for good,” said Herschel-Burns. “But one thing that we found really striking is that overwhelmingly the top law firms are [representing] the wrong side of it.”

There’s a tangible human cost, said Alyssa Johl, legal director for the Center for Climate Integrity. “Elite law firms are representing the oil and gas companies and providing them with a deep bench of high-priced lawyers,” she said. “For the communities across the country that are seeking justice, the end result is that their cases have been delayed and bogged down by procedural hurdles put forward by some of the biggest law firms in the country.”

Law Students for Climate Accountability is calling on law firms to pledge to stop taking on new fossil fuel industry work, phase out their current work by 2025 and ramp up their work for the renewable energy industry and in support of litigation to tackle the climate crisis.

It’s a potentially controversial stance given the principle that everyone should have access to legal representation. But Herschel-Burns said this principle is often used in “really sloppy ways which end up justifying law firms being able to represent whoever pays the most”.

Some firms have acknowledged a choice. Speaking at a conference last year about the link between law and climate change, the global senior partner at Clifford Chance Jeroen Ouwehand said firms “can choose what we support, and what we don’t support. We do not have to be neutral professional service providers”.

Law firms are starting to ramp up their own climate action, even as they continue their fossil fuel work. A number of firms that scored F grades on the climate scorecard, including Shearman & Sterling and Hogan Lovells, have signed up to the Net Zero Lawyers Alliance, which launched in July. Members pledge to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 and to work with clients to embed climate goals and to help drive “systemic change”. Neither firm responded to the Guardian’s request for comment.

Another alliance member, DLA Piper, has set its own science-based target to halve all emissions by 2030, including indirect emissions from the firm’s supply chain. The firm was recently appointed official legal services provider for the forthcoming Cop26 climate talks. But it scored only a D on the climate scorecard and has represented clients including Shell, ExxonMobil and BP. The firm declined to comment.

Thom Wetzer, law professor and director of the Oxford Sustainable Law Programme, one of the organisations supporting the alliance, said the firms may be serious about taking steps in the right direction but they do not necessarily have the best practices yet. “We need to move the whole sector, and for many firms involved this is the start of a journey.”

Some law firms that ranked low on the climate scorecard were keen to promote their green energy work. Allen & Overy, which according to the scorecard worked on fossil fuel transactions worth $125bn over the last five years, said in a statement that it does “more renewables work than any other law firm in the world by most key measures”. Clifford Chance, which the scorecard calculated worked on fossil fuel transactions worth $123bn, said it is “perennially at or near the top” for advising on renewables financing.

But neither firm, both of which scored an F, responded to questions about how they reconcile this work with their representation of fossil fuel firms.

Lawyers have a responsibility to reflect on their own role and to ask whether their clients’ values align with their own, Wetzer said. “Firms that engage constructively with the net zero transition will be rewarded; clients will value their judgment and expertise, top talent will be more easily attracted and retained, and these firms will strengthen their social license to operate.”

Law firms’ best resource is their employees, said Sam Sankar, of the nonprofit environmental law organization Earthjustice, which makes the climate scorecard a powerful tool. “In the future nobody is going to think twice about making career decisions with an eye to whether it aligns with their climate ethics.”

There’s now a conversation about legal ethics and climate which is well overdue, Sankar said. “The [fossil fuel] industry is paying law firms tons of money in an effort to dodge responsibility and block regulatory reforms that could help avert this crisis.”

HAWAII
Expired 'burrito' sandbags litter beaches on Oahu's North Shore

Sophie Cocke, The Honolulu Star-Advertiser
Sun, October 10, 2021

Oct. 10—On a gusty Saturday morning, local residents and visitors lounged along Oahu's picturesque Sunset Beach, breathing in the thick, salty air and swimming in the deep-blue and turquoise waters. Two women strolled along the beach where waves glide up the deep deposits of golden sand, until they encountered a tangled mound of thick, black fabric, sand bags the size of large tree trunks, boulders and wood planks with protruding screws, and turned back.

Here, waves slam angrily against the littered shoreline, tugging at the black fabric and debris that property owners have strewn along the public beach to protect their homes from being sucked into the ocean. The large heap that fronts about half a dozen homes prevents residents and visitors from walking along the shoreline.

Ocean Lemus, who was at the beach with his friends Saturday, stared intently at the mess and questioned how this could be allowed to exist along one of the world's most famous stretches of sand.

"It looks like a trash heap ... not something you would assume to find on Sunset Beach, which is the premier surf spot, " he said.

Indeed, it's not supposed to be there.

In 2018, the state Department of Land and Natural Resources gave property owners along the span of North Shore coastline that fronts surf breaks known as Monster Mush and Kammies permission to install emergency "burritos, " long, sand-filled tubes covered by heavy fabric that create a hard barrier against ocean waves.

Typically, such protections are forbidden under state law. In order for property owners to armor a shoreline or install a structure on a public beach, they need to get a conservation district use permit. The process includes conducting an extensive study that looks at potential environmental impacts, opportunities for the public to weigh in on the use of the public trust resource, and approval from the Land Board that oversees DLNR.

But DLNR deemed the homes "imminently threatened " and allowed the homeowners to install the protections on a temporary basis with the condition they be removed in three years, or even earlier if there were signs they were damaging the beach.

The homeowners have refused to remove the protections, however, which expired between July and September of this year. They are among dozens of property owners throughout the islands who have been allowed to install temporary sandbags and other protections that are now expired.

In addition to marring the beauty of the coastlines, scientists worry they pose an existential threat to Hawaii's prized beaches. When waves slam up against a hardened shoreline that is migrating inland, they claw away at the sand, causing beaches to disappear.

The Honolulu Star-Advertiser and ProPublica published an last year that found DLNR had granted 66 emergency shoreline permits to property owners across the islands. Nearly half of the permits were for properties along Oahu's North Shore, known as the Seven Mile Miracle because of its abundance of prime surf breaks and stunning beaches.

Many of the beneficiaries are owners of multimillion-dollar homes along some of the most prized beaches in the state and include famous surfers Kelly Slater and Fred Patacchia. While DLNR says Slater's system was installed without permission, they haven't forced him to remove it.

The news organizations found the temporary sandbags and burrito systems are rarely removed from public beaches when they expire. Instead, state officials repeatedly have granted homeowners extensions or don't enforce their own deadlines, while granting after-the-fact approval for structures that were built illegally.

DLNR now seems to be trying to rein in the protections, particularly along the North Shore, though none of the homeowners have been fined or faced any other enforcement action. The state can fine property owners $15, 000 a day for unauthorized structures that remain on the beach.

Asked why DLNR hadn't forced the homeowners to remove the burritos, the department said in written responses to questions that the homes remain imminently threatened and that property owners have a right to due process.

"We understand that many of these homeowners are in a very stressful and challenging situation, " wrote DLNR's Office of Conservation and Coastal Lands.

DLNR officials, including Board of Land and Natural Resources Chairwoman Suzanne Case, who oversees the department, did not respond to interview requests. But in written responses, officials said the temporary protection measures along areas such as Kammies have "led to obvious degradation of the public beach resource."

The officials say there are now about 70 coastal properties throughout the state that have expired emergency permits and that those owners have or will be receiving letters of "alleged noncompliance " along with requests for information about how they intend to "correct the situation " and their "plans moving forward in the long term."

OCCL says it is requiring certain homeowners, though it didn't specify how many, to prove that a "bona fide planning effort " is underway, including employing "professional planners, engineers, or consultants to develop and implement a long-term solution whether it involves relocation or abandonment, beach restoration, or some other form of shoreline management."

OCCL also said a surety bond or other financial assurance may be required as part of any potential approvals for a time extension to ensure the temporary protections are removed when they expire.

Officials didn't specify how long of an extension may be granted to the homeowners.

Many of the North Shore homeowners declined or didn't respond to requests for comment. But William Kernot, who is among the owners of homes that front the Kammies surf break, confirmed he received one of the letters.

He acknowledged his burrito system "looks terrible " but maintained it wasn't harming the beach, even though it's blocking the public shoreline. He said DLNR should approve a seawall for his property to improve the aesthetics of the coastline.

Coastal experts say engineering a seawall along this stretch, which isn't permitted under state law, would be extremely difficult because the base would have to be so wide and deep in order for it to be stable.

"It would take over the whole beach, " said Dolan Eversole, a coastal geologist with the University of Hawaii Sea Grant College Program, referring to the much wider beach that exists there during the winter months when the sand shifts.

"If we desire beaches on the North Shore, we are going to have to get out of the way, " Eversole said.

Meanwhile, Randy Rarick, a well-known surfer and surf promoter who has lived along Sunset Beach for 50 years, says he is already seeing damage to this stretch of coastline from sea-level rise and the burritos.

In the winter months, western swells typically deposit large amounts of sand to the east of the homes along Kammies, replenishing the long stretch of Sunset Beach. But he says the homes with burritos are blocking this from occurring, causing the sand to be depleted, a sign the burrito systems could contribute to a domino effect of beach loss down the coastline.

Rarick says backwash from the waves hitting this stretch of coastline hardened with sandbags, tarps and boulders is disrupting the famous surf breaks.

"I feel really sorry for the homeowners, " Rarick said, "but sea-level rise is upon us."

Climate activist Nakate visits huge German coal mine

Sat, October 9, 2021, 10:00 AM·2 min read

LUETZERATH, Germany (AP) — Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate on Saturday visited a vast German open-pit coal mine and a village that is to be bulldozed for its expansion, saying the destruction is “really disturbing” and has implications far beyond Germany.

The visit by Nakate and other young climate activists comes a few weeks before U.N. climate talks open in Glasgow, Scotland on Oct. 31.

The Garzweiler lignite mine, operated by utility giant RWE, has become a focus of protests by people who want Germany to stop extracting and burning coal as soon as possible. Activists and local residents say expanding the mine runs counter to Germany’s goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to meet the Paris climate accord’s target of capping global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit).

They also oppose the destruction of villages such as Luetzerath and nearby woods to make way for the mine. Coal mining is due to end in Germany by 2038, but environmentalists say it needs to stop much earlier.

“I came to see how much destruction is being done in Luetzerath with the coal mine and to see how much of this destruction is not just affecting the people in this place, but also the people in my country, Uganda,” Nakate told The Associated Press.

Because of rising global temperatures, “the weather patterns are changing in my country and we are experiencing more extreme rainfall and extreme droughts,” she said.

“With the expansion of this coal mine, it means people’s cultures will be destroyed, people’s traditions, people’s histories of this place," Nakate said.

Noting the mine's size and its implications for greenhouse gas emissions, she added "it’s really disturbing to see how much destruction is taking place.”

German activist Leonie Bremer said “it’s absurd that my friend Vanessa has to come here from Uganda to show people that what we are doing here in Germany, that what RWE is doing here, that’s affecting countries like Uganda.”

Germany Climate ProtestClimate activist Vanessa Nakate from Uganda during her visit to the Garzweiler open-cast coal mine in Luetzerath, western Germany, Saturday, Oct. 9, 2021. Garzweiler, operated by utility giant RWE, has become a focus of protests by people who want Germany to stop extracting and burning coal as soon as possible. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner)More

Meet the Teen Who Got the Pro-Choice Movement on TikTok

Emily Shugerman
Fri, October 8, 2021, 

Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast / Photos Getty/Mahi Bath

The email sent to hundreds of reproductive rights organizations last year contained an urgent warning: Anti-abortion groups had seized on TikTok and were gaining “extreme traction” with the platform’s young audience.

“There is serious, untapped potential here, and you should capitalize on it,” it read.

Perhaps even more surprising than the message was the identity of its author: a 15-year-old California high school student who was stuck home because of the pandemic and had, like many Americans, gotten sucked into the app.

Another surprise: The abortion rights movement listened to her.

Now, a year and a half after sending that email, Mehtaab Kaur is a high-school senior who juggles homework, equestrian polo practices, and consultations with advocacy groups on how they can harness the power of the video-sharing service.

“The way I had planned it out initially was that they would just get on the app,” Kaur told The Daily Beast. “But something I realized is a lot of these organizations don’t understand TikTok.”

“And that’s where I came in,” she added.

“AbortionTok”—the term pro-choice advocates use to describe their space on the app—has grown steadily in recent years as abortion access in the U.S. has waned. The most popular accounts have more than half a million followers and regularly garner tens of thousands of likes. Last month, when an anti-abortion group set up a tip line to catch violators of a restrictive Texas abortion law, activists on TikTok flooded it with false reports and Shrek memes. The site was taken down within a week.

But it wasn’t always that way. Before Kaur and other advocates joined the app, anti-abortion organizations like LiveAction had an outsized voice among TikTok’s predominantly young, liberal audience. At the time of Kaur’s email, Live Action had more than 80,000 followers; the anti-abortion clothing line A Chance at Life had nearly 48,000. (They now have more than 477,000 and nearly 125,000, respectively.) Explaining the breadth of the problem in her email, Kaur wrote: “Not saying you should be concerned, but you should be concerned.”

But the teenager also knew that pro-choice accounts gained traction on TikTok much faster than pro-life ones—“that’s a literal fact,” she wrote. She urged the organizations she emailed—which included the Guttmacher Institute, multiple abortion funds and every branch of NARAL and Planned Parenthood she could find—to create accounts and start posting videos. (Thirty- to 40-second videos were best, she wrote, 15 was acceptable; it was probably a good idea to put a younger staff member in charge of the account.)

“I don’t mean to push a sense of urgency, but I cannot allow pro-life organizations to blatantly spread lies on an app that is comprised of so many younger, and impressionable children/teens,” she wrote.

At the same time Kaur was doing her outreach, some other advocates were slowly coming to the app on their own. Denise Rodriguez, the communications manager at the Texas Equal Access Fund, noted the hundreds of millions of people who joined TikTok during the pandemic, and hired a class of interns exclusively to make content for the app. A group of clinic escorts in North Carolina went viral several times for their videos mocking anti-abortion protesters.

Eleanor Grano, the program manager at abortion-rights advocacy group Jane’s Due Process, set about creating a pro-abortion “hype house”—Gen-Z-speak for groups that get together to make TikTok content. But every time she reached out to an organization about joining, she said, she got the same response.

"Everyone was telling me how they got this email from this bossy 16-year-old who was like, ‘Why aren’t you on TikTok?’” she said. “And I was like, I need to find this teen.”

Kaur sticks out among her peers for her gumption and for her single-minded focus on abortion. A New York Times article last summer detailed the apathy some teens feel toward the issue; a survey it cited found Gen Z women consistently ranked mass shootings, climate change, education, and racial inequality as more important to them than abortion.

But for Kaur, the issue is personal: When she was 13, an aunt in India was impregnated by a man who did not want to marry her; she wound up killing herself by ingesting arsenic. The incident impressed on her the weight of the stigma around abortion and unwanted pregnancy, and reminded her that these issues are closer to home than you might think. “There’s this huge campaign: ‘[Everyone knows] someone who’s had an abortion,’” Kaur said. “It’s the same for me, but I know someone who couldn’t get an abortion and had to deal with the consequences of that.”

Chaos Continues as Court Swiftly Brings Back Texas’ Abortion Ban

Despite her obvious passion, Kaur’s cold-email campaign didn’t take off instantly. Many organizations said they didn’t have time for another social media app; a few said they wanted to join but didn’t know how. One of those people was Whitney Shanahan of ProChoice with Heart.

Shanahan’s group, which was started in response to a proposed six-week abortion ban in Ohio, often staged protests in which pregnant people scrawled the words “pro-choice” across their stomachs with lipstick. Footage from the protests had gone viral on other social media platforms, but Shanahan knew nothing about Gen Z’s favorite app. “When [Kaur] reached out to me and was like, ‘We need pro-chociers like you on TikTok,’ I think I said to her, ‘What’s TikTok?’” Shanahan recalled.

At Kaur’s urging, Shanahan agreed to download the app and uploaded some of her old protest footage. It took off instantly. From there, Shanahan set about mastering TikTok, with Kaur as her consultant. Almost entirely through Instagram DM, Kaur walked her through TikTok basics like sounds, dance moves, and hashtags, “She was basically a tour guide,” Shanahan said.

Today, Shanahan has one of the most popular pro-choice accounts on TikTok, with more more than half a million followers. She estimates 99 percent of her advocacy is now done through the app, where she often uploads multiple times per day. And she says she owes it all to Kaur. “I would never have even gone to TikTok if I hadn’t gotten an Instagram message from her,” she said.

Grano, the Jane’s Due Process manager, did eventually get in touch with Kaur and convince her to join her hype house. There, the teenager functioned as the resident Gen-Z correspondent, reporting back on what sounds and styles were trending and how they could tailor it to pro-choice content. She and Grano also developed several lectures about how to use the app and presented them to abortion funds and at reproductive rights conferences.

Some of their recommendations are at odds with traditional pro-choice tactics. While older generations were taught to treat abortion as a serious, personal issue, TikTok activists often joke about it and even record fake abortion appointments. And while many pro-choice groups adopt an argumentative tone to persuade skeptics, Kaur tells her clients that the point of TikTok isn’t to convince the viewer, but to make them feel something.

“I tell people, ‘If you want to get people hooked, try making them feel hopeful, try making them feel proud, and try making that emotion come through in the video you’re making,’” she said.

“If they feel the right way, they're going to remember it, and they're going to continue having that conversation with other people they know, and it's just going to spread like wildfire.”

Grano said her biggest struggle is convincing millennial activists to let go a little. The generation raised on Instagram is often overly concerned with aesthetics, she said, and forgets that the way to connect with younger viewers is through authenticity. On TikTok, she said, “you can have uncombed hair and talk about something and Gen Z will listen."

But they can get their older clients to cooperate, both Kaur and Grano say getting them on TikTok is always worth it. The beauty of the app, Kaur explained, is in its largely captive audience: Viewers don’t have to follow your organization or search for it to find your content—if you work the algorithm right, it will simply pop up on their “For You” page. Once it’s there, she said, “Everyone will guaranteed give you at least five seconds before they scroll.”

Today, Kaur is balancing her social media consulting with a more typical high school activity: applying to colleges. She says she wants to major in marketing and apply it to work at nonprofits. She is writing her college admissions essay about her passion for activism.

Even when Kaur moves on with her life, her legacy in AbortionTok will live on. Paige Alexandria, the creator behind the popular pro-choice account @abortioncounselor, called Kaur a “catalyst” for AbortionTok, and even gave her a shout-out during a presentation last year.

Amelia Bonow, the founder of Shout Your Abortion, credited Kaur with inspiring her to launch an artists residency for pro-choice TikTok creators. She still remembers the email she received from the self-confident teen.

“She wasn’t just like ‘You should do this,’” Bonow said over email. “She was basically like, ‘If you are calling yourself a pro-abortion culture change organization and you’re not on Tik Tok, please take several seats.’”

“And based on her cold email game at age 15,” she added, “I have decided to endorse Mahi Beth for President of the United States of America in 2040.”

There's a generational shift in how we talk about women's health



Tina Reed
Sat, October 9, 2021


When it comes to women's health, Americans — and the advertisers that market to them — are getting blunter.

What's happening: Women's health is undergoing a generational cultural change. Younger women talk more openly about their periods and sexual health concerns — and more companies are marketing to them with messages that women only whispered about a few years ago.

Why it matters: The shift in conversation, and what people feel comfortable addressing head-on, could ultimately lead to changes in the health care women receive.

"Consumers and women are more empowered today than they ever have been to speak about issues that historically have been stigmatized or spoken about in a shameful manner," said Varsha Rao, CEO of Nurx, a women's telehealth company.

Much of this shift has come with changing expectations among Gen Zers.


A survey of more than 2,000 women ages 18 to 38 by menstrual cup company Lunette found 83% of Gen Zers felt periods are a totally natural process and should be discussed by everyone, including men. In comparison, only 72% of millennials agreed.


There's a "profound seismic shift" from previous generations, Deena Shakir, a partner at Lux Capital, told Insider.

There has also been an increase in understanding about the market power of women's health in recent years.


Female-led health care brands such as Maven, Elvie and Nurx have become more common in recent years, raising hundreds of millions of dollars in venture capital for technology solutions directed at women's health concerns.


In 2019, the “femtech” industry generated $820.6 million in global revenue, according to PitchBook.

State of play: Accompanying this shift are messages from marketers that are far franker than years' past.


Just a decade ago, the menstrual hygiene company Kotex had its ads banned from airing in the U.S. because it used the word "vagina."


But last year, the period underwear brand Thinx launched an advertisement depicting women experiencing stained sheets from their periods before discovering their product.


Far from using the euphemisms of intimate washes, Lume Deodorant ads encourage women to apply the product to fight their "crotch and butt smells."


Schitt's Creek actress Annie Murphy tells viewers, "Welcome to my vagina," before extolling the benefits of non-hormonal birth control gel Phexxi, while an ad for estrogen therapy drug Imvexxy exclaims: "Your vagina is queen."

That level of openness can be valuable in setting the tone for conversations with health providers.


It can empower "women to be thoughtful about their pelvic health in ways that aren't embarrassing to them," Verywell Health chief medical officer and OB/GYN Jessica Shepherd told Axios.


Rao of Nurx said that "around here, we talk about gonorrhea the way some people talk about the common cold."


"What we've found is, when you start talking about these issues, it's very liberating and it's when you're able to deliver the best care possible."

Yes, but: Some subjects are still off-limits. Pitchbook wrote last year that Facebook rejected an ad by Lily Bird, a subscription startup delivering bladder leakage products to women in menopause, that exclaimed, "Laugh more and leak less."


Language restricts. A Columbia University Irving Medical Center study from 2020 found that women who identify as being non-heterosexual may not seek preventative sexual and reproductive health care at the same rates as their heterosexual peers because their providers aren't using inclusive language.


Inequities persist. A 2020 study from Indiana University-Bloomington found that Black women reported having conversations about their sexual activities (e.g., condom use) and were offered sexually transmitted disease testing more often than white women.

The bottom line: We've come a long way, but we've still got a long way to go.

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I'm a Christian minister who's had 2 abortions. Here's how faith informed those decisions.

Rebecca Todd Peters

Sun, October 10, 2021, 

I am a Presbyterian minister, a Christian ethicist, a professor of religious studies, a wife and a mother of two.

I have also had two abortions.

I did not make my abortion decisions despite my Christian identity and faith, but rather because of it.

Christian values that support healthy and secure families also require careful, thoughtful and morally rich consideration about the decision to become a parent or not.

The fact that the social, physical and moral well-being of children is primarily the responsibility of parents meant that my husband and I thought carefully and deeply about our decisions to have and not have children.

And I can say, without a doubt, that the two decisions we made to have children were far more morally significant than the decisions to end two pregnancies.

Parenting is a sacred task

Guided by Christian principles that promote abundant life, seek justice and recognize the human dignity of women, the decision to end a pregnancy can be a morally good decision. And in a world where the dominant Christian voices insist that abortion is morally wrong, it is time for those Christians who believe otherwise to say loudly and clearly that abortion can be a moral good.

In 1967, 19 ministers and two rabbis announced formation of the Clergy Consultation Service on Abortion via a front-page story in The New York Times.

Before Roe v. Wade, when legal access to abortion was almost nonexistent and tens of thousands of women got illegal and often life-threatening abortions annually, clergy across the country courageously began a public campaign to help women secure safe abortions in defiance of the law.

Many of these clergy had been active in civil rights and anti-war organizing, and they saw the need for women to have control over their reproductive health as part of that same drive for social justice.

By the time abortion was decriminalized, more than 3,000 largely white, male clergy had provided counseling and referral to an estimated 450,000 women in 38 states.

More than 50 years later, we are on the precipice of returning to that pre-Roe world. While women like me will continue to find access to abortion care, it is largely poor women, women of color, and young women and their families who will bear the brunt of the burden of abortion bans.

Today’s Christians cannot stay silent while pregnant people in our communities are being harassed, abused and forced to bear children by the state.

Recognizing and affirming that parenting is a sacred responsibility means that we need to recognize the moral wisdom my momma shared with me: “You shouldn't have a baby just because you are pregnant – you should have a baby because you want to be a mother, you want to have a family.”

That is the message that people of faith need to shout from the rooftops. That because parenting is a sacred task, pregnant people must be supported in using their moral agency to know when and whether they are able to embrace that sacred trust of parenting.

Ending a pregnancy when one cannot afford to care for a child (or another child) can be a morally responsible decision.

Ending pregnancy can be a moral good

Ending a pregnancy when one is not emotionally or physically able or ready to parent a child can be a morally responsible decision.

Ending a pregnancy that will interrupt one’s education or career, the tools that enable people in our culture to prepare themselves to live stable and abundant lives, can be a morally responsible decision.

Ending a pregnancy in the midst of an abusive relationship, a failing marriage, a job loss, a health crisis or any number of other reasons can be a morally responsible decision for a woman and her partner who want to be able to provide a stable and healthy family situation for their children.

What is missing in public life today is a nationwide presence of Christian leaders who can give full-throated support to this perspective. It’s not that we aren’t around; it’s just that our voices are not being heard.

We need more people of faith who will stand up and speak out in support of respecting women as full moral agents, created in the image of God, and capable of making the important moral decisions that shape our lives, our families and our futures.

We need more Christians to stand up and testify that abortion can be a morally good decision and women must be trusted to make moral decisions.

Rebecca Todd Peters is a professor of religious studies at Elon University and is the author of "Trust Women: A Progressive Christian Argument for Reproductive Justice."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Abortion decision: My Christian faith led me to end 2 pregnancies