Thursday, January 12, 2023

Republican Men Still Can’t Talk About Abortion and Rape Without Embarrassing Themselves

Kylie Cheung
Thu, January 12, 2023

Photo: Brandon Bell (Getty Images)

It’s been well over a year now since Texas enacted its citizen-enforced abortion ban, S.B. 8, which offers no exceptions for rape. In September 2021, Gov. Greg Abbott famously defended this by proclaiming that he would simply “eliminate all rapists from the streets,” ostensibly by giving more funding to the same police officers who do little to nothing to prevent sexual violence—and often perpetrate it themselves.

And now, in the wake of some Texas Republicans expressing openness to adding a rape exception to the state’s abortion laws ahead of the 2023 legislative session, Lieutenant Gov. Dan Patrick (R) opted to give a revisionist history lesson on the issue on the podcast Y’allitics this week. Specifically, Patrick suggested Democrats are actually to blame for the cruelty that abortion bans inflict on rape victims. “Our original law that’s on the books now was written by Democrats—all Democrats,” Patrick said. “We had few Republicans back then, few Republicans in the state. They did not put in an exception for rape or incest when they passed that law.”

Patrick is referring to pre-Roe abortion bans and laws criminalizing abortion from the 1920s and as far back as the 1850s—you know, before the political realignment spurred by the New Deal era.

Because apparently it needs to be said, political parties took radically different stances 100 years ago! Today, Texas Democrats are challenging abortion bans and Republicans are upholding them—it’s not complicated.

Insipid as Patrick’s comments were (including his claim that “a child who is born should not be another victim of that crime,” referring to rape-induced pregnancies), what else, really, could he say? For over a year now, Texas Republicans—like anti-abortion lawmakers everywhere—have stumbled around talking about abortion and rape, relying on obfuscation, misinformation, and tough-on-crime rhetoric disregarding how law enforcement and the criminal legal system have historically victimized survivors, because they can’t justify their positions.

In recent months, Republican politicians have claimed people can’t be impregnated by rape because they “control that intake of semen.” Last year, Jezebel reported on a Michigan Republican candidate who said he told his daughters, “If rape is inevitable, you should just lie back and enjoy it.” An Ohio Republican in the state legislature called pregnancy from rape “an opportunity.” Notably, in post-Roe Ohio, a 10-year-old rape victim was forced to travel across state lines for abortion, prompting top Republicans in Ohio and Indiana to terrorize and investigate the doctor who provided her care for months.

In June, then-Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) outright admitted that the state’s total abortion ban, which lacks a rape exception, could force rape survivors as young as 13 to carry their rapist’s babies—but he also refused to do anything about it. “I would prefer a different outcome than that, but that’s not the debate today in Arkansas. It might be in the future, but for now, the law triggered with only one exception ... in the case of the life of the mother.”

I truly can’t over-state that rape exceptions to abortion bans are almost worthless in practice, since the majority of victims don’t report their rapes, and any and all abortion bans already amount to state gender-based violence—being denied abortion places someone at greater risk of domestic violence. The top cause of death for pregnant people is homicide, often by abusive partners.

The only way to grant pregnant rape victims dignity and agency is to not ban abortion at all or subject survivors to extensive, retraumatizing verification processes to “prove” their rape to law enforcement. Yet, where anti-abortion lawmakers once overwhelmingly supported rape exceptions—to present themselves as “moderate”—nearly all abortion bans post-Roe now lack them. Because why pretend to care about pregnant people and rape survivors when you can just lie and blame the Democrats?

Jezebel

Georgia nuclear plant startup delayed due to vibrating pipe

In this image provided by Georgia Power, the outside of the Unit 3 reactor containment building at Plant Vogtle in Waynesboro, Ga., is shown on Oct. 13, 2022. Startup of the nuclear power plant will be delayed since its operator found a vibrating pipe in the cooling system during testing, Georgia Power Co. announced Wednesday, Jan. 11, 2023.

JEFF AMY
Wed, January 11, 2023

ATLANTA (AP) — Startup of a nuclear power plant in Georgia will be delayed since its operator found a vibrating pipe in the cooling system during testing.

Georgia Power Co., the lead owner of Plant Vogtle near Waynesboro, announced the delay Wednesday. The company said that the third reactor at the plant is scheduled to begin generating electricity for the grid in April. The unit of Atlanta-based Southern Co. had previously given a startup deadline of March.

The problem was found during startup testing in a pipe that is part of the reactor's automatic depressurization system, said Georgia Power spokesperson Jacob Hawkins. He said the pipe needs to be braced with additional support.

“It's not a safety issue,” he said.

Southern Nuclear Operating Co., which will operate the reactor on behalf of Georgia Power and other owners, must get approval for a license modification from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the company said in an investor filing.

The plant includes two operating nuclear reactors and the first two nuclear reactors being built from scratch in the United States in decades. The fourth reactor is still under construction and is supposed to start generating electricity sometime in 2024.

The delay will cost Georgia Power and other co-owners at least $30 million.

A third and a fourth reactor were approved for construction at Vogtle by the Georgia Public Service Commission in 2012, and the third reactor was supposed to start generating power in 2016. The cost of the third and fourth reactors has climbed from an original cost of $14 billion to more than $30 billion.

Other owners include Oglethorpe Power Corp., the Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia and the city of Dalton. Oglethorpe and MEAG would sell power to cooperatives and municipal utilities across Georgia, as well as in Jacksonville, Florida, and parts of Alabama and the Florida Panhandle.

Radioactive fuel was loaded into the third reactor in October. Federal regulators gave approval after delays over faulty wiring and incomplete inspection documents.

Georgia Power customers are already paying part of the financing cost and state regulators have approved a monthly rate increase as soon as the third reactor begins generating power. But the Georgia Public Service Commission will decide later who pays for the remainder of the costs.

Vogtle is the only nuclear plant under construction in the United States. Its costs and delays could deter other utilities from building such plants, even though they generate electricity without releasing climate-changing carbon emissions.

Solar developers approached two NY farmers. Their choices reveal an industry in crisis

Thomas C. Zambito and Edward Harris, New York State Team
Wed, January 11, 2023

The cows have all been milked and fed.

Ben Simons’ Holsteins are lounging in a field next to his home on Starr Hill in Remsen, the morning fog having given way to a warming early afternoon sun.

“Right now, they’re fat and happy,” Simons says, taking in the scene.

Ben Simons stands outside of his home and farm on Starr Hill in Remsen, NY. He was approached by a land agent interested in leasing acres of Simons’ land to build an array of solar panels to convert the sun’s energy into electricity and deliver it to the state’s electrical grid.

Dairy cows have provided Simons a steady income through the years, ever since he and his wife Robin arrived in central New York in the 1980s, joining an exodus of farming families from New Hampshire in search of a place where they could work the land and raise a family.

They sell milk to yogurt maker Chobani in nearby Chenango County and Hood dairy products in Massachusetts.

But it’s physical work, up with the sun milking cows, planting corn and soybeans and, when the growing season is over, chopping firewood for sale in nearby towns. Simons is 61.

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A few years ago, while he was up on a tractor harvesting hay, Simons got an unexpected visit from a man who chased him down in the field with an offer.

He was a land agent for a developer checking his interest in leasing acres of Simons’ land to build an array of solar panels to convert the sun’s energy into electricity and deliver it to the state’s electrical grid.

He mentioned the transmission lines that border the fields along the Starr Hill property. Those lines would carry energy down to a substation and onto the grid, helping the state achieve its goal of 70% reliance on renewables by 2030.

A view of the transmission lines that border the fields along Ben Simons' Starr Hill property in Remsen, NY.

But just two small utility-scale solar farms currently deliver energy to the grid. There are more than 70 in the pipeline awaiting state approval. Most of those are planned for upstate towns where land is cheap and plentiful, with a goal of sending it downstate to offset the region’s heavy reliance on fossil fuels.

“Farmers, I talk to them every day, they are equally frustrated and concerned about their well-being,” said Jeff Williams, the policy director for the New York Farm Bureau. “I know a couple of farmers are making that calculation now because they just can't be competitive.”

And so, the question posed to Simons a few years ago — “Are you going to keep farming?" — takes on greater urgency.

“It gets your attention,” Simons said. “It really does.”
'Preserving our farmland'

Some 16 miles southeast of Simons’ farm, Richard Marko runs a 350-acre cattle farm called Hillside Meadows in Newport, north of Utica. It produces enough beef to feed about 30 families.

A few months ago, Marko was approached by a Canadian renewable developer named Boralex who wanted to put a solar farm on a portion of his 350–acre property on North Gage Road.

The Newport Solar Project, as it’s called, would saddle the Herkimer and Oneida county lines, covering some 900 acres in Deerfield and Newport.

Boralex approached Marko because they were looking for land flat enough to lay solar panels and fields close enough to the electrical grid. The Deerfield and Newport properties checked all the boxes, Boralex spokesman Darren Suarez said.

Fields of solar panel arrays would be mixed in with viable farmland that would remain in use during the 25-year life of the project, Suarez said.

“It’s integrated more into the community," he said.

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Towns, counties and local school districts would reap an estimated $8 million in revenue. The 130-megawatt array would produce enough energy to power roughly 37,000 homes, with some of the energy remaining nearby and the rest sent out on the grid.

Marko and his wife Patty were raised on dairy farms and bought the Hillside Meadows property a decade ago. They have four adult children between the ages of 30 and 43 and hope one day to leave it to their son, who is currently on active duty in the Marines.

After the lease term expires, the land involved in the solar project would be returned to farming. That sold Marko.

“It’s not ruining our farmland," he said. "It’s preserving our farmland."
Balancing NY renewable energy goals with 'finite resources'

State Sen. Michelle Hinchey, a Democrat, chairs the agriculture committee and represents a district with more than 1,000 farms.

In recent years, the district, which includes Greene and Montgomery counties, has been flooded with proposals for largescale solar developments and Hinchey fears the state's renewable buildout risks creating "a secondary crisis" by removing prime soil from food production.

“Don’t get me wrong, we need renewable energy, we needed it 50 years ago,” Hinchey said. “But we cannot do it at the detriment and at the expense of our finite resources, especially our finite agricultural resources.”

A view of Ben Simon's farm atop of Starr Hill in Remsen, NY. He was approached by a land agent interested in leasing acres of Simons’ land to build an array of solar panels to convert the sun’s energy into electricity and deliver it to the state’s electrical grid.

Farmland, she said, should be the last resort.A bill Hinchey sponsored that would discourage renewable developers from using prime farmland passed both houses of the state legislature this year. But in late November it was vetoed by Gov. Kathy Hochul, who said it would hinder the New York State Energy and Redevelopment Authority’s agrivoltaic program — a way to use land simultaneously for renewable energy and farming.

Hinchey plans to introduce the measure again in 2023.

Ben Simons talks with his son Christopher who is sitting inside of a John Deere atop of Starr Hill in Remsen, NY. He was approached by a land agent interested in leasing acres of Simons’ land to build an array of solar panels to convert the sun’s energy into electricity and deliver it to the state’s electrical grid.

In an effort to steer developers away from viable farmland, the state recently began a program requiring solar developers to make an “agricultural mitigation payment” if their plan includes building on prime agricultural soil. A Hinchey-sponsored bill Hochul signed this month requires that the money go into a farmland protection fund.

Under the current setup, developers search out willing landowners, then try to win state approval. It’s led to showdowns pitting the state against towns who fear sweeping views of green pastures will be marred by fields of solar panels or wind turbines.

State Sen. Joseph Griffo, a Republican whose district includes the upstate counties of Oneida, Lewis and St. Lawrence, said the current system needs to change.

Ben Simons stands out on the back porch of his home with his farmland in the background atop of Starr Hill in Remsen, NY. He was approached by a land agent interested in leasing acres of Simons’ land to build an array of solar panels to convert the sun’s energy into electricity and deliver it to the state’s electrical grid.More

“They (developers) go in and say, ‘Hey, we'll take on most of your problem land and we'll leave you a little bit.’ And the farmers are jumping at it. But the communities are screaming, saying, ‘Well, wait a minute, you're gonna put all these things here.”

Several upstate towns have joined in a lawsuit challenging the state’s decision to create the Office of Renewable Energy Siting to streamline the approval process for renewable projects. Griffo sponsored a bill that would have eliminated ORES.

“I think these communities have legitimate questions and legitimate concerns and they should not only be dealt with fairly but they need to be addressed,” said Griffo. “Stop the power grab. It’s basically, in my opinion, a sham process.”
Paying for those idyllic views

Marko's taking Boralex up on their offer. He is currently working with the company on acreage amounts.

“The big thing that sold me," Marko said, "is when the project expires, it goes right back to farmland."

The project will need to clear a number of significant hurdles.

Boralex expects to apply for a state permit early next year with hopes of beginning construction at the end of 2024 and up and run by the end of the following year.

Marko’s agreement with Boralex has not been finalized and the payout will depend largely on how many acres of his property the company uses.

But the deal will help him enough financially that he can continue operations on the farm.

A view of Ben Simons' farmland atop of Starr Hill in Remsen, NY. He was approached by a land agent interested in leasing acres of Simons’ land to build an array of solar panels to convert the sun’s energy into electricity and deliver it to the state’s electrical grid.

Simons told the agent who chased him down in the field he wasn’t interested.

But another developer came around last year, asking about a property he owns in Westernville, some six miles to the west of Starr Hill.

He wanted to build on 30 acres.

The proposal promised an initial payment of $10,000 the first year, with payments of $1,000 an acre annually. Over 25 years, the payout would exceed $1.6 million.

Ben Simons and his son Christopher are pictured in front of their farm's welcome sign atop of Starr Hill in Remsen, NY. Ben was approached by a land agent interested in leasing acres of Simons’ land to build an array of solar panels to convert the sun’s energy into electricity and deliver it to the state’s electrical grid.

“Business-wise it is a stupid decision,” Simons said. “I’m not kidding you. It is. But we’re farmers. And I’m getting ready to retire. I’m not going anywhere but I’m slowing down.”

His son, Christopher, is 33 and has plans to take over the farm some day. He has little interest in the dairy business but wants to grow crops and work the land.

“We kicked it around,” Chris Simon said. “We considered it. But when you’re talking about the best prime farmland we have, then it’s a no. If you’re taking the marginal land, the small-odd shaped fields, the ones that are less productive, that’s a different story.”

Ben Simons understands the choices made by Marko and other farmers and doesn’t begrudge their decision a bit.

In the end, he was not convinced the land could be tilled again after solar panels were dug into the ground.

But when he stops to think about the current cycle of contention — developers making deals with farmers, communities fighting developers — he thinks perhaps the farmer has been forgotten in the debate.

This article originally appeared on New York State Team: NY solar buildout presents upstate farmers with tempting offers

Go to Texas to see the anti-green future of clean energy

THE ECONOMIST
Thu, January 12, 2023

For more than 140 years John Davis’s family has owned the Pecan Spring Ranch on the prairie lands of West Texas. He has a photo of his great-great-grandmother, known as “the sheep queen of Texas”, sitting in a horse-drawn carriage beneath a tree that still stands in front of the hay barn. It’s a tough business to maintain, even with a valuable herd of Wagyu beef cattle to raise. Yet when a renewable-energy developer offered Mr Davis a large payment to put wind turbines on his land, at first the staunch Republican—and former state congressman—turned it down.

His opposition was knee-jerk. “Clean energy has been branded a liberal technology. People literally say, ‘this is AOC coming into town,’” explains his son, Samuel, referring to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the left-wing congresswoman whose name pops up with almost flattering frequency among conservative Texans. Eventually, though, economic sense prevailed. As the family points out, at an average return per acre, cattle generate $8, deer hunters $15—and wind hundreds of dollars. It assures the ranch’s future.

Now hosting seven turbines, the family embraces renewables as religious converts would. Samuel is a representative for the Texas Land and Liberty Coalition, which promotes wind and solar energy among ranchers. His parents have bought a filling station, ripped out the petrol pumps, and are converting it into an electric-vehicle charging station (with a farmers’ market on the side). Your columnist sat down with the clan last month over a breakfast of quiche and tomato-jalapeño jam, before bouncing across their ranch in an electric buggy. He learned lessons about clean energy that challenged his own philosophical assumptions.

The first is that you do not have to believe in climate change to support renewables. Quite the opposite. For a portion of conservative America, things like climate change and carbon taxes are still viewed as big-government malarkey. Even greenery is despised as a term co-opted by the left. “When someone says we are embracing green energy, it’s like shoving an ice pick through our ears,” says Matt Welch, head of Conservative Texans for Energy Innovation, another pro-renewables group. “We just say clean energy.”

This is not just Texan recalcitrance. Wind power is abundantly harvested in states run by Republican governments and over land owned by climate-sceptic ranchers. The message they prefer is a more free-market one: that wind and solar are increasingly competitive sources of energy, help reduce electricity costs, foster entrepreneurship, and are no less American than oil and gas.

It is a surprisingly effective mantra. You might think that California, which talks a good game about climate change and green energy, is on the forefront of renewables development. But Texas is far ahead. According to a study commissioned by Mr Welch’s organisation, in the second quarter of 2022 his home state had three times more wind, solar and battery storage under construction than California. The Energy Information Administration, a federal agency, predicts that this year the share of renewables in Texan power generation will for the first time exceed that of natural gas.

That helps explain the next lesson. For all the mockery of AOC, it is from their own Republican ranks that wind-energy ranchers face the most antagonism—especially from fossil-fuel producers who fear being undercut by renewables. Organisations like the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), which lobbies on behalf of oil and gas, and the Texas Landowners Coalition, backed by right-wing beneficiaries of the fracking boom, are fighting tooth and nail to curb wind development. The TPPF’s battle extends to proposed offshore wind farms as far away as New England.

Jason Isaac of the TPPF says his organisation helped convince the Texas government to let a school-district tax credit lapse on December 31st that encouraged renewables investment in rural Texas. He argues that such fiscal support distorts the power market, though that stance ignores other incentives for oil and gas producers. He blames wind for the blackouts across Texas in 2021 caused by storm Uri, never mind that an official report concluded that “all types of generation technologies failed”, including natural gas and coal. Republicans accuse liberals of “cult-like decarbonisation”, yet their policies hurt some fellow conservatives.

The third lesson is pragmatism. Even though Republican lawmakers unanimously opposed President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which provides hundreds of billions of dollars to curb America’s use of fossil fuels, red states like Texas plan to lap it up. The Davis family do not support the IRA, but they hope its expanded federal tax credits will entice more wind and solar to rural Texas. The state also expects to attract big hydrogen and carbon-sequestration projects. Other Republican states like Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina and Tennessee are welcoming billions of dollars of clean-energy investments spurred by the IRA. Even conservative businesses that lobby strongly for fossil fuels hope to benefit from the energy transition. For example, Koch Industries, an energy conglomerate, supported a big investment by Freyr, a Norwegian firm, in a battery factory in Georgia that will benefit from the law.

Don’t waste your breath

The upshot is that there are ways to promote clean energy that do not rely on convincing climate sceptics that they are bonkers. A better sales pitch may be to play up the cost advantages of renewables rather than the climate benefits, emphasise their contribution to cutting air pollution rather than carbon emissions, and acknowledge that, owing to intermittency factors, natural gas may have a role to play in power generation for years to come. As Michael Webber, a professor of energy at the University of Texas, puts it, “It’s not unusual for Texas to do the right thing for all the wrong reasons.” In the end, everyone’s aim is a better future. As the elder Mr Davis says, many ranchers lucky

THE VATICAN IS ALL ABOUT SECRETS
'Catastrophe': Cardinal Pell's secret memo blasts Francis

NICOLE WINFIELD
Thu, January 12, 2023

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis will deliver a final send-off for Cardinal George Pell during a funeral Mass on Saturday, the Vatican said, as revelations emerge of the Australian prelate’s growing concern about what he considered the “disaster” and “catastrophe” of the papacy under Francis.

The Vatican on Thursday said the dean of the college of cardinals, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, would celebrate Pell's funeral Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica. As is custom for cardinal funerals, Francis will deliver a final commendation and salute.

Pell, who had served as Francis’ first finance minister for three years before returning to Australia to face child sex abuse charges, died on Tuesday at a Rome hospital of heart complications following hip surgery. He was 81.

He had been dividing his time between Rome and Sydney after he was exonerated in 2020 of allegations he molested two choirboys while he was archbishop of Melbourne. Australia’s High Court overturned an earlier court conviction, and Pell was freed after serving 404 days in solitary confinement.

Pell had clashed repeatedly with the Vatican’s Italian bureaucracy during his 2014-2017 term as prefect of the Holy See’s Secretariat for the Economy, which Francis created to try to get a handle on the Vatican’s opaque finances. In his telegram of condolence, Francis credited Pell with having laid the groundwork for the reforms underway, which have included imposing international standards for budgeting and accounting on Vatican offices.

But Pell, a staunch conservative, grew increasingly disillusioned with the direction of Francis’ papacy, including its emphasis on inclusion and canvassing of the laity about the future of the church.

He penned a remarkable memorandum outlining his concerns, and recommendations for the next pope in a future conclave, that began circulating last spring and was published under a pseudonym, “Demos,” on Vatican blog Settimo Cielo.

The blogger Sandro Magister on Wednesday revealed that Pell indeed was the author of the memo, which is an extraordinary indictment of the current pontificate by a onetime close collaborator of Francis.

The memo is divided into two parts — “The Vatican Today” and “The Next Conclave” — and lists a series of points covering everything from Francis' “weakened” preaching of the Gospel to the precariousness of the Holy See’s finances and the “lack of respect for the law” in the city-state, including in the current financial corruption trial underway that Pell himself had championed.

“Commentators of every school, if for different reasons … agree that this pontificate is a disaster in many or most respects; a catastrophe,” Pell wrote.

Also Wednesday, the conservative magazine The Spectator published what it said was a signed article that Pell wrote in the days before he died. In the article, Pell described as a “toxic nightmare” Francis’ two-year canvassing of the Catholic laity about issues such as church teaching on sexuality and the role of women that is expected to come to a head at a meeting of bishops in October.

Referring to the Vatican's summary of the canvassing effort, Pell complained of a "deepening confusion, the attack on traditional morals and the insertion into the dialogue of neo-Marxist jargon about exclusion, alienation, identity, marginalization, the voiceless, LGBTQ as well as the displacement of Christian notions of forgiveness, sin, sacrifice, healing, redemption.”

Pell's anonymous memo, however, is even harsher and takes particular aim at Francis himself. While other conservatives have criticized Francis’ crackdown on traditionalists and mercy-over-morals priorities, Pell went further and devoted an entire section to the pope’s involvement in a big financial fraud investigation that has resulted in the prosecution of 10 people, including Pell’s onetime nemesis, Cardinal Angelo Becciu.

Pell had initially cheered the indictment, which stemmed from the Vatican’s 350 million-euro investment in a London real estate deal, given it vindicated his yearslong effort to uncover financial mismanagement and corruption in the Holy See. But over the course of the trial, uncomfortable questions have been raised about the rights of the defense in a legal system where Francis has absolute power, and has wielded it.

Pell noted that that Francis had issued four secret decrees during the course of the investigation “to help the prosecution” without the right for those affected to appeal. The defense has argued the decrees violated the suspects’ human rights.

Pell also came to the defense of Becciu, whom Francis removed in September 2020 before he was even under investigation. “He did not receive due process. Everyone has a right to due process,” wrote Pell, for whom the issue is particularly dear given his own experiences.

“The lack of respect for the law in the Vatican risks becoming an international scandal,” Pell wrote.

Anti-Abortion Groups Are Planning One of Their Dumbest Protests Yet

Caitlin Cruz

JEZEBEL
Wed, January 11, 2023

Anti-abortion rights demonstrators protest during a Women's March in Washington, DC, US, on Saturday, Oct. 8, 2022. On October 8th, exactly one month before Election Day, women and their allies marched across the country for a massive nationwide "Women's Wave" day of action meant to rally supporters of reproductive rights ahead of the 2022 midterms.

Photographer: Valerie Plesch/Bloomberg

After the FDA announced last week it would allow retail pharmacies to carry the abortion drug mifepristone behind its counters, CVS and Walgreens said their pharmacies in legal jurisdictions would become certified to distribute mifepristone. This was, uh, obviously an affront to anti-abortion activists who are not letting the foot off the gas after getting the big thing they wanted at the Supreme Court.

Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising—the same group that claimed to have been given 115 sets of fetal remains from a medical waste truck—will be protesting at Walgreens and CVS locations in a range of cities across America on Saturday, Feb. 4. Members are hitting up the obvious sites—New York City, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and San Francisco—but the organic, protester-led format (think about how satellite versions of the Women’s Marches were held around the country) means they’ll also be protesting at retail pharmacies in Boston, Mass.; Austin, Texas; Detroit, Mich.; Pittsburgh, Penn.; Indianapolis, Ind.; Sioux Falls, S.D.; Akron, Ohio; and Portland, Oregon, as of publication.

The group says the protests will have the same vibe as sidewalk “counseling” that anti-abortion activists do in front of abortion clinics to harass providers and patients. “We want people to be uncomfortable going into a CVS that has a demonstration going on and to consider going to a different pharmacy,” Caroline Smith, a Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising leader, told Politico. “We also want to put enough pressure on the companies to retract this decision and not get certified to sell abortion pills.”

As Smith’s statements says, retail pharmacies are not required to become certified, but activists saw it as heartening that two of the largest pharmaceutical chains chose to start the process. The group wants the protests to be a part of a national boycott and calling campaign to CVS, too. Walgreens and CVS have not issued statements about the upcoming protests.

The group is continuing the anti-abortion movement’s use of hyperbolic language about murder and killing to promote the events. “Both pharmacy chains are in the process of converting their retail locations to become abortion businesses by selling and dispensing the abortion pill,” PAAU posted on Facebook on Tuesday.

Though medication abortions make up more than half of abortions performed in America, it is highly unlikely that certified CVS and Walgreens will pivot their operations to being abortion clinics. Still, pharmacists are worried about the anti-abortion protests. After all, protests at clinics have been known to be injurious, if not just plain annoying. “The safety of pharmacy teams is really important, and that’s something they’re going to take into consideration when they decide whether or not to become certified,” Ilisa Bernstein, the interim CEO for the American Pharmacists Association, told Politico. “In some communities, that may be more of a concern than others, but it is a concern.”

Maybe the pharmacists are right to be concerned. Students for Life policy veep Kristi Hamrick said the activists are “much savvier” now. “If Walgreens wants to learn anything from more than 50 years of our abortion activism, it’s that we will not give up,” Hamrick told Politico.

But I do question how long and just how many anti-abortion crusaders will be willing to stand out in front of enough random CVS stores to get the corporation’s attention? The reason abortion clinic protests worked (and still work, even post-Roe) is that they are directly targeting patients. The goal (beyond abolition of abortion) is to make sure everyone has to walk past those protesters at an abortion clinic if they ever actually have an abortion.

Now, people will have to walk past these inflammatory fetus signs and prayer groups as they enter a Walgreens to pick up toothpaste. If that’s how these activists want to waste their time, so be it.

Arguments over masks aren't going away in 2023

Alexander Nazaryan
·Senior White House Correspondent
Thu, January 12, 2023

Commuters at the Times Square-42nd Street subway station in New York City. (Jeenah Moon/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — On a recent evening, comedian Jimmy Fallon devoted a segment of his late night talk show to launch into one of his ready-made-for-social-media ditties, this one devoted to the new XBB.1.5 variant of the coronavirus. Rendered in the campy style of the B-52s, the joking song contained a line many public health officials would like to see elected officials make with deliberate seriousness.

“Put on your mask when inside a facility,” Fallon crooned.

Three years into the pandemic, the question of whether to mask or not to mask shows no signs of heading toward a resolution, especially during a winter season that has seen a so-called tripledemic sweep across the United States. States dropped their mask mandates long ago; last spring, a court struck down a mask mandate on airplanes, planes and other forms of transit. Today, masking is still required in some institutions, like hospitals and theaters.

But for the most part, masking has become purely a matter of choice.

Dr. Ashish Jha, White House COVID-19 response coordinator, at a news conference on Dec. 15. (Oliver Contreras/Sipa/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Not even the appearance of XBB.1.5 has spurred a shift toward mandates. Some school districts in Michigan and Massachusetts required students to mask after they returned from the winter holiday break, but those mandates remain very much the exception, not the rule. So far, no major city has reimposed a mask mandate. Even the governors of the bluest states would rather talk about inflation than the pandemic, so gruelingly divisive has that topic become.

Still, the virus persists. The emergence of XBB.1.5 is especially concerning because this newest Omicron subvariant is so transmissible. And it arrived in the United States as winter set in, when people are much more likely to gather indoors.

“COVID is the thing that concerns us most as we look to the days and weeks ahead,” Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House pandemic response team coordinator, told NPR earlier this month.

For public health officials concerned with a new winter spike, masking is an obvious solution to a recurrent problem. “When it comes to individual decisions, masks are among the most low-cost and most effective steps that can be taken to broadly reduce transmission of a multitude of viruses,” University of Michigan epidemiologists Emily Toth Martin and Marisa Eisenberg argued in a recent op-ed.

New York City's health officials issued an advisory in December urging New Yorkers to use masks as COVID-19, flu and RSV cases rose. (Fatih Aktas/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Some believe that masks should not be a matter of personal choice, pointing to evidence that masking is most effective when it is practiced by everyone. A recently formed activist group called the People’s CDC — its very title is an implicit criticism of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — has called for mask mandates to be implemented in schools and other institutions.

“The pandemic isn't over — and it's not going to be over for any of us until it's over for all of us,” People’s CDC member Dr. Zoey Thill, a New York physician, told Yahoo News. “We are only going to get through this pandemic with a collective approach.”

She and other masking advocates believe that Americans’ resistance to masking has been overstated and that, more broadly, too many Democrats have forsaken aggressive mitigation measures because of political concerns, not public health realities.

The White House recently announced it was making coronavirus diagnostic tests available for free again. But officials like Jha who work on the pandemic have ceased to emphasize masking as a matter of course, the way they did in 2020 and early 2021. Incentives for vaccination disappeared long ago, and many Americans who received their initial inoculations decided against booster shots that were updated to fight new variants of the coronavirus.

A medical worker administers a dose of flu vaccine at a medical center in Rosemead, Calif. (Xinhua via Getty Images)

To some, all this is merely society returning to normal. To others, it’s surrender.

“People don’t want to be dealing with this pandemic forever,” Thill acknowledged in a telephone interview. But she argued that unless measures like universal masking, improved ventilation and paid leave for sick workers were implemented, the coronavirus would continue to spread, giving rise to new variants and delaying the pandemic’s end.

Even though many Americans continue to support masking, the resistance to mask mandates has become a political movement of its own. “Mask mandates were brazenly wrong 3 years ago and they’re wrong today,” tweeted Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas in response to the new school mandates. He and other Republicans have used disagreements over masking to launch culture war attacks that have galvanized the conservative base.

Sen. Ted Cruz at the Republican Jewish Coalition on Nov. 19, 2022, in Las Vegas. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Politics aside, even some medical professionals believe that the efficacy of masking was overstated to begin with. “Masks certainly can work on an individual level to reduce viral transmission (i.e. infecting another person), but only if the mask is well-fitted, high-grade, and worn consistently,” Dr. Lucy McBride, a physician in Washington, D.C., wrote in a recent newsletter.

“In the real world, these conditions aren’t readily met — which explains why the real-world population data on mask effectiveness is weak.”

Even Jha, the White House coordinator, has become something of a mask skeptic. “There is no study in the world that shows that masks work that well,” he said in December, in a comment that cheered some and dismayed others. (The White House notes, correctly, that it has no power to impose mask mandates, though the bully pulpit of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue comes with no small amount of suasion.)

Washington physician McBride is one of the founders of Urgency of Normal, a group started last year to advocate for doing away with pandemic restrictions. Last week, Urgency of Normal called for an end to all school mask mandates across the country. In an open letter, the organization argued that “continued pandemic mitigation measures like mask mandates are not justified for respiratory viruses. It is in children’s best interests to normalize the daily school experience and put an end to unnecessary and harmful restrictions.”

Let Them Breathe, an anti-mask group, protests in Redondo Beach, Calif., in July 2021. (Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

Urgency of Normal has plenty of detractors, who say its arguments cater to wealthier, whiter communities that benefit from high-quality health care and the ability to work from home. The People’s CDC has an information tool kit titled “The Urgency of Equity,” which serves both as an obvious allusion and a counterargument.

So far, though, the imperative for normalcy seems to be winning out over pandemic worries in many parts of the country, frustrating advocates who believe that individualized approaches to the pandemic are bound to fail.

“We all need to do our own part to minimize risk for everyone,” Thill said. “It’s only until we do that that we’re going to get through this."

IMPERIALIST INTERVENTION

Canada sends armored vehicles to Haiti to fight gang violence

North American Leader's Summit in Mexico City

Wed, January 11, 2023

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada delivered armored vehicles to Haiti on Wednesday to help combat criminal gangs as the Caribbean nation faces a humanitarian crisis, the Canadian foreign ministry said.

Canadian military aircraft made the delivery to the Haitian National Police in the capital Port-au-Prince, it added.

Haitian gangs have seized control of much of the country since the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moise, leading to routine gun battles with police.

Hundreds died in turf battles last year, and in September, Haitian gangs blocked a fuel terminal for nearly six weeks, halting most economic activity.

Canada and the United States provided tactical and armored vehicles and other supplies in October after Haiti urged the international community to send in a "specialized armed force." Ottawa has also sanctioned Haitians accused of gang ties, including a former president, two ex-prime ministers and three high-profile entrepreneurs.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters in Mexico City on Wednesday the sanctions and aid were "making a difference" in Haiti.

"We're all very aware that things could get worse in Haiti and that's why Canada and partners, including the United States, are preparing various scenarios if it does start to get worse," he said.

Canada will continue to provide support but the Haitian crisis must be resolved domestically, said Trudeau, who was attending the North American Leaders' Summit along with U.S. President Joe Biden and Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

"What is particularly important in this situation is that the Haitian people themselves be at the center of the support, the building of stability, and the resolution of the crisis in Haiti right now."

(Reporting by Ismail Shakil and Steve Scherer in Ottawa; Editing by Richard Chang)

UNDER DESANTIS ANTI-CRT IT WILL BE

How a Florida race massacre in 1923 was almost erased from history

A rural Black community was destroyed by a racist white mob a century ago. Now, historians and descendants are making sure the story of the Rosewood massacre is never forgotten.

Marquise Francis
·National Reporter
Thu, January 12, 2023

A Black family’s home in flames in January 1923 amid race riots following allegations that a Black man had attacked a white woman. (Bettmann Archive/Getty Images)

For years, longtime Florida resident Arnett Doctor noticed that his mother routinely went into a deep depression around Christmastime. It wasn’t until weeks later that her yearly depression would subside, and he never understood why. Then one Christmas, when he was 19, Doctor’s mother finally told him about the week of racial violence that she and dozens of other Black people endured in January 1923, when a white mob terrorized and destroyed their rural community in Rosewood, Fla.

Now, 100 years later, historians and descendants of those families, who once buried the ordeal in their memory, are making sure the story of the Rosewood massacre is never forgotten.

“It’s really important that we remember these events because they’ve been hidden for too long,” Maxine Jones, a historian with a focus on African American history and a professor at Florida State University, told Yahoo News. “In order to understand the future and then move forward, we have to understand the past.”

The ruins of the two-story shanty near Rosewood, Fla., where 20 Black residents barricaded themselves and fought off a mob of white people. (Bettmann Archive/Getty Images)

The Rosewood massacre is eerily similar to a lot of other tragic incidents of racial violence in American history. In this instance, violence broke out in the town of about 150 mostly Black, land-owning residents on Jan. 1, 1923, after a white woman accused a Black man of assaulting her. News of the allegation spread fast as tensions quickly boiled over. An angry mob of white residents from nearby Sumner, Fla., began hunting for Jesse Hunter, a Black man accused of the assault with no evidence, for a week. Over that time, residents’ homes and businesses were burned down and churches were destroyed. In all, at least six Black people and two white people were killed; no one was arrested following the ordeal. Residents who were able to escape fled to nearby Gainesville, while others, historians say, disappeared altogether. For decades, the incident was never talked about by Rosewood victims out of fear of retribution.

“People sometimes don’t realize the power of fear,” Jones said. “Knowing the reach of powerful white people, they knew they couldn’t talk about it openly. And, in fact, some of the families never even talked about it amongst themselves.

“Fear is very powerful, and to watch everything that you own burn or be stolen and no one being held accountable for that — it was a nightmare over and over again.”

But it didn’t stay buried forever.

A crowd of white citizens of Sumner, Fla., near a site where six Black residents of Rosewood, Fla., were killed and buried. (Bettmann Archive/Getty Images)

Jones in 1993 became the lead researcher on a study about the massacre, commissioned by the Florida Legislature. Previously, she said, little was known about the tragic events because former Rosewood residents had been mum about the ordeal. But Doctor, whose own life was transformed by the event he wasn’t even alive for, made it his personal mission to expose it. He wanted the families, including his own, to receive something back for what was stripped from them.

“I called him the Moses of the family,” his cousin Gregory Doctor told the Tampa Bay Times. “God implanted in him the spirit to lead the family and fight for reparations.”

Arnett Doctor traveled across the state of Florida to talk to descendants of Rosewood following his mother’s death; she had forbidden him to talk about it while she was alive. He connected with a reporter from the St. Petersburg Times in 1982 to elevate the story, and he eventually enlisted a high-powered law firm, Holland & Knight, to help with the fight. Twelve years later, the Florida Legislature passed a claims bill awarding the descendants $2.1 million for their losses. The bill noted that both local and federal officials “had sufficient time and opportunity to act to prevent the tragedy” but “failed to act to prevent the tragedy.”

A view in 2020 of the Wright House, where John Wright helped Black residents of Rosewood flee the massacre. (Zack Wittman for the Washington Post via Getty Images)

“The money was important, but I think to the survivors — the nine people who ended up getting the $250,000 — I think even more important was they got to tell their story,” Jones said. “They finally had a voice.”

The bill stopped short of any mention of reparations, which Jones said was key in its passage.

“The word ‘reparations’ is loaded,” she said. “And there was a lot of resistance from Florida legislators to opening this gate, and they tried to make sure when they agreed to compensate these families that there were no loopholes — that other people couldn’t come out of the woodwork and make any more claims against the state.”

In addition to the lump sum, a scholarship fund was created for descendants who attend state colleges. To date, about 300 students have received the Rosewood scholarship since its inception in 1994, according to the Washington Post.

Morgan Carter, a Rosewood scholarship recipient who attends Florida A&M University in Tallahassee, Fla., in 2019. (Zack Wittman for the Washington Post via Getty Images)

Marking a dramatic shift from decades past of silence, a slew of events this weekend in Gainesville, Fla., will commemorate the 100th anniversary of the massacre. Speakers will include prominent civil rights attorney Ben Crump and the Rev. Jamal Bryant.

For Jones, the Rosewood massacre should serve as a sobering reminder of why talking about and documenting history, both good and bad, is more important than ever.

“I think these incidents of racial violence, the lynchings explain race relations in this country,” she said. “It explains the tension, the fear, the distrust that still exists between Black and white people in this country.

“We need to talk about this and stop hiding it. It doesn’t mean we don’t talk about the good, but when you study the past, it just gives you an understanding of a lot that connects the past to the present.”

_____

Cover thumbnail photo: Bettmann Archive/Getty Images

Biden slams House Republicans' plans on taxes, says they will make inflation worse

U.S. President Biden boards Marine One for travel to Kentucky

Thu, January 12, 2023
By Jeff Mason

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Biden criticized House Republicans who have taken control of Congress for backing tax measures that he said would benefit the wealthy at the expense of middle class taxpayers, and make inflation worse.

The Republican-controlled House passed a bill Monday night that would slash tens of billions of funding dollars for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The measure is not expected to pass the Senate, where Democrats are the majority, and Biden vowed to veto it even if it did.

As part of the Inflation Reduction Act, passed on party lines last year, Democrats provided money to hire 87,000 new IRS agents who would focus on wealthy taxpayers with complicated returns. The new agents are expected to bring in additional revenue as they scrutinize the returns.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which analyzes bills for lawmakers, reported in an analysis on Monday that the Republicans' IRS measure would raise the deficit by $114 billion.

"House Republicans campaigned on inflation. They didn't say if elected their plan was to make inflation worse," Biden told reporters. "Well, let me be very clear: If any of these bills make it to my desk, I will veto them."

(Reporting by Jeff Mason and Doina ChiacuEditing by Frances Kerry)

President Biden slams ‘reckless bill’ from Republicans to reverse funding for the IRS and its 87,000 new hires — here's how it could affect you

Serah Louis
Wed, January 11, 2023

President Biden slams ‘reckless bill’ from Republicans to reverse funding for the IRS and its 87,000 new hires — here's how it could affect you

Washington’s lawmakers have come back from their holiday break swinging.

After a days-long speaker standoff, Republicans in the House have moved on to their next priority: clawing back funds from the IRS.

President Joe Biden had included increased funding for the IRS in the Inflation Reduction Act to help the agency catch sneaky tax evaders — especially those high-earners who love to find loopholes. Advocates believe the increased funding could raise as much as $1 trillion by forcing tax cheats to pay their dues, especially after years of budget cuts have gutted the system.

But on Jan. 9, Republicans introduced and passed a bill to rescind that $80 billion in funding.

While it’s likely to be struck down by the Democrat-controlled Senate, and Biden’s office has already voiced his intentions to veto "this reckless bill" if it makes it to his desk, it’s still a strong statement from Republican lawmakers.

Meanwhile, at the center of this political football is an overworked and understaffed tax agency. And whoever wins the power struggle in Washington, experts say taxpayers could be the ones left holding the bag.

The IRS desperately needs the support

The $80 billion in funding spread over the next 10 years would help the IRS modernize its infrastructure, increase enforcement and replace its aging workforce (50,000 of the IRS’s 80,000 workers are expected to leave in the next five years).

A Treasury Department report from May 2021 estimates the extra money would allow the agency to hire around 87,000 new employees — which could include revenue agents and customer service and IT staff — by 2031.

The agency has reportedly been underfunded by about 20% for a decade — leading it to cut back on both staff and technology updates.

Bogged down by a processing system that’s more than half a century old and a backlog that includes millions of unprocessed paper filings, the IRS has been in need of more resources and support for a while.

The customer service department has been woefully short-staffed as well. During the 2022 filing season, the IRS received around 73 million phone calls from taxpayers — but only 10% were actually answered.

"The combination of more than 21 million unprocessed paper tax returns, more than 14 million math error notices, eight-month backlogs in processing taxpayer correspondence, and extraordinary difficulty reaching the IRS by phone made this filing season particularly challenging," national taxpayer advocate Erin M. Collins wrote in her 2022 midyear report to Congress.

On top of these issues, former IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig estimated in 2021 that the agency is losing $1 trillion in unpaid taxes each year — particularly due to evasion from the rich and big businesses. He also indicated they could be slipping through the cracks in part due to the lightly regulated cryptocurrency market, foreign source income and abuse of pass-through provisions.

Rettig has long pushed for increased funding “to bring on the fire-breathing dragons” to take cheaters to task.
Could bolstering enforcement do more harm than good?

Supporters argue the funding will help close the “tax gap” by helping catch more evaders.

From the total $80 billion, $45.6 billion has been allotted for increased enforcement — which would go toward hiring more enforcement agents, providing legal support and investing in “investigative technology” to determine who should or shouldn’t be audited.

But not everyone is thrilled with the news.

“They’re not going to get this ‘magic money,’” Brian Reardon told Bloomberg. Reardon is the president of the S Corporation Association, which represents small, privately-owned businesses that pass taxes onto their shareholders.

“If you dial up enforcement on people who are otherwise following the rules and paying what they owe, you create resentment and anger. You undermine people’s confidence in the tax system.”

However, the Biden administration maintains that the increased enforcement will be focused on the ultra wealthy and large corporations, and isn’t intended for small businesses or households who earn less than $400,000 a year.

Research from the Department of Treasury indicates that the top 1% of Americans could be dodging as much as $163 billion in taxes each year.

That being said, if the increased budget is approved, Eli Akhavan, a partner at Steptoe & Johnson in New York, says he expects audits will go up. But he’s been telling his wealthy clients they “have nothing to worry about other than some headaches,” provided they’re following good advice and have their “ducks in a row.”

“If there’s nothing to find, there’s nothing to find,” Akhavan says.

Factbox-Who's who in European Parliament's cash-for-influence scandal

European Parliament member Marc Tarabella leaves the headquarters of the Socialist Party

Fri, January 6, 2023

(Reuters) - A corruption scandal has been rocking the European Parliament since Belgian authorities raided parliament offices two weeks before Christmas.

Four people - all affiliated with the chamber - have been charged over allegations Qatar lavished them with cash and gifts to influence decision-making.

The European Parliament said on Monday it had begun a procedure to waive the immunity of two other MEPs after a request from Belgian judiciary.

Qatar has denied wrongdoing.

In arrest warrants issued in Italy, there are also allegations of payments from Morocco. Morocco has not officially commented on the allegations but on Thursday its foreign minister has complained of European parliament 'harassment'.

Investigators searched 19 homes and offices of the European Parliament in raids on Dec. 9-12, recovering 1.5 million euros ($1.59 million) in cash.

WHO'S WHO

The four suspects are charged with participating in the activities of a criminal organisation, money laundering and corruption, and are all in pre-trial detention. Belgian prosecutors only gave their initials but sources close to the investigation confirm they are:

* Eva Kaili: a Greek socialist politician who was one of the European Parliament's 14 vice presidents until mid-December when she was removed from that post over the allegations.

Her Greek socialist PASOK party has expelled her from and Greece has frozen her Greek property.

She has denied any wrongdoing through her lawyers.

* Pier Antonio Panzeri: a former European Parliament member from Italy's centre-left and founder of non-profit group Fight Impunity. Panzeri's lawyer did not reply to requests to comment. Fight Impunity has not responded to a request for comment.

Belgium also submitted European arrest warrants for his wife and daughter in Italy on suspicion of taking part in Panzeri's alleged activities .

Both have denied any involvement.

* Francesco Giorgi: Kaili's partner who is a parliamentary assistant. His LinkedIn account says he is a founder of Fight Impunity and that his specialist areas as a policy adviser are foreign affairs, human rights and the Middle East.

According to two sources with direct knowledge of the matter, Giorgi admitted to Belgian investigators that he took bribes to influence European Parliament decisions and sought to exonerate Kaili.

Giorgi's lawyer said he is currently not commenting on his case.

* Niccolo Figa-Talamanca: an Italian lobbyist and secretary-general of human rights and rule of law campaign group No Peace Without Justice. Prosecutors say the group was used by the suspects to funnel money paid by a Middle Eastern country to buy influence in EU institutions.

Figa-Talamanca could not be reached for comment.

No Peace Without Justice has said he had suspended himself from his role to safeguard the organisation and that the group trusted the investigation would show he had acted correctly.

The European Parliament said on Jan. 2 it had begun a procedure to waive the immunity of two other MEPs after a request from Belgian judiciary.

Sources close to the investigation said both were named by Giorgi and that the MEPs were:

* Marc Tarabella: a Belgian socialist MEP and vice-chair of the parliament’s delegation for relations with the Arab Peninsula.

Tarabella's lawyer Maxim Toller said his client, who denied wrongdoing, was in favour of being stripped of his immunity.

*Andrea Cozzolino: an Italian MEP who worked directly with Francesco Giorgi, the latter being one of his parliamentary assistants.

Cozzolino did not respond to efforts to contact him for comment.

($1 = 0.9420 euros)

(Reporting by Charlotte Van Campenhout and Philip Blenkinsop, additional reporting by Renee Maltezou in Athens; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)

KRIMINAL KAPITALISM; OLIGARCH

Roman Abramovich transferred superyachts and private jets worth $4 billion to his children just before the Ukraine invasion, report says

Jyoti Mann
Jan 8, 2023,

Roman Abramovich is worth more than $7 billion, according to Bloomberg.

Laurence Griffiths/Getty Images

Roman Abramovich transferred assets to his children before the Ukraine invasion, per The Guardian.

The oligarch's assets included properties, superyachts, helicopters, and private jets.

He owns at least 10 more yachts than was previously known, per the report.

Roman Abramovich's assets including luxury properties, superyachts, helicopters and private jets, were transferred to his children weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine, The Guardian reported.

Ten offshore trusts that hold assets belonging to the sanctioned Russian oligarch were amended in February 2022, according to leaked files revealed by the newspaper.

Assets worth more than $4 billion were transferred to his seven children only three weeks before the start of the war, the report said. The longtime associate of Russian President Vladimir Putin was sanctioned by the UK and European Union in March.

His children's beneficial interest in the trust's assets – including the Eclipse superyacht worth $700 million and shares in Russian companies – rose from 51% to 100%, per the report.

In addition to his six yachts worth more than $1 billion, it was revealed that Abramovich owns at least 10 more yachts and vessels via offshore companies, Forbes reported, citing files it obtained alongside the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project.

The shuffling of assets were detailed in hacked files from Cypriot company MeritServus, which managed the former Chelsea FC owner's finances for two decades, per the reports.

Demetris Ioannides, the chairman of MeritSevus, didn't respond to The Guardian's requests for comment but said: "The paramount responsibility of a trustee is to protect the assets of a trust."

Companies controlled by Abramovich's trusts had assets worth $2.5 billion at the end of 2021, per the reports.

The oligarch's net wealth has increased by $72 million in the year to date, according to Bloomberg's Billionaires Index, to more than $7 billion.

Abramovich seemingly reorganized other assets just weeks before the invasion of Ukraine. He transferred ownership of two private jets in February worth $400 million to his children via two trusts that control a web of shell companies, an FBI agent claimed in June.

Abramovich also tried to sell a property 15 days before the invasion, but was stopped by Portuguese authorities who froze the asset. Three months after being hit by sanctions, the billionaire sold Chelsea football club for $5.3 billion after owning the club for 19 years.

Representatives for Abramovich did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider.

CRIMINAL CRYPTO CAPITAL$M

SEC charges Genesis, Gemini with

selling unregistered securities

Jennifer Schonberger

·Senior Reporter

Thu, January 12, 2023

The Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday charged Genesis Global Capital and Gemini, the cryptocurrency exchange founded by Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, for selling unregistered securities to investors through Gemini's Earn crypto asset lending program.

The SEC alleges the Gemini Earn program constituted an offer and sale of securities under SEC law, raising billions of dollars of crypto assets from hundreds of thousands of investors, and should have registered with the SEC.

"We allege that Genesis and Gemini offered unregistered securities to the public, bypassing disclosure requirements designed to protect investors," SEC Chair Gary Gensler said in a statement.

"Today’s charges build on previous actions to make clear to the marketplace and the investing public that crypto lending platforms and other intermediaries need to comply with our time-tested securities laws. Doing so best protects investors. It promotes trust in markets. It’s not optional. It’s the law."

According to the complaint, in December 2020, Genesis entered into an agreement with Gemini to offer Gemini customers the ability to loan their crypto assets to Genesis in exchange for interest payments.

Beginning in February 2021, Genesis and Gemini began offering the program to investors.

Gemini facilitated the transaction and deducted for itself an agent fee, sometimes as high as 4.29%, from the returns it received from Genesis, according to the SEC.

The SEC alleges Genesis then exercised its discretion in how to use investors' crypto assets to generate revenue and pay interest to investors.

Last November, Genesis, which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Barry Silbert's Digital Currency Group (DCG), announced it would pause withdrawals on its lending platform as it lacked sufficient liquidity to meet requests amid volatility in the crypto market in the wake of FTX's collapse. At the time Genesis held approximately $900 million Gemini customer deposits, which remain frozen on the platform.

The SEC's announcement comes as Genesis and Gemini have been engaged in a war of words, with Cameron Winklevoss earlier this week calling for DCG CEO Barry Silbert to step down and accusing Silbert and others at DCG of making "false statements and misrepresentations to Gemini."

Cameron Winklevoss, co-founder of crypto exchange Gemini Trust Co., attends the crypto-currency conference Bitcoin 2021 Convention at the Mana Convention Center in Miami, Florida, on June 4, 2021. (Photo by Marco BELLO / AFP) (Photo by MARCO BELLO/AFP via Getty Images)

Investigations continue

“The recent collapse of crypto asset lending programs and the suspension of Genesis’ program underscore the critical need for platforms offering securities to retail investors to comply with the federal securities laws,” said Gurbir Grewal, Director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement. “As we’ve seen time and again, the failure to do so denies investors the basic information they need to make informed investment decisions.

Investigations into other securities law violations and other entities and persons relating to alleged misconduct are ongoing, according to the SEC.

Grewal encouraged anyone with information about this case or others to come forward and, if necessary, do so under the SEC’s Whistleblower Program.

The SEC is filing a litigated action and part of the requested relief from the Federal District Court will be a monetary civil penalty, plus disgorgement of any ill gotten gains.

The SEC’s action comes after investors brought a class action lawsuit against Gemini, alleging they were duped into investing in the exchange's interest-bearing accounts without being informed that they were unregistered securities.

Gensler has warned for months the agency would take enforcement action if firms didn't comply with SEC rules.

Gensler told Yahoo Finance in an interview in December he has one goal when it comes to regulating crypto markets in 2023: Make crypto exchanges and lending platforms come into compliance with existing rules.

"They can do that appropriately, working with the SEC, or we can continue on a course with more enforcement actions, and I would have to say that the runway's getting shorter," Gensler said.