CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

Int'l operation takes down ChipMixer money laundering service


Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco announced Wednesday that an international operation had taken down ChipMixer, an international cryptocurrency platform accused of laundering more than $3 billion worth of bitcoin.

 File Photo by Bonnie Cash/UPI | License Photo

March 16 (UPI) -- International authorities have conducted a takedown of ChipMixer, a darknet cryptocurrency mixing service that they accuse of laundering and hiding the origins of billions of dollars in bitcoin for criminal organizations, North Korean hackers and the Russian Intelligence Service.

The Justice Department announced the coordinated law enforcement action Wednesday, stating they seized of two domains that directed users to the ChipMixer service and a Github Internet hosting service account, while German police took down the ChipMixer back-end servers and more than $46 million in cryptocurrency.

"This morning, working with partners at home and abroad, the Department of Justice disabled a prolific cryptocurrency mixer, which has fueled ransomware attacks, state-sponsored crypto-heists and darknet purchases across the globe," Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said in a statement.

A cryptocurrency mixing service obfuscates the origins of cryptocurrency by commingling the illicitly earned funds with other streams of cryptocurrency, and ChipMixer is one of the most widely used by bad actors to launder their funds, authorities said.

Federal prosecutors said ChipMixer offered its clients numerous other services to conceal their bitcoin deposits from law enforcement and is responsible for laundering more than $3 billion worth of digital monies since 2017.

They also charged Minh Quoc Nguyen in a criminal complaint on Wednesday as the 49-year-old Vietnamese operator of ChipMixer with money laundering, operating an unlicensed money transmitting business and identity theft.

Prosecutors accuse the service of processing some $17 million in bitcoin connected to 37 ransomware strains and more than $700 million in bitcoin associated with stolen digital wallets, some which were thieved in heists by North Korean cyberactors from online video game network Axie Infinity last year and in 2020.

Russian General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate also used the service to purchase Drovorub malware, they said.

Europol said in a statement that it supported the German and U.S. law enforcement effort that also included investigative support from Belgium, Poland and Switzerland.

"Today's coordinated operation reinforces our consistent message: we will use all our authorities to protect victims and take the fight to our adversaries," Monaco said. "Cybercrime seeks to exploit boundaries, but the Department of Justice's network of alliances transcends borders and enables disruption of the criminal activity that jeopardizes our global cybersecurity."

Michigan bank holding company pleads guilty in $69M securities fraud case


Financial services firm Sterling Bancorp agreed Wednesday to plead guilty to security fraud, including a $27.2 million fine, which will go toward paying restitution. 

File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo

March 15 (UPI) -- Financial services firm Sterling Bancorp agreed Wednesday to plead guilty to securities fraud, including a $27.2 million fine, which will go toward paying restitution.

The Michigan-based bank holding company pleaded guilty to one count of securities fraud, under terms of the plea agreement, according to the Justice Department.

The company also will serve a probation term through 2026. Officials are not seeking a criminal fine in the case.

Sterling committed $69 million worth of securities fraud. Prosecutors contend it filed false statements related to its initial public offering in 2017, as well as its subsequent financial statements in 2018 and 2019.

The bank allegedly encouraged its employees to push its Advantage Loan Program to customers in the lead-up to the IPO. The program provided loans with a 35% interest rate, "but it did not require submission of typical loan documentation, such as an applicant's tax returns or payroll records."

"For years, Sterling originated residential mortgages that were rife with fraud to pad its bottom line and then lied about these loans in its IPO and subsequent public filings, defrauding unwitting investors," Justice Department Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Polite Jr. said in a statement.

"This proposed guilty plea reflects the nature and seriousness of the wrongdoing and demonstrates the Department of Justice's commitment to protecting the integrity of our public markets, holding corporations accountable for their criminal misconduct, and compensating victims for their losses," he said.

Sterling Bancorp merged into Webster Financial Corp. last year.

Total losses to non-insider-victim shareholders amounted to just under $70 million.

Negotiated as part of the plea deal, the fine will go toward paying restitution to non-insider victims. The lack of criminal charge is to ensure the company pays all it is able to the victims.

"This proposed guilty plea holds Sterling accountable for its role in defrauding non-insider victim-shareholders of millions of dollars by originating fraudulent loans through its Advantage Loan Program and filing false securities statements about the Program in its IPO and subsequent annual filings," said Tyler Smith, acting inspector general of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, in a statement.

Exxon starts production from expanded Beaumont refinery

Exxon said it spent $2 billion to overhaul its Beaumont refinery in Texas, already among the largest in the country. File photo by ExxonMobil

March 16 (UPI) -- Announcing the largest domestic refinery overhaul since 2012, ExxonMobil said Thursday it started operations from the expanded segment of its Beaumont refinery in Texas, already among the largest in the nation.

Exxon said it spent $2 billion to add 250,000 barrels per day to the processing capacity at the Texas plant, bringing the total to 650,000 bpd.

"The new crude unit enables us to produce even more transportation fuels at a time when demand is surging," said Karen McKee, the president of ExxonMobil product solutions division.

The Energy Department expects gasoline demand to average 8.9 million bpd, a 2.3% upward revision from its forecast from February. A decline in expected miles traveled was offset by lackluster fuel efficiency for current vehicles on the road.

 Exxon planning largest hydrogen production facility in the world

Beaumont is connected by pipelines to Exxon's operations in the Permian shale basin spread out over Texas and New Mexico. The facility processes that crude into diesel, gasoline and jet fuel. At around 5.5 million barrels of oil production per day, the Permian basin accounts for about 60% of total inland oil production in the United States.

Expecting the start of operations from the Beaumont expansion, the Energy Department will have a trickle-down impact on the economy by way of lower retail gasoline prices.

"We expect that rising gasoline inventories, along with falling crude oil prices, will gradually decrease gasoline prices throughout the forecast period," its latest monthly market report read. "We forecast retail gasoline prices to average near $3.20 per gallon in the fourth quarter of 2023, down more than 30 cents per gallon from 4Q22."

U.N. Secretary General condemns oil, gas industry for continuing to fuel climate crisis

Exxon's fourth-quarter production of 3.8 million oil-equivalent barrels matched year-ago levels and was just 2.8%, or about 100,000 barrels, more than third-quarter levels. Exxon said much of its growth came from the Permian shale basin in the southern United States and offshore Guyana, where it operates alongside U.S.-based Hess Corp.

Biden orders oil companies to ramp up production, threatens 'windfall' tax

Plans proposed for Louisiana facility that can pull CO2 directly from the air

Climeworks, already a leader in Europe in the technology needed to pull CO2 out of the air, joined a consortium petitioning for funds to build a similar facility in Louisiana. Image courtesy of Climeworks

March 16 (UPI) -- A consortium of technology developers said Thursday they submitted a proposal to the U.S. government to secure investment funds for a facility in Louisiana that could pull carbon dioxide directly out of the air.

Battelle, Climeworks and Heirloom Carbon submitted their proposal to the Energy Department to secure funds from last year's bipartisan Inflation Reduction Act to support the development the planned Project Cypress direct air capture hub along the U.S. Gulf Coast. The measure was filled with incentives for the energy transition.

"Direct air capture technology is an important bridge to a future that greatly reduces the amount of legacy carbon dioxide in our atmosphere," said Shawn Bennett, a division manager for Battelle.

Climeworks has already built two carbon capture facilities similar to what's proposed for Louisiana. The first can pull 900 tons of CO2 from the air each year for use in greenhouses. Its second facility can capture 50 tons per year, which the company plans to bury in basalt formations deep beneath Earth's surface.

RELATEDDenmark awards first-ever contracts for carbon storage offshore

Its DAC technology uses large fans to blow air through a solution of potassium hydroxide. The solution reacts with CO2 to produce potassium carbonate. The potassium carbonate is converted into a calcium carbonate pellet, which when heated yields CO2.

CO2 can either be stored or sent out to end users, such as carbonated-beverage companies.

Louisiana is quickly establishing itself as a hub for carbon capture and storage technology. CF Industries, which specializes in agricultural fertilizers, unveiled plans in August to invest nearly $200 million to cut carbon emissions for an area ammonia facility by capturing it, cooling it to liquid form and send it off to a sequestration site

RELATEDFederal funding supports carbon storage ambitions at Texas port

That project could be up and running by 2025 and capture the equivalent pollution of removing 700,000 gasoline-powered cars off the road.

Battelle and its partners believe their facility would be unique in that the technology used to draw carbon out of the air would be powered by renewable energy. Rather than send it off to end users, captured carbon would be stored underground.

RELATED Enbridge, Oxy review CCS technology for U.S. Gulf Coast

Exhibit: ‘Invisible’ Monet, Leon, was key to impressionism

By THOMAS ADAMSON

today

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A portrait of Leon Monet by his brother Claude Monet on display as part of an exhibition showcasing the art of Leon Monet, at the Musée du Luxembourg in Paris, Monday, March 13, 2023. Monet’s older sibling is the focus of a landmark Paris exhibit illuminating the never-before-known role Leon Monet played in the French Impressionist painter’s life and art. (AP Photo/Lewis Joly)

PARIS (AP) — Behind some great men, there is a bigger brother.

Claude Monet’s older sibling is the focus of a landmark Paris exhibit illuminating the hitherto unknown role Leon Monet played in the French impressionist painter’s life and art. Leon — a color chemist four years his senior -- is now understood to have been critical in the emergence of Monet’s commercial success as well as the famed color palette that created masterpieces like the “Water Lilies” series.

“It’s never been known before, but without Leon there would not have really been a Monet — the artist the world knows today,” said Geraldine Lefebvre, exhibit curator at the Musee du Luxembourg.

“His rich big brother supported him in the first period of his life when he had no money or clients and was starving,” she said. “But more than that. The vivid palette Monet was famous for came from the synthetic textile dye colors Leon created” in the town of Rouen — site of some of Claude’s best-known paintings.

The groundbreaking exhibit is the fruit of years of investigation by Lefebvre, who visited Monet’s great-grandchildren, studied family albums and brought to light a masterly portrait of Leon by Claude that Leon hid away in a dusty private collection and has never before been seen by the public. The 1874 painting shows Leon with a black suit, stern expression and red — almost wine-flushed — cheeks.

The exhibit dispels a long-held view that Claude and his older brother were estranged.

“Historians always thought the two brothers had nothing to do with each other. It was assumed because there are no photographs of Claude and Leon together, and no correspondence. In reality, they were incredibly close throughout their life,” Lefebvre said.

The brothers had an argument in the early 1900s and that may explain why no direct traces of the relationship exist. “Maybe Leon got rid of the traces, maybe it was Claude. Maybe it was jealousy. We will never know. It is a mystery,” Lefebvre said.

What is now known is that Leon would wine and dine his younger brother, introduce him to other artists, give him money, and patronize his art — buying it up at auction at high prices to boost his reputation.

“One of the problems was because they shared the surname it seemed like (Claude) Monet was buying back his own pictures. But it was Leon,” said professor Frances Fowle, senior curator of French art at the National Galleries of Scotland.

“This exhibit is important as it throws light on Leon Monet, who up until now has been an invisible figure. It also reveals the wider network at work. Leon was a key figure,” Fowle added.

Leon’s influence went beyond his brother: He financially supported other impressionists such as Camille Pissarro, Auguste Renoir and Alfred Sisley — some of whom would connect around his dinner table in Rouen, where the wine would flow freely. Claude followed his brother to Rouen, where he painted his Rouen cathedral masterpieces.

Monet also worked for his older brother as a color assistant, a pivotal moment not only in his life — but possibly in the emergence of impressionism as we know it.

Leon would dissolve carbon to create a chemical called aniline, which created incredible synthetic colors that natural pigments couldn’t compete with. One of the earlier examples of Leon’s color filtering down into Monet’s art is from an 1860s illustration — before he was famous — that is featured in the exhibit. Monet drew his future wife Camille in a dress with an eye-popping green that had never been seen before.

“The French press coined the term ‘Monet green,’” Lefebvre said, adding that journalists were initially mocking of it. “At the time, they said he would make a good dye artist.”

However, both Monets had the last laugh.

Claude Monet founded impressionism — a term coined from his 1872 painting “Impression, Sunrise” — to become one of the most celebrated painters of the last two centuries. And by impressionism’s height at the end of the 19th century, an incredible “80% of all impressionists’ work” used the synthetic colors borrowed from Leon, according to Lefebvre.

These synthetic hues, which were cutting edge at the time, enabled members of the group to depict the fleeting impression of the moment with shifting colors and luminosity.

“Who knows the exact extent of the impact Leon had on the movement?” Lefebvre said with a shy smile. “But it was extraordinary.”

“Leon Monet. Brother of the artist and collector” runs at the Musee du Luxembourg in Paris from March 15 until July 16.

Samsung to invest $230 billion to build “mega” chip cluster

By KIM TONG-HYUNG

yesterday

The logo of the Samsung Electronics Co. is seen at its office in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, Jan. 31, 2023. Samsung Electronics said Wednesday, March 15, 2023, it expects to invest 300 trillion won ($230 billion) over the next 20 years as part of an ambitious South Korean national project to build the world’s largest semiconductor manufacturing base near the capital, Seoul. 

(AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon, File)

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Samsung Electronics said Wednesday it expects to invest 300 trillion won ($230 billion) over the next 20 years as part of an ambitious South Korean national project to build the world’s largest semiconductor manufacturing base near the capital, Seoul.

The chip-making “mega cluster,” which will be established in Gyeonggi Province by 2042, will be anchored by five new semiconductor plants built by Samsung. It will aim to attract 150 other companies producing materials and components or designing high-tech chips, according to South Korea’s Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy.

Samsung’s new plants will be located near its existing domestic factories and will produce both computer memory chips used for storing data and higher-margin logic chips designed to perform a broader range of functions, the company said.

A giant in the global memory business, Samsung is trying to expand its presence in advanced chips, anticipating that demand will soar in coming years with the adoption of new technologies such as 5G wireless networks, artificial intelligence and self-driving cars.

The semiconductor cluster is part of broader government plans announced Wednesday to promote six key technology industries the country sees as most crucial for its export-dependent economy. Apart from semiconductors, they include rechargeable batteries, electric vehicles, robotics, displays and bio-technology. The government hopes to draw 550 trillion won ($422 million) in corporate investment on those projects through 2026.

South Korea’s plan comes as other technology powerhouses, including the United States, Japan and China, are building up their domestic chip manufacturing, deploying protectionist measures, tax cuts and sizeable subsidies to lure investments. In a meeting with economic policymakers and business leaders Wednesday, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol described technology industries as the country’s “key economic growth engines and security and strategic assets that are also directly linked to job creation and livelihoods.”

“(South Korea) has world-class manufacturing capabilities and technologies in various high-tech industries such as semiconductors, secondary batteries, and displays, but (government) support and regulatory conditions have been insufficient,” the Trade Ministry said in a statement.

Samsung, South Korea’s biggest company, has seen its profit plummet in recent months as a weak global economy, rattled by Russia’s war on Ukraine and high inflation, depressed demand for its consumer electronics products and memory chips. The company’s profit for the three months through December fell near 70%, partially because chip prices fell sharply as clients adjusted their inventories to reflect economic uncertainties.

SK Hynix, another major South Korean chipmaker, reported an operating loss of 1.7 trillion won ($1.3 billion) for the October-December period, which marked its first quarterly deficit since 2012.

Bally Sports owner files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy

By JOE REEDY

yesterday

 A member of the Houston Astros stands in the dugout in front of a Bally Sports sign before the team's spring training baseball game against the St. Louis Cardinals on March 2, 2023, in Jupiter, Fla. Diamond Sports Group, the largest owner of regional sports networks, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Tuesday, March 14. The move came after it missed a $140 million interest payment last month. Diamond owns 19 networks under the Bally Sports banner. Those networks have the rights to 42 professional teams — 14 baseball, 16 NBA and 12 NHL. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson, File)


Diamond Sports Group, the largest owner of regional sports networks, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Tuesday. The move came after it missed a $140 million interest payment last month.

Diamond owns 19 networks under the Bally Sports banner. Those networks have the rights to 42 professional teams — 14 baseball, 16 NBA and 12 NHL.

The company said in a release Tuesday night that it expects to continue to operate during the bankruptcy process and that coverage of games should not be affected.

Diamond Sports also said it is negotiating a restructuring agreement with debt holders that will eliminate most of its debt. Under an agreement with creditors, it would become a separate company from Sinclair Broadcast Group.

“DSG will continue broadcasting games and connecting fans across the country with the sports and teams they love,” Diamond Sports CEO David Preschlack said in a statement. “We look forward to working constructively with our team and league partners and all DSG stakeholders throughout this process and beyond.”

Diamond said in a financial filing last fall it had debt of $8.67 billion. The bankruptcy filing was made in the Southern District of Texas.

Sinclair Broadcast Group bought the regional sports networks from The Walt Disney Co. for nearly $10 billion in 2019. Disney was required by the Department of Justice to sell the networks for its acquisition of 21st Century Fox’s film and television assets to be approved.

Diamond has nearly $1 billion in rights payments, mostly to baseball teams, due in the first quarter this year. The company is current on payments to hockey and basketball teams, but it might withhold payments from some baseball teams where it is trying to renegotiate a better deal.

Major League Baseball has set up a local media department in case it has to take over broadcasts for teams. Games would air locally via MLB Network or streamed on MLB.TV in case that happened.

“Diamond Sports Group’s bankruptcy declaration today is an unfortunate development that we have been expecting. Despite Diamond’s economic situation, there is every expectation that they will continue televising all games they are committed to during the bankruptcy process,” MLB said in a statement late Tuesday night. “Over the long term, we will reimagine our distribution model to address the changing media climate and ultimately reach an even larger number of fans.”

Diamond Sports isn’t the only company experiencing financial woes with its regional sports networks. Warner Bros. Discovery, which has an ownership stake in three of the AT&T SportsNet networks, has given the Colorado Rockies, Houston Astros and Pittsburgh Pirates until March 31 to reclaim their broadcast rights. WBD Sports is ending its investment in the networks.

 

Silicon Valley Bank’s demise disrupts the

disruptors in tech

By MICHAEL LIEDTKE

March 14, 2023

Notices are posted at the entrance to a Silicon Valley Bank Private branch in San Francisco, Monday, March 13, 2023. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse rattled the technology industry that had been the bank’s backbone, leaving shell-shocked entrepreneurs thankful for the government reprieve that saved their money while they mourned the loss of a place that served as a chummy club of innovation.

“They were the gold standard, it almost seemed weird if you were in tech and didn’t have a Silicon Valley Bank account,” Stefan Kalb, CEO of Seattle startup Shelf Engine, said during a Monday interview as he started the process of transferring millions of dollars to other banks.

The Biden administration’s move guaranteeing all Silicon Valley Bank’s deposits above the insured limit of $250,000 per account resulted in a “palpable sigh of relief” in Israel, where its booming tech sector is “connected with an umbilical cord to Silicon Valley,” said Jon Medved, founder of the Israeli venture capital crowdfunding platform OurCrowd.

But the gratitude for the deposit guarantees that will allow thousands of tech startups to continue to pay their workers and other bills was mixed with moments of reflection among entrepreneurs and venture capital partners rattled by Silicon Valley Bank’s downfall.

The crisis “has forced every company to reassess their banking arrangements and the companies that they work with,” said Rajeeb Dey, CEO of London-based startup Learnerbly, a platform for workplace learning.

Entrepreneurs who had deposited all their startups’ money in Silicon Valley Bank are now realizing it makes more sense to spread their funds across several institutions, with the biggest banks considered safer harbors.

Kalb started off Monday by opening an account at the largest bank in the U.S., JP Morgan Chase, which has about $2.4 trillion in deposits. That’s 13 times more than the deposits at Silicon Valley Bank, the 16th largest in the U.S.

Bank of America is getting some of the money that Electric Era had deposited at Silicon Valley Bank, and the Seattle startup’s CEO, Quincy Lee, expects having no difficulty finding other candidates to keep the rest of his company’s money as part of its diversification plan.

“Any bank is happy to take a startup’s money,” Lee said.

Even so, there are fears it will be more difficult to finance the inherently risky ideas underlying tech startups that became a specialty of Silicon Valley Bank since its founding over a poker game in 1983, just as the advent of the personal computer and faster microprocessors unleashed more innovation.

Silicon Valley quickly established itself as the “go-to” spot for venture capitalists looking for financial partners more open to unconventional business proposals than its bigger, more established peers who still didn’t have a good grasp of technology.

“They understood startups, they understood venture capital,” said Leah Ellis, CEO and co-founder of Sublime Systems, a company in Somerville, Massachusetts, commercializing a process to make low-carbon cement. “They were woven into the fabric of the startup community that I’m part of, so banking with SVB was a no brainer.”

Venture capitalists set up their accounts at Silicon Valley Bank just as the tech industry started its boom and then advised the entrepreneurs that they funded to do the same.

That cozy relationship came to an end when the bank disclosed a $1.8 billion loss on low-yielding bonds that were purchased before interest rates began to spike last year, raising alarms among its financially savvy customer base who used the fruits of technology to spread warnings that turned into a calamitous run on deposits.

Bob Ackerman, founder and managing director of venture funder AllegisCyber Capital, likened last week’s flood of withdrawal demands from Silicon Valley Bank to a self-inflicted wound by “a circular firing squad” intent on “shooting your best friend.”

Many of Silicon Valley Bank’s roughly 8,500 employees now find themselves hanging in limbo, too, even though government regulators now overseeing the operations have told them they will be offered jobs at 1.5 times their salaries for 45 days, said Rob McMillan, who had worked there for 32 years.

“We don’t know who’s going to pay us when,” McMillan said. “I think we all missed a paycheck. We don’t know if we have benefits.”

Even though all of Silicon Valley Bank’s depositors are being made whole, its demise is expected to leave a void in the technology sector that may be difficult to fill. In an essay that he posted on his LinkedIn page, prominent venture capitalist Michael Moritz compared Silicon Valley Bank to a “cherished local market where people behind the counters know the names of their customers, have a ready smile but still charge the going price when they sell a cut of meat.”

Silicon Valley Bank is fading away at a time when startups were already having a tougher go at raising money, with a downturn in technology stock values and a steady rise in interest rates causing venture capitalists to retrench. The bank often helped fill the financial gaps with one of its specialties — loans known as “venture debt” because it was woven into the funding provided by its venture capitalist customers.

“There’s going to be a lot of great ideas, a lot of great teams that don’t get funding because the barriers to entry are too high or because there are not enough people who are willing to invest,” said William Lin, an investor in the cybersecurity startup Symmetry Systems and a venture partner at ForgePoint, a venture capital firm.

With Silicon Valley Bank gone and venture capitalists pulling in their reins, Lin expects there will be fewer startups getting money to pursue ideas in the same fields of technology. If that happens, he foresees a winnowing of competition that will eventually make the biggest tech companies even stronger than they already are.

“There’s a real day of reckoning coming in the startup world,” predicted Amit Yoran, CEO of the cybersecurity firm Tenable.

That may be true, but entrepreneurs like Lee and Kalb already feel like they had been through an emotional wringer after spending the weekend worrying that all their hard work would go down a drain if they couldn’t get their money out of Silicon Valley Bank.

“It was like being stuck inside a doomsday loop,” Lee said.

Even as he focuses on growing Shelf Engine’s business of helping grocers managing their food orders, he vowed not to forget “a very hard lesson.”

“I obviously now know banks aren’t as safe as I used to think they were,” he said.

___

Associated Press writers Ilan Ben Zion in Jerusalem; Ami Bentov in Tel Aviv; Kelvin Chan in London; Jennifer McDermott in Providence, Rhode Island; Frank Bajak in Boston and Cathy Bussewitz and Cora Lewis in New York contributed to this story.

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Fed criticized for missing red flags before bank collapse

By CHRISTOPHER RUGABER and FATIMA HUSSEIN

March 14, 2023

A pedestrian passes a Silicon Valley Bank branch in San Francisco, Monday, March 13, 2023. As the primary regulator of the bank, the Federal Reserve is coming under sharp criticism from financial watchdogs and banking experts. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Federal Reserve is facing stinging criticism for missing what observers say were clear signs that Silicon Valley Bank was at high risk of collapsing into the second-largest bank failure in U.S. history.

Critics point to many red flags surrounding the bank, including its rapid growth since the pandemic, its unusually high level of uninsured deposits and its many investments in long-term government bonds and mortgage-backed securities, which tumbled in value as interest rates rose.

“It’s inexplicable how the Federal Reserve supervisors could not see this clear threat to the safety and soundness of banks and to financial stability,” said Dennis Kelleher, chief executive of Better Markets, an advocacy group.

Wall Street traders and industry analysts “have been publicly screaming about these very issues for many, many months going back to last fall,” Kelleher added.

The Fed was the primary federal supervisor of the bank based in Santa Clara, California, that failed last week. The bank was also overseen by the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation.

Now the consequences of the fall of Silicon Valley Bank, along with New York-based Signature Bank, which failed over the weekend, are complicating the Fed’s upcoming decisions about how high to raise its benchmark interest rate in the fight against chronically high inflation.

Many economists say the central bank would likely have raised rates by an aggressive half-point next week at its meeting, which would amount to a step up in its inflation fight, after the Fed implemented a quarter-point hike in February. Its rate currently stands at about 4.6%, the highest level in 15 years.

Last week, many economists suggested that Fed policymakers would raise their projection for future rates next week to 5.6%. Now it’s suddenly unclear how many additional rate increases the Fed will forecast.

With the collapse of the two large banks fueling anxiety about other regional banks, the Fed may focus more on boosting confidence in the financial system than on its long-term drive to tame inflation.

The latest government report on inflation, released Tuesday, shows that price increases remain far higher than the Fed prefers, putting Chair Jerome Powell in a tougher spot. Core prices, which exclude volatile food and energy costs and are seen as a better gauge of longer-run inflation, jumped 0.5% from January to February — the most since September. That is far higher than is consistent with the Fed’s 2% annual target.

“Absent the fallout from the bank failure, it may have been a close call, but I think it would have tipped them towards a half-point (rate hike) at this meeting,” said Kathy Bostjancic, chief economist at Nationwide.

On Monday, Powell announced that the Fed would review its supervision of Silicon Valley to understand how it might have better managed its regulation of the bank. The review will be conducted by Michael Barr, the Fed vice chair who oversees bank oversight, and will be publicly released May 1.

A Federal Reserve spokesperson declined to comment further.

Elizabeth Smith, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation, said, “We are actively investigating the situation and conducting a thorough review to ensure the Department is doing everything we can to protect Californians.”

By all accounts, Silicon Valley was an unusual bank. Its management took excessive risks by buying billions of dollars of mortgage-backed securities and Treasury bonds when interest rates were low. As the Fed continually raised interest rates to fight inflation, leading to higher rates on Treasurys, the value of Silicon Valley Bank’s bonds steadily lost value.

Most banks would have sought to make other investments to offset that risk. The Fed could have also forced the bank to raise additional capital.

The bank had grown rapidly. Its assets quadrupled in five years to $209 billion, making it the 16th-largest bank in the country. And roughly 94% of its deposits were uninsured because they exceeded the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s $250,000 insurance cap.

That percentage was the second highest among banks with more than $50 billion in assets, according to ratings agency S&P. Signature had the fourth-highest percentage of uninsured deposits.

Such an unusually high proportion made Silicon Valley Bank highly susceptible to the risk that depositors would quickly withdraw their money at the first sign of trouble — a classic bank run — which is exactly what happened.

“I’m at a loss for words to understand how this business model was deemed acceptable by their regulators,” said Aaron Klein, a former congressional aide, now at the Brookings Institution, who worked on the Dodd-Frank banking regulation law that was passed after the 2008 financial crisis.

The bank failures will likely color an upcoming Fed review of rules that set out how much money large banks must hold in reserve. Barr said last year that he wanted to conduct a “holistic” review of those requirements, raising concerns in the banking industry that the review would lead to rules forcing banks to hold more reserves, which would limit their ability to lend.

Many critics also point to a 2018 law as softening bank regulations in ways that contributed to Silicon Valley’s failure. Pushed by the Trump administration with bipartisan support in Congress, the law exempted banks with $100 billion to $250 billion in assets — Silicon Valley’s size — from requirements that included regular examinations of how they would fare in tough economic times, known as “stress tests.”

Silicon Valley’s CEO, Greg Becker, had lobbied Congress in support of the rollback in regulations, and he served on the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco until the day of the collapse.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts, asked him him about his lobbying in a letter released Tuesday.

“These rules were designed to safeguard our banking system and economy from the negligence of bank executives like yourself — and their rollback, along with atrocious risk management policies at your bank, have been implicated as chief causes of its failure,” Warren’s letter said.

The 2018 law also provided the Fed with more discretion in its bank oversight. The central bank subsequently voted to further reduce regulation for banks the size of Silicon Valley.

In October 2019, the Fed voted to effectively reduce the capital those banks had to hold in reserve.

Kelleher said the Fed still could have pushed Silicon Valley Bank to take steps to protect itself.

“Nothing in that law prevented in any way the Federal Reserve supervisors from doing their job,” Kelleher said.

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AP Economics Writer Paul Wiseman contributed to this report.

Saudi Arabia’s golf case threatens to spill kingdom secrets

By ELLEN KNICKMEYER

March 12, 2023

 Former President Donald Trump, left, talks with Yasir Al-Rumayyan, governor of Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, center, and Majed Al-Sorour, CEO of Golf Saudi, on the 16th hole during the first round of the Bedminster Invitational LIV Golf tournament in Bedminster, NJ., July 29, 2022. 

(AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Officials who oversee Saudi Arabia’s tens of billions of dollars in U.S. investments haven’t been shy about flaunting their ties with top American business and political figures, down to wearing MAGA caps as they swing golf clubs alongside former President Donald Trump. But they’ve been silent about many of the details of these relationships.

That’s changing as a result of a federal lawsuit in California pitting the Saudi-owned golf tour upstart LIV against the PGA Tour. A judge, citing what she described as the kingdom’s hands-on management of LIV, found that when it came to the new golf league, Saudi officials and the Saudi government aren’t shielded from U.S. courts the way sovereign nations usually are.

While Saudi Arabia is fighting the decision, insisting U.S. courts have no jurisdiction over its high officials, the ruling means lawyers for the PGA Tour would be able to question top officials about business secrets that the Saudis have held close, such as details of deal-making involving 2024 presidential candidate Trump and others.

U.S. District Judge Beth Labson Freeman found that the Saudis had smacked up against a commercial exception to U.S. laws on sovereign immunity.

Yasir al Rumayyan, appointed under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to manage the oil-rich Saudi government’s $600 billion-plus stockpile of wealth, is “up to his eyeballs” in managing the golf tour, Labson Freeman declared.

The finding follows PGA Tour claims that al Rumayyan himself recruited LIV players, approved LIV contracts and was otherwise the golf league’s decision-maker and manager. Lawyers for Saudi Arabia counter that Rumayyan’s actions were those of an eager investor, not of someone actually running a business.

The case matters beyond the world of golf. Saudi Arabia has been assertive in U.S. business investments and political relationships and could now face court demands for greater transparency and accountability.

The insistence by Saudi officials that U.S. courts have little or no say over their actions is especially sensitive. Last year, the kingdom, with legal backing from the Biden administration, successfully argued that American courts had no authority to try the prince in a lawsuit over the 2018 killing of U.S.-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi. U.S. intelligence officials had concluded that aides and other Saudi officials sent by the prince killed Khashoggi. The slaying has opened a lasting rift between the Biden administration and Prince Mohammed, Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler.

Longstanding international law generally protects the leaders and government of one country from being hauled into another country’s courts. Congress carved out commercial activity as an exception to that sovereign immunity in 1976.

-The PGA Tour argued in a filing Friday that Saudi Arabia and its sovereign wealth fund under the prince have a record of flip-flopping on insisting upon sovereign immunity, depending on whether doing so works to their advantage in various business deals and lawsuits.

Saudi Arabia’s critics and independent legal experts and analysts say the kingdom may be in a tough spot legally.

“It seemed to me very clear that it wasn’t immune” from U.S. courts when it came to operating the LIV golf tour and tournaments, said Donald Baker, a lawyer and a former head in the Justice Department’s antitrust division who is not involved in the case.

Baker projected the case could lead to California’s Northern District federal court seeking depositions from Saudi royals. Any decisions on whether other Saudi government business deals in the United States have similarly lost their immunity from U.S. courts would have to be made on a case-by-case basis, he said.

Sarah Leah Whitson, who runs the Democracy for the Arab World Now rights group founded by Khashoggi, said that “if they want to have sovereign immunity from their business transactions, it means they can sue people, they can demand that the judicial system enforces contracts and the laws governing contracts, but nobody can impose that against them. Nobody can hold them accountable.”

The Saudi-funded professional golf tour, now in its second season and with a slogan of “Golf, but louder,” is known for its blaring music, record multimillion-dollar purses, ties with Trump and unfriendly rivalry with the PGA Tour. Trump courses this year will host three LIV tournaments, in deals whose financial terms have not been publicly disclosed.

Saudi Arabia’s immunity problem comes in an antitrust lawsuit that was initially brought by LIV players against the long-established PGA Tour. The case already has revealed that the Saudi government’s sovereign wealth fund owns 93% of LIV.

A lawyer for Saudi Arabia’s side of the case did not respond to an email from The Associated Press seeking comment. A LIV spokeswoman referred questions to the Saudi sovereign wealth fund, which also did not respond to requests for comment.

Under the now eight-year rule of Saudi Arabia’s king, Salman, his son Prince Mohammed has made the kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund a primary tool of Saudi investment at home and abroad. The prince is the fund’s chairman. Saudi officials say the aim is to diversify the kingdom’s oil-funded economy.

Under Prince Mohammed and fund governor al Rumayyan, the fund has more than $30 billion invested in Uber, Meta, luxury electric car brand and Tesla rival Lucid, Paypal, Costco and other publicly traded U.S. businesses.

The fund also has consolidated Saudis’ relationship with the Trump family, using Trump golf courses and directing $2 billion to the investment firm of Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Rumayyan sits on the board of Uber. He plays golf with Trump. He triggered one of Elon Musk’s biggest tweet storms and legal cases, when Musk tweeted about what he later testified was the prospect of a Saudi sovereign wealth fund deal to take Tesla private.

The Saudi sovereign wealth fund also is spending heavily on sports. In addition to creating the LIV golf tour, the Saudis have bought the Newcastle United soccer team in Britain’s Premier League and hosted Formula One races, horse races with record prize money, and other tournaments and matches, from snooker to boxing and chess.

Saudi Arabia is presenting itself as an energetic, youthful and business-friendly government. Human rights groups counter with the word “sportswashing,” saying the kingdom under Prince Mohammed’s influence is trying to distance itself from the killing of Khashoggi, the jailing of other rights advocates, and a failed war in Yemen. U.S. critics paint Saudi Arabia’s financial deals with Trump and Kushner as the oil kingdom backing one side in America’s highly partisan politics.

“They’re really trying to rebrand the kingdom ... using sport to reach a much wider public audience and trying to tap into some of the passion that people have,” said Kristian Ulrichsen, a fellow for the Middle East at the Baker Institute in Houston.

To close the deal buying Newcastle United, Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund provided what authorities said were “legally binding assurances” that the kingdom would not be involved in running the team, even though Rumayyan serves as team chairman. Rights advocates argued unsuccessfully for a reexamination of that deal in light of the rulings of the California federal court.

Critics — and the PGA Tour lawyers in Friday’s filing — also contend Saudi Arabia willingly waived sovereign immunity when it submitted government documents in another U.S. case, against a Saudi who had served as a top intelligence official under the previous king. The United States intervened to quash the case on the grounds it threatened to reveal national security secrets.

In the golf lawsuit, LIV players and the Saudi sovereign wealth fund, formally called the Public Investment Fund, argue that unfair practices by the PGA are harming LIV. PGA lawyers respond in filings that it’s the reputations of Saudi Arabia and Prince Mohammed that are scaring away business.

___

AP Golf Writer Doug Ferguson contributed to this report.

Ellen Knickmeyer
Foreign policy, national security, foreign policy & climate

EllenKnickmeyer

THE FIRST MASONS
Like it or not, building in Italy means mastering concrete

By CAIN BURDEAU

This image provided by Audrey Rodeman shows Cain Burdeau covering a wall of a small concrete house where he lives with his family outside Castelbuono, Sicily, Italy, in a coat of concrete plaster. Burdeau had to become familiar with masonry to build in Italy, a land where laborers have long excelled with trowels, chisels, mortar mixes, stones and bricks. (Audrey Rodeman via AP)

CONTRADA PETRARO, Sicily (AP) — Everywhere you look in Italy, it’s there: It can be hulking and gray but also colorful and fun. Ominous but also beautiful.

Masonry using concrete and its old ingredient, cement, are inescapable here. It’s a crucial difference between construction in North America and in Europe: the carpenter versus the stone worker.

That was the difficult reality I faced when I moved from the U.S. with my family into a long-abandoned farm property 3 kilometers (a couple of miles) outside a town called Castelbuono in the Madonie Mountains in north-central Sicily.

I had a whole bunch of ugly and crumbling concrete to deal with. Or that’s how I saw it at first.

Coming from a background in American carpentry, the art of masonry was entirely new to me. But here, in a land where laborers have long excelled with trowels, chisels, mortar mixes, stones and bricks, I realized I’d have to become familiar with them too.

Masonry is especially legendary in Italy, home to many of the world’s most spectacular examples of stone and mortar work. The country also boasts the largest un-reinforced concrete dome still in existence: the Pantheon of ancient Rome.

As I began experimenting with concrete work and got a little better at it, I also came to appreciate more all those concrete buildings around me in Sicily — from the ancient beauties to the clunkier, Brutalist-style versions that went up in a post-World War II building boom.

The farm’s main part consists of two barns: an old stone structure, and a newer, tower-like one made of concrete blocks. Nearly five years went by before I finally attempted to turn the barns into a house.

During those years, my family had been living comfortably in a tiny modern home, also built in concrete blocks, a few yards from the barns where the farmer who built this place kept animals and tools, and made wine and olive oil. The 430-square-foot home – with a flushing toilet, lights, shower, windows, veranda and tiled floors – was the reason we’d bought the property.

The hulking barns, though, remained always at the back of my mind, holding the potential to be transformed into a bigger, more beautiful house.

Finally, one day I picked up a borrowed, hand-held jackhammer and started busting into the work.

My first objective was to remove a concrete-and-stone bench sitting against a sagging wall of the old barn. After a few weeks of work, I’d burnt through my friend’s jackhammer and a cheap new one.

It was hard going. Hand chisels were more apt to bounce off than accomplish any demolition. Normal drills were absolutely useless. The hours accumulated, along with a pile of busted concrete bits, stones of many sizes, lots of sand and cement, steel rods, broken bricks, pebbles.

My back was sore. I was exasperated. I looked up and sighed at the thought of what still awaited:

One side of the two-story barn was bereft of even a coat of plaster, and bats flew in and out of its gaping cracks. A big concrete trough was pulling away from the wall of the main barn. Inside the barns, the walls had no electrical outlets. Water lines and windows were scarce. The floors needed to be layered in new concrete.

And maybe worst of all, concrete beams throughout the structure were showing cracks.

Overwhelmed, I went back to jackhammering, chiseling, cutting steel re-bar, piling up rubble, cutting electrical lines into the concrete walls and, eventually, even beginning to plaster.

“Rome wasn’t built in a day, I suppose,” I bolstered myself.

In town, a friend and marble worker tried to teach me the mysteries of Italian construction, running his hand over a massive stone and mortar edifice.

“Look at this ancient place’s walls; look at how thick these walls are,” said Antonio Capuana, admiration in his voice. “These are load-bearing walls that keep up the entire house. This wall was part of a barn for an old monastery.”

Back then, he said, cement didn’t exist. The builders used stone and cocciopesto — a clay mixed with lime — to make huge structures.

This image provided by Cain Burdeau shows a construction worker mixing concrete on a street in Castelbuono, Sicily, Italy. In Italy, masonry using concrete is an inescapable aspect of construction and a crucial difference between home building in North America and in Europe. (Cain Burdeau via AP)

Widespread use of modern concrete and cement arrived in Sicily in the early 1900s and boomed after World War II, as it did in much of the world.

“Cement changed the world,” Nicolo Pierlucio Raimondo, an architect in Castelbuono, told me.

The art of mortar-making goes back to the ancient Romans and Arabs, he said. They experimented with the binding qualities of pozzolans, naturally occurring cements such as volcanic ash and gypsum. The invention of Portland cement in the 1820s, and its mass adoption in the early 1900s, was another game changer.

“Think about how much bigger cities have gotten in these last 100 years. Cement had a big part in this,” the architect said. “It helped speed up construction.”

But he added a cautionary note: “How long will these concrete structures last? No one knows.”

Capuana, the marble worker, pointed across the street to a row of concrete homes built in the 1960s and ’70s.

“Look at the overhangs on all those buildings,” he said. “They were made with steel and concrete. Over time, we’ve had to rebuild them all.”

By contrast, experts are still trying to understand the secret to the longevity of the ancient Romans’ concrete.

Modern concrete’s biggest weakness is water seeping through its tiny pores, a major factor in hairline cracks. Once water penetrates and rusts the steel used to reinforce concrete, a cracking process known as spalling worsens.

Gioacchino Allegra, a master builder overseeing the remodeling of a concrete home on the outskirts of Castelbuono, said today’s concrete is more compact than that of the building boom of the 1960s, which reduces spalling.

I also reached out to the International Masonry Institute for guidance.

Amy Lamb Woods, a concrete expert and preservationist there, said the post-World War II boom in concrete construction — the Brutalist stuff — was made possible by the advent of better kilns in the early 1900s.

On the down side, concrete became associated with urban decay. On the plus side, its use helped create so much modern infrastructure, from highways to hospitals.

“There’s this onslaught of: ‘Oh, it’s concrete, it’s ugly,’ and they want to tear them down,” Woods said. “All of us preservation people are advocating for their preservation because we believe these buildings are iconic, breathtaking, especially when they’re maintained well.”

In the U.S., that debate has intensified because concrete structures older than 50 years are now eligible for landmark status.

Also, because concrete is now recognized as causing some 8 percent of all carbon dioxide emissions, most of that from cooking that cement in those kilns.

Yet as Woods noted, “The most green building you can build is the one that you restore and preserve. You’re in essence keeping the building. And so, you’re not putting it into a landfill, and you’re continuing its use.”

Listening to her made me feel so much better about the potential in my towering and downright ugly concrete barn, and about all the concrete work waiting to be done.

——

The ancient lowly; a history of the ancient working people from the earliest known period to the adoption of Christianity by Constantine

by Ward, C. Osborne (Cyrenus Osborne)

Publication date 1888

PDF 

VOL 1

https://archive.org/details/ancientlowlyahi03wardgoog/page/n6/mode/2up

VOL2

https://archive.org/details/ahistoryancient00wardgoog/page/n7/mode/2up

Experts say attacks on free speech are rising across the US

By REBECCA BOONE

1 of 5
A content disclaimer sits at the entrance to the Unconditional Care exhibit Monday, March 6, 2023, at the Lewis-Clark State College Center for Arts & History in Lewiston, Idaho. Artists said some of their works weren't allowed in the exhibit by LCSC, which cited Idaho's No Public Funds for Abortion for removing some of the pieces. In Idaho, an art exhibit was censored and teens were told they couldn't testify in some legislative hearings. In Washington, a lawmaker proposed a hotline for reporting people who make offensively biased statements. In Florida, bloggers are fighting a bill that would force them to register with the state if they write posts criticizing public officials.

 (August Frank/Lewiston Tribune via AP, File)

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — In Idaho, an art exhibit was censored and teens were told they couldn’t testify in some legislative hearings. In Washington state, a lawmaker proposed a hotline so the government could track offensively biased statements, as well as hate crimes. In Florida, bloggers are fighting a bill that would force them to register with the state if they write posts criticizing public officials.

Meanwhile, bans on books and drag performances are growing increasingly common nationwide.

“We are seeing tremendous attacks on First Amendment freedoms across the country right now, at all levels of government. Censorship is proliferating, and it’s deeply troubling,” said Joe Cohn, legislative and policy director with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.

“This year, we’re seeing a wave of bills targeting drag performances, where simply being gender nonconforming is enough to trigger the penalty. We’re also seeing a wave of bills regulating what can be in public or K-12 school libraries,” Cohn said. “On college campuses, we have been tracking data about attempts to get faculty members punished or even fired for speech or expression and the numbers are startling — it’s the highest rate that we’ve seen in our 20 years of existence.”

First Amendment rights had been stable in America for decades, said Ken Paulson, director of the Free Speech Center at Middle Tennessee State University, but in recent years many states have reverted to the anti-speech tactics employed by people like Sen. Joe McCarthy during the “Red Scare” of the early 1950s.

McCarthy and others tried to silence political opponents by accusing them of being communists or socialists, using fear and public accusations to suppress basic free speech rights. The term “McCarthyism” became synonymous with baseless attacks on free expression, and the U.S. Supreme Court has referred to the phenomena in several First Amendment-related rulings.

“We are seeing a concerted wave that we have not seen in decades,” said Paulson, highlighting states like Florida where Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has pushed for legislation that would criminalize drag shows, limit what pronouns teachers can use for students, allow parents to determine what books can be in libraries and block some history classes entirely.

“It’s pretty mind-boggling that so many politicians are waving the flag of freedom while doing anything they possibly can to infringe on the free speech rights of Americans,” Paulson said.

Still, no one political group has a monopoly on censorship — aggression is increasing across the spectrum, Cohn said.

Washington state’s bias hotline bill, which died in committee earlier this year, was sponsored by Democratic Sen. Javier Valdez and backed by several groups including the Anti-Defamation League, Urban League, Council on American-Islamic Relations and others. It aimed to help the state collect information about hate crimes and bias incidents and to provide support and compensation to victims at a time when hate crime reports are rising.

Opponents, including the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, said they feared it would chill protected speech because it encompasses both criminal behavior and offensively biased statements.

Hate speech can be damaging and repugnant, but is still generally protected by the First Amendment. The Department of Homeland Security and experts who study extremism have warned that hateful rhetoric can be seen as a call to action by extremists groups.

Oregon created a similar bias hotline in 2019. It received nearly 1,700 calls in 2021, with nearly 60% of the reported incidents falling short of criminal standards, according to an annual report from Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum’s office.

“People in power target their political adversaries, so who is being silenced really depends on where you are on the map and its individual context,” Cohn said.

Artist Katrina Majkut experienced that first-hand last week, when artworks she had shown in more than two dozen states over the past decade were unexpectedly censored at a small state school in Lewiston, Idaho.

Majkut uses embroidery to highlight and subvert historically narrow ideas of wifedom and motherhood. She was hired to curate an exhibit at Lewis-Clark State College focusing on health care issues like chronic illness, pregnancy and gun violence.

But March 2, a day before the show’s opening, Majkut and two other artists were told some of their work would be removed over administrator fears about running afoul of Idaho’s “No Public Funds for Abortion Act.”

The 2021 law bars state-funded entities from promoting abortion or taking other measures that could be seen as training or counseling someone in favor of abortion.

Majkut’s cross-stitch depicting misoprostol and mifepristone tablets — which can be used together to induce abortion early in pregnancy — was removed from the exhibit along with a wall plaque detailing Idaho’s abortion laws.

Four documentary video and audio works by artist Lydia Nobles that showed women talking about their own experiences with abortion were also removed. And part of artist Michelle Harney’s series of 1920s-era letters written to Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger were stricken from the show.

“To be censored like that is shocking and surreal,” said Majkut, who designs her art to be educational rather than confrontational. “If the most even-keeled, bipartisan artwork around this topic is censored, then everything is going to be censored.”

Logan Fowler, the spokesman for LCSC, said the school made the decision after consulting with attorneys about whether showing the art could violate the law. Republican Rep. Bruce Skaug, the author of the law, said Tuesday that it was not intended to “prevent open discussion” of abortion — only to prevent tax dollars from being used to promote it.

The art exhibit censorship comes just two months after another controversial decision by Skaug. As chairman of the Idaho House Judiciary and Rules Committee, Skaug announced in January that people under age 18 would not be allowed to testify in his committee. Another Republican committee chair soon followed suit.

Lawmakers have the ability to limit committee testimony, and often use those limits to keep the legislature’s work focused and timely. Still, the age-based speech restriction appeared to be a first for the state.

A group of teens took action, launching phone and email campaigns staging protests.

“There is a clear lack of foresight in politicians who seek to eliminate the voices of those who will one day elect and eventually supersede them,” a group of 32 high school student leaders wrote in a joint opinion piece sent to news outlets across the state. “We ask Idaho’s Republican leaders, what are you so afraid of?”

The lawmakers eventually modified their rules, allowing youth to testify as long as they have signed permission slips from a parent or guardian.

Skaug said the rule was necessary to ensure parents are aware if their kids are leaving school to testify at the Statehouse. He still intends to give priority to older residents when testimony time is limited, but said he’s not aware of any youth actually being denied the chance to testify so far this year.

For Cohn, the efforts in Idaho and elsewhere reflect the danger of trying to restrict the expression of people who hold opposing views.

“We have to be ever-vigilant if we want our culture of individual freedoms to prevail,” he said. “Bad ideas are better dealt with through debate and dialogue than government censorship.”