Sunday, April 18, 2021



The cost of a single tulip bulb surged to the same price as 
a mansion 400 years ago: 
Are NFTs the ‘tulipmania’ of the 21st century?

Similarities between the new digital technology craze in the art world and the surge in value of tulips in 17th-century Holland suggest that it could all end in (real) tears


SCOTT REYBURN
16th April 2021
THE ART NEWSPAPER

At tulipmania’s peak in 17th-century Holland, specimens cost the same as a mansion Norton Simon Art Foundation

It is not often that the commercial churn of the art world produces a moment that feels truly seismic. Plenty of people thought that moment had come on 11 March when the digital artist Beeple’s non-fungible token (NFT) sold at Christie’s in an online auction for $69.3m, a price far higher than anything yet paid for works by canonical greats such as Georgia O’Keeffe, Eugene Delacroix, Francisco Goya, Jackson Pollock and Marcel Duchamp.

For the first time, Christie’s accepted payment in Ethereum cryptocurrency—including for its own fees. The work, which has no physical existence, was bought by Metakovan, a pseudonymous crypto investor who already owns numerous Beeple works, for 42,329.453 Ether, including Christie’s buyer’s premium.

“It’s like Duchamp. We’re dealing with the same kind of conceptual leap,” says Candace Worth, a New York-based art adviser. “Are we just the wrong generation?” adds an uncomprehending Worth, who wonders whether Beeple’s jpeg could turn out to be the 21st-century equivalent of Duchamp’s Fountain readymade, which proved equally baffling when first exhibited in 1917.

Beeple’s Everydays: The First 5000 Days was a digital collage of all the images he had posted online since 2007. NFTs are essentially digital files in which authenticity and ownership are certified, at considerable environmental expense, by blockchain computer networks. They can turn almost anything into a virtual collectible: cars, tweets, land, sneakers, music, even video clips of basketball shots. During the past few months, these tokens have been traded at heady prices on specialist platforms by speculators who have made digital fortunes from cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. The aggregate value of this virtual money has soared to more than $1trn after backing from Elon Musk’s Tesla group, hedge funds and other major investors.

As a stunned analogue art world is now realising, the crypto-wealthy are paying the headiest prices of all for NFT art. As well as tokens by Beeple, CryptoPunks, a collection of 10,000 algorithm-generated characters made since 2017 by Larva Labs, have also been selling at mind-altering levels. On 11 March, Punk no. 7804, one of only nine rare “alien” CryptoPunks, sold for 4,200 Ether, around $7.5m at the time.

That price, given for a computer file containing a Space Invader-like image comprising just 576 pixels, was way above the latest auction highs for works by in-demand analogue artists such as Amoako Boafo and Matthew Wong. Just three years earlier, Punk no. 7804 had sold for 12 Ether, or about $15,000.


Taking the pixel: Larva Labs’s Punk no. 7804 sold for around $7.5m last month Larva Labs

“In 30 years, I’ve never seen such a reaction in the art world. It’s nothing less than an earthquake,” says the New York-based writer, collector, dealer and NFT convert Kenny Schachter, who in recent months has himself become a successful digital token artist, selling more than $200,000 of works on Nifty Gateway, the online sales platform owned by the Bitcoin billionaire twins, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss. “This is a whole new audience. They don’t know about the art world, and they don’t care about it,” Schachter says.

Do NFTs represent a truly significant cultural shift? Or is this just the speculative madness of the crypto-crowd, like the mania for tulips in the mid-1630s or South Sea Company stock in 1720?

Christine Bourron, the chief executive of the London-based art market analysts Pi-eX, has a simple explanation. “Ether has gone from $100 a year ago to $1,800. A group of people have become millionaires and billionaires in cryptocurrency,” Bourron says. “It’s very complicated to turn it back into dollars or another fiat currency, and they don’t have many options for spending their ether.” And NFTs are one of those few options.



Ether is the key

Bourron also points out that the Christie’s Beeple sale of one NFT grossed 44% more than the $48m the auction house had turned over from all its January and February auctions combined, comprising some 3,000 lots.

No wonder auction houses, along with others in the analogue art world, suddenly see NFTs as financial El Dorado. This is art that is made online, viewed online, bought online and owned online, incurring no transportation, storage, photography or insurance costs. And it makes huge prices. What’s not to like?

Well, the problem is that most NFT art, like Beeple’s Everydays is traded in Ether, a highly volatile cryptocurrency that is not widely accepted for consumer payments.

“Many cryptocurrency payment apps have been created in recent years to promote its use,” Chi Lo, an economist at BNP Paribas, recently pointed out in Investors’ Corner, the official blog of the French bank’s asset management division. “But none of them has made it to the core of the world’s daily transactions and payments, except for some underworld transactions.”

The value of an NFT work, having no physical existence, is umbilically dependent on the price of Ethereum. If Ether is on a high, then Ether art is on a high. It’s all about the digital money.

“Christie’s auction wouldn’t have been a success if it hadn’t accepted Ether,” Bourron says. “That was the key.”

For the moment at least, with the price of Ether having more than doubled since the beginning of the year, it is onwards and upwards for NFT art.

Sotheby’s collaborated with the digital artist Pak on an NFT sale this week that totalled $16.8m. In a statement, the auction house said that ultimately it is “looking to expand upon this first venture in the months to come with new ideas and concepts, such as introducing well-known contemporary artists into the digital art space”.


500 cubes from Pak's Fungible collection Courtesy of Sotheby's and Pak

Buy an NFT, get a painting free

The potential of using cryptocurrency to lever the price of analogue works of art has also been spotted by Mintable, a specialist online NFT marketplace. In March, Mintable held what it billed as the “greatest NFT auction ever”, consisting of Abstract Composition (around 1925) by the Russian avant-garde artist Wladimir Baranoff-RossinĂ© and an accompanying digital certificate to be purchased in Ether.

The choice of a work by Baranoff-Rossiné as the focus of this seven-day hybrid offering might have struck many in the mainstream art world as a bold move. Russian avant-garde art is a sector of the market notorious for the proliferation of fakes, many of which carry bogus provenance and certificates of authentication.

The possibilities of this kind of buy-an-NFT, get-real-art-free (Bangraf) offer are virtually endless, given the $1trn of digital cash looking for something to buy.

If, for instance, Christie’s had offered all of those 3,000 analogue lots it auctioned in January and February with accompanying digital tokens, purchasable in Ether, then maybe they might have sold for $4.8bn, rather than a paltry $48m. Admittedly the blockchain computing of that many NFT transactions would use energy equivalent to the average daily consumption of 6,000 American homes, but it would at least transform the auction house’s Covid-battered turnover figures.

It is surely this kind of combination and confusion of the crypto and analogue that represents the biggest threat to the equilibrium of the wider art economy.

Back in January 1637 in Holland, at the height of tulipmania, a single bulb of the most coveted Semper Augustus flower had an asking price of 10,000 guilders—the cost of a mansion in one of Amsterdam’s smartest districts. The market for the colourful flowers collapsed the following month, leading to prices falling by as much as 90%.

Five years later in Amsterdam, Rembrandt was paid about 1,600 guilders by a company of musketeers, the Kloveniersdoelen, to paint his monumental masterpiece, The Night Watch, now in the Rijksmuseum.

Though plenty of wonderful paintings of flowers were made and sold in Holland in the 17th century, the markets for flowers and art remained distinct. In the 21st century, societies are under enormous economic and cultural pressure to regard digital technology as the solution to everything. To be sure, new technology has brought us enormous benefits, but certain aspects, such as speculation in cryptocurrencies, also bring risk. The Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, writing in the New York Times, has called Bitcoin “a bubble wrapped in techno-mysticism inside a cocoon of libertarian ideology”.

Selling tangible works of art in virtual currencies could well end in tears. And they won’t be digital.
What a Deb Haaland-led Interior Department may mean for Colorado’s public lands

Many are expecting some major policy shifts


Colorado Public Radio
12:30 AM MDT on Apr 18, 2021

Interior Sec. Deb Haaland talks with a small group of supporters, who waited in the rain, to welcome her on her second day as Secretary of the Interior, March 18, 2021. (Caitlyn Kim/CPR News)


By Caitlyn Kim, CPR News

On Interior Secretary Deb Haaland’s second day on the job, a small group of supporters parked a video screen outside the department’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., to flash messages of encouragement and thanks. Under a light rain, Haaland — the first Native American secretary of the Interior — came out for a look.

“I’m so humbled by the opportunity that President Biden has given me,” she said.There are a lot of expectations riding on Haaland’s shoulders. In Colorado, where almost a third of the land is federally owned, the Department of the Interior can have an outsized influence.

It is required to consider multiple uses for the lands it owns — juggling fossil fuel development, recreation, conservation, ranching and much more. But different administrations often have different priorities, which changes up how multiple uses are balanced. During former President Donald Trump’s term, a goal of ‘energy dominance’ drove a push to open more public lands to production. So far, the Biden administration has signaled it’s ready to move in a very different direction.

Haaland touched on this tension in management priorities at a virtual forum on the future of oil and gas development on public lands.

“Now is the time for all of us to have a frank conversation about the future of our shared resources,” she said. “I will not pretend that this moment of reflection will be easy, or that we have all the right answers. But I can promise you that I will listen to you, and I will be honest and transparent.”

So, what does this mean for Colorado? Many are expecting some major policy shifts.

Advocates in the conservation and environmental world in Colorado are excited about the administration’s change in focus to include climate change and environmental justice. And they strongly support Biden’s 30 by 30 plan — conserving 30 percent of U.S. land by 2030.
Deb Haaland (congressional photo)

Scott Braden, director of the Colorado Wildlands Project, calls it “a new day and a chance to really rebalance.”

He wants to see legislative initiatives like the Colorado public lands bill, the CORE Act, move through Congress. A compendium of public lands bills passed the U.S. House earlier this year but has not made much progress so far in the Senate.

“Is Deb Haaland going to be good for Colorado and our public lands and environmental and climate issues? I think absolutely and I think she’ll be keyed into the issues that folks in our state care about,” said Will Roush, executive director of the Wilderness Workshop, a public lands watchdog organization based out of Carbondale.

Roush said the discussion about possible reform of the oil and natural gas leasing system on public lands is long overdue.

“We’re not pretending there won’t be folks who object to it. At the same time, I think it’s great to see the administration — you know they ran on these issues and now they’re acting on them. And that seems to be the right move.”

The most concrete — and controversial — move President Joe Biden has made so far with public lands is his executive order temporarily halting oil and gas leasing, signed as part of a slate of orders addressing climate change.

The Western Energy Alliance has sued to undo it, as have a number of states. Colorado has not joined that lawsuit.

Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Western Energy Alliance, said she’s glad to hear Haaland say “the right things” about oil and gas remaining part of the US energy mix. Sgamma said royalties from oil and natural gas on federal lands help pay for conservation efforts through the Land and Water Conservation Fund, and more importantly, the law requires land managers to sell leases for appropriate areas.

But because of the lack of a timeline for the pause, Sgamma fears Biden’s temporary leasing halt is anything but.

“When you start to look at the impacts of those policies in the west,” she said, “it looks like it’s a sacrifice of Western jobs and economic opportunity to satisfy the environmental left.”  
  
North Apostle, West Apostle and more of the Sawatch range visible through a curtain of smoke from Taylor Park Reservoir on August 17, 2020. (Eric Lubbers, The Colorado Sun)

Sgamma points to an industry-funded study that shows Colorado could lose $586 million a year if the leasing moratorium stretches out for all of Biden’s first term. The state might also lose thousands of jobs — most of that felt in the Western Slope.

Haaland’s support for the Green New Deal during her time in Congress has made her a target of some Republicans, including Colorado Rep. Doug Lamborn who said via a tweet that Haaland is “an extremist.” But Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet is confident that Haaland will strike a balance similar to the approach Colorado has taken in recent years.

“I think if we’re going to continue oil and gas development on our public lands, then we need to do it the right way,” Bennet explained, “with high standards and low emissions and with individuals and local governments having a say in the process. I believe that’s what Colorado wants and I think that’s what Secretary Haaland will deliver.”

Like many previous Interior secretaries, including Coloradans David Bernhardt and Ken Salazar, Haaland is a Westerner. But unlike her predecessors, she also brings a tribal perspective to the table as a member of the Laguna Pueblo.

Bennet said he’s heard from leaders of the Southern Ute and the Ute Mountain Ute that they are excited about a future Haaland visit to listen to their concerns and priorities. Last week, Haaland traveled to Utah to meet with tribal leaders and others about the future of two contested National Monuments.

Ernest House Jr. is also looking forward to having different voices heard when it comes to public lands.

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House wears many hats: senior policy director for the Keystone Policy Center, a board member of Conservation Colorado and a member of the Ute Mountain Ute tribe.

“The consultation is really the big effort and opportunity, to intently listen, to bridge the gaps and meet with all the stakeholders at the table and ensure that the right voices are around the table. And I think that’s what she’ll bring to the position,” House said.

After the Trump administration, House also wants benchmarks for the Biden administration to be set high.

“We have taken so many steps back, in my opinion,” he explained, “So I think there’s so much we need to get back on track. We have lost time and we’re trying to make up for that time.”

But calls for action by some groups inevitably bring up concerns for others. For example, any new or expanded wilderness designations could come at the expense of grazing permit holders.

Still, if Coloradans hope Haaland keeps an open mind, many of them are keeping an open mind about a Haaland-led Interior.

Mark Roeber is a fourth-generation rancher whose family has been grazing cows and calves on public lands in west-central Colorado since before they were public lands. He’s also vice president of the Public Lands Council, an advocacy group for grazing leaseholders.

“We’ll just have to see how it goes. I’m not going to put out a verdict yet. but we are hopeful,” he said.

Roeber said he’s a strong advocate for multiple uses on public lands and he wants that to continue. He said ranchers see themselves as part of the solution, not the problem, when it comes to issues like climate change or 30-by-30, but it means having conversations and keeping an open mind about possible solutions.

He wants the Interior Department, regardless of who leads it or what administration is in the White House, to work in partnership with different stakeholders.

Democratic Sen. Bennet agrees, adding a balanced approach is all Coloradans are looking for. He’s hopeful that will be reflected in discussions about keeping BLM headquarters in Grand Junction or the future of the controversial Trump-era Uncompahgre Resource Management Plan, which Colorado and other groups are suing to invalidate.

“Our public lands are a national treasure,” Bennet said. “And we’ve got to take care of them because, I think, we’ve got a moral responsibility to pass [them] on to the next generation of Coloradans and Americans, just like our parents and grandparents passed them on to us.
 

 

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland

WASHINGTON — U.S. Dept. of the Interior Secretary Deb Haaland on Friday issued two Secretarial Orders that will prioritize action on climate change throughout the Department.

The first Secretarial Order, SO 3399, establishes a Climate Task Force to coordinate work across the Interior Department, including accelerating renewable energy development and identifying actions to foster investments in energy communities. The Order also provides guidance on how science should be used in the decision-making process and improves transparency and public engagement in the Department’s decision-making process. 

One key component of SO 3399 is the directive for the Interior Department to engage with tribes to seek their input through tribal consultation. The Order says, “Tribal consultation is a means to rectify this by recognizing the government-to-government relationship and considering Tribal interests in decision making.”

The Order additionally provides policy instruction to ensure that the level of National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) analysis across DOI bureaus is not diminished, that climate change is appropriately analyzed, and that Tribes and environmental justice communities are appropriately engaged.  

"From day one, President Biden was clear that we must take a whole-of-government approach to tackle the climate crisis, strengthen the economy, and address environmental justice,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said. “At the Department of the Interior, I believe we have a unique opportunity to make our communities more resilient to climate change and to help lead the transition to a clean energy economy. These steps will align the Interior Department with the President’s priorities and better position the team to be a part of the climate solution.” 

The second Secretarial Order, SO 3398, seeks to rectify the reckless Secretarial Orders issued during the Trump administration. SO 3398 revokes a series of Secretarial Orders issued in recent years that are inconsistent with the Department’s commitment to protect public health; conserve land, water, and wildlife; and elevate science. Collectively, those Orders tilted the balance of public land and ocean management without regard for climate change, equity, or community engagement. The new Order does not impact the Interior Department’s ongoing review of proposals for oil, gas, coal, and renewable energy development on public lands and waters.

“I know that signing Secretarial Orders alone won’t address the urgency of the climate crisis. But I’m hopeful that these steps will help make clear that we, as a Department, have a mandate to act,” added Secretary Haaland. “With the vast experience, talent, and ingenuity of our public servants at the Department of the Interior, I’m optimistic about what we can accomplish together to care for our natural resources for the benefit of current and future generations.” 

Interior head Haaland revokes Trump-era orders on energy


BY MATTHEW DALY ASSOCIATED PRESS
APRIL 16, 2021


In this April 6, 2021, file photo, U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland listens to tribal leaders and jots down notes during a round-table discussion at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center in Albuquerque, N.M. Secretary Haaland will visit Utah this week before submitting a review on national monuments in the state. She's expected to submit a report to President Joe Biden after she meets with tribes and elected leaders at Bears Ears National Monument on Thursday, April 8, 2021. (AP Photo/Susan Montoya Bryan, File) SUSAN MONTOYA BRYAN AP


WASHINGTON

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland on Friday revoked a series of Trump administration orders that promoted fossil fuel development on public lands and waters, and issued a separate directive that prioritizes climate change in agency decisions.

The moves are part of a government-wide effort by the Biden administration to address climate change ahead of a virtual global summit on climate change that President Joe Biden is hosting next week.

“From day one, President Biden was clear that we must take a whole-of-government approach to tackle the climate crisis, strengthen the economy and address environmental justice,” Haaland said in a statement. The new orders will “make our communities more resilient to climate change and ... help lead the transition to a clean energy economy,'' she added.


The orders revoke Trump-era directives that boosted coal, oil and gas leasing on federal lands and promoted what Trump called “energy dominance” in the United States. Haaland also rescinded a Trump administration order intended to increase oil drilling in Alaska's National Petroleum Reserve.

Haaland called the orders by her predecessors, Ryan Zinke and David Bernhardt, “inconsistent with the department’s commitment to protect public health; conserve land, water, and wildlife; and elevate science.''

Collectively, the previous orders “tilted the balance of public land and ocean management without regard for climate change, equity or community engagement,'' Haaland said.

The new orders do not affect Interior's ongoing review of proposals for oil, gas, coal and renewable energy development on public lands and waters, she said.

Environmental groups heralded the orders and pledged to work with Haaland to ensure Interior Department decisions are guided by science and respect for Indigenous communities, wildlife, outdoor recreation and other uses.

More than 25% of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions originate on public lands, and Interior has “unrivaled opportunities to restore natural carbon sinks, responsibly deploy clean energy and reduce existing emissions,'' said Collin O’Mara, president and CEO of the National Wildlife Federation.

“Rescinding the previous administration’s orders that encouraged unfettered drilling in ecologically and culturally sensitive areas and establishing a climate task force will help ensure wise management of our natural resources for people and wildlife alike,'' O'Mara said.

One of the orders issued by Haaland cancels a 2017 action that revoked a moratorium on federal coal reserve sales that had been imposed under President Barack Obama to deal with climate change.

Agency spokeswoman Melissa Schwartz said Friday’s move does not automatically resurrect the coal moratorium. “Today’s announcement does not take any action on coal development. We are continuing to review an appropriate path going forward,” she said.

The coal moratorium brought a sharp backlash by Republicans, who said it was evidence of a “war on coal” by Obama and other Democrats. The moratorium had little practical effect, however, since interest among companies in leasing large tracts of federal land dried up when coal markets collapsed over the last decade amid competition with cheaper natural gas.

The American Petroleum Institute, the oil industry's top lobbying group, warned that policies aimed at slowing or stopping oil and natural gas production on federal lands and waters could harm national security, environmental progress and the economy.

“Banning or greatly hindering federal leasing ... would threaten decades of American energy and climate progress and return us to greater reliance on foreign energy with lower environmental standards,'' said Kevin O’Scannlain, an API vice president.

NEWLY OBTAINED EMAILS INCLUDE PRIVATE-SECTOR EXECUTIVES’ PANDEMIC-RELATED COMMUNICATIONS WITH KUSHNER, MNUCHIN

PUBLISH DATE: APRIL 9, 2021

In March 2020, then-President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner took on a major role in key aspects of the coronavirus response, despite a lack of related experience and expertise. Kushner’s task force, which relied on private companies to address challenges such as testing and medical-supply shortages, raised questions about undue influence and created confusion among federal officials who were uncertain about the roles of Kushner’s private-sector team members. At the time, Politico reported that “the scope of his authority now exceeds that of Health Secretary Alex Azar.”

American Oversight previously published documents that showed communications Kushner and other top officials had with executives of private companies during the early months of the pandemic. American Oversight has now obtained additional records that show the potential influence wielded by members of the private sector as well as their easy access to top officials, including Kushner and then-Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, in the spring of 2020. 

On March 15, 2020, Nat Turner, the CEO of Flatiron Health, sent an “Updated deck on social distancing recommendations” to Kushner as well as to then-Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield and then-White House Coronavirus Coordinator Deborah Birx. Turner, like Adam Boehler, another task force member, had previously invested in Oscar Health, a company founded and run by Kushner’s brother. 

Also on March 15, biotech billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong sent an email to Mnuchin with the subject line, “Executive order to save lives.” Soon-Shiong has been criticized by medical professionals for his brash public persona and tendency to exaggerate the success of his medical technology, and was reportedly considered by Trump prior to Trump’s inauguration as a potential head of the National Institutes of Health. Mnuchin forwarded Soon-Shiong’s email to multiple White House officials, including Kushner.

The documents also include an exchange, forwarded to Mnuchin on March 16, between Vidar Jorgensen, the chairman of the World Health Care Congress, and Alfredo Ortiz, the CEO of the Job Creators Network, who has ties to Trump. Jorgensen had sent an email to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, outlining his concerns about the “overcentralization of the SBA process,” referring to the Small Business Administration. Gingrich looped in Ortiz, who wrote: “We share your exact same concerns and agree. I believe we have a solution which we will be sharing with the Treasury Secretary later today.” 

Jorgensen said he supported Ortiz’s solutions, and emphasized that the president should promote “more freedom and lower regulation.” After the emails were forwarded to him, Mnuchin asked Brent McIntosh, Treasury’s undersecretary for international affairs, to work on “helping SBA” that same day. 

Also on March 16, Mnuchin forwarded Kushner an email from Ortiz: “Here is an idea we had we wanted to share with you. The small business loan idea is being finalized and I will send to you later this morning.” 

The documents include other instances in which private-sector executives reached Kushner through Mnuchin. On March 15, Mnuchin forwarded Kushner an email from Sen. Lamar Alexander that said that Jimmy Haslam, the owner of the Cleveland Browns and then the CEO of Pilot Flying J truck stops, wanted “to volunteer parking space at many of those sites for testing truckers. He says truckers need to be on the road so people can get the things that they need during this slow down.” 

The same day, Robert Vitale, the CEO Of Post Holdings, referenced a call with “Trump, Pence, Mnuchin, and Perdue” and offered suggestions about how to preserve supply chains. 

PARASITOLOGY
LEVIN REPORT
JARED KUSHNER AND IVANKA TRUMP ARE ALREADY WORKING ON THEIR NEXT GRIFT

The duo is advising a new group with “the mission of perpetuating former president Trump’s populist policies.”


BY BESS LEVIN APRIL 13, 2021
VANITY FAIR, HIVE
PARASITES AT NUREMBURG
Attending a joint news conference with German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, in the East Room of the White House.BY ANDREW HARNIK/A.P. IMAGES.

Since departing Washington for Miami back in January, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner have maintained relatively low profiles. Oh, sure, Kushner penned an op-ed in which he offered Joe Biden some unsolicited foreign policy advice, and Trump has made herself readily available for the paparazzi to catch her jogging with Kushner, eating ice cream with her kids, and pointing at things with her assistant. But otherwise, it’s been unusually quiet on the Javanka front. And that’s probably by design as the couple attempts to rehab their image and shake off the taint of the last four years in general and the January 6 insurrection specifically, not to mention the unfortunate press that comes after forcing one’s Secret Service detail to go to extreme lengths to “find a bathroom.”

Of course, as a couple of people who see themselves returning to the White House in a presidential capacity—they’ve already determined Trump will be the first woman POTUS—the duo are no doubt planning their next moves behind the scenes, and on Tuesday, one of the projects they’ve been working on was revealed.

Per Axios:

A constellation of [Donald] Trump administration stars today will launch the America First Policy Institute, a 35-person nonprofit group with a first-year budget of $20 million and the mission of perpetuating former president Trump’s populist policies…. Two top Trump alumni tell me AFPI is by far the largest pro-Trump outside group, besides Trump’s own Florida–based machine. In the coming months, the group plans to take a large office space near the U.S. Capitol as a symbol that it’ll fight to be a muscular, well-heeled center of the future of conservatism…. Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump are informal advisers.

The president and CEO is Brooke Rollins, a Texan who was head of Trump’s Domestic Policy Council. Rollins, who met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago last week to update him on plans for the group, told me the group wants to be “dreamers and…risk-takers.” The board chair is Linda McMahon, who was a member of Trump’s Cabinet as the administrator of the Small Business Administration, after winning fame as a pro-wrestling entrepreneur. The vice chair is Larry Kudlow, Trump’s economic adviser, a longtime CNBC personality who's now a Fox Business host. AFPI—now based in the Crystal City area of Arlington, Virginia—has been in the planning stages since December. The group will also have offices in Fort Worth, where Rollins remains based, Miami, and New York. Rollins plans to move the group to Washington to be closer to the action.

Rollins told Axios she hopes the group’s budget will double to $40 million in 2022. It’s not clear how AFPI plans to fundraise, though if it‘s anything like how Trump’s campaign did it, it’ll be wildly underhanded and deceitful. Earlier this month, The New York Times reported that over the course of the 2020 election, Team Trump ripped off unwitting supporters for tens of millions of dollars through a simple yet extremely shady scheme in which the default option for donations authorized the campaign to transfer the pledged amount from people’s bank accounts not once, but every single week. Later, the campaign introduced a second prechecked box that doubled a person’s contribution and was known internally as a “money bomb.” In order for people to have noticed this before it was too late, they would have had to wade through “lines of text in bold and capital letters that overwhelmed the opt-out language,” the Times wrote. Few people did, and in the final two and half months of 2020, the Trump campaign, the Republican National Committee, and their shared accounts were forced to issue a staggering 530,000 refunds worth $64.3 million to online donors. Days later, the Times reported that the political arm of the House Republicans had upped the ante re: bilking supporters, with a truly psychotic prechecked box that warned “If you UNCHECK this box, we will have to tell Trump you’re a DEFECTOR.”


In other Trump fundraising ploys, a significant portion of the money the ex-president’s legal defense fund raised—ostensibly for 2020 election suits—went to his Save America super PAC, which he can tap to pay for all kinds of personal expenses. But we’re sure this group will be entirely above board and legit. Ivanka and Jared would never be involved with something that wasn’t.


Ivanka and Jared Are “Advisers” to New Cash-Flush Right-Wing Think Tank
Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump arrive with family at the Amway Center in Orlando, Florida, on June 18, 2019.JOE BURBANK / ORLANDO SENTINEL / TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE VIA GETTY IMAGES
PUBLISHED April 16, 2021

On Tuesday, it was reported that a group of former advisers to Donald Trump, with Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump’s guidance, would launch a new right-wing nonprofit aimed at “perpetuating former President Trump’s populist policies,” according to Axios. The new foundation is just the latest in a long string of recent announcements about Trump-centered think-tank-style organizations popping up in Washington aimed at doing Trump’s bidding, all while the former president attempts to maintain control of the Republican Party from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.

The new nonprofit America First Policy Institute, which lists Ivanka Trump and Kushner as “informal advisors,” will boast a 35-person crew with an operating budget of $20 million in its first year. In a flashy ad, the group claims it will be “the heart of [an] effort” to save the “soul of this country.”

The group’s noteworthy hires include former Trump economic adviser Larry Kudlow, who will serve as the organization’s vice chair, former Trump Energy Secretary Rick Perry and former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi. “In the coming months, the group plans to take a large office space near the U.S. Capitol as a symbol that it’ll fight to be a muscular, well-heeled center of the future of conservatism,” Axios further reported.

Furthermore, the group seemingly seeks to impact conversations in the nation’s capital the very same way the conservative think-tank heavyweight, The Heritage Foundation, has long done in D.C. policy, potentially sparking a rivalry between the two non-profits. Heritage recently hired former Vice President Mike Pence, but it remains to be seen exactly how it will seek to influence policy on Capitol Hill in a post-Trump era.

Asked by Salon about the new pro-Trump group, Heritage vice president of communications Rob​ Bluey said his organization looks forward to working with America First Policy. “The Heritage Foundation congratulates the talented team at America First Policy Institute and we look forward to working with them on a range of policy issues. Heritage already has strong relationships with many of America First Policy Institute’s leaders, including Brooke Rollins, from their service in the Trump administration,” Bluey told Salon via email on Thursday. “Heritage has a long history of cooperating on policy solutions with conservative organizations. The America First Policy Institute and the other new conservative groups in Washington are welcome allies. It’s more important than ever to work together on positive solutions for the American people while also countering the left-wing agenda from the White House and woke corporations.”

While the America First Policy Institute appears to be the largest and most prominent pro-Trump think tank to emerge since the former president left office, there are a series of other groups in D.C. being launched. Pence announced in early April that he would start his own think tank called Advancing American Freedom, alongside such Trump allies as Kudlow and Kellyanne Conway. “Advancing American Freedom plans to build on the success of the last four years by promoting traditional Conservative values and promoting the successful policies of the Trump Administration,” Pence said in a statement upon the group’s launch.

Another group that looks to shape a post-Trump Washington includes a legal enterprise founded by anti-immigration Trump adviser Stephen Miller, the America First Legal Foundation, which aims to give the Biden administration headaches in the courts. “Those who believe in America First must not shy away from using our legal system to defend our society and our families from any unlawful actions by the left,” Miller said in a statement on the group’s launch. “Those looking to hold the new administration in Washington to account finally have their answer. Our self-imposed policy of legal disarmament is now over.” Miller’s group says it will aim to hamstring the Democratic agenda by creating a coalition of attorneys and state attorney generals dedicated to stalling or stopping Biden’s policies from being implemented.

The new Trump organizations come on the heels of the apparent collapse of Charlie Kirk and Jerry Falwell Jr.’s Falkirk Center at Liberty University, amid the growing scandal around Falwell that has driven away Kirk and several other pro-Trump figures. “Now, less than two years later, Falkirk’s high-profile founders are gone, and Liberty is rethinking the center’s future in a post-Trump world,” The New York Times reported.

Although The Falkirk Center claimed to be a conservative think tank, it has operated more as a communications firm, fixated on cable news hits on Fox News and having its “Falkirk fellows” promote the center on social media. That said, it often appears that right-wing media is precisely where conservative discussions of policy occur, although often boiled down to the most simplistic and incendiary talking points.

This piece was reprinted by Truthout

Zachary Petrizzo  is a staff writer at Salon. He previously covered politics at Mediaite and The Daily Dot. Follow him on Twitter: @ZTPetrizzo.
Secret Facebook pages for elite military members are full of QAnon conspiracies and calls to murder officials: report

Sky Palma
April 16, 2021

Shutterstock

Secret Facebook groups exclusively for special operations forces that were accessed by NBC News show members posting debunked claims about the 2020 election, racist rhetoric, and even QAnon conspiracy theories, NBC News reports.

One Facebook post in a forum shows a member of a special forces group complaining that several aides to former Vice President Mike Pence were part of a "Concerted effort by the thieves and pedophiles walking the hallowed halls of the peoples government" to undermine former President Donald Trump, according to NBC News.

"In a just world, they would have already been taken out behind the court house and shot," a member commented.
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"Trump was sabotaged once again!" a member of US Special Forces Team Room wrote Jan. 7 about the Capitol riot, adding that "trying to get to the bottom of the obvious election fraud now looks like it doesn't have a chance."

Former Army Ranger and Green Beret says that the story of "radicalization in special operations is a story that needs to be told."

"It has shocked and horrified me to see what's happened to these guys in the last five or six years," he said.

Extremism in the military has been a closely watched phenomenon, especially after the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. But as NBC News points out, it's especially worrying to see such high levels of America's military being vulnerable to such corrosive ideologies.

According to former Green Beret Robert Wilson, members of these forums "are radicalizing themselves online, just like many of these lone-wolf ISIS terrorists did."

"It's a problem, and it's an internal threat to the United States," said Wilson, who was counterterrorism director on the National Security Council during the Obama and Trump administrations.

Read the full report over at NBC News.

QAnon Has Some Truly Unhinged Theories About Prince Philip’s Death

The Duke of Edinburgh died of natural causes, but QAnon believers are sharing the rumor that he died as a result of being vaccinated against COVID-19.

By David Gilbert

The bombshell news last weekend revealing the real identity of Q and the revelation that Matt Gaetz is reportedly being investigated for child sex trafficking barely registered a blip inside the QAnon conspiracy movement. But the death of a member of the British royal family from natural causes at the age of 99? Now that’s something to get excited about.

Within minutes of the announcement from Buckingham Palace that the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Philip, had died peacefully in Windsor Castle on Friday morning, QAnon followers began flooding their online message boards and groups with thousands of messages.

Many of them were displaying glee and excitement over the prince’s death, and many more were crudely predicting that Queen Elizabeth would be next to die, following the death of her husband of 73 years.

But those posts were quickly replaced by a vast array of unhinged conspiracy theories about Prince Philip’s death, including the increasingly popular claim that he died as a result of recently being vaccinated against COVID-19.

Conspiracies like claims he had already died a long time ago, or that he had been executed, or that his death was a distraction for some other nefarious activity, or that he died of an “adrenochrome shortage” were all spread quickly on fringe websites like Gab, Telegram and the QAnon-focused message board the Great Awakening.

QAnon followers have long been fascinated by the Royal Family.

“The British Royal Family has of course long been a subject of interest to QAnon followers: on the one hand because they represent the elite—their sworn enemies—and on the other because of the types of actually credible accusations that have been made over the years against some members of the Royal Family, such as with Prince Andrew and his involvement with convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein,” Nick Backovic, a researcher with Logically, a fact-checking group that tracks QAnon, told VICE News.


QAnon typically latches onto major world events to search for links to its own core conspiracy mythos, typically by finding links between real-world events and the messages posted by Q, the anonymous leader of the movement—just as it did last month when the Ever Given container ship got stuck in the Suez Canal.

Q has not posted a new message—or “Q Drops,” as they’re known—in over four months, so followers need to rely on the back catalog of almost 5,000 Q Drops that have been written since late 2017.

Typically what followers try to do is come up with proofs that feature “deltas” or anniversaries of older posts.

Which is exactly what Mel Q, an influential QAnon promoter, did in this post, which tries to link the Prince’s death to a Q drop written exactly a year ago:


This so-called “proof” attempts to link the Prince’s death to a Q Drop through the use of the term “scot free,” which Mel Q says is a reference to the Prince being called the Duke of Edinburgh, a city in Scotland.

Another “proof” being widely shared on Telegram attempts to link the death to Q through the term “bridge” which was a phrase often used in Q’s posts. The link this time is that the funeral plans for Prince Philip’s funeral were known as Operation Forth Bridge. The Queen’s funeral plans are known as Operation London Bridge.

Another Telegram user flagged that the Prince died on the 9th aged 99, and what number do you get when you turn 999 upside down? That’s right, 666.


But as tenuous as these “proofs” are, others in the QAnon world went much further, writing down the first thing that came into their head — and in the case of one poster on the QAnon-focused Great Awakening message board, it was this: “Adrenochrome supply got held up in Suez Canal and unfortunately Prince Pompous Philip permanently fainted.”

Adrenochrome is the chemical that QAnon followers believe a group of elites around the world are collecting from the blood of tortured children and that they subsequently drink to prolong their lives.

The Passion of the Christ’s Jesus Christ Thinks Celebrities Are Harvesting Children’s Adrenaline
OY AND IF HE AIN'T A CELEBRITY WHO IS
Jim Caviezel is a card-carrying member of QAnon

Jim Caviezel in The Passion of the Christ

Alex Young
April 17, 2021

Who had Jesus from The Passion of the Christ becoming a card-carrying member of QAnon, subscribing to the batshit crazy conspiracy theory that celebrities are torturing and harvesting children for their adrenaline, on their 2021 Bingo card?

As TheWrap points out, actor Jim Caviezel, who portrayed the titular character in Mel Gibson’s 2004 biblical blockbuster, appeared alongside other QAnon luminaries like Michael Flynn, Lin Wood, Sidney Powell, and My Pillow’s Mike Lindell at a COVID-19 “health and freedom” conference in Oklahoma on Friday night. When it was his turn to speak, Caviezel addressed “the adrenochroming of children.”

“Essentially, you have adrenaline in your body,” Caviezel began. “And when you are scared, you produce adrenaline. If you’re an athlete, you get in the fourth quarter, you have adrenaline that comes out of you. If a child knows he’s going to die, his body will secrete this adrenaline.”
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“It’s the worst horror I’ve ever seen,” Caviezel went on to claim, before hilariously admitting in the very next sentence that he had in fact never witnessed such a horror in person. “The screaming alone, even if I never, ever, ever saw it, it’s beyond — and these people that do it, umm, there will be no mercy for them.”

Caviezel also claimed that Tim Ballard, founder of the “anti-trafficking” organization Operation Underground Railroad, was unable to attend Friday’s conference because “he’s down there saving children as we speak.” Caviezel portrays Ballard in an obscure new film called Sound of Freedom, which Caviezel said “is on a level of Academy Award level.”

And here we thought Mel Gibson was the most problematic person in The Passion of the Christ cinematic universe.


NRA’s Ex-Top Finance Officer Questions Whether Gun Group Could Survive without Wayne LaPierre’s Fundraising

ADAM KLASFELD
LAW & CRIME
Apr 16th, 2021



The National Rifle Association’s former chief financial officer and treasurer previously told a bankruptcy court that he tried to reform an organization under the thrall of its CEO Wayne LaPierre, who allegedly instilled an institutional culture of subordinates justifying a disregard for internal control with the words “Wayne said.”

On Friday, that ex-CFO, Craig Spray, questioned whether the NRA would fold entirely without its current leader.

“Isn’t it fair to say that the NRA could survive without LaPierre at the helm?” Assistant New York Attorney General Yael Fuchs asked Spray.

“I think it would be very challenging,” Spray replied.

Responding to that testimony, a lawyer for the NRA’s longtime public relations firm Ackerman McQueen quizzed Spray about the late French army officer and statesman Charles de Gaulle’s line about “indispensable men.”

“The cemeteries are full of them,” lawyer Mike Gruber answered his own question, paraphrasing de Gaulle’s line in a meditation on change and the arc of history.


The man at the helm of the NRA for roughly three decades, LaPierre testified for two days last week about his alleged receipt of gifts that New York regulators claim represent undisclosed conflicts of interest. The NRA chief justified his decision to voyage on Hollywood producer Stanton McKenzie’s 108-foot yacht, the Illusions, after the Sandy Hook shooting for “security” reasons, but he also acknowledged taking regular trips to the Bahamas on that vessel for years, starting in 2013.

He offered the same rationale for flying exclusively by private charter jet, and he defended his receipt of nearly $300,000 in Italian suits from a Beverly Hills Zegna, which the group’s longtime public relations Ackerman McQueen bought him for television appearances.

For Spray, the flipside of that is that LaPierre has become a key part of the NRA’s fundraising power.

“Nobody can attract dollars the way that LaPierre can,” Spray remarked.

On Jan. 29th this year, LaPierre sent the NRA’s staff and board a letter claiming that Spray resigned “due to health concerns.”


Referring to Spray’s prior testimony undermining that narrative, Fuchs quoted him telling the court: “The day of your departure was ‘certainly not the date you would have chosen’?

“Correct,” Spray responded.

The exchange highlighted a running theme in the case New York regulators have been making for a federal bankruptcy judge in Texas: that LaPierre ran the organization by fiat, retaliated against dissidents, and ousted those who, like Spray, hoped to reform the organization.

Spray testified that his pushback as the NRA’s ex-top finance officer to the group’s usual way of doing business sparked ire, including his concerns about the group’s non-profit tax records known as form 990s for the year 2019. LaPierre ultimately signed the forms himself while Spray investigated his reservations.

New York regulators appeared skeptical that the NRA’s fundraising operations amounted to a one-man shop.

“It’s a pretty large and diverse operation,” Fuchs noted, describing mail campaigns and a staff of volunteers.

“It’s not overly complex, but there is some complexity to it,” Spray replied.

When it comes to the group’s big-ticket donors, Spray said, the NRA’s fundraising sophistication becomes much simpler.

“When they come to those meetings, they come to meet with Wayne,” Spray testified.

Earlier this week, Spray testified that the NRA’s decision to file for bankruptcy blindsided him and that he was not even aware that LaPierre had created a company Sea Girt, LLC to establish jurisdiction in Texas. The NRA’s general counsel John Frazier and board member Phillip Journey, a Wichita judge, offered similar testimony. The NRA described itself as being in good financial health when LaPierre surprised its top officials with the bankruptcy gambit, which New York regulators are trying to block as a “bad faith” effort to scuttle their lawsuit seeking to shut down the organization for allegedly violating charity law.

Listen to highlights of LaPierre’s testimony last week on the Law&Crime podcast, “Objections.”