WRASTLING

Inside the WWE Writers Room, ‘A Kingdom Ruled by Fear’

Krystie Lee Yandoli
Sat, October 19, 2024 

WWE then-chairman Vince McMahon during a 'Monday Night RAW' show in Las Vegas in 2009. - Credit: Ethan Miller/Getty Images

When Michael Leonardi was fired from his job as a television writer at the WWE in 2016, he says he was told by an HR representative and the head writer at the time that he was “not fit for the role” — this despite, according to Leonardi, him getting a promotion, a raise, and positive feedback during his 10-month stint. But less than a week prior to his dismissal, Leonardi says, he was dressed down by the company’s then-CEO Vince McMahon for making a last-minute, minor change to a script that he and other wrestlers thought was racially insensitive.

“He turned to me and he said, ‘So you didn’t give me what I wanted?’” Leonardi tells Rolling Stone. “I said, ‘I understand, I’m sorry. We all went over it and felt good about it, we just made the small tweak.’ And then he started just yelling at me. It was such an intense moment. I walked out with my tail between my legs.”

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Leonardi is one of six former WWE writers who spoke to Rolling Stone about what they describe as a hostile environment in the TV writers room, which they say started at the top with McMahon and was perpetuated by staffers in leadership positions there. The majority of the former writers, who worked on the network’s long-running shows Monday Night RAW and SmackDown! for anywhere from four months to five years, between 2016 and 2022, asked to remain anonymous out of a fear of retribution from the WWE, their former colleagues, and rabid wrestling fans.

“WWE is a kingdom ruled by fear,” one former writer tells Rolling Stone. “It is the motivating factor everywhere: fear.”

Representatives for the WWE did not respond to multiple requests for comment on this story. In a statement, a spokesperson for McMahon told Rolling Stone, in part, “Scores of writers could share tales of what an enjoyable, creative and freewheeling environment the WWE writers rooms were. This handful of (obviously disgruntled) individuals aren’t representative in any way of the consensus — or of the truth.”

THE WORKPLACE CULTURE of the WWE (and the WWF before it) has been rife with alleged misconduct for decades. As far back as the late Eighties and early Nineties, there were accounts of rampant drug and steroid use among wrestlers, as well as claims of sexual harassment and abuse of both men and women within the organization. (Neither McMahon nor the WWE responded to requests for comment on these incidents.) All the while, as described in the new Netflix docuseries Mr. McMahon, McMahon seemed to thrive on the controversy, and the organization grew.

But in recent years, claims against the company and McMahon personally have reached a crescendo. In 2022, he stepped down as WWE CEO following a Wall Street Journal report that alleged he paid more than $12 million to four women to silence them from speaking out about instances of sexual misconduct and extramarital affairs he’d had with employees. Then, in January, a former WWE employee, Janel Grant, filed a lawsuit accusing McMahon of sexual assault and sex trafficking, saying he pressured her into having sex with him and another WWE staffer in exchange for her job. The day after the suit was filed, McMahon resigned from his role as executive chairman of TKO Group Holdings, the conglomerate born from the 2023 merger of WWE and UFC, as well as his position on its board of directors. (In a statement at the time, McMahon denied wrongdoing, calling Grant’s lawsuit “baseless” and “replete with lies.”) He is currently under federal investigation in connection with Grant’s claims.

McMahon, who purchased the WWE (then known as WWF) from his father in 1982, crafted a villainous public persona starting around the mid-Nineties, often appearing on the organization’s shows to snarl at various wrestlers and even competing in the ring. In 2002, he instituted what he called the organization’s “Ruthless Aggression” era. But the writers who spoke with Rolling Stone say McMahon’s intimidating behavior was not just for show. By berating and belittling those around him, they say, he instilled a culture of fear that trickled down.

“There was a very heavy layer of fear and tension and that was directly from Vince,” Leonardi says. “And that culture that he created obviously created a lot of problems.”

The six writers who used to work at WWE tell Rolling Stone they regularly witnessed or were on the receiving end of verbal abuse. The allegedly hostile conditions permeated not just the writers room but the company in general, they say, whether at the corporate headquarters in Stamford, Connecticut, or when the organization’s TV shows filmed on the road. The former writers say staffers seemed to be divided into two camps: those who were WWE loyalists and only had experience working at McMahon’s company, and newcomers with outside experience in the entertainment industry who immediately realized the WWE was unlike any other workplace they’d seen.

“Everybody was getting yelled at all the time in the room,” one former writer says. “It was more saying shit that was humiliating or mean [that was then] couched as a joke, but it’s a nasty joke.” The writer adds, “If you’re being targeted in the room, nobody stands up for you, but that’s because if they do, they will get the bullet in the head, too. You don’t stick your head up out of the foxhole for anybody, because nobody wants to take a bullet.”

LEONARDI WAS ORIGINALLY hired to work at the WWE as an associate producer in 2001. He says he quit the job in 2005 because he had been demoted and stripped of his responsibilities after telling his superiors he was uncomfortable working on a storyline he viewed as insensitive. Days before the July 7, 2005, London bombings, in which Islamic terrorists detonated explosives on three city commuter trains and a bus, the WWE had scripted a SmackDown! segment in which the controversial character Muhammad Hassan defeated the Undertaker with the help of five men dressed in ski masks, black shirts, and camo pants. The episode aired as planned on the 7th, with a parental advisory. Still, many viewers found it offensive. Even though the WWE later eliminated Hassan’s character due to outside pressures, and Leonardi says he was eventually given his responsibilities back, the former writer says he couldn’t get past his experience of allegedly being punished for speaking up.

A decade later, Leonardi reconsidered his stance on the company when he saw a writing position open up. A longtime wrestling fan, it was his dream job to be a writer there, so he applied and was hired back at WWE, this time to work in the writers room. But not long after, he says, another troubling storyline arose. During the taping of a Monday Night RAW segment that aired on Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 2016, Leonardi says he was producing on the road with wrestlers, R-Truth, Titus O’Neil, and Mark Henry, all three of whom are Black, and Neville, who is white. As Leondari described in a video he posted to LinkedIn this past February, “The script called for Neville to speak up and tell everyone else that he’s ‘got a dream too, and that dream is to win the Royal Rumble,’” referencing the civil rights leader’s historic 1963 speech at the Lincoln Memorial. Leonardi says Neville told him he was uncomfortable delivering the line and, with a limited amount of time, the bit was changed so that R-Truth said the line instead. Leonardi says his boss at the time, Dave Kapoor, approved the change. (Kapoor could not be reached for comment. Neville and R-Truth did not respond to requests for comment.)

According to Leonardi, there were many other times when segments weren’t executed verbatim, with the talent going slightly off script. Sometimes wrestlers would even ad lib a little, he says, and “it was not a big deal.” But after bringing the change to McMahon’s attention, he says, the boss became furious. Following their confrontation, Leonardi was let go.

A spokesperson for McMahon denied Leonardi’s account in a statement. The spokesperson acknowledged that McMahon had “an extremely hands-on approach” with WWE scripts, adding, “That’s why the idea of him suggesting or approving the use of a famous Martin Luther King, Jr. quote for a punchline to be used by a white British character is so ridiculous. It simply didn’t happen.”

This wasn’t the only alleged instance of racial insensitivity in the WWE writers room. In 2023, former WWE writer Britney Abrahams filed a lawsuit against the company and specific executives, including McMahon, alleging she was fired in 2022 after she pushed back against racism she experienced in the writers room. According to court documents, Abrahams, a Black woman, says she openly disagreed with storylines she felt played to racist stereotypes. She also says she was fired because she took a commemorative chair from a WrestleMania event, despite white employees having done so in the past without punishment. The lawsuit was later dismissed, and Abrahams’ attorney, Derek Sells, told a Wrestlenomics reporter the matter was “resolved amicably.”

ACCORDING TO THE former WWE writers who spoke to Rolling Stone, the TV writers room was unlike any other they’d experienced. For one thing, the fact that McMahon himself — the CEO of a company of more than 800 people — regularly joined and supervised the small staff of writers (around 20 to 25 people, depending whether a show was being produced at headquarters or on the road) was highly unusual. There were also unconventional rules, including a formal dress code. In a document detailing the dress code obtained by Rolling Stone, the company required men to wear suits and women to wear skirts, dresses, or pantsuits; in addition, all employees were instructed to keep their shoes shined at all times. There were other policies the former writers say were atypical compared to entertainment industry standards: The writers allege they were told not to sneeze in front of McMahon because he saw it as a sign of weakness and to always push their chairs in when they get up from a table. The writers say they were also instructed to stand whenever McMahon walked into the room and to sit down only after he took his own seat.

“Many of the anonymous writers’ claims bear no resemblance to the reality of the writers room,” a spokesperson for McMahon said in a statement. “Vince never told people to stand up when he entered the room. That’s ludicrous.” (The former writers who spoke with Rolling Stone say that while they did not hear the directive from McMahon himself, they were instructed by their managers to follow this rule.)

Most unorthodox of all was McMahon’s direct say in the final scripts, the writers say. Until he stepped down as CEO and chairman of the company two years ago, McMahon was closely involved in every single script. The former writers describe a process that was hardly collaborative: Writers would pitch story ideas to lower-level supervisors and head writers, and, on days McMahon was in the room, directly to him. They would sometimes produce multiple versions of scripts. But ultimately, they say, McMahon changed storylines — even ones he’d previously approved — and entire scripts on the day of the taping. He “destroyed everything by the time we got to air” seemingly just to exert his dominance, one former writer says.

“It doesn’t really matter what he said in that creative room or if he loved it [at an earlier point], it was still going to get torn up before the show,” one former writer says. “By the time Monday rolled around and we were all in the production meeting, something else was gonna happen. It almost felt like a joke, like we were just there to satisfy Vince’s whims. We were all Vince McMahon transcribers.” The writer adds that there was something about McMahon’s changing directives that felt almost sadistic: “I think Vince enjoyed the manipulation. He liked changing things. He liked keeping people on their toes. I genuinely felt like, this isn’t to benefit the show or the storyline, Vince really just enjoys making people squirm.”

Writers say it was commonplace to wait around the Stamford office late into the night for McMahon to show up to their scheduled meetings about that week’s scripts. One former writer says they would often wait “for hours, and you wouldn’t know why you were waiting.” The writers claim meetings sometimes did not start until midnight and didn’t wrap until 2:00, 3:00, or 4:00 in the morning.

In a statement, a spokesperson for McMahon said: “Like many jobs in the sports and entertainment industries, the writer’s position was not a 9-to-5 gig. If new ideas needed to be implemented or changes made to the script, meetings could be held late into the evening because of Vince’s availability given his travel schedule and his multiple duties at the company as CEO as well as overseeing all of the creative content for hundreds of live events and broadcasts every year.”

It wasn’t just McMahon who was the problem, the former writers say. One former writer says that while they didn’t have any negative experiences with McMahon directly, they thought other writers in the room who were in positions of power could be “bullies,” motivated by fear of upsetting McMahon and losing their jobs. Those who demonstrated this type of loyalty to McMahon tended to be avid fans of wrestling who had spent their careers inside the world of WWE, the writers say.

“Those people were the most miserable people I’ve ever worked with, but that’s where a lot of them had worked their whole professional lives and that’s the only game in town,” one writer says. “They didn’t know what it was like working on a regular television show.”

One former writer claims they witnessed a colleague in a leadership position tell another writer “something to the extent of, ‘I wish your dad pulled out and came on your mom’s tits instead of having you.’”

“This was, like, good old boys locker-room talk,” the former writer says. The more someone was promoted and the closer they got to “that innermost circle,” the writer adds, “the more volatile it got, and the more you dealt with some of these ‘good old boys.’”

The jockeying for favor with McMahon turned people against each other, the former writers say. One compares the WWE writers room culture to a “Mafia style” of leadership in which “if you do one thing , you’re pissing off three other people who are higher up than you who are going to chew you out, get angry, or seek revenge.”

“I couldn’t understand what the hell was going on because nobody made eye contact, nobody talked to you. It was so odd,” another former writer says. “Everybody’s scared and the only laughs are at someone else’s expense…. Everybody is emotionally shut down because of the verbal beating that they take and the humiliation. That’s what the room is like with a bad leader.”

WOMEN IN THE WWE writers room faced specific challenges. Of the former writers who spoke with Rolling Stone, the women say they felt othered and became hyper-aware of their gender because of how they were treated by male writers. One former writer says people would comment on her outfits and touch her in ways that felt unnecessary; even though the behaviors weren’t explicitly sexual, she says it felt like a means of controlling her in a way that didn’t happen to the men in the writers room.

“They would touch me where they would have me come closer [to them],” she claims. “They would pull me by my waist to come somewhere or move closer to them. I’m just super aware that it’s kind of close to my butt and most people don’t touch me by the waist ever. I thought, ‘This is strange.’”

Two former writers tell Rolling Stone they took their complaints to human resources. One was subsequently fired from her position, a decision she interpreted as retaliation. According to former writers, enough female writers complained about their treatment to WWE HR in 2020 that leadership held a Zoom meeting they referred to as a “women’s forum,” in which the affected writers were encouraged to collectively air their grievances. One former writer says she grew emotional when she told everyone in the meeting that she didn’t feel safe with her co-workers. Another woman who attended the meeting says the leadership staffers there were dismissive of the womens’ claims. “They did it just to appease us, but they didn’t take it seriously at all,” she says.

After the Zoom meeting, the writers who spoke with Rolling Stone say, there was an in-person meeting with the entire writers room in which senior leadership allegedly told everyone they were “acting like middle schoolers” and not to go to HR if they have any future problems.

One male senior staffer “essentially said, ‘Come to me if you have a problem,’” one former writer alleges, “which is such bullshit, because he’s part of the problem, too. He enabled Vince with everything that he did.”

One former writer who says they have a history dealing with anxiety also says their mental health was impacted by their time working at WWE. They say they were allegedly driven to having “crippling” panic attacks because of the job. When the former employee brought those concerns to a WWE HR representative, they say no one ever followed up or took any course of action.

“When I spoke to HR, I said, ‘I have anxiety. I can’t handle this. This is going to kill me,’” the writer says. “They didn’t care.”

Another former writer says she left the job because she didn’t feel safe working at the company as a woman. The writer says she was uncomfortable with the way other writers would talk about the female wrestlers’ bodies and wardrobes, and how they would mock or make fun of the wrestlers “if they weren’t over-sexualizing themselves.”

“On the one hand, this is the product in the story,” the writer acknowledges, “but on the other hand, I feel like we’re not talking about the story anymore. The undertones are dangerous, and what they wanted in their environment scared me.”

The writer says the way that male writers spoke about and treated other women, including the network’s female WWE Superstars, made her feel like “an object.” “I felt like there’s no way I could be in this boys club,” she says.

DESPITE THE ALLEGED toxicity of the writers room, Leonardi says there were also times he felt a degree of camaraderie with his colleagues because they were “all in this together, getting shit on all the time.”

“When Vince wasn’t there, it was amazing to see how things opened up,” he says, describing the mood as “jovial” on occasion. “People start talking, the creativity [flows]. It’s just so clear how much his influence and the way he ran things would actually stifle the process.”

The six former writers who spoke to Rolling Stone say they have no direct knowledge of or insight into the sexual assault and trafficking allegations against McMahon, but they were not necessarily surprised to learn about Grant’s lawsuit. Not only were they aware of past allegations made against the former CEO, but the writers say rumors floated around the office about McMahon and other women who worked for WWE.

“I never saw anything crazy like that,” one former writer says. “Certainly while I was there, I heard some of the other writers joking, like, ‘Yeah, there’s some women that work in this company that nobody knows what they do.’” When allegations of hush payments by McMahon emerged, the writer says they didn’t find it “off brand for the Vince that I knew.” (In response to the Wall Street Journal’s 2022 report about hush-money payments, a WWE spokesperson told the outlet that the company was “cooperating with [a] board inquiry into the matter…and taking the allegations seriously.”)

Another former writer says they weren’t “shocked, but it doesn’t mean that I still wasn’t sickened by it.” The writer adds that reading the details of Grant’s allegations “finally allowed me the freedom to say, ‘That place was fucked up.’”

There’s more than one side to McMahon, Leonardi points out. He says there’s no denying that McMahon’s company “has done wonderful things” and the former CEO has “taken care of so many people” over the course of his tenure, especially by creating so many jobs. But McMahon’s business acumen and any acts of kindness he extended toward employees he favored don’t absolve him of the alleged wrongdoing that went on behind the scenes, Leonardi says.

“Multiple truths are present here. We have to acknowledge and recognize the fact that he’s done so many amazing, selfless things for people in the business, for a lot of people that have proven to him that they are loyal or they’re just good workers,” Leonardi says. “But there’s the other side [of him].”

Former WWE head writer Brian Gewirtz, who’s now the senior vice president of development at Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s Seven Bucks Productions, published a memoir in August 2022 detailing his experience working under McMahon, titled There’s Just One Problem…: True Tales from the Former, One-Time, 7th Most Powerful Person in WWE. Gewirtz, who also appears in Netflix’s McMahon docuseries, shares a range of stories about his time at WWE in the book, some of them portraying his position in a positive light and others corroborating the experiences of the six writers who spoke to Rolling Stone. In the book, Gewirtz describes the volatile culture of the WWE, how writers were “either there for a minute or a lifetime.” He writes about “bracing” himself “to get chewed out,” addresses incidents when McMahon screamed and yelled at other staffers, and makes statements like, “Vince is the entire company.” (Gerwitz could not be reached for comment on this story.)

After decades of McMahon’s reign, it’s a new era for the WWE. McMahon’s son-in-law Paul Levesque, also known in the wrestling world by his stage name Triple H, is now the company’s Chief Content Officer. Some of the former writers who spoke with Rolling Stone believe that with McMahon gone, the WWE is moving on. Leonardi says he’s heard the work culture has improved and people are “much happier,” calling Triple H “a great leader.”

But other former writers who spoke to Rolling Stone aren’t convinced there will be any major shifts in the overall culture at WWE. The longstanding atmosphere of tension and fear in the WWE writers room is something they don’t have faith can be undone overnight.

“There are a lot of people complicit in continuing this culture,” one former writer says. “I am highly doubtful it’s changed, even with Triple H in charge. I just don’t think it really can.”

Montana GOP Senate Hopeful Accused Firefighters Of 'Milking' Infernos For Extra Pay

Chris D'Angelo
Updated Sat, October 19, 2024 


Tim Sheehy, an ex-Navy SEAL and pro-Donald Trump conservative, is running against incumbent Democratic Montana Sen. Jon Tester. It is among the most contested races of the 2024 election. Tim Sheehy for Montana

Montana GOP Senate hopeful Tim Sheehy, who made his fortune as the founder and CEO of an aerial firefighting company that has relied largely on lucrative federal contracts, has repeatedly accused wildland firefighters of dragging their feet to put out blazes and “milking” disasters for overtime pay, a HuffPost review of his recent statements found.

In his 2023 book “Mudslingers: A True Story of Aerial Firefighting,” Sheehy described a discussion he had with fellow firefighters during a series of blazes in Idaho in 2015.

“I was hanging out at the base, shooting the breeze with some other guys, talking about how intense the fires seemed to be, just trying to make conversation and contribute to the cause,” Sheehy wrote. “‘Hopefully we can hammer this thing down quickly and get it under control,’ I said. Most of the other guys nodded solemnly, but one person, a pilot, kind of straightened up and grunted. ‘Well, we don’t want it to go too fast,’ he said. ‘There’s a lot of overtime pay to be earned out there! We put it out, it’s back on salary!’”

That conversation led Sheehy — an ex-Navy SEAL who founded a Bozeman, Montana-based firefighting company called Bridger Aerospace in 2014 — to confront what he described as a “troubling undercurrent of complacency, of embracing or at least accepting the status quo because, frankly, there was so much money at stake.”

“I’ve since come to realize that this is not a feeling shared universally, but it does exist, and to deny its existence is to impede the efforts of those who understand the importance of change,” he wrote.

At the time of that 2015 encounter, Sheehy was still working to get Bridger Aerospace, a startup with a focus on using infrared cameras and other surveillance technology to monitor fires, off the ground.

While Sheehy would go on to make millions from the same pot of federal money that wildland firefighters rely on, his writings and more recent public comments suggest he came to view many in the field as bad actors competing for and ultimately wasting the government’s limited resources.

The 2015 conversation “smacked less of concern or common sense than it did laziness — or, worse, greed,” he wrote in his book. “I wouldn’t call it malevolence; anyone who climbs into a plane or picks up a shovel to fight wildfires clearly has a capacity for goodness and a desire to help. That said, even in positions that are demonstrably service-oriented, there is the potential for self-interest, if not outright corruption, leading to a response that is not necessarily in the public’s best interest.”

″If there is no fire, there is no money,” he added. “And the faster that a fire is extinguished, the sooner the money dries up or goes elsewhere. It might seem ridiculous to worry about a shortage of work to keep the wildfire industry busy given the extraordinary expansion of the season in recent years, not to mention the gnawing sense that firefighters will forever be overmatched against nature. But old beliefs and protocols die hard, and clearly there were some in the industry who saw nothing wrong with milking every fire for what it was worth despite the risks and the blurring of ethical boundaries.”

Sheehy echoed that same sentiment during a book signing in Huntsville, Alabama in March, months after he launched his bid against three-term incumbent Democratic Sen. Jon Tester. He told the crowd that his company’s use of technology to fight fires more quickly and effectively was “not received well” within the broader industry.

“There’s a very real dynamic in wildfire that a lot of those people don’t want to put the fire out,” he said at the event, according to a recording obtained by HuffPost. “It’s called ‘let it burn.’ And they don’t want to put the fire out because that’s where they get their overtime, that’s where they get their hazard pay. And for a lot of these folks out there — I don’t mean to cast them in a negative light, but it’s just a fact — they don’t want that fire to be put out, because ... they make half their annual income on hazard overtime pay during the summer fires.”

Sheehy speaks at a rally supporting Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in Bozeman, Montana, on August 9, 2024. NATALIE BEHRING via Getty Images

Since the early 1970s, the U.S. Forest Service has increasingly allowed certain wildfires, usually those that start naturally in remote areas, to continue burning — not so that firefighters could rake in overtime pay, but in hopes of slowly reversing the devastating impacts of decades of aggressive fire suppression, which has left many forests overloaded with fuel and more prone to extreme infernos.

Scientists have come to understand the critical role fire plays in many forest ecosystems, from clearing away dead vegetation to controlling invasive species. But the Forest Service disputes that it has ever had a “let it burn” policy. And the vast majority of fires — roughly 98% — are still suppressed before they consume 100 acres.

In his book, Sheehy does dive into the complex set of factors driving increasingly catastrophic wildfires, including climate change and the nation’s long history of racing to extinguish every fire as quickly as possible. He describes fire suppression as a “double-edged sword” and notes that “putting every single fire out immediately all the time isn’t the answer.” And he sympathizes with wildland fire crews, describing them as “highly motivated and skilled individuals who make little more than minimum wage and usually have a passion for both the work and the lifestyle.”

But aside from that single comment from an unnamed wildland firefighting pilot in 2015, he offers nothing to back up his claim that a significant number of firefighters are standing around watching fires burn for personal financial gain.

Sheehy’s campaign did not respond to any of HuffPost’s questions about his portrayal of wildland firefighters. Instead, in a short email statement, campaign spokesperson Katie Martin touted Sheehy’s military and business credentials and condemned HuffPost’s reporting on the GOP candidate as “embarrassing.”

Ben McLane is a captain of a Forest Service fire crew and a board member of Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, a nonprofit that advocates for federal firefighters. He told HuffPost he “respects the heck out of” aerial firefighters and applauded Sheehy for starting a company that provides an essential service to communities threatened by fire, but condemned Sheehy’s statements about wildland firefighters as “fundamentally flawed.”

“I’ve never seen firefighters let something burn for the sake of keeping the good times going and for monetary reasons,” McLane told HuffPost. “You’ve got to take into account all you’re sacrificing to be out there.”

“For him to basically accuse firefighters of retreating intentionally — these same people who represent the kind of patriotic attributes in action that he claims to represent in words — is a contradiction that is just hard for me to fathom,” he added.

Sheehy resigned as CEO of Bridger Aerospace in July to focus on his Senate bid. Polls show Sheehy leading Tester in the race, which many say could ultimately decide which party controls the Senate next year.

As HuffPost previously reported, Sheehy was once outspoken about the need to combat global climate change and supported major climate initiatives. But since launching his campaign, Sheehy has repeatedly railed against what he calls the “climate cult” and the “disastrous socialist Green New Deal.”

Meanwhile, in public documents, Bridger Aerospace has made clear-eyed assessments of the effects of worsening climate change. In its most recent annual report to the Securities and Exchange Commission, Bridger wrote that the “consequences of these climate-driven events may vary widely and could include increased stress on our services due to new patterns of demand, physical damage to our fleet and infrastructure, higher operational costs and an increase in the number [of] requests for our services.”

Fossil fuel-driven climate change, misguided fire suppression policies and increased development in forested areas have triggered an an era of megafires that pose a growing threat to many communities. Yet the wildland firefighters on the front lines of this emergency remain woefully underpaid, earning a base salary of just $15 per hour while facing extreme physical and mental health risks, as ProPublica recently reported. The surge in overtime pay among wildland firefighters is largely due to a shortage of people willing to do this dangerous job, and for many firefighters, overtime pay is the only way to make a living wage.

“A lot of the work of Grassroots has been advocating for a livable wage for firefighters, which we still have not attained,” McLane said. “I don’t think it’s greedy to identify pathways to balance your call to service and adventure with the need to feed your family and wanting to be out on assignment to do that.”

He noted that a bill to hike wildland firefighters’ wages has stalled in Congress. If lawmakers decide to move the bill, “that will be a great day, because no longer will we have to face that moral conflict,” he said.

One of Bridger Aerospace's aircraft, known as a "super scooper," battles the Hermits Peak and Calf Canyon Fires in the Santa Fe National Forest in New Mexico in April 2022. via Associated Press

Sheehy is not the first Montana Republican to accuse wildland firefighters of being lazy and mismanaging infernos.

In July 2006, then-GOP Sen. Conrad Burns famously accosted a crew of highly trained wildland firefighters, known as hotshots, that were in the state to help battle a large fire near the town of Worden. At the Billings, Montana airport, Burns accused the crew of doing a ”piss-poor job” fighting the blaze.

According to a state official’s report of the incident, Burns pointed at one particular firefighter and said, “See that guy over there? He hasn’t done a God-damned thing. … You probably paid that guy $10,000 to sit around. It’s gotta change.”

The state official noted in her report that she “offered to the senator that our firefighters make around $8-$12 per hour and time-and-a-half for overtime. He seemed a little surprised that it wasn’t higher.″

Burns later apologized for his outburst, saying he should have “chosen my words more carefully” and that his criticism “should not have been directed at those who were working hard to put [the fire] out.” A few months later, Tester narrowly defeated Burns, a three-term incumbent.

On the 2-year anniversary of Burns’ attack on wildland firefighters, Wildfire Today, a publication of Missoula, Montana-based nonprofit International Association of Wildland Fire, summarized the incident like this:

“Burns was up for re-election, running against Democrat Jon Tester. Soon, 1,000 ‘Wildland Firefighters for Tester’ bumper stickers appeared. Tester won by about 2000 votes, and the leading political columnist for the Lee Newspaper chain credited the ‘firefighter flap.’ The Democrats took control of the U.S. Senate by a margin of one.”

Montana GOP candidate who could flip control of Senate nagged by claims he lied about bullet wound

MATTHEW BROWN
Updated Sun, October 20, 2024

- Tim Sheehy speaking during the second day of the Republican National Convention, July 16, 2024, in Milwaukee. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)


BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — A former Park Service ranger said Friday that U.S. Senate hopeful Tim Sheehy of Montana has been lying about a bullet wound that the candidate said came from fighting in Afghanistan — going public with an accusation that has nagged the Republican’s campaign for months.

The claim from former ranger Kim Peach that Sheehy in fact shot himself on a family trip in Montana was immediately dismissed by Sheehy and his allies as a smear campaign engineered by Democrats in a race that's expected to help decide control of the Senate.

But with the election less than three weeks away, it adds to the huge pressures that the political newcomer already faced as he challenges three-term Democratic incumbent Sen. Jon Tester.


Sheehy is a former U.S. Navy SEAL and his military record is a centerpiece of his bid for office. During stump speeches and in a book published by Sheehy last year, he recounts being wounded on multiple occasions during combat, including in the arm in 2012.

Sheehy was awarded a Purple Heart for wounds sustained in a separate combat incident and was also awarded a Bronze Star.

A Sheehy campaign spokesperson said Peach was a partisan Democrat pushing a “defamatory story.”

“Anyone trying to take away from the fact that Tim Sheehy signed up for war as a young man and spent most of his 20s in some of the most dangerous places in the world is either a partisan hack, a journalist with an agenda, or outright a disgusting person,” spokesperson Katie Martin said.

He’s faced scrutiny over the arm wound since April, when The Washington Post quoted a Glacier National Park ranger anonymously saying Sheehy accidentally shot himself in 2015, when he was travelling with his family and his gun fell out of a vehicle and fired when it hit the ground in a parking lot on Logan Pass. The ranger who was quoted in the story was Peach.

Sheehy was ticketed and paid a $525 fine for illegally discharging a firearm in Glacier, government records show.

The Republican candidate said in response to the April story that he lied to the park ranger — not about being wounded in Afghanistan.

Sheehy said he fell while hiking at Glacier and injured his arm, then concocted the story about the bullet wound to cover up the fact that the 2012 incident may have been friendly fire. He said he didn’t want members of his SEAL unit in Afghanistan to suffer any consequences.

With absentee voting in Montana underway and Sheehy poised for potential victory, Peach, a Democrat, said Friday that he “couldn’t let him get way with something like that without the truth being told.”

Peach said he interviewed Sheehy at the hospital where he was treated for the bullet wound and briefly confiscated the gun. Before returning it, Peach said he unloaded the weapon and found five live rounds and one that had been fired.

“At the time, he was obviously embarrassed about it. And you know, he admitted to what I was there for — the gun going off in the park," Peach told The Associated Press. “He knows the truth and the truth isn't complicated. It's when you start lying things get complicated.”

His decision to go public was reported earlier by the Post.

Attorneys for Sheehy's campaign said Peach’s recent statements differ from the facts in a declaration submitted by the ranger after interviewing Sheehy in 2015.

The declaration made no mention of Peach examining the gun and finding only five live rounds, the attorneys wrote in a letter provided by the campaign. There was no gunshot residue on Sheehy when he went to the hospital, nor any gunshots reported in Glacier that day, the attorneys said.

"There is no physical evidence suggesting that Mr. Sheehy discharged his firearm at Glacier National Park. Because it didn’t happen," attorneys Daniel Watkins and Dustin Pusch wrote.

Peach worked as a park ranger for more than three decades and is now retired. He lives in small town near Glacier. He's posted a photo of himself on social media wearing a “Make Lying Wrong Again” hat and said he votes for Democrats.

He denied any connection with the Tester campaign or other Democratic organizations.

A recent Tester campaign ad criticizes Sheehy for lying about the gunshot wound. A campaign spokesperson did not have an immediate comment Friday.

The Montana Democratic Party seized on Peach’s latest comments as providing a “firsthand account” of what happened to Sheehy.

But Mike Berg, communications director for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, rejected the latest reiteration of the accusations against Sheehy. He suggested it's a sign of Democrats' desperation because they fear Tester will lose.

“It's the last gasp of a career politician who sees his career about to end,” Berg said.

___

This story was first published on Oct. 18, 2024. It was updated on Oct. 20, 2024 to correct the message on the hat of former ranger Kim Peach. It said “Make Lying Wrong Again,” not “Make America Wrong Again.”


New Doubts Emerge Over GOP Senate Candidate’s Gun Wound War Story

William Vaillancourt
Fri, October 18, 2024 

Jim Urquhart


Tim Sheehy, the former Navy SEAL and Purple Heart recipient running as the Republican candidate against incumbent Montana Sen. Jon Tester, has long told voters that a gun wound in his right forearm occurred when he was serving in Afghanistan.

However, following a Washington Post report in April alleging that the wound was accidentally self-inflicted, a New York Times investigation Friday has made the story appear even more dubious.

Earlier this year, the Post reported that in October 2015—three years after Sheehy‘s deployment had ended—he told police that he had mistakenly shot himself in the arm after a hike at Montana‘s Glacier National Park—and that that was the reason for the bullet in his arm.

A park ranger who talked with Sheehy in the hospital in 2015 told the Times on the record that Sheehy told him he had accidentally shot himself.

“I am 100 percent sure he shot himself that day,” Kim Peach told the paper. Peach, who affirmed his incident report, also said he temporarily confiscated and unloaded Sheehy’s revolver, finding five live rounds and one casing.

Sheehy and his lawyers have since argued he lied to Peach in order to protect his former platoon mates, claiming the bullet in his arm may have been a result of friendly fire. They say Sheehy actually slipped and fell while hiking, aggravating the pre-existing wound.

“Mr. Sheehy‘s account is the only plausible one,” the Trump-endorsed candidate’s lawyers claimed.

Peach, speaking to the Post, had condemned Sheehy for how he criticized those questioning what happened in Afghanistan.

“He said that questioning his military service was ‘disgusting,’” Peach said. “What is disgusting is saying a wound from a negligent, accidental firearm discharge is a wound received in combat.”

Another new account that runs contrary to Sheehy’s comes from Dave Madden, a former SEAL colleague.

Madden told the Times that Sheehy had never mentioned a gunshot wound to him, adding that it would have very likely come up during their time together overseas—or in conversations when the two reconnected months later and shared war stories, he said.

Madden explained that he has come forward publicly because believes Sheehy is making up the tale.

“It seems obvious to me and every other operator I’ve talked to about this,” he told the Times.

Madden said that he didn‘t understand why Sheehy would have been trying to hide a friendly fire wound—such a ricochet injury is considered a typical battle hazard, he said, adding that he believed no one would have investigated the source of the bullet.

Two other former SEALS who spoke with the Times said they had heard about Sheehy being injured in Afghanistan, but didn‘t recall anything about a gunshot wound specifically. One of them, Justin Sheehan, recalled discussing Sheehy’s injuries as from an improvised explosive device (IED).

Another said he remembered Sheehy talking about an IED blast and having been struck by friendly fire.

Sheehy‘s lawyers accused Madden, a registered Democrat, of acting out of a political desire to harm Sheehy’s standing in his Senate race. Sheehy currently leads Tester by 8 percentage points, according to the latest New York Times/Siena College poll.

The Daily Beast.

Montana park ranger says Senate candidate Tim Sheehy lied about combat wound

Gloria Oladipo
Sat, October 19, 2024 a

Tim Sheehy speaking at the Republican national convention on 16 July in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.Photograph: J Scott Applewhite/AP

A former Montana park ranger has now publicly accused Tim Sheehy – a Republican running for a US Senate seat in the state – of lying about getting shot while at war in Afghanistan.

In an interview with the Washington Post published on Friday, 67-year-old Kim Peach went on the record about how Sheehy – a former US navy seal – actually shot himself on a family trip in 2015 at Glacier national park. Peach’s account explicitly contradicts Sheehy’s claim that he was shot in the arm during military combat, a story that the Republican candidate has shared throughout his US Senate campaign.

Peach said that Sheehy’s allegedly self-inflicted wound left him with a bullet lodged in his right arm at Glacier national park in Montana’s Rocky Mountains. He told the Post that he first met Sheehy at a hospital in the area of the park during the aftermath of the 2015 episode.

“I remember Sheehy obviously being embarrassed by the situation but at the same time thankful that it wasn’t worse,” Peach said to the Post. There, Sheehy also confirmed to Peach that he had mistakenly shot himself after his firearm discharged in his car.

Peach said he then inspected Sheehy’s gun and observed a bullet casing, confirming the firearm had discharged. That same day, Peach issued Sheehy a $525 fine for discharging a firearm in the national park, according to government records.

Peach also wrote about the case in a 2015 report about the gunshot, writing he was “grateful no other persons or property were damaged”, the Post reported.

The Post first spoke with Peach – who initially came forward anonymously – in April to dispute Sheehy’s claim. But several Republican public figures quickly disclosed Peach’s identity, leading to harassment.

Sheehy and others accused Peach of unduly attempting to discredit the candidate’s military service.

In response to the Post’s reporting in April, Sheehy claimed that he actually lied to Peach in 2015 about accidentally shooting himself. Sheehy said that he fell and injured his arm during the hike in Glacier – but he lied about the self-inflicted shooting to conceal the fact that he may have obtained the bullet wound during friendly fire that he endured while fighting in Afghanistan.

A spokesperson for Sheehy has said that Peach is a Democrat, and his most recent interview is an attempt to spread a “defamatory story”.

Nonetheless, Peach told the Post he was motivated to speak with his name on the public record because Sheehy had remained untruthful about having shot himself.

“He said that questioning his military service was ‘disgusting’,” Peach said to the Post. “What is disgusting is saying a wound from a negligent, accidental firearm discharge is a wound received in combat.”

Peach added: “I have no personal vendetta against Tim Sheehy. But when a person makes a statement that’s not true somebody has to call them on it.”

Sheehy is challenging Democratic incumbent Jon Tester in a race that could determine which political party controls the Senate after the 5 November presidential election.

ISLAMOPHOBIA 

Bisan Owda’s Claims of IDF Executing Palestinians Prompt New Calls to Rescind Her Emmy

Mike Roe
Sun, October 20, 2024 

A post from activist Palestinian journalist Bisan Owda made unsubstantiated claims calling an image of men captured by the Israeli military a “death queue,” renewing outrage around her Emmy win last month for a documentary on the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

Photos and video shared by Israel Defense Forces spokesperson Avichay Adraee indicated that the IDF and the Israeli Security Agency conducted an operation that led to the arrest of terrorists, shared alongside images and video. Owda alleged Saturday that the men were being lined up to be killed or taken hostage. She did not provide evidence for her speculation.

“As a well-documented member of the youth propaganda wing of the PFLP terrorist group, it is not surprising that she is spreading blood libels and disinformation, making these outrageous claims,” Ari Ingel, executive director of pro-Israel Jewish entertainment nonprofit Creative Community for Peace, told TheWrap.

Owda has previously been identified as a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, designated by the United States as a terrorist organization since 1997. She has been seen in video speaking at PFLP rallies and was explicitly referred to by the organization as a member in 2018.

The group issued a call for Owda’s Emmy nomination to be withdrawn in August, but they were unsuccessful in their efforts.

“What is truly troubling is that the NATAS Emmys decided to legitimize someone with terrorist ties, and so now people believe what she says and think that what she posts is credible,” Ingel continued. “NATAS should rescind her award and apologize.”

Owda won at the 2024 News & Documentary Emmys in the Outstanding Hard News Feature Story: Short Form category, alongside Qatari-owned media outlet AJ+, for their series “It’s Bisan From Gaza and I’m Still Alive.” Owda is a journalist, activist and filmmaker best known for her work on social media platforms including Instagram (4.7 million followers) and TikTok, in which she documents her experience during the ongoing Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

In her post, Owda wrote, “I don’t know if this post is to ask for your solidarity. We tried it, and nothing stopped Israel’s thirst for the blood of my people, or it was not enough for that!”

The language used by Owda has been criticized for it containing elements of blood libel, the false notion that Jews kill non-Jews to use their blood in rituals. Critics have pointed to allegations that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians as helping to spread this trope.

“But this is to show how horrific our world is, and how alone my people are in the face of the monster,” Owda continued. “**I once heard a story that I did not like, about a village where everyone was vile and despicable, so they threw the only man in the village who had noble morals off the mountain. They killed him because he reminded them of their ugliness. **

“This is what is happening with the Palestinians today, unfortunately. The queue you see now in this photo taken an hour ago in Jabalia / North Gaza is the death queue,” Owda’s post continued. “The Israeli terrorist army separates the females from the males (men and male children sometimes)… They order the women to leave and take the men to a far place, with their hands tied and blindfolded and they are often placed in a deep hole.. and we all know what happens later.”

She continued to make a variety of speculative claims about what happened to the men after their arrests. “Either they bury them alive, as happened in the north and Khan Yunis during the first ground invasion, or they execute them on the ground, or they take them hostage, as happened to 10,000 who subsequently suffered torture, murder, organ theft, and rape. What do you think? What is the most likely scenario?”

“I feel disgusted with all human ideals and values. The Zionist colonizers in 2024 are doing this before your eyes,” Owda wrote, before going on to praise the men seen in the photos as she concluded her post. “What oppression and pain, these men survived and protected their families from all kinds of death over the course of a year and until the last moment, and they refused to leave their homes, and now they are being annihilated in this way. They are depopulating northern Gaza by killing the entire population!”

Owda also won a Peabody Award for “It’s Bisan From Gaza and I’m Still Alive” earlier this year. PFLP, which became known in the 1970s for its airplane hijackings, also participated in the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of over 1,200 Israeli citizens and the kidnapping of hundreds of others.

The CCFP argued when Owda and AJ+ were nominated that the nomination violates NATAS’ Code of Ethical Conduct, which states that “NATAS and its Chapters have zero tolerance for discrimination, harassment or illegal, dishonest, unethical or otherwise harmful conduct.”

As a member of a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, the pro-Israel nonprofit argues that her Emmy nomination “could reasonably be construed as contrary or detrimental to the best interests of the Academy.”

Owda has also been criticized for promoting anti-vaccine conspiracy theories as the World Health Organization worked to vaccinate Gaza residents from polio, including criticism from fellow Palestinian journalist Hind Khoudary. Owda called on Palestinians not to vaccinate their children while not providing any evidence that the vaccinations were anything other than actual vaccinations meant to protect from the disease.

Palestinian filmmakers previously defended Owda after the call for her Emmy to be rescinded, accusing Hollywood of “racism and censorship.”

The post Bisan Owda’s Claims of IDF Executing Palestinians Prompt New Calls to Rescind Her Emmy appeared first on TheWrap.

Why experts say Christian nationalists’ rhetoric may spur violence

Alice Herman
Sat, October 19, 2024 

A Turning Point USA event in Phoenix, Arizona, on 6 June 2024.Photograph: Carlos Barría/Reuters


As the sky darkened on the National Mall in DC last Saturday, evangelical pastor Ché Ahn addressed the thousands of worshippers gathered there and issued a decree.

Trump, Ahn said, was a figure akin to the biblical King Jehu, and “Kamala Harris is a type of Jezebel, and as you know, Jehu cast out Jezebel”.

“I decree in Jesus’s mighty name, and I decree it by faith,” said Ahn, “that Trump will win on November the fifth, he will be our 47th president, and Kamala Harris will be cast out and she will lose in Jesus’s name.”


The Bible story Ahn invoked is extremely violent. In it, Jehu throws the Phoenician princess Jezebel from a window. She is then trampled by horses, her corpse left to be eaten by dogs. Ahn did not get into the particulars of this story at the DC event, but he likely didn’t need to: in his world of charismatic and evangelical preachers, pastors, self-styled prophets and apostles, and their many followers, the story of Jezebel is a key narrative.

The rally on the mall on 12 October, advertised under the name A Million Women, was billed as a gathering for women to wage spiritual warfare against changing gender norms in the US. Drawing tens of thousands, the event showcased the ability of leaders from the New Apostolic Reformation, a growing movement on the Christian right, to mobilize followers – and ply them with militant political rhetoric.

Experts fear their spiritual message has the potential to spur real-world political violence, especially if Trump were to lose the November election.

As Ahn spoke, the crowd that had gathered on the mall to “turn back hearts to God” through prayer and praise, swayed and listened. Some had heard about the rally through Bible studies and church groups and seemed unaware that many of the featured speakers were deeply involved in rightwing politics. Others had participated in the Capitol protest that devolved into a deadly riot on 6 January 2021. All received the messages of a dire, good-versus-evil vision of American politics that the speakers brought that day – and peddle regularly on podcasts, YouTube channels and Christian television and in front of their congregations.

Matthew Taylor, a scholar whose work has focused on the New Apostolic Reformation, said veiled calls for violence cloaked in religious rhetoric are common in the NAR, a loosely-affiliated network on the Christian right that embraces modern-day apostles and prophets.

“Having it be a women’s march, I think they kind of dialed back some of the more violent rhetoric,” said Taylor, who is a senior researcher at the Institute for Islamic, Christian and Jewish Studies. But Ahn’s decree, he said, “shocked” him.

“I could very easily picture, if you had the right mix of charismatic identity theology that’s aligned with the NAR, and unhinged, violent tendencies in an individual – yeah, that could very easily be an instigating factor in an assassination attempt,” said Taylor.

Leaders in the movement who spoke with the Guardian emphasized that they meant only to draw their followers into battle of a spiritual nature, and correctly pointed out that the rally on the mall was peaceful.

“We were fasting, all of us on that stage were fasting,” said Folake Kellogg, a pastor who helped organize the event and spoke there. “We had not eaten, we were praying. We knew that the battle is not against any human being. We love our brothers and sisters.”

Ahn disputed the idea that his decree could spur his followers to violence, writing in an email that such language was “all spiritual” and that “[a]nyone who advocates physical violence in Jesus name is not a true follower of Jesus who taught us to turn our cheeks”.

Leaders in the NAR “believe themselves to be what they call kings and priests and [members of] a royal nation”, said Jonathon Sawyer, an academic whose research focuses on religious and political extremism. Such figures “have the sense that when they offer some type of decree such as this, that there is a tangible impact that will happen in the ‘natural sphere’ and in politics”, he added.

Because pastors like Ahn lean so heavily on biblical allegory, they are afforded a degree of plausible deniability if followers interpret their speech as an incitement to violence. And in the world that Ahn occupies, this kind of language has been thick in the air for years. Ahn’s decree itself was likely familiar to some: on 5 January 2021, Ahn issued a nearly identical one at a Stop the Steal rally in Washington DC.

The notion that Harris herself embodies the spirit of Jezebel has also become commonplace among preachers in the NAR.

“Republicans, like Ahab in the Bible, accommodate Jezebel,” said the pro-Trump, self-styled prophet Lance Wallnau on a 13 September episode of his podcast titled Trump vs The Jezebel Spirit: How Trump Can Still Win, which aired after the presidential debate. In the episode, Wallnau alleged collusion between the ABC anchors who aggressively fact-checked Trump’s many falsehoods, and the Harris campaign, saying: “What was accomplished was she looked presidential, and that’s – we’ll go to this later – that’s the seduction of what I would say is witchcraft.”



If you had the right mix of charismatic identity theology, and violent tendencies, that could be an instigating factor in an assassination attempt

Matthew Taylor, Institute for Islamic, Christian and Jewish Studies

Wallnau, who enjoys a following of 1 million on Facebook and 78,000 on YouTube, where he offers a near-constant stream of discourses on topics ranging from electoral politics and theology to wellness supplements, frequently casts the 2024 election in apocalyptic terms.

“We’re in a place, my brethren, where in 30 days – 30 days or so – the die is cast. I don’t think we come back from this one if Trump cannot secure a victory,” said Wallnau on his 7 October show. “I think that once he’s removed, the anti-Christ forces are going to start to move at a faster rate.”

Jenny Donnelly, the organizer of the 12 October rally, hopes the women she summoned to the National Mall – “Esthers”, she calls them – will be ready to fight such anti-Christ forces. Donnelly frequently cites the Bible story of Esther in her appeals to women and moms. In it, Esther, the Jewish wife of a Persian king, risks her life to save her people from persecution. Donnelly and others in the NAR invoke the story, which forms the basis of the Jewish holiday Purim, to urge their followers to take on spiritual battles of their own.

Many women in attendance at the rally wore T-shirts emblazoned with the words “If I Perish, I Perish”, a statement in the story.

“We had a dream in 2022 that we will collectively come together today and declare a war cry,” said Kellogg, a pastor affiliated with Donnelly, early in the day on 12 October. “On the cross, the last words of Jesus, he said: ‘It is finished.”

Shortly after, a dramatic video played on the large screens broadcasting the event on the mall.

“On this day of atonement, we gather to stand and cry out for America,” said the narrator of the video. “If we perish, we perish. United, we will make way for the Lord. The time is now.” A short clip of a hand casting a ballot flashed on the screen.

“As America goes, so go the nations of the Earth,” said the narrator. “This is the last stand.”

Former Russian oil executive found dead after ‘fall’

ANOTHER OLIGARCH AND AN OPEN WINDOW

Our Foreign Staff
Sun, October 20, 2024 

Mikhail Rogachev was found dead in Moscow - Nexta TV


A former Russian oil executive has been found dead after apparently falling from the window of his Moscow flat.

Mikhail Rogachev was found outside his 10th-story apartment in Moscow with injuries consistent with a fall, Russian media reported.

Russian news agencies said authorities were treating his death as a suicide.


Telegram channels close to the Russian security services said his body was discovered by an agent of the SVR, Russia’s foreign intelligence service, who was walking the dog of a senior spymaster in the building’s courtyard on Saturday morning.

The 64-year-old was a former vice-president of Yukos, the oil giant that was broken up and after its billionaire owner Mikhail Khodorkovsky was imprisoned after challenging Vladimir Putin.

He went on to work as executive director of the Onexim group, oligarch Mikhail Prokhorov’s investment vehicle, and later deputy general director of Norilsk Nickel, a mining giant.

He is the latest of nearly a dozen Russian energy executives to die in mysterious circumstances over the past two years.

Leonid Shulman, the head of the transport service at Gazprom Invest, which handles investment projects for state-owned gas giant, was found dead in a cottage north of St Petersburg in January 2022.

Alexander Tyulakov, another executive at Gazprom, was found dead in the garage of his St Petersburg home on February 25 that year, the morning after Russia invaded Ukraine, Russian media reported.

Later that year Ravil Magonov, the chairman of Lukoil, an oil giant, died after falling out of the window of a Moscow hospital.

Vladimir Nekrasov, who succeeded him as the chair of the Lukoil board, died in October last year of heart failure.

Oklahoma parents and teachers sue to stop top education official’s classroom Bible mandate

Associated Press
Sat, October 19, 2024 

Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters speaks during a special state Board of Education meeting in April 2023 in Oklahoma City.

A group of Oklahoma parents of public school students, teachers and ministers filed a lawsuit seeking to stop the state’s top education official from forcing schools to incorporate the Bible into lesson plans for students in grades 5 through 12.

The lawsuit filed Thursday with the Oklahoma Supreme Court also asks the court to stop Republican State Superintendent Ryan Walters from spending $3 million to purchase Bibles in support of his mandate.

The suit alleges the mandate violates the Oklahoma Constitution because it involves spending public money to support religion and favors one religion over another by requiring the use of a Protestant version of the Bible. It also alleges Walters and the state Board of Education don’t have the authority to require the use of instructional materials.


“As parents, my husband and I have sole responsibility to decide how and when our children learn about the Bible and religious teachings,” plaintiff Erika Wright, the founder of the Oklahoma Rural Schools Coalition and parent of two school-aged children, said in a statement. “It is not the role of any politician or public school official to intervene in these personal matters.”

The plaintiffs are represented by several civil rights groups, including the Oklahoma chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the Oklahoma Appleseed Center for Law & Justice.

The suit also notes the initial “request for proposal” released by the State Department of Education to purchase the Bibles appears to have been carefully tailored to match Bibles endorsed by former President Donald Trump that sell for $59.99 each. The request was later amended at the behest of state purchasing officials.

It is the second lawsuit filed in Oklahoma seeking to challenge Walters’ mandate. Another lawsuit filed in June by a Locust Grove man currently is pending in Mayes County.

Walters said in a statement posted to his account on X that he will “never back down to the woke mob.”

“The simple fact is that understanding how the Bible has impacted our nation, in its proper historical context, was the norm in America until the 1960s and its removal has coincided with a precipitous decline in American schools,” Walters wrote.

Walters, a former public school teacher elected in 2022, ran on a platform of fighting “woke ideology,” banning books from school libraries and getting rid of “radical leftists,” who he claims are indoctrinating children in classrooms.

Chumash people in California to co-steward marine sanctuary in historic partnership
JAIMIE DING
Fri, October 18, 2024 









California Marine Sanctuary Tribe
Dancers perform during celebration of "Indigenous Peoples' Day Picnic In The Park 2024" and Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary at Dinosaur Caves Park, Pismo Beach on Monday, October. 14, 2024. (Robert Schwemmer via AP)

For more than 10,000 years, Native Americans have been living along California’s central coast, an area of breathtaking beauty with stunning turquoise waters rich in biodiversity. Now, in the first partnership of its kind, the area will soon be part of a new national marine sanctuary that Native people will co-steward with a federal agency.

It will give the Chumash people, once the largest cultural group in California, a say in the way the marine sanctuary is preserved. The Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary, designated by the Biden administration last week, is the first tribally nominated sanctuary in the United States.

It covers 116 miles (187 kilometers) of California coastline. The more than 4,500 square miles (11,655 square kilometers) of coastal and offshore waters that will be included contain diverse marine life increasingly threatened by climate change and pollution from human activities.

The designation, which was announced by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, will take effect after Congress has 45 days to consider it.

The Chumash people, which span several tribes, including the federally recognized Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians, have long depended on the ocean for fishing and shellfish, and today some are involved in environmental monitoring and advocacy work.

Some collaborative projects may include coastal signage, or scientific studies along the shoreline where there may have been Indigenous villages in the past that are now submerged.

“The waterways adjacent to the aboriginal territory are areas that our tribal people have thrived and lived off of for many years,” said Kenneth Kahn, chairman of the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians. “The legacy of all Chumash people in the namesake of the Marine Sanctuary is certainly very important.”

The sanctuary comes nearly a decade after it was originally nominated by the late Chief Fred Collins of the Northern Chumash Tribal Council in 2015.

“When he passed away three years ago … he asked me to complete this for him, and I promised him I would,” said Violet Sage Walker, chairwoman of the Northern Chumash Tribal Council.

There have been other national marine sanctuaries that involved collaboration with tribes, but this will be the first one where it is written into the final management plan with Indigenous partners included in the conversation from the beginning, Walker said.

A growing Land Back movement has been returning Indigenous homelands to the descendants of those who lived there for millennia before European settlers arrived. That has seen Native American tribes taking a greater role in restoring rivers and lands to how they were before they were expropriated.

Earlier this year, the Yurok Tribe in Northern California became the first Native people to manage tribal land with the National Park Service under a historic memorandum of understanding signed by the tribe, Redwood National and State Parks and the nonprofit Save the Redwoods League.

Stretching from around the San Louis Obispo County area in central California down to the border of the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary off the coast of Santa Barbara, the Chumash marine sanctuary represents a unique mix of ecological zones of the northern and southern parts of the coast, said Stanford University professor Stephen Palumbi, who is conducting research in the area.

The waters are home to at-risk species, such as snowy plovers, southern sea otters, leatherback sea turtles, abalone and blue whales. It also includes ecologically rich features like the Rodriguez seamount, formed from an extinct volcano.

When Palumbi and his team were examining a set of silvery fish called grunions that beach themselves when they spawn in the southern part of the coast, they brought their findings to their partners at the Northern Chumash Tribal Council.

“They were saying, ’Oh yeah, we usually get them in the south just like you’re seeing, but you know, just a couple generations ago we could get them further north,'” Palumbi said, giving an example of the value of the tribal members' knowledge.

The latest national marine sanctuary will advance the White House’s America the Beautiful initiative, which set a goal of conserving and restoring at least 30% of U.S. lands and waters by 2030.

Some advocates had originally hoped the boundaries of the sanctuary would extend north to the edges of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, past Diablo Canyon, which houses California’s last operating nuclear power plant. However, after concerns from wind energy companies, NOAA decided to carve out an area planned for off-shore wind farm development but laid out a process for potential sanctuary expansion in the future.

“It’s really a balancing act of trying to accomplish the renewable energy goals of the Biden-Harris and Newsom administrations and America the Beautiful,” said Paul Michel, NOAA regional policy coordinator.

The final management plan includes a framework for co-stewardship that involves an advisory group with a voting seat for the the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians and two “Indigenous Cultural Knowledge voting seats," as well as a policy council consisting of the Santa Ynez Band, NOAA, and California government.

“We not only protected our homeland but we protected our spiritual connection to our ancestors and our future generations for everybody,” said Walker. “This is something that will live long beyond my lifetime.”