Mississippi governor responds to probe of Jackson water woes


U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., displays a letter to Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves that expresses concern over what he believes is the inadequate federal funding from the American Rescue Plan Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to address the failing water system in Mississippi's majority-Black capital city, Jackson, Miss., on Monday, Oct. 24, 2022, at a town hall meeting hosted by the NAACP. Reeves responded Monday, Nov. 7, to a congressional probe into the crisis that left 150,000 people in the state's capital city without running water for several days in late summer.

 (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis, File)More


MICHAEL GOLDBERG AND EMILY WAGSTER PETTUS
Mon, November 7, 2022 at 5:34 PM·4 min read

JACKSON, Miss (AP) — Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves Monday released his response to a congressional investigation of the crisis that left 150,000 people in the state's capital city without running water for several days in late summer.

Reeves said Jackson has received a disproportionate amount of funding for its water system based on the city's size. He also said local officials only have themselves to blame for the water woes.

“(M)y administration is deeply committed to ensuring that all federal funds received by Mississippi for drinking water systems upgrades have been in the past and will continue to be in the future made available and distributed among Mississippi’s more than 1,100 water systems on an objective and race-neutral basis,” Republican Reeves said in a letter dated Oct. 31 and addressed to Reps. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi and Carolyn Maloney of New York.

The two Democrats sent Reeves an Oct. 17 letter requesting details of where Mississippi sent money from the American Rescue Plan Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, including “the racial demographics and population sizes of each” community that received aid. They also requested information on whether Jackson, which is 80% Black, has faced “burdensome hurdles” to receive additional federal funds.


Comparing census data against the recipients of state water loans, Reeves wrote “there is no factual basis whatsoever to suggest that there has been an ‘underinvestment’ in the city or that it has received disproportionately less than any other area of the state.” In 2021, Jackson accounted for 68% of all loans dispersed, Reeves wrote.

Mississippi received about $1.8 billion in ARPA money, and the Legislature put $750 million of that toward competitive grants for Mississippi’s water systems. Officials announced last week that they approved Jackson’s request for $35.6 million in federal funds to help pay for seven water and sewer projects.

Thompson and Maloney said in a joint statement Monday that recent federal aid to Jackson can be traced to more federal involvement. They said they received the governor's letter Monday.

“The Governor’s response to our letter is a clear acknowledgment that the City of Jackson, and its water systems, are in desperate need of resources to supply clear water to the city’s residents," Thompson and Maloney said. “Democrats have passed infrastructure funding for this exact purpose, and the Biden Administration has orders in place to maximize the delivery of these resources to communities of greatest need — including Jackson — to overcome generational disinvestment in communities of color from every level of government.”

They also pointed to an ongoing EPA civil rights investigation into whether Mississippi state agencies discriminated against Jackson in the distribution of water infrastructure funds.

Reeves wrote that Jackson tax collections increased from 2003 to 2020, but numbers cited by the governor did not account for the decreased buying power because of inflation. Reeves wrote that Jackson’s property tax collections were about $60 million in 2003 and $79 million in 2020. An inflation calculator shows that $60 million in 2003 would be worth about $84 million in 2020 — so, although the numbers were up, the buying power was down.

Reeves also wrote that Jackson sales tax collections increased during those years, but he did not mention that part of the increase was because Jackson residents voted in 2014 to approve an additional 1% sales tax to help pay for infrastructure improvements.

"Enforcement efforts” against Jackson by federal regulators are proof of city mismanagement, he said. The Environmental Protection Agency issued a notice in January that Jackson’s water system violated the federal Safe Drinking Water Act.

In September, federal attorneys threatened legal action if the city did not agree to negotiations related to its water system. Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba said last week that negotiations are continuing. While the EPA said current samples indicate Jackson’s water quality meets federal standards, testing continues and legal action against the city is still a possibility.

Through a spokesperson, Lumumba declined to comment on the governor's letter Monday.

Jackson has had water problems for years, and the latest troubles began in late August after heavy rainfall exacerbated problems in the main treatment plant, leaving many customers without running water. Jackson had already been under a boil-water notice since late July because the state health department found cloudy water that could make people ill.

Reeves said the city has been unable to run its billing system and hire enough skilled personnel to manage the system.

Running water was restored within days, and a boil-water notice was lifted in mid-September, but Thompson and Maloney's letter to Reeves said “water plant infrastructure in the city remains precarious, and risks to Jackson’s residents persist.”

Thompson and Maloney said their letter marked “the start of a joint investigation” by the House Homeland Security and the Oversight and Reform committees into the water crisis. If Democrats lose their majority in the midterm elections, it is unlikely the probe would continue without bipartisan interest.

___

Michael Goldberg is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/mikergoldberg. Follow Emily Wagster Pettus on Twitter at http://twitter.com/EWagsterPettus.

MONOPOLY CAPITALI$M

U$ patients can spend more than $3,000 per pen for the exact same life-changing arthritis drugs that people in some European countries get for free


Hilary Brueck
Mon, November 7, 2022 a

Lawyer Priti Krishtel is one of the MacArthur Foundation's "genius" award winners for 2022.John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

Drugmakers routinely add new patents to old drugs in order to prolong monopolies.


The practice is called building "patent thickets" and it can make drugs too expensive for patients.


A "genius" health justice lawyer says drug companies are "gaming" the US patent system.

Patients in the US are paying a sticker price upwards of $3,000 per pen for blockbuster arthritis drug Humira, the country's top-selling drug. Meanwhile, prices in Europe have decreased dramatically, ever since Humira's principal patent expired in 2018.

In the US, Humira's manufacturer, AbbVie, has used what are sometimes called "patent thickets" to prevent generic versions of the medicine — an anti-inflammatory which treats several debilitating diseases, including severe arthritis, Crohn's disease, and ulcerative colitis — from entering the market. By creating a vast thicket of patents which aren't protecting much that's integral to the way the drug works (for example, changing the dose, or tweaking the way the product is manufactured) drugmakers like AbbVie are able to hold on to their drug monopolies for decades after they should've expired.

Priti Krishtel, a leading health justice lawyer and cofounder of the Initiative for Medicines, Access, and Knowledge (I-MAK), told Insider these patent thickets are a clear distortion of the way the US patenting system was designed to work — and they must be weed-whacked out if the country is ever going to achieve fairer prescription drug prices for consumers.

"What we see in a case like Humira is a company like AbbVie has filed for over 300 patents, received over 160 patents on this drug, and so they're able to keep lengthening the monopoly period, they're able to keep blocking competition here in the US," Krishtel said.

Patents are far from the only reason that there's such a big price difference for this treatment between the US and Europe – but advocates like Krishtel believe it is an important one. The US doesn't really regulate or negotiate the prices of drugs like countries in Europe do, so the main way American drug prices become lower over time is through generic competition. What AbbVie is doing with Humira subverts that system, Krishtel said. (Abbvie did not respond to Insider's requests for comment.)

Krishtel won the MacArthur Foundation "genius" award in October for her decades-long work building a worldwide movement to illuminate and contest what she sees as predatory drug patenting.

Humira's price has risen by 500% in the US

About one in four Americans say they skip or skimp on prescriptions for themselves or their immediate family members every year, because of how much their drugs cost, according to Kaiser Family Foundation polling. Insurance or manufacturer coupons may lower the cost of prescriptions substantially — but the system doesn't always work. Sometimes, the steep cost of medicines in the US is fatal.

"I just don't think that people should have to pay their life savings for life-saving medicines," Krishtel said.

In Europe, generic forms of the drug formerly known as Humira (adalimumab) have been on the market for four years. Users on that continent now routinely pay up to 90% less than they used to, whether they still choose to buy the brand name version of the drug, or pick up one of its new off-brand competitors.

Humira prices in the US, however, have skyrocketed by more than 500% since the drug first hit the market 20 years ago, and have increased by 60% since its primary patent expired, ballooning Medicare spending on the drug.

And AbbVie is far from the only manufacturer playing this patenting game.

Drugmakers routinely file new patents related to their bestselling old drugs, changing how they're dosed, released or manufactured, even though no significant changes have been made to how they work. This enables big drugmakers to continue their monopolies on the market, for many years after their original patents expired — "exploiting" the patent system, as the US House Committee on Oversight and Reform reported in 2021.

'Basically the same drug,' but more expensive than ever

Richard Gonzalez, chairman and CEO of AbbVie Inc., 

the company that makes Humira.

Win McNamee/Getty Images

Now that cheaper generics compete with Humira in Europe, one injection pen may cost a patient nothing (in places like Scotland, where all prescriptions are taxpayer-funded), $10 (in Germany, where there's a strict cap on co-payments) or $225 a year (in Sweden, where co-payments vary, but are also capped), according to an independent report published in 2021.

Humira's primary US patent expired in 2016, but no generic is available yet, and the brand-name drug is so expensive that some US employers fly their Humira-users across the border to Mexico or Canada, just to save on prescription costs, Bloomberg Law reported in 2020. (Of course, the price any US patients actually pay for their prescriptions fluctuates dramatically, depending on their insurance coverage.)

The CEO of AbbVie told Congress in 2021 that "the drug is basically the same drug" it has always been. And yet, from 2016-2021, the price of Humira shot up more than four times faster than inflation, according to I-MAK.

Humira certainly isn't the only drug "gaming the US patent system" she added, it's just the "worst offender." Similar issues exist for other medicines, including life-saving cancer drugs, HIV therapies, and diabetes treatments, according to a recent I-MAK report titled "Overpatented, Overpriced."

"Basically, the higher the percentage of the company's revenue that the drug makes up, the more incentive they have to play these patent games and extend their control of the market," she said.

Krishtel isn't naive about how the US patent system might be reformed — she doesn't think that the US can just replicate how Europe does healthcare.

"We're going to have to design a health system that works for Americans, and that is designed by Americans," she said.

That might include more legislation from Congress, or more oversight of the patent and trademark office, she said, offering a few suggestions.

But "central to any vision of health equity for our country has to be patent reform," she said. "There's no way around that."

Read the original article on Insider

Women managers have improved Vatican more than men, pope says
By Philip Pullella - Yesterday 

Pope Francis visits Bahrain© Reuters/POOL

ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE (Reuters) -Pope Francis said on Sunday that women he has appointed in the Vatican have proved they can be better managers than men and that there was too much male chauvinism in the Roman Catholic Church and society at large.

The pope made his comments during an airborne news conference on the plane returning to Rome from his four-day trip to Bahrain.

"I have noticed that every time a woman is given a position (of responsibility) in the Vatican, things improve," he said.

Francis was asked about the women at the forefront of protests in Iran, but he did not answer the question, pivoting to the topic of the role of women in general.

Speaking of women he has appointed to managerial roles, he mentioned Sister Raffaella Petrini, the deputy governor of Vatican City, who is effectively the most powerful woman in the Vatican, in charge of some 2,000 employees.

"Things have changed for the better," he said, referring to the management skills of Petrini, who was appointed last year.

He also cited the impact of five women he appointed to a department that oversees Vatican finances.

"This is a revolution because women know how the find the right way to go forward," he said.

Francis condemned male chauvinism, acknowledging there was still too much of it around the world, including in his native Argentina.

"Women are a gift. God did not create man and then give him a puppy dog to play with. He created man and woman," he said. "A society that is not capable of (allowing women to have greater roles) does not move forward."

Francis has also appointed women as deputy foreign minister, director of the Vatican Museums, deputy head of the Vatican Press Office, as well as four women as councillors to the Synod of Bishops, which prepares major meetings.

(Reporting by Philip Pullella; editing by Barbara Lewis)

Pope says women's rights fight is 'continuous struggle', condemns mutilation


Pope Francis visits Bahrain
Sun, November 6, 2022 
By Philip Pullella

ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE (Reuters) -Pope Francis said on Sunday the fight for women's rights was a "continuous struggle", and condemned male chauvinism as deadly for humanity and female genital mutilation as a crime that must be stopped.

Speaking to reporters on the plane returning from a four-day trip to predominantly Muslim Bahrain, he also praised women he has appointed to managerial jobs in the Vatican, saying they had improved things there.

He made no mention of campaigns to let women move on beyond that and become clergy - the pope and his predecessors have said the question of women priests is closed.

Francis was responding to a question about women protesting in Iran but turned to the topic of women's rights in general.

"We have to tell the truth. The struggle for women's rights is a continuing struggle," he said, listing historic struggles such as the fight for the right to vote.

"We have to continue struggling for this because women are a gift. God did not create man and then give him a lapdog to play with. He created both equal, man and woman," he said.

"A society that is not capable of (allowing women to have greater roles) does not move forward," he added.

Francis denounced male chauvinism, acknowledging there was still too much of it around the world, including in his native Argentina. "This chauvinism kills humanity," he said.

He also condemned as a "criminal act" female genital mutilation (FGM), repeating a major call he made in February on the U.N. International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation.

According to the United Nations, FGM is concentrated in about 30 countries in Africa and the Middle East but is also practiced by immigrant populations elsewhere. More than four million girls are at risk of undergoing FGM this year, the U.N. says.

He spoke of women he has appointed to managerial roles in the Vatican, mentioning by name Sister Raffaella Petrini, a nun who as the deputy governor of Vatican City is effectively the most powerful woman there.

"I have noticed that every time a woman is given a position (of responsibility) in the Vatican, things improve," he said.

He also cited the impact of five women he appointed to a department that oversees Vatican finances.

"This is a revolution (in the Vatican) because women know how the find the right way to go forward," he said.

Francis also has appointed women as deputy foreign minister, director of the Vatican Museums, deputy head of the Vatican Press Office, as well as four women as councillors to the Synod of Bishops, which prepares major meetings.

The Church teaches that only men can become priests because Jesus chose men as his apostles.

(Reporting by Philip Pullella; editing by Barbara Lewis and Andrew Heavens)

Pope calls female genital mutilation a crime that must stop


Bahrain PopePope Francis attends a prayer meeting and Angelus with bishops, priests, consecrated people, seminarians and pastoral workers, at the Sacred Heart Church in Manama, Bahrain, Sunday, Nov. 6, 2022. Pope Francis is making the November 3-6 visit to participate in a government-sponsored conference on East-West dialogue and to minister to Bahrain's tiny Catholic community, part of his effort to pursue dialogue with the Muslim world. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)More

NICOLE WINFIELD
Sun, November 6, 2022


ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE (AP) — Pope Francis called female genital mutilation a “crime” on Sunday and said the fight for women’s rights, equality and opportunity must continue for the good of society.

“How is it that today in the world we cannot stop the tragedy of infibulation of young girls?” he asked, referring to the ritual cutting of a girls' external genitalia. “This is terrible that today there is a practice that humanity isn’t able to stop. It’s a crime. It’s a criminal act!”

Francis was responding to a question about women’s right en route home from Bahrain. He was asked whether he supported the protests in Iran sparked by the death in custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who was detained by morality police after allegedly violating the country’s strict dress code for women.

Francis didn’t directly respond, but gave a lengthy denunciation of how women in many cultures around the world are treated as second-class citizens or worse and said: “We have to continue to fight this because women are a gift.”

“God ... created two equals: man and woman,” the pope said.

Francis has done more than any pope to give more decision-making roles to women in the church. He has appointed several women to key governing positions, including the No. 2 in the Vatican City State administration as well as several other high-ranking management roles. He has also named women — laywomen and religious sisters — as consultors to Vatican offices dominated by male clergy, including the one that chooses bishops.

“I have seen in the Vatican, that whenever a woman enters to work, things improve,” he said.

He said society would do well to follow suit, noting that his native Argentina remains a “macho” culture, but that such attitudes “kill” humanity.

“A society that cancels women from public life is a society that grows poor,” he said.

Francis was also asked about new cases of clergy sex abuse and cover-up that have emerged in the French church, with evidence that a bishop was allowed to quietly retire in 2021 despite having been found guilty by a church investigation of having spiritually abused two young men by making them strip during confession. More victims have reportedly come forward since the scandal was first reported.

Francis didn’t reply when asked if such church sanctions should be made public going forward. But he insisted that the church was on the right path, even reviewing bad past canonical investigations and redoing them. He said the church was committed to not hiding abuse even if there are still some in the church “who still don’t see clearly, who don’t share” the need for justice.

“It’s a process we’re doing with courage, and not all of us have courage,” he said. “Sometimes there’s the temptation of making compromises -- we are enslaved by our sins.”

But he said the goal was toward further clarity, noting that he had recently received two reports from victims lamenting their abuse and how their cases had been “covered up and then not adjudicated well by the church,”

“I immediately said ‘Study this again, do a new judgment.’ So we’re now revising old judgments that weren’t well done,” he said. “We do what we can. We’re all sinners.”

___

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

Video shows Ted Cruz getting hit with a White Claw can and booed at during a Houston Astros victory parade

Lauren Frias

Mon, November 7, 2022

Senator Ted Cruz, R-Texas, left, waves to spectators while attending Game 4 of an American League Championship baseball series between the New York Yankees and the Houston Astros, Sunday, Oct. 23, 2022, in New York.AP Photo/John Minchillo

• Police said a man threw a White Claw can at Sen. Ted Cruz during the Houston Astros parade Monday.

• Cruz was on a parade float celebrating the team's World Series win when he was struck by the can.

• Houston Police arrested the man in connection with the incident. He faces assault charges.

A 33-year-old man was arrested after he threw a White Claw can at Sen. Ted Cruz during the Houston Astros victory parade on Monday, police said.

The senator from Texas made an appearance at the parade in Houston celebrating the Astros' World Series win over the weekend when "the beer can struck the Senator in the chest/neck area," according to Houston police.

"Nearby HPD officers arrested the male without further incident," police said in a statement. "He was taken to jail and faces assault charges."

Video of the incident showed a man blocking the can apparently before it made contact with the senator. The crowd can be heard booing throughout. Police said Cruz did not require medical attention.

In a statement to Insider, Cruz thanked law enforcement and said he was thankful that the man had a "noodle for an arm."

"As always I'm thankful for the Houston Police and Capitol Police for their quick action," Cruz said in a statement to Insider. "I'm also thankful that the clown who threw his White Claw had a noodle for an arm."

Editor's note: November 7, 2022: This story has been updated to reflect with a statement from Sen. Cruz, who said that he was struck by a White Claw can, not a beer can.

NO-ONE WOULD WASTE GOOD BEER ON CRUZ

In California's conservative Little Saigon, a progressive unravelling among Vietnamese Americans switches up Orange County politics and raises the stakes for Republicans

Hanna Kang

The Washington Post 
Mon, November 7, 2022

Political signs for Vietnamese American candidates for local office are displayed outside the Asian Village shopping center in the Little Saigon neighborhood of Westminster, California.

Bing Guan via Getty Images

The race in California's 45th House district has put a spotlight on its conservative Vietnamese American voter bloc in Little Saigon.

Vietnamese American voters have long leaned conservative while the Asian American vote nationwide for decades trended Democratic.

But experts and voters say the Vietnamese vote isn't monolithic.

WESTMINSTER, California – Drive down Bolsa Avenue during election season and there's no denying that the Vietnamese American identity is well represented on the ballot.

Colorful signs that clutter every major street corner and line the strips of grass in front of modest, beige stucco mini-malls feature candidates with Vietnamese surnames: Ho, Nguyen, Ta.

Home to the largest Vietnamese diaspora, Little Saigon is an ethnic enclave of expatriate Vietnamese located in the heart of suburban Orange County, California, just a few miles south of Disneyland. Centered in the city of Westminster, Little Saigon has fingers into the adjacent cities of Fountain Valley, Garden Grove, and Santa Ana.

"When we talk about representation, the Vietnamese community is very well represented, especially in the last ten years or so," Julie Vo, policy director at the Orange County Asian & Pacific Islander Community Alliance, told Insider. Westminster is the first city in the nation to have a Vietnamese American majority on the council, she added. It's also the first to elect a Vietnamese American mayor.

Aside from being an ethnic hub, Little Saigon — located in the 45th Congressional District — is the center of the region's political gravity. The enclave's large concentration of Vietnamese voters is crucial to elections, especially in a battleground district where races are decided by only a few percentage points. The Vietnamese vote was instrumental in Republican Rep. Michelle Steel's success in 2020 when she defeated then-incumbent Democrat Harley Rouda by about two percentage points.

Due to cultural and historical reasons, Vietnamese voters — in Orange County and elsewhere — have long leaned conservative while the Asian American vote nationwide has for decades trended Democratic. In 2020, more than half (53%) of voters in Little Saigon backed Donald Trump while the rest of Orange County supported Joe Biden by a 10 percentage point margin. Out of the six ethnic groups in the 2022 Asian American Voter Survey conducted this summer, Vietnamese Americans were the only enclave with a higher favorability rating for Trump (49%) than Biden (41%).

But these figures fail to explain the whole story, according to experts. What often goes under the radar is that the Vietnamese vote, let alone the Asian American vote, isn't monolithic. The political transformation of the Vietnamese community in Orange County – powered by young, independent, and issue-based voters – is breaking the surface.

"One of the things that we've seen about the Vietnamese community pretty consistently is there's this perception of the community as being reliably conservative," Dan Ichinose, research director of progressive engagement organization OC Action, told Insider. "But what we've seen pretty clearly is that the Vietnamese community is home to diverse political perspectives."

Little Saigon's Republican beginnings

Here in Little Saigon, where an abundance of traditional shops and eateries dot the three square mile stretch centered along Bolsa Avenue and the perpendicular Brookhurst and Magnolia Streets, the residents of Little Saigon — many of whom fled communist Vietnam — take comfort in the sights, tastes and sounds that remind them of home.

But before these public spaces popped up, anti-communist sentiment was the glue that held the neighborhood together. The first wave of refugees fled Vietnam after the fall of Saigon in 1975 and the next wave — the "boat people" who fled by sea — followed a couple of years later.

First-generation Vietnamese who escaped a Communist-led country would be more averse to progressive or liberal politics, said Madalene Mielke, president of the Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies. They're also deeply religious, she told Insider, and hugely invested in the idea of the American dream.

"You're talking about people who are now voting in America who come from a place where they didn't have democracy," she said. "There's distrust in government from the country they originally were coming from."

It's people like Marie Suchy, 47, whose mother was rescued in Operation New Life, a US Air Force airlift effort that evacuated Vietnamese from South Vietnam before and after the government's collapse and flew them to Guam. Her mother went into labor during the evacuation and Suchy was born shortly after on April 29, 1975, the day before Saigon fell.

She's always voted Republican because of her family history and conservative upbringing, and she'll be voting no differently this year.

"I was raised in an era where it was mostly conservative views," Suchy told Insider. "I pay for everything on my own, and I don't make a lot. I don't have a college degree. But I have earned my way to be where I'm at right now. I feel like many people in today's society feel entitled, and that entitlement needs to go away."

Vietnamese Americans' conservative bent could also be explained by Orange County's history as a conservative bastion, a place once described by Ronald Reagan as where "all the good Republicans go to die."

"Part of what it takes to be accepted politically would be to be conservatives," Sara Sadhwani, professor of politics at Pomona College, told Insider. "Having settled in Orange County at the time that they did, Orange County, until very recently, and still now, as we can see in the competitiveness of this race, has been a Republican stronghold."

But things are changing.

Young progressives unraveling the political fabric

While the first generation of Vietnamese immigrants has, for the most part, stayed loyal to the Republican Party, the second and third generations who have no memory of Vietnam's communist regime, are progressive.

More than 65% of Vietnamese age 49 and under in Orange County were registered as Democrats as of Election Day in 2020.

"We see generational differences between refugees for whom anti-communist politics are important and native-born children whose politics are more informed by their experiences growing up here," Ichinose said.

But there are teething pains that come with trying to unravel the community's political fabric. In a nationally-watched race between a Korean American incumbent and a Taiwanese American challenger in a district where Asian American voters make up a third of its electorate, Vietnamese Americans' anti-communist sentiment is being utilized for political gain.

Fliers sent by Republican incumbent Michelle Steel's campaign to Vietnamese voters living in the 45th District portray her Democratic challenger Jay Chen as a Communist sympathizer. Signs that say "China's Choice Jay Chen" have popped up on light poles and chain-linked fences around buildings.

It's an artful and deliberately planned out strategy of trying to "red-bait" him, experts say.

"There's no question that this is an intentional strategy to red-bait Jay Chen," Connie Chung Joe, CEO of Asian Americans Advancing Justice – Los Angeles, told Insider. "It's going to resonate with the older immigrant Vietnamese which she's targeting."

But that's where Steel's messaging falls short. From a larger perspective, Joe said, Steel's strategy is short-sighted because it only reaches the immigrant Vietnamese conservative subgroup.

Lanae Jackson, senior vice president for social policy and politics at the center-left think tank Third Way, agrees. With young Asian voters whose politics are largely informed by anti-Asian racism, Steel's play doesn't resonate in the way she wants it to.

"I think the politics around China are particularly tricky," Jackson told Insider. "Overall, when we talk about making things in America and trade policy, demonizing China is a useful political tool. But that definitely might play out differently with Asian voters, particularly those who are sensitive to the fact that hate crimes against Asian communities have been rising pretty substantially over the past couple of years."

Younger voters identify more as progressive on issues such as healthcare, the citizenship process, protecting the environment, gun control, abortion, and social justice.

Vincent Tran, a 27-year-old Fountain Valley resident, told Insider "red-baiting" doesn't focus on the current needs of Vietnamese Americans, such as affordable housing, affordable education, healthcare, and reproductive health.

"All of the stuff that's being sent out right now is pretty much focused on people's nationalities and allegiances," he said. "But I think if these candidates actually spoke on issues that the community cares for, it would radically shift how we see the Vietnamese population."

Even his immigrant parents — registered Republicans — toss the fliers when they receive them in the mail, he said. Tran's father came to the US in the early 1980s as one of the "boat people," and his mother came through the Orderly Departure Program, through which Vietnamese were allowed to leave the country for family reunions and humanitarian reasons.

"Red-baiting has been a traumatic tool that's been used in the community to ostracize people, and folks don't want to associate with it anymore," Tran said. "I think it's very disheartening because they are treating this community as a very "one issue" type community, not addressing complex issues."

Moving away from the establishment GOP

Former Westminster vice mayor and one-term state Rep. Tyler Diep was a registered Republican until last year when he reregistered to non-party preference. He said the aftermath of the January 6 attack on the Capitol triggered the change.

"As we got toward the later part of 2021, I started getting a sense that a lot of Republican leaders were backtracking and downplaying the severity of what happened," he told Insider.

He'll still be voting for the Republican candidate, incumbent Michelle Steel, but it isn't because of the party she identifies with. Diep said he looks at the candidate's presence in the district and the issues they stand for.

"I've known Michelle for over 15 years," he said. "And candidate familiarity is important. I want to see if a candidate cares about Little Saigon or not. How often do they come around? What have they done in the past to support the aspirations of the Vietnamese community abroad?"

And the fact that the Vietnamese vote isn't monolithic is well-illustrated in Diep's own family: his sister is a lot more liberal in her political views and doesn't look at the Republican Party the same way he does.

"It's not that I was trying to get her to think about what it means to be a progressive, or what it means to be a conservative," Diep said. "She picked up everything on her own, and then came to the conclusion that the Republican Party is not for her. She's not a Democrat either. She's just not ideologically aligned with what the Republican Party stands for."

The power of independent, issue-based voters

Both Steel and Chen would have been rarities here in Orange County, even a few decades ago. But the district's emergence as one of the most politically consequential races in the midterms and its Vietnamese American electorate — that could swing the vote — is a testament to how much Orange County has changed.

These swing independent voters make up nearly a quarter of the 45th District. Nationwide, over 40% of Vietnamese voters identify as independent. And the fact that the Asian American demographic is rapidly growing not because of birth, but because of immigration, means that they're up for grabs and that neither party can afford to rely on identity politics.

"More recent immigrant populations of Asian Americans who are newer to voting may be more likely to flip because they aren't attached to one party or the other," Jackson told Insider. "They wouldn't necessarily have a pattern of decades of picking one side or the other to rely on, and may be more apt to look at an individual candidate."

That's exactly what Linda Nguyen did in 2020. Nguyen, who sits on the Asian Business Association of Orange County's board of directors, voted for Biden in 2020 because she had encountered anti-Asian hate sentiments on three different occasions under the Trump administration. But it was tough making that decision, Nguyen told Insider.

"I vote based on policies over candidates," she said. "It was tough because fiscally, I'm a little more conservative, so of course, I lean Republican in that sense. But it just really depends on the policies, and the anti-Asian hate sentiments led me to voting for Biden."

What's most on her mind this election cycle? Inflation and the rising cost of living.

"That's what my friends and I are talking about," she said.

When asked whether she would support a Democrat or a Republican in 2024, Nguyen said she's not sure yet. But it definitely won't be Trump.

"That's a tough one," she said. "It really depends on the candidate, and if there was a different Republican candidate, I would definitely consider it."

U.S. looks to companies to fund more of energy transition at COP27


COP27 climate summit in Egypt

Mon, November 7, 2022 
By Valerie Volcovici and Sarah McFarlane

SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt (Reuters) - The United States wants businesses to pay countries to stop burning coal via carbon markets, in a proposal it will announce at the United Nations climate conference this week, people familiar with the matter said.

The initiative, expected to launch on Wednesday at the COP27 Summit in Egypt, proposes that companies buy carbon credits and the proceeds be used to fund renewable energy projects in countries seeking to replace fossil fuels such as coal, the people said.

Top U.S. climate diplomat John Kerry has been canvassing companies in sectors including banking, consumer goods, shipping and aviation on the proposal, the people said. The idea is that companies would participate voluntarily.

The U.S. State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Voluntary carbon markets are expanding rapidly, whereby credits are generated by activities including tree planting and solar power projects, although concerns persist about these credits being outside regulated markets. The voluntary market was valued at around $2 billion in 2021, almost quadruple the previous year, according to data provider Ecosystems Marketplace.

One incentive for a company to participate in the proposed scheme is that it could help reduce its own emissions balance sheet, assuming the company has operations in a country that is phasing out coal. Companies do not necessarily have big operations that they need to decarbonize in countries looking at transition deals such as Indonesia and Senegal, however.

Fossil fuel producers are excluded from participating in the proposed scheme, the people said, although the industry has been one of the largest users of carbon markets to date.

"Crediting of energy transition in a country is an interesting concept but some of the restrictions on participation need to be worked on if it is going to have any scale," said Dirk Forrister, chief executive of the International Emissions Trading Association.

"Right now, the idea is it should be narrowly applied to be bought by non-fossil fuel companies like tech companies and banks, which would restrict private sector demand."

(Additional reporting by Kate Abnett; Editing by Mark Potter)

Biden’s climate envoy Kerry wants to tap companies to fund developing world’s move off fossil fuels: report

Rachel Koning Beals -

 peter dejong/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

WASHINGTON WATCH

The U.S. reportedly wants to launch a carbon credit program to tap the might of the world’s largest companies to fund a transition off coal, especially, but also oil and gas in developing countries. The financing would help those nations switch to alternatives such as wind, solar, hydrogen and other energy options.

Related video: U.S.-UAE $100 billion clean energy deal is part of a 'new approach' to climate change, says professor

Duration 3:58

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The plans were reported in the Financial Times, which said it had talked to policy officials working closely with John Kerry, the Biden administration’s lead representative at a major U.N. climate conference just underway in Egypt, known as COP27.

Read: What is COP27? Key issues for markets to watch as U.N. climate talks kick off in Egypt

The report said Kerry is trying to gin up support from other governments, companies and climate experts to develop a new framework for carbon credits to be sold to businesses. With carbon credits, there is financial incentive to create fewer emissions, and lighter emitters can sell their credits to heavier emitters.

President Joe Biden will attend COP27 on Friday. MarketWatch reached out to the White House for a comment on the Financial Times article.

Kerry and team hope to unveil the plan this week, the report said. It will remain voluntary, according to the FT, but is seen pressuring more companies to join as they also face the likelihood of increased regulatory requirements when it comes to reporting their own emissions. Many also shoulder increased pressure to prove to employees and investors that they won’t sit out what some call the “green” Industrial Revolution for too long.

The U.N. has said that rich nations have made welcome pledges to clean up their greenhouse gas emissions, but are moving too slowly. Most wealthy nations, and many private companies, have vowed to flip to net-zero emissions by 2050, with some setting a plan to cut emissions in half as soon as 2030.

These efforts are part of the 2015 Paris climate accord, which set out to limit global warming to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius. In reality, emissions are still rising, with atmospheric levels of the three main greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide) all reaching new record highs in 2021.

Related: At COP27, U.N. chief tells climate summit to ‘cooperate or perish’

The credits would be certified by an independent, but yet unnamed, accreditation body. Companies would then be able to buy the credits to offset their own carbon emissions. The proceeds could then fund new clean energy projects.

Under the plans, according to the FT, regional governments or state bodies would earn carbon credits by reducing their power sector’s emissions as fossil fuel infrastructure such as coal-fired plants were cut and renewable energy increased.

U.S. officials hope the plan will combat global warming by unlocking “tens of billions” of private capital to fund the energy transition in emerging economies, according to a person familiar with the discussions, the FT said.

Carbon credit markets have existed for years, so the Kerry plan would advance yet another framework. To date, largely unregulated credit markets have faced controversy, in part for double counting and lack of transparency. The staunchest advocates for exiting fossil fuels sooner versus later regularly charge that credit programs don’t do enough to cut demand for burning coal, oil and gas in the first place. Others say they are a key tool among many as the world transitions to cleaner energy.

A primary focus of the roughly two weeks of talks in Egypt will be on how wealthy nations can financially resolve the added burden they put on developing nations when it comes to resource use, deforestation and the health and economic costs of pollution.

U.S. Latinos contributed trillions of dollars to the economy in 2020. So why are they so underserved by financial services?

Emma Ockerman - Yesterday 

When it comes to banking, Mireya Olvera knows that Latino consumers want to feel understood — or, at the very least, like the person on the other end of the interaction respects them.


Related video: Hispanic Americans views on wealth gaps and the economy
Duration 2:23   View on Watch

She’s been in that vulnerable position before. Olvera immigrated to the United States from Mexico 27 years ago and, despite growing up with a father who worked for a financial institution, she remembers how she felt afraid to visit banks, because of both a language barrier and her concerns that she wouldn’t grasp how accounts and loans worked in the U.S.

Today, she’s an area manager at a branch of the Notre Dame Federal Credit Union in South Bend, Ind., where she serves a largely Latino community. And to Olvera, truly providing for that population means offering free financial classes, plenty of patience, and ample bilingual services; though U.S.-born Latinos are overwhelmingly proficient in English, only 37% of Latino immigrants speak English proficiently, according to the Pew Research Center.

Her credit union also offers loans with rates of 12.99% to help cover the immigration fees and legal expenses associated with coming to the U.S., as well as mortgage loans for immigrants who only have an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number, rather than a Social Security number. Without that kind of opportunity, immigrants may face higher rates, she said.

“Once we open the doors for the Hispanic community, and once we give them opportunities, they will always be committed to paying on time,” Olvera said.

The Hispanic population in the United States has grown precipitously in the past several decades to reach at least 62.1 million people, largely owing to immigrants and their descendants. They’re also a critical component of the U.S. labor force, as well as the country’s small-business ecosystem: A 2020 research report from the Stanford Latino Entrepreneurship Initiative found that the number of Latino-owned businesses had increased by 34% over the past decade, compared to 1% for all other small businesses.

What’s more, Latinos had a total economic output of $2.8 trillion in 2020, according to a September report from the Latino Donor Collaborative in partnership with Wells Fargo That means if they were their own independent nation, they’d have the fifth largest gross domestic product in the world, behind Germany, Japan, China and the United States, the report said.

Many Latinos are plenty knowledgeable of how the financial system works, one analyst said — they’re just more likely to be discriminated against within it.

Yet despite being an economic powerhouse in their own right, Latinos remain woefully underserved in the financial realm, advocates say: 9.3% of all Hispanic people in the U.S. were unbanked in 2021 — down from 12.2% in 2019, but still substantially higher than the 2.1% of white people who remain unbanked, according to a survey from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

There also remains a significant — albeit narrowing — gap between Latino people and white people when it comes to homeownership, as well as disparities in wealth, inheritance, education and income, according to the National Community Reinvestment Coalition.

It’s no surprise, then, that Latinos also are far more likely to report that they’re dissatisfied with banking and financial services when compared to their white peers, according to a December 2021 report from McKinsey & Company.

“We have a financial system that has been structured in such a way that incentivizes some of these inequities that we see, where minority populations don’t have access to the tools that the white majority has had access to, through which they have built their wealth,” said Pablo DeFilippi, the executive vice president of Inclusiv, a network of 500 credit unions that have been certified as community development financial institutions and minority depository institutions.

In an effort to remedy that, the Inclusiv network’s members try to pave a nontraditional path when it comes to banking. Many provide mortgages to people who have an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number instead of a Social Security number, DeFilippi said. Member credit unions also provide credit-builder loans so customers can eventually access other services they might not qualify for otherwise.

Larger banks haven’t really caught up in offering those kinds of services, he said.

“We like to talk about financial inclusion as being not just sustainable, but as a driver of growth for financial institutions, especially small and mid-sized institutions,” DeFilippi said. Financial literacy

Financial technology companies have also been stepping up to create products with Latinos specifically in mind. SUMA Wealth, for example, is a digital platform for young U.S.-born Latinos that Beatriz Acevedo, the company’s co-founder and CEO, worked to create during the pandemic after she saw how the community was struggling economically, all without the sorts of culturally relevant resources that could help them.

Now, the platform’s community is 615,000 strong, she said. The company provides free financial education, as well as an app that can provide personalized financial coaching and advice in a way that might feel more accessible to young Latinos. (The basic app, which helps track users’ savings and debt-to-income ratios, among other features, is free, while the personalized aspect that comes with targeted insights and robo-coaching has a subscription fee of $14.99 a month.)

SUMA Wealth is also partnering with employers to provide its premium product as a benefit, she said.

“For me, success means that we really helped move the needle when it comes to closing the wealth gap in our community, and not so much just having a high valuation for my company,” Acevedo said. The role of industry and government

Still, while there have been valuable conversations around financial literacy and education as a means of bringing more Latino consumers into the fold, those can only go so far, according to Susana Barragán, an economic policy analyst at UnidosUS, a Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization. Many Latinos are plenty knowledgeable of how the financial system works, Barragán said — they’re just more likely to be discriminated against within it. It will take both industry and government to fix that, she added.

“When we look at credit scores or access to credit in general, Latinos really show a high understanding of how the credit system works,” Barragán said. “Yet they have much lower credit scores than the national average, they’re much more likely to get denied access to credit, and they’re much more likely to be ‘credit invisible,’ meaning that they have absolutely no recorded credit with any of the credit reporting agencies.”

A survey of 1,200 Latinos in Arizona, California and Texas, commissioned by UnidosUS and published last month, showed that 20% of Latinos lacked any credit history, while only 56% had a credit card, compared to a national rate of 84% among adults. When it came to getting extra cash to cover basic living expenses, 32% of Latinos said they primarily relied on loans from friends or family, according to UnidosUS.

Olvera also said that addressing these issues has to go beyond offering basic bilingualism and good customer service: People in the financial-services industry need to be willing to stick with their customers for the long haul, offering compassion and understanding throughout their financial journey. Bilingualism can’t be limited to just bank-teller communications either, Barragán added: A 2017 report from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau noted that many financial institutions reported only offering written contracts and agreements in English.

At one point in her career, Olvera said, she encountered two credit-union members who were married and had saved for years and years to purchase a house — but all of their savings were in cash, and they had no credit history. They’d also taken Olvera’s financial-literacy classes.

Olvera told the couple they had to establish credit. Two years later, they were able to apply for a mortgage and purchase a home.

“Most of those stories make me feel like we have a purpose here to keep coming to work,” Olvera added.

A decade of legal weed

Kerri Sandaine, Lewiston Tribune, Idaho
Sun, November 6, 2022

Nov. 6—Ten years ago today, Washington voters gave the green light to legalizing the sale of recreational marijuana.

Love it or hate it, it's the law.

At the local level, the move sparked contentious city council meetings in Clarkston and Pullman before a limited number of shops were allowed to open their doors a few years later. Months of heated discussions in both jurisdictions drew record-sized crowds to city halls.

After moratoriums were eventually lifted, the legal marijuana business started booming on the Palouse and in downtown Clarkston. However, cities and counties still aren't receiving much of the tax revenue.

Marijuana is certainly big business in Washington. According to state figures, there was nearly $1.5 billion in retail sales in fiscal year 2021, which generated an additional $553 million in excise taxes. Of that tax money, only $15 million went to county and municipal governments; the rest filled the coffers of the state government.

During fiscal year 2021, retail marijuana sales in Asotin County totaled more than $15 million while the county and cities collected $75,088 in excise tax money. Whitman County had more than $13 million in retail sales and its entities received $133,686 in excise tax money. Garfield County doesn't have a marijuana store and doesn't get any of the tax money.

The businesses aren't causing any major upticks in crime, but law enforcement officials worry about the message it sends to kids, increases in impaired driving and the potential psychological effects of higher concentrations of THC, the psychoactive component in pot.

Marijuana advocates and store owners point to the benefits of their products, saying they are safer than what's sold on the black market and helping people deal with a wide array of ailments.

Matt Plemmons, owner of Greenfield Company in Clarkston, said the fastest growing group of customers are senior citizens. Some have used marijuana in the past, but many are newcomers seeking health remedies.

"Legalization has opened the minds of a lot of residents who questioned marijuana in the beginning," Plemmons said. "Our biggest demographic has grown in the 60-to-90 age group. They've bravely come through the doors of the shop and experienced the product for themselves."

When the businesses opened, owners in states where it is legal weren't allowed to use traditional banks because marijuana is still prohibited on the federal level.

Plemmons said that issue has since been resolved. Armed delivery services transport cash for all retail shops now. He uses Timberland Bank in Auburn for his Sweet Releaf shop in Mt. Vernon, and Numerica Credit Union in Spokane for Greenfield.

"Both shops also utilize a debit card 'cashless' ATM at the point of sale for customers who don't use cash," he said.

The shops in Clarkston and Pullman have the advantage of being located next to a state where marijuana can't be sold legally. There's no doubt that Idaho residents are helping the bottom line in both cities.

Lewiston Detective Cpl. Cody Bloomsburg said his department has "definitely seen a rise in the amount of people with marijuana" since it was legalized across the river.

"I was on patrol when marijuana was still illegal in Washington, and I feel like after it was legalized, there were a lot more traffic stops that yielded marijuana. It's much more common now."

What worries police is how concentrates, which are products that contain increased levels of THC, can affect people. Bloomsburg said he's seen several cases where younger people have used strong doses of THC, such as "dabs," and the results weren't pretty.

"I can specifically think of a young man who ended up on the fifth floor (of St. Joseph Regional Medical Center) and then he broke out, and the entire episode was caused by concentrates with higher THC levels. We still don't know all of the effects those have psychologically."

Longtime Pullman Mayor Glenn Johnson remembers when Floyd's, a popular shop near the state line and University of Idaho, would pick up customers in a bus. "I haven't seen that lately," he said. "The shops closest to the Washington State University campus also seem to have a "rather busy clientele."

The city of Pullman treats marijuana stores like any other business, Johnson said. Each year when the Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board issues license renewals, he sends a notice to police, fire and a community development director to see if there are any problems with the stores.

So far, no concerns have been reported, Johnson said.

"Still to this day, we have some residents who don't like it, and another larger population that accepts it," Johnson said. "So far, there's been no reported increase in criminal activity because of it."

However, cities and counties aren't seeing much benefit financially from the profitable trade of legalized marijuana.

"Like any city in Washington, we would like to have more of the tax revenue," the mayor said. "This has been on the Association of Washington Cities' legislative agenda for years, along with the city's."

Whitman County Sheriff Brett Myers said when marijuana was legalized, law enforcement agencies were promised tools to detect impaired drivers, but the state never delivered.

"That makes it really, really hard for law enforcement," he said. "There's no doubt there's more impaired people on the road. It's just harder for law enforcement to detect in a way that will hold up in court."

Myers, who has been in law enforcement for 25 years, said even before it became legal, his department primarily targeted people trafficking in marijuana rather than small possession cases.

"Marijuana was already here, so it's not like this is a new thing," Myers said. "Legalization is a new approach that allows people to use it more openly. Now you can smell marijuana in public spaces."

Myers said if he ran random urine tests at the Whitman County Jail, the results would show how prevalent it's become.

"I bet about 95% would test positive for THC," he said, "and most of them would show they'd used it in the last two or three days. ... The number of mental health patients has skyrocketed in jails across the state of Washington, and the levels of THC have gone up as well. There is some incredibly potent marijuana out there now."

Studies and surveys indicate some alarming trends in states that have legalized the sale of recreational marijuana, he said. For example, the number of drivers who die in car wrecks with THC in their systems has doubled, and more Washington high school kids are reporting marijuana use.

"The sad thing is the message it sends to our youth," said Myers, who also serves as the commander of the Quad Cities Drug Task Force. "We don't want any of our children using drugs, but it almost seems like we've put our stamp of approval on it."

Clarkston Police Chief Joel Hastings agrees the biggest concern and issues now are access to minors and people operating motor vehicles under the influence.

"The legal marijuana industry is still relatively new, and the black market continues to operate. Reducing black market operations in our state is a work in progress," Hastings said.

"The marijuana retail outlets are extremely regulated and have been good at securing their stores against theft and burglary," he added. "Each store is subject to compliance checks by the Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board. I am unaware of any cases of marijuana being sold directly to minors at our local stores. When we find marijuana on juveniles, it has often come from home or the black market."

One thing that has widespread agreement is that youth should not be exposed to marijuana use, Hastings said. The Clarkston Police Department is involved in prevention efforts and is a participant in the EPIC (Empowering People and Inspiring Change) coalition. EPIC leads community programs to increase youth connection to family, friends and community. Its primary goal is to minimize the likelihood that our youth will develop short- and long-term physical and emotional problems as a result of substance abuse.

"Statistically, driving under the influence of marijuana has been trending upward," Hastings said. "Drivers should know that driving under the influence of marijuana is dangerous and can lead to increased crash risk. Law enforcement has been working toward improving detection and processing of DUIs involving marijuana."

Kelly Jackson, of Asotin, is the former owner of Canna4Life and one of the advocates who attended Clarkston City Council meetings in support of allowing retail shops in the downtown corridor.

"For me, it was very personal because cannabis tinctures have controlled my chronic asthma. The expensive pharmaceutical drugs I used to take didn't work, and cannabis does at a fraction of the cost," Jackson said.

He and other retailers believe legalization has increased the safety of the products now sold in shops across the state of Washington.

"Legalization has taken an uncontrolled black market product and made it safer for consumers, because all cannabis sold in state-licensed stores must adhere to state-controlled testing labs," Jackson said.

"We will always be proud of bringing a safer product to our community with so many health benefits. If we could change one thing, it would be to increase how much of the taxes remain in our town so our elected officials could use the money instead of the state controlling all of the revenue."

Sandaine can be reached at kerris@lmtribune.com.

Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan of Alaska is the latest member of Congress to violate a federal conflicts-of-interest law with improperly disclosed stock trades


Dave Levinthal
Sun, November 6, 2022 

Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan, 

Sen. Dan Sullivan, a Republican from Alaska, was weeks late disclosing two stock sales.

Sullivan's office told Insider that an investment manager was tardy informing the senator that the stock had been sold.

Since 2021, 75 members of Congress have violated the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act's disclosure provisions.

Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan of Alaska violated a conflicts-of-interest and transparency law by failing to disclose two stock sales until weeks past a federal deadline.

Sullivan affirmed in a financial disclosure filed with the US Senate that he inherited and sold $15,000 to $50,000 worth of stock in Mowi, a seafood company, on August 2, and $1,001 to $15,000 worth of stock in Five Below Inc., a discount store chain, on August 30.

But the senator did not publicly report the sales until November 3, well past a 45-day stock trade disclosure specified in the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act of 2012.

Congress created this law to curb insider trading among lawmakers and provide the American public with more information about public officials' personal financial dealings — and dozens of lawmakers have since violated it.

A personal financial disclosure filed on November 3, 2022, by Sen. Dan Sullivan, a Republican who represents Alaska.US Senate

In a statement to Insider, Sullivan spokesman Mike Reynard said that Sullivan wasn't aware of the sale of his stock until after a federal disclosure deadline had already passed.

"The two assets were inherited after the death of the Senator's parent and were promptly sold by the third party investment manager, who did not advise the senator until October 30," Reynard said.

Sullivan's mother, Sandy Sullivan, died in 2019, and his father, Tom Sullivan, died in 2020.

"As soon as the senator was made aware of the sale, the necessary steps were immediately taken" to file disclosure paperwork with the US Senate Select Committee on Ethics, "which has acknowledged receipt," Reynard said.

Reynard did not reply to a question about who the third-party investment manager is or why the investment manager didn't inform the senator of the stock sales until after a federal deadline for publicly disclosing the sales.

A potential stock trade ban in Congress

Since 2021, Insider and other media organizations have identified 75 members of Congress — a cross-section of Republicans and Democrats, leaders, and back-benchers — who've violated the STOCK Act's disclosure provisions by failing to properly report their various financial trades or holdings.

Two of those members — Democratic Reps. Bill Keating of Massachusetts and Lloyd Doggett of Texas — violated the STOCK Act within the past week.

Insider's ongoing "Conflicted Congress" project, along with reporting from The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Sludge, have also found numerous examples of financial conflicts of interests among federal lawmakers, judges, and executive branch officials.

Calls for reform have come from numerous quarters inside and outside of Congress. And in September, after months of deliberations, dickering, and delay, Democratic House leaders — backed by Speaker Nancy Pelosi — unveiled a bill that would ban members of Congress, as well as many other top government officials, from trading individual stocks. It would also strengthen the generally weak penalties for violating the STOCK Act.

But some Democrats and Republicans alike, as well as government reform groups, immediately lambasted it, either arguing that the bill is too broad or too riddled with loopholes, such as allowing lawmakers to create blind investment trusts that they don't consider truly blind.

House leadership ultimately punted on voting until after the midterm elections, meaning it'll be mid-November before debate on the stock-ban bill resumes in earnest.

Sullivan's office did not respond to Insider's question about whether the senator supports or opposes the House leadership bill.

Read the original article on Business Insider