Buttigieg: Trump’s Disabled Veteran Bashing ‘Outrageous’

William Vaillancourt
Sun, September 24, 2024

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, a veteran of the Afghanistan War, was disgusted Sunday by a September 2019 comment that then-President Donald Trump made about a wounded Army captain, as reported Thursday in The Atlantic.

Trump, in the same vein as his 2015 declaration that Vietnam veteran and prisoner of war John McCain was “not a war hero” because he “likes people who weren’t captured,” apparently groused about the inclusion of Luis Avila at the welcome ceremony for incoming Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley. An IED attack in Afghanistan had cost Avila one of his legs, and he had also suffered brain damage, two heart attacks and two strokes.

“Why do you bring people like that here?” Trump complained to Milley after Avila, seated in a wheelchair, sang “God Bless America,” according to several people who heard him. “No one wants to see that, the wounded.” Trump then reportedly instructed Milley to never again have Avila at a public event.

Appearing on CNN’s State of the Union, Buttiegieg was asked about this and Trump’s angry response to the story, which included him accusing Milley of treason for trying to maintain global stability around the time of the 2020 election in light of an increasingly erratic president.

“It’s just the latest in a pattern of outrageous attacks on the people who keep this country safe,” the transportation secretary told anchor Dana Bash, before commending some injured veterans he knows. “These are the kind of people that deserve respect and a hell of a lot more than that from every American, and definitely from every American president.”

In his Truth Social post Friday, Trump did not specifically deny that he made the comment to Milly, but resorted to his default swipe at “Fake News reporting”–an insult that, by his own admission, according to 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl, is just meant to tarnish an outlet’s reputation whenever it publishes something he doesn’t like.

“I guess wounded veterans make President Trump feel uncomfortable,” Buttigieg continued. “Those are exactly the kinds of people we should lift up, because their commitment could help unify the country. And we need voices–whether it’s ordinary people, service members, or political leaders–who are interested in unifying, not dividing, Americans.”

Pete Buttigieg condemns Trump’s reported remarks about wounded veteran

Adam Gabbatt
Sun, September 24, 2023

Photograph: Olivier Douliery/AFP/Getty Images

Pete Buttigieg, the US transport secretary and a military veteran, has criticized Donald Trump after a report that he sought to bar a severely wounded veteran from public appearances during his presidency.

In an interview with the Atlantic, Mark Milley, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, said Trump had been irritated after Luis Avila – who lost a leg and suffered brain damage after an IED attack in Afghanistan – sang at Milley’s 2019 welcome ceremony.

Related: Cassidy Hutchinson left DC amid ‘security concerns’ after January 6 hearings

“Why do you bring people like that here? No one wants to see that, the wounded,” Milley said Trump told him after the ceremony.

Milley told the Atlantic that Trump said Avila should never appear in public again.

On Sunday, Buttigieg – who was a lieutenant in the US navy reserve and served a tour of duty in Afghanistan in 2014 – told CNN that Trump’s alleged order was “just the latest in a pattern of outrageous attacks [by Trump] on people who keep this country safe”.

Military members wounded in combat, Buttigieg said, “deserve respect and a hell of a lot more than that from every American, and definitely from every American president”.

Buttigieg also said: “The idea that an American president, the person to whom service members look as a commander in chief, the person who sets the tone for this entire country, could think that way or act that way or talk that way about anyone in uniform, and certainly about those who put their bodies on the line and sacrificed in ways that most Americans will never understand … I guess wounded veterans make president Trump feel uncomfortable.”

Trump has a previously attacked members of the military. In 2020, the Atlantic reported that Trump had said the Aisne-Marne American cemetery – where more than 2,000 American military members who died in France are buried – was “filled with suckers”.

The Atlantic reported that Trump had also said the more than 1,800 marines who died at Belleau Wood, the site of a key battle in the first world war, were “suckers” for getting killed.

Trump denied the report, but he has a history of criticizing service members. In 2015 he referred to John McCain, the late US senator and navy veteran who spent nearly six years in a Vietnamese prisoner-of-war camp, as a “loser”.

Trump added: “He’s not a war hero. He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured.

Trump suggests Mark Milley should be executed in possible breach of pre-trial release conditions

Josh Marcus
Sun, September 24, 2023 

Donald Trump made a series of aggressive comments on social media about outgoing head of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley, suggesting the top military leader’s conduct was worthy of execution.

“Mark Milley, who led perhaps the most embarrassing moment in American history with his grossly incompetent implementation of the withdrawal from Afghanistan, costing many lives, leaving behind hundreds of American citizens, and handing over BILLIONS of dollars of the finest military equipment ever made, will be leaving the military next week,” Mr Trump wrote on Truth Social on Friday.

“This will be a time for all citizens of the USA to celebrate!” he continued. “This guy turned out to be a Woke train wreck who, if the Fake News reporting is correct, was actually dealing with China to give them a heads up on the thinking of the President of the United States. This is an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH!”

The Independent has contacted the Joint Chiefs of Staff for comment.

The former president’s comments could potentially run afoul of his release conditions ahead of his trials related to the special counsel investigations against him in the Mar-a-Lago documents and 2020 election conspiracy cases. He has been warned to avoid publicly attacking court officers and potential witnesses on social media.

If Mr Milley is in fact a witness in either of these case, Mr Trump could face serious penalties.

"My bet: Donald Trump is threatening General Milley because General Milley is on the government’s witness list for the trial in the Mar-a-Lago documents case," former New York Attorney General’s Office official Tristan Snell wrote on X on Saturday.

Mr Trump’s attacks on Mr Milley come after the military official was featured in an in-depth profile in The Atlantic, where the general described Mr Trump’s “disturbing” alleged lack of respect for the armed forces.

He described how at a 2019 event, Mr Trump reportedly expressed disgust that Luis Avila, an Army veteran who served five combat tours and lost his leg in an IED attack, was chosen to sing “God Bless America.”

"Why do you bring people like that here? No one wants to see that, the wounded,” Mr Trump allegedly said.

The former president also reportedly praised Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher, who was previously found guilty of posing the dead body of an Isis prisoner who he stabbed in the neck, as a “hero,” claiming soldiers are “are all just killers. What’s the difference?”

Mr Trump’s China comments likely reference a set of calls Mr Milley paid to his Chinese counterpart, assuring him the US didn’t have plans in 2020 and early 2021 to attack China, after intelligence officials captured Chinese officials appearing to fear the prospect as likely.

"The calls on 30 October and 8 January were coordinated before and after with Secretary [Mark] Esper and acting Secretary [Chris] Miller’s staffs and the interagency," Mr Milley testified in the Senate in 2021.

"My task at that time was to de-escalate," he added.

Column: Trump has a second-term agenda, and it's more terrifying than ever

Doyle McManus
Sun, September 24, 2023

Former President Trump, campaigning last month in Windham, N.H., wants to deport millions, send the National Guard into U.S. cities and prosecute political opponents, just for starters. (Joseph Prezioso / AFP/Getty Images)

Former President Trump is on the campaign trail again, and most of the attention he’s getting is for bare-knuckled attacks on his chief opponents, President Biden (whom he derides as “Crooked Joe”) and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (“DeSanctimonious”), as well as the prosecutors who have indicted him (“fascist thugs”).

Amid the insults, Trump has laid out a menu of actions he plans to take if he becomes president again. Anyone who isn’t a true believer in Trump’s authoritarian vision should be terrified.

In speeches, interviews and campaign videos, Trump has promised to:

• Use the military to participate in the largest deportation of undocumented immigrants in American history;

• Order the National Guard into cities with high crime rates, whether local officials want it or not;

• Prosecute Californians who protect minors coming to the state for gender-affirming care;

• Impose a 10% tariff on almost all foreign goods, increasing prices for consumers;

• Appoint a special prosecutor to “go after” his political opponents, beginning with Biden;

• Purge the federal civil service of anyone who questions his views.

Read more: Big majorities of Americans say the political system stinks. Will immigrants and young people change it?

Some of those pledges may turn out to be illegal or impractical, but they’re more than bluster.

Most of them reflect views Trump has held for decades; he'll try to act on them even if laws and judges get in his way.

Some promises, like mass deportations, are reruns from his first-term agenda — only this time, he and his aides know how to fulfill them under an expansive view of federal authority.

Here’s a preview of the second Trump administration, based mostly on the candidate’s own words:

Immigration

Just as he did in 2016, Trump has promised to launch “the largest domestic deportation operation in American history” against an estimated 11 million immigrants without legal status, using military units as well as civilian agencies.

As he did in 2016, he’s using racially coded language.

“They’re criminals, people from mental institutions, terrorists,” he said at a rally in Iowa last week.

"It's not just countries adjoining us," he told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt. “They’re coming from all over Africa. They're coming from areas of the world that nobody can believe. ... and they're destroying our country."

Trump has also said he wants to revive the family separation policy he imposed during his first term until public outcry forced him to reverse it.

And he has promised to sign an executive order “on Day One” to end birthright citizenship for children of immigrants without legal standing.

All of these actions would almost surely draw legal challenges, but a determined president could probably get some of them to stick.

National Guard

Trump has also revived a proposal he made during the summer of unrest in 2020: “In cities where there has been a complete breakdown of public safety, I will send in federal assets including the National Guard until law and order is restored.”

The federal Insurrection Act gives the president authority to use troops to quell civil disturbances, whether local officials want them to or not. President Dwight D. Eisenhower used the provision to send the National Guard to Little Rock, Ark., to protect school desegregation efforts in 1957.

Transgender care

Trump has said he will ask Congress to pass a federal ban against gender reassignment surgery for minors, a priority he called “probably No. 1" on his list. Until then, he says, he will use executive action to restrict the practice.

He says he will ban federal funding for gender transitions at any age and bar hospitals and doctors that provide reassignment surgery to minors from participating in Medicare or Medicaid.

At a meeting with religious conservatives this month, he denounced the 2022 California law that prohibits healthcare providers from releasing information about a minor’s gender-related medical care to authorities in another state.

“We will prosecute those involved in this sick California scheme for violating federal laws against kidnapping, sex trafficking [and] child abuse,” Trump said.

As president, Trump could presumably direct the FBI to investigate healthcare providers who refuse to respond to inquiries from other states. Prosecuting them for sex trafficking or child abuse sounds like a stretch, even for Trump.

Tariffs and taxes

Trump has always called himself “a tariff man,” convinced that taxes on imports will strengthen the economy. That hasn’t changed.

He says he wants to impose a 10% tariff on all foreign goods, another rerun from his 2016 campaign. Federal law gives the president wide authority to impose tariffs.

Most economists, including conservatives, say it’s a terrible idea, partly because it would fuel inflation by raising prices. The nonpartisan Tax Foundation estimated that a 10% tariff would be equivalent to a $300-billion tax on consumers, since the cost of tariffs is absorbed by buyers, not sellers.

Trump also wants to cut corporate taxes again, but that would require legislation from Congress. He has not proposed any new tax cuts for individuals.

Prosecutions

Trump could certainly appoint a pliant attorney general and federal prosecutors who would investigate his political opponents.

“I will appoint a real special ‘prosecutor’ to go after the most corrupt president in the history of the USA, Joe Biden, the entire Biden crime family, & all others involved with the destruction of our elections, borders, & country itself!” he wrote in a social media post after he was arraigned on charges that he illegally retained classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate.

If he carries out that threat, it would represent a politicization of the Justice Department unmatched since the Watergate scandal half a century ago.

Many of Trump’s promises sound familiar, since they resemble actions he attempted to take in his first term. But there would be two important differences this time around.

In his first term, Trump initially surrounded himself with aides who sought to temper his impulses: White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, Defense Secretary James N. Mattis — even, occasionally, Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions. Those moderating influences are gone.

“When I went there, I didn’t know a lot of people; I had to rely on, in some cases, RINOs,” Trump said earlier this year, referring to “Republicans in Name Only.” Now “I know the good ones; I know the bad ones,” he said.

In 2017, Trump arrived in the White House unprepared, with no clear idea of how to force the federal bureaucracy to turn his whims into action. If he wins this time, he’ll bring a team of loyal aides who have been planning their return to power for months, and who intend to start by purging bureaucrats who stand in their way.

“Trump 2.0 would be the Delta variant of democracy,” David Axelrod, the former campaign strategist for President Obama, said last week. “It would be a thousand times more virulent and harder to control.”

After four chaotic years in office followed by four years of simmering-rage exile, we should know better than to think Trump will change his ways now.

Don’t say he never warned you.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

OPPORTUNISM
Republicans seize on auto workers strike as opportunity to recapture the White House

Robert Tait in Washington

Fri, September 22, 2023 

Photograph: Jeremy Wadsworth/AP

A strike pitting a resurgent trade union against the US’s three biggest carmakers has exposed key differences in labour relations among Republicans – even while animating their assault on Joe Biden’s self-styled “Bidenomics” policies.

Led by Donald Trump, the former president and 2024 party frontrunner, Republican hopefuls have seized on the stoppage by 13,000 United Auto Workers (UAW) members at General Motors, Ford and Stellantis production facilities in Missouri, Michigan and Ohio to highlight rumbling economic discontent as a catalyst to recapturing the White House. The UAW is demanding a 40% pay raise, shorter hours and better pensions for its members – and is threatening to spread the strike to other plants if its terms are not met.

Republicans – who have attacked unions for decades – believe they stand to gain from a dispute that could seriously test Biden’s claim to be the most pro-labour president in US history. Yet underlying their conviction is a divide between those professing sympathy for the strikers’ grievances and others who have invoked Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher to suggest that they deserve to be sacked.

For his part, Biden has clearly sided with the union’s demands and urged management to share more of their companies’ record profits with the workforce.

Bullishly heading the Republican charge is Trump, who has made clear his intention to woo UAW members by scheduling a keynote speech in Detroit next week – the symbolic heartland of the US motor industry and near the site of the strike-hit Ford plant in Dearborn.

He will address 500 workers and union members from a range of industries – including carworkers – in a bid to reclaim the level of working-class support that enabled him to carry Michigan in his 2016 presidential victory over Hillary Clinton, before losing the state in his 2020 defeat to Biden.

Next Tuesday’s event will be timed to coincide with the second Republican primary debate in California, which he is deliberately skipping to shield his presumed status as the party’s anointed nominee-in-waiting.

“There’s something in this strike for Trump, and maybe one or two of the other Republicans,” said Larry Sabato, the director of the centre for politics at the University of Virginia. “It’s a political opportunity for Trump and he recognises it. Whatever you think of Trump, his political instincts aren’t bad.

“He needs something in the neighbourhood of 37% to 40% of union voters to win back Michigan, so he will come in and give a speech promising that he is their best, best friend and will be to their dying day – even though they will live longer than he will.

“He did pretty well in 2016 in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, partly because a lot of union members didn’t like Hillary Clinton but also because Trump’s swagger really seemed to appeal to many union members – they were attracted to that style of leadership.”

Shawn Fain, the UAW’s president, rebuffed Trump’s ostensibly union-friendly posture, saying in an issued statement: “Every fibre of our union is being poured into fighting the billionaire class and an economy that enriches people like Donald Trump at the expense of workers.”

Shawn Fain, the UAW president, greets union autoworkers in Sterling Heights, Michigan, on 12 July 2023. Photograph: Rebecca Cook/Reuters

Crucially, however, the UAW has yet to endorse Biden’s re-election bid, despite the president’s labour-friendly posture and his vocal support for the union’s demands – giving Republicans leeway to make inroads with its members.

Trump is not alone among the GOP field in displaying sympathy for the UAW – or at least its grassroots membership.

Describing himself as “among the most pro-labour Republicans in the US senate”, JD Vance, the senator from Ohio – a traditionally union-friendly state – said American carworkers had “gotten the short end of the stick” and declared: “I support the UAW’s demand for higher wages.”

But he qualified his support with an attack on the Biden administration’s “premature transition to electric vehicles”, calling it a “6,000lb elephant in the room”.

Vivek Ramaswamy, the rightwing populist presidential candidate and biotechnology entrepreneur, avoided choosing a side and said the union should direct its anger at the White House. “I empathise with workers who have seen wages not go up nearly at the same rate as prices have gone up,” he said. “The people they should be really protesting against is the current administration that has given us the economic policies of inflation without wage growth to go along with it.”

Contrasting with efforts to curry favour with the strikers are the hardline attitudes expressed by Tim Scott and Nikki Haley.

Scott, a senator for South Carolina, cited Ronald Reagan’s firing of striking air traffic controllers in 1981 as a model.

“I think Ronald Reagan gave us a great example when federal employees decided they were going to strike,” Scott said at a campaign event in Iowa. “He said, ‘You strike, you’re fired.’ Simple concept to me, to the extent that we can use that once again.”

In separate remarks, he accused the UAW of fighting for “more pay and fewer days on the job. It’s a disconnect from work.”

Analysts said Scott’s comments were motivated by a track record of known anti-union sentiment – illustrated by his sponsorship of a recent bill in the senate that critics say would curtail workers’ rights and a desire to attract business funds to finance his presidential campaign.

Haley, the US ambassador to the United Nations during Trump’s presidency who has repeatedly invoked Margaret Thatcher on the presidential campaign trail, appeared to identify with the former British prime minister’s famously uncompromising approach to striking trade unionists, boasting of being “a union buster” while governor of South Carolina.

“When you have the most pro-union president and he touts that he is emboldening the unions, this is what you get,” she told Fox News. “The union is asking for a 40% raise, the companies have come back with a 20% raise – I think any of the taxpayers would love to have a 20% raise and think that’s great.”

Samantha Sanders, the director of government affairs and advocacy at the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington-based thinktank, suggested Republican interventions on the strike were driven by opportunism.

“I don’t know what is the decision-making on their campaigns,” she said. “All I can say is, what is your track record? What have you done for workers? Have we reason to believe they would follow on these messages of support some of them express? I have not seen anything backed up by action while they were in office.

Trump claims Biden’s ‘ridiculous all-electric car hoax’ partially to blame for UAW strike

Nick Robertson
Sat, September 23, 2023 

Former President Trump took aim at Biden administration electric vehicle (EV) policy, claiming the president’s “ridiculous all-electric car hoax” is responsible for the United Auto Workers strike against major automakers.

“Crooked Joe sold them down the river with his ridiculous all Electric Car Hoax,” Trump said on Truth Social in the early morning Saturday. “Within 3 years, all of these cars will be made in China.”

“If the UAW ‘leadership’ doesn’t ENDORSE me, and if I don’t win the Election, the Autoworkers are ‘toast,’ with our great truckers to follow,” he added.

The UAW began its strike last week against the “Big Three” automakers: Ford, General Motors and Stellantis. The union is demanding higher wages, shorter work weeks, union representation for battery plant workers and better retirement benefits — including restored pensions for new hires.

Republicans have pinned the strike on Biden administration EV policy, saying efforts to encourage the production of electric vehicles has pushed jobs out of UAW strongholds in the midwest and weakened the union.

“I also think that this green agenda that’s using taxpayer dollars to drive our automotive economy into EVs is understandably causing great anxiety among UAW members,” Former Vice President Mike Pence said last week. “These guys are seeing the Green New Deal that was passed under the guise of the Inflation Reduction Act, they’re seeing it drive their industry into EVs, benefiting China that makes most of our batteries.”

The UAW has shared similar concerns, citing EV policy as the main reason the union has not yet endorsed Biden’s reelection campaign. However, UAW President Shawn Fain said that the union will never endorse Trump.

Fain has pushed for what he calls a “just transition” to EVs — a process that better protects union jobs.

“I think there’s always been that tension between the labor movement and the environmental groups,” said Marick Masters, a professor of business at Wayne State University, to The Hill last week. “I think the environmental group is the dominant group within that alliance … the forces behind electrification of the vehicle fleet are almost unstoppable within the Democratic Party.”

The country’s largest EV manufacturer, Tesla, is not unionized despite growing efforts from the UAW and other worker advocates. Many new manufacturing plants for EVs and EV parts are also in the south, where workers have fewer protections than in the midwest.

Biden has backed the UAW strike, calling on automakers to increase their offers and negotiate with the union. He is scheduled to visit striking workers in Michigan this week.

“Tuesday, I’ll go to Michigan to join the picket line and stand in solidarity with the men and women of UAW as they fight for a fair share of the value they helped create,” he posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “It’s time for a win-win agreement that keeps American auto manufacturing thriving with well-paid UAW jobs.”

Six young activists devote years to climate fight with 32 governments. Now comes their day in court

  

Siblings Sofia Oliveira, 18, and Andre Oliveira, 15, pose for a picture at the beach in Costa da Caparica, south of Lisbon, Wednesday, Sept. 20, 2023. They are two of the six Portuguese children and young adults set to take 32 European governments to court on Wednesday, Sept. 27, for what they say is a failure to adequately address human-caused climate change in a violation of their human rights. 

(AP Photo/Ana Brigida)

BARRY HATTON and HELENA ALVES
Sat, September 23, 2023

COSTA DA CAPARICA, Portugal (AP) — Sofia Oliveira was 12 years old when catastrophic wildfires in central Portugal killed more than 100 people in 2017. She “felt it was now or never to raise our voices” as her country appeared to be in the grip of deadly human-caused climate change.

Now a university student, Sofia and five other Portuguese young adults and children between 11 and 24 years of age are due on Wednesday at the European Court of Human Rights, where they are accusing 32 European governments of violating their human rights for what they say is a failure to adequately address climate change. It’s the first climate change case filed with the court and could compel action to significantly slash emissions and build cleaner infrastructure.

Victory for them in Strasbourg would be a powerful instance of young people taking a legal route to force their governments to adopt a radical recalibration of their climate measures.

The court’s rulings are legally binding on member countries, and failure to comply makes authorities liable for hefty fines decided by the court.

The courts are increasingly seen by activists as a way of sidestepping politics and holding governments to account. Last month, in a case brought by young environmental activists, a judge in the U.S. state of Montana ruled that state agencies were violating their constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment by allowing fossil fuel development.

When the Portuguese group decided in 2017 they would pursue legal action, Sofia wore braces on her teeth, stood taller than her younger brother André and was starting seventh grade at school. The braces are long gone and André, who is now 15, is taller than her by a few centimeters (an inch or so).

The past six years, André noted in an interview with The Associated Press, represent almost half of his life.

What has kept them going through the piles of legal documents gathered by the nonprofit group supporting them and through lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic is what they call the pressing evidence all around them that the climate crisis is getting worse.

The Praia do Norte beach at Costa da Caparica near where Sofia and André live, just south of the Portuguese capital Lisbon, was about 1 kilometer (3,000 feet) long when his father was his age, André says. Now, amid coastal erosion, it measures less than 300 meters (1,000 feet). Evidence like that led him to attend climate demonstrations even before he became a teen.

The other four members of the Portuguese group — Catarina, Cláudia, Martim and Mariana — are siblings and cousins who live in the region of Leiria in central Portugal where summer wildfires are common.

Scientists say the climate of the Sahara is jumping across the Mediterranean Sea to southern European countries like Portugal, where average temperatures are climbing and rainfall is declining. Portugal’s hottest year on record was 1997, followed by 2017. The four driest years on record in the country of 10.3 million people have all occurred since 2003.

It’s a similar story across Europe, and the legal arguments of the six Portuguese are backed by science. The Earth sweltered through its hottest Northern Hemisphere summer ever measured, with a record warm August capping a season of brutal and deadly temperatures, according to the World Meteorological Organization.

The world is far off its pledge to curb global warming, scientists say, by cutting emissions in line with the requirements of the 2015 Paris climate accord. Estimates say global average temperatures could rise by 2 to 4 degrees Celsius (2.6 to 7.2 Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times by 2100 at current trajectories of warming and emissions reductions plans.

Among the specific impacts listed by the young Portuguese are being unable to sleep, concentrate, play outside or exercise during heat waves. One of their schools was closed temporarily when the air became unbreathable due to wildfire smoke. Some of the children have health conditions such as asthma that makes them more vulnerable to heat and air pollution.

They are being assisted by the Global Legal Action Network, an international nonprofit organization that challenges human rights violations. A crowdfunding campaign has drawn support from around the world, with messages of support coming from as far away as Japan, India and Brazil.

Gerry Liston, a GLAN legal officer, says the 32 governments have “trivialized” the case. “The governments have resisted every aspect of our case … all our arguments,” he said.

André describes the governments as “condescending.” Sofia adds: “They don’t see climate as a priority.”

Portugal’s government, for example, agrees the state of the environment and human rights are connected but insists the government’s “actions seek to meet its international obligations in this area” and cannot be faulted.

At the same time, some governments in Europe are backsliding on commitments already made.

Poland last month filed legal challenges aimed at annulling three of the European Union’s main climate change policies. Last week, the British government announced it is delaying by five years a ban on new gas and diesel cars that had been due to take effect in 2030. The Swedish government’s state budget proposal last week, meanwhile, cut taxes on gas and diesel and reduced funding for climate and environmental measures.

Amid those developments, the courts are seen by activists as a recourse.

The London School of Economics says that globally, the cumulative number of climate change-related cases has more than doubled since 2015 to more than 2,000. Around one-fourth were launched between 2020 and 2022, it says.

The Portuguese activists, who are not seeking any financial compensation, will likely have to wait some more. The verdict in their case could take up to 18 months, though they see the court’s decision in 2020 to fast-track the proceedings as an encouraging sign.

A precedent is also giving the activists heart. The Urgenda Foundation, a Dutch organization that promotes sustainability and innovation, brought against the Dutch Government the first case in the world in which citizens argued that their government has a legal obligation to prevent dangerous climate change.

In 2019, the Dutch Supreme Court found in Urgenda’s favor, ruling that the emissions reduction target set by the government was unlawfully low. It ordered authorities to further reduce emissions

 

The government consequently decided to shut down coal-fired power plants by 2030 and adopted billion-euro packages to reduce energy use and develop renewable energy, among other measures.

Dennis van Berkel, Urgenda’s legal counsel, accused governments of choosing climate change targets that are “politically convenient” instead of listening to climate scientists. Judges can compel them to justify that what they are doing on climate issues is enough, he said.

“Currently there is no such scrutiny at any level,” he told the AP. “That is something incredibly important that the courts can contribute.”

___

Associated Press writers Samuel Petrequin in Brussels and Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen contributed to this report.

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Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

 

Was the freak 'medicane' storm that devastated Libya a glimpse of North Africa's future?

by Mike Rogerson, Belkasem Alkaryani and Mahjoor Lone, The Conversation

Derna, a city in eastern Libya, before and after Storm Daniel. 

Credit: Google Earth/Holly Squire, CC BY

Storm Daniel landed on the Libyan coastal town of Toukrah in the early hours of September 10 and started moving east. Soon the wind was rising and heavy rain falling, forcing people to stay indoors. By afternoon the rain was clearly out of the ordinary.

Albaydah city on the coast would receive 80% of its annual rain before midnight, according to records from a local weather station that we have accessed. In less than 24 hours, thousands of people were dead, hundreds of thousands were missing, and towns and villages across Jebel Akhdar (the Green Mountain) in north-eastern Libya resembled a Hollywood disaster movie.

Storm Daniel was a Mediterranean cyclone or hurricane (a so-called medicane) which struck Greece, Bulgaria, Libya, Egypt and Turkey over the course of a week. Medicanes are not rare. Such large storms happen in this part of the world every few years. But Daniel has proved to be the deadliest.

At the time of writing, the World Health Organization estimates that at least 3,958 people have died across Libya as a result of the floods, with more than 9,000 people still missing.

Daniel was not an exceptionally big storm though. The medicane with the highest wind speeds was medicane Ianos in September 2020, which killed around four people and caused more than €224 million (£193 million) of damage. So what made Storm Daniel different?

Less frequent, but stronger

Like tropical cyclones, medicanes form in hot conditions at the end of summer. Most medicanes form to the west of the islands of Corsica and Sardinia. As they tend to strike the same regions each time, the people living in the western Mediterranean, southern Italy and western Greece, have built structures to deal with these storms and the occasional downpours they bring.

Daniel formed relatively far to the east and struck north-eastern Libya, which is rare. Dozens of people were killed in communities across Cyrenaica, the eastern portion of the country.

In the mountain gorge above the city of Derna, two dams failed in the middle of the night. Thousands of people, most of whom were asleep, are thought to have perished when the wave of water and debris swept down to the coast, destroying a quarter of the city.

Since medicanes are formed in part by excess heat, events like this are highly sensitive to climate change. A rapid attribution study suggested greenhouse gas emissions made Daniel 50 times more likely.

Despite this, the sixth assessment report from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded that medicanes are becoming less frequent but larger. Storm Daniel suggests where medicanes form and make landfall might be more important than their frequency and size.

So does Libya need to brace itself for more of these events in the future than it has in the past, even if they affect the western Mediterranean less often?

Clues from the past

An important clue might lie deep underground, inside caves within north-eastern Libya. Although the caves are often dry today, they contain stalagmites which formed when rain passed through the soil, into the rock and dripped into the cave below thousands of years ago.

These rock formations attest to times in the past when this region was considerably wetter. The caves in Libya—and in Tunisia and Egypt too—form these stalagmites when the global climate is warm.

These bygone warm periods are not quite the same as the warm periods IPCC forecasts suggest modern climate change will usher in. But the way a hot world, a relatively ice-free Europe and North America and a wet northern Africa have regularly coincided in the past is striking. Striking and difficult to understand.

That's because the experiments that suggest medicanes will become less frequent as the climate warms belong to a pattern described by IPCC climate assessments, in which wet parts of the world are expected to get wetter and dry parts drier. So it is hard to understand why stalagmites tell us warmer periods in the past involved wetter conditions across the northern margin of the Sahara—one of the driest regions on Earth.

Fortunately, scientists can learn more from the way stalagmites sometimes grow imperfectly, leaving tiny blobs of water trapped between the crystals.

The stalagmite we recovered from Susah Cave on the outskirts of Libya's Susah city, which was severely damaged in the storm, had quite a lot of water in it from wet periods dating to 70,000 to 30,000 years ago. The oxygen and hydrogen isotopes in this water are suggestive of rain drawn from the Mediterranean. This could indicate more medicanes were hitting the Libyan coast then.

Our finding that more rain was falling above Susah Cave during warm periods suggests we should get more storms hitting eastern Libya as the climate warms. This is not quite what the IPCC forecasts, with their prediction of fewer but larger storms, show.

But storm strength is measured in wind speed, not rainfall. The caves could well be recording an important detail of past storminess which we're not yet able to forecast.

Are stalagmites warning us that North Africa must prepare for future medicanes shifting further east? Our ongoing research aims to answer that question.

The pattern of ancient desert margins receiving more rain during warm periods despite the "dry gets drier" pattern of global climate models is not unique to northern Africa but found around the world. Over millions of years, globally warm periods almost always correspond with smaller deserts in Africa, Arabia, Asia and Australia.

This "dryland climate paradox" is important to unravel. Understanding the differences between climate models and studies of ancient rain will be key to navigating the future as safely as possible.

Provided by The Conversation 

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Medicanes: rare, 'supercharging' Mediterranean storms

ICYMI

The fall equinox is here. What does that mean?

by Maddie Burakoff

The sun sets beyond the downtown skyline of Kansas City, Mo., as the autumnal equinox 

marks the first day of fall Saturday, Sept. 23, 2023

During the equinox, the Earth’s axis and its orbit line up so that both hemispheres get an equal amount of sunlight. Credit: AP Photo/Charlie Riedel, File

Fall is in the air—officially. The equinox arrives on Saturday, marking the start of the fall season for the Northern Hemisphere. But what does that actually mean? Here's what to know about how we split up the year using the Earth's orbit.

What is the equinox?

As the Earth travels around the sun, it does so at an angle.

For most of the year, the Earth's axis is tilted either toward or away from the sun. That means the sun's warmth and light fall unequally on the northern and southern halves of the planet.

During the equinox, the Earth's axis and its orbit line up so that both hemispheres get an equal amount of sunlight.

The word equinox comes from two Latin words meaning equal and night. That's because on the equinox, day and night last almost the same amount of time—though one may get a few extra minutes, depending on where you are on the planet.

The Northern Hemisphere's spring—or vernal—equinox can land between March 19 and 21, depending on the year. Its fall—or autumnal—equinox can land between Sept. 21 and 24.

What is the solstice?

The solstices mark the times during the year when the Earth is seeing its strongest tilt toward or away from the sun. This means the hemispheres are getting very different amounts of sunlight—and days and nights are at their most unequal.

During the Northern Hemisphere's summer solstice, the upper half of the earth is tilted in toward the sun, creating the longest day and shortest night of the year. This solstice falls between June 20 and 22.

Meanwhile, at the winter solstice, the Northern Hemisphere is leaning away from the sun—leading to the shortest day and longest night of the year. The winter solstice falls between December 20 and 23.

What's the difference between meteorological and astronomical seasons?

These are just two different ways to carve up the year.

Meteorological seasons are defined by the weather. They break down the year into three-month seasons based on annual temperature cycles. By that calendar, spring starts on March 1, summer on June 1, fall on Sept. 1 and winter on Dec. 1.

Astronomical seasons depend on how the Earth moves around the sun.

Equinoxes, when the sun lands equally on both hemispheres, mark the start of spring and autumn. Solstices, when the Earth sees its strongest tilt toward or away from the sun, kick off summer and winter.

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It's the first day of spring: Here's what that really means