Historic Black town lies one hurricane away from disaster

By TOM FOREMAN Jr.

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A boat ramp sign is submerged in the Tar River as it rises following a heavy rain in Princeville, N.C., Thursday, March 17, 2022. The river continues to be a threat to the small community nestled in the flood plain of the Tar River. (AP Photo/Gerry Broome)

PRINCEVILLE, N.C. (AP) — As she exits her hometown’s only restaurant clutching an order of cabbage and hush puppies, Carolyn Suggs Bandy pauses to boast about a place that stakes its claim as the oldest town chartered by Black Americans nearly 140 years ago.

“It is sacred to me,” said Bandy, 65. “We got roots in this town.”

Yet historic Princeville, on the banks of the Tar River in eastern North Carolina, is one hurricane away from disaster.

With an ever-changing climate, hurricanes are likely to be more intense, and melting glaciers are causing sea levels to rise, making more flooding inevitable.

Princeville’s future rests not only on protecting the town from flooding, but also convincing younger generations to make a home in the town. The latest U.S. Census puts the town’s population at 1,254, which marks a steep decline from 2010, The median income is $33,325 as of 2020.

Gaining new residents will require providing opportunities that make the move worth it, or convincing young families to stay.

Two-term mayor Bobbie Jones, a full-time school principal who lives in Princeville and commutes one hour each way to his job in Hertford County, says history compels him — and others —to work for his town’s survival.

“These are sacred grounds,” Jones said. “These are sacred African-American grounds.”

Princeville was incorporated in 1885 by former slaves on swampy, low-lying land. The town grew from a population of 379 in 1880 to 552 at the turn of the century. It had a school, churches and businesses.

The town has endured racism, bigotry and attempts by white neighbors to erase it from existence.

Today, Princeville features single-family homes interspersed with empty homes that have been boarded up and abandoned as a result of the two latest floods. One church sits with its windows covered in plywood.

Commerce focuses on a small strip where a barber shop and a liquor store flank a convenience store where residents can get snack foods, buy lottery tickets and fill their cars with gasoline. A separate building holds the small sit-down restaurant where Bandy got her food.

Princeville is in a bad spot when it comes to hurricanes because of its position on the Tar River. The town lies 124 miles from the Atlantic Ocean at the edge of North Carolina’s Coastal Plain, an area where the biggest threat from tropical weather tends to be rain, not wind. When slow-moving storms come ashore and move inland, drenching rains that can extend far from the core of the storm drain into the rivers and flood towns along the banks.

If it’s not hurricanes, ocean levels could be a threat, according to a summary of the state’s climate written by N.C. State University.

Melting glaciers add more water to the ocean, and sea water increases in volume when it warms up, the report says.

Attempts to protect the town from flood waters have been mixed.

In 1967, the Army Corps of Engineers completed an earthen dike along the Tar’s southern bank. Nearly 3 miles long and up to 49 feet above sea level, the levee surrounds the town on three sides.

For more than 30 years, it held nature at bay. Then, in September 1999, Hurricane Floyd hit.

Swollen by rain, pushed by winds, the Tar surged over, around and even under the dike, washing homes from their foundations and the dead from their graves.

“When Floyd came, it seemed like the end of the world,” says Navy veteran Alex Noble, 84. “It seemed like you just were turned outdoors. You know, everything was wide open.”

In the spring of 2016, after years of study, the Corps announced plans to try and prevent another disaster. The levee would be extended, roads would be raised, and gates would be installed in culverts to prevent water passing through the dike.

Just a few months after that announcement, Hurricane Matthew struck, and with it came more devastating flooding.

In response, Congress approved nearly $40 million to better protect the town. The money was appropriated in 2020, but as another hurricane season approaches, nothing has happened.

Despite the delays, Col. Benjamin A. Bennett, commander of the Corps’ Wilmington district, said Princeville is a priority.

“We have a team of engineers every single day and a large part of our district focused on Princeville. We are actively tweaking our design and trying to optimize the engineering, and running models to make sure that we protect Princeville without causing problems somewhere else,” Bennett said.

Meanwhile, as Princeville’s population ages, young people ultimately will have to succeed them to keep the town moving forward. Without its own industry or significant commercial outlets, it is difficult to keep younger residents in town.

Luring new business into Princeville will likely involve offering incentives such as tax breaks, the kind that are offered by state governments seeking to land a major manufacturer.

Housing is also an issue. While some homes are being elevated, other homeowners have accepted buyouts from the N.C. Hazard Mitigation Grant Program.

Despite the many challenges, those who live in Princeville aren’t ready to give up.

Noble, who came to Princeville with his wife in 1963, thinks of the freed slaves who built Princeville, and what they might say to today’s residents.

“You know, they always said, ‘Don’t give up. Don’t give up,’” he says. And that’s what we got to do. Stick with it. ... You know, we didn’t come this far to turn around.”

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

Astroworld movie set for release despite lawyers’ concerns
By JUAN A. LOZANOyesterday


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FILE - Travis Scott performs at the Astroworld Music Festival in Houston, Nov. 5, 2021. The experiences of panicked concertgoers who couldn’t breathe and had no clear path to escape a massive crowd surge at last year’s deadly Astroworld music festival in Houston are featured in a documentary set for release Friday, April 29, 2022. But lawyers for Live Nation, which is being sued for its role as the festival’s promoter, say they’re concerned that publicity from the documentary, “Concert Crush: The Travis Scott Festival Tragedy,” could “taint the jury pool.” (Photo by Amy Harris/Invision/AP, File)

HOUSTON (AP) — The experiences of panicked concertgoers who couldn’t breathe and had no clear path to escape a massive crowd surge at last year’s deadly Astroworld music festival in Houston are featured in a documentary set for release Friday.

But lawyers for Live Nation, which is being sued for its role as the festival’s promoter, say they’re concerned that publicity from the documentary, “Concert Crush: The Travis Scott Festival Tragedy,” could “taint the jury pool.” A gag order has been issued in the case, but Live Nation’s lawyers say an attorney who filed lawsuits related to the tragedy also co-produced the documentary.

Charlie Minn, the film’s director, said he believes he has made a balanced and fair film that tries to show the public what happened.

“My job is to make the most truthful, honest, sincere documentary from the victim’s point of view ... We need to know about these stories to prevent it from happening again,” Minn told The Associated Press.

Around 500 lawsuits have been filed following the Nov. 5 concert headlined by Scott, a popular rapper. Ten people died and hundreds of others were injured during the massive crowd surge. Scott is also being sued.

The documentary, opening in 11 Texas cities including Austin, Dallas and Houston, includes interviews with several people who survived the crowd surge. The film also features cellphone video shot by concertgoers in which people can be heard repeatedly screaming for help.

“It’s hard to explain to friends and family what we saw and what we actually went through and I think (the documentary) will give a lot of people the opportunity, if you weren’t there, to understand,” said Frank Alvarez, who attended the concert but does not appear in the film.

The film highlights what concertgoers experienced and what led to the tragedy, said Minn, who has also made documentaries about the deadly 2018 shooting at a suburban Houston high school and violence along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The film suggests Scott could have done more to prevent the conditions that led to the casualties, but Minn said it isn’t a “hit piece toward Travis Scott.” He said it also questions whether others, including Live Nation and Houston police, could have done more to improve safety or respond more quickly to the danger. Minn said Scott, Live Nation and Houston police declined to be interviewed for the documentary. Houston police are investigating the disaster.

In a report released this month, a task force created by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott uncovered problems with permits for such events and called for “clearly outlined triggers” for stopping such a show.

Attorneys for Live Nation expressed their concerns in a letter this month to state District Judge Kristen Hawkins, who is handling all pretrial matters in the lawsuits.

“The involvement of plaintiffs’ lawyers in the film, and the publicity the filmmakers and producers are trying to generate for it raise significant issues about efforts to taint the jury pool,” Neal Manne and Kevin Yankowsky, two of Live Nation’s attorneys, wrote in the letter.

But the attorneys have not asked Hawkins to take any specific action regarding the documentary.

Manne and Yankowsky did not respond to emails seeking comment. Live Nation has said it’s “heartbroken” by what happened but has denied responsibility.

Scott’s attorneys said in an email Thursday that they don’t know if he has seen the documentary, and referred to the concerns raised by Live Nation when asked if they had any issues with it.

“Mr. Scott remains focused on his philanthropic work in his hometown of Houston and in lower-income communities of color across the country, both of which are longstanding efforts,” his attorneys said.

Cassandra Burke Robertson, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, said she would be shocked if the judge would take any action regarding the documentary because of First Amendment concerns, even with the gag order.

“I think the public interest here in exploring what happened and avoiding similar tragedies in the future, that’s a really big interest. That is likely to outweigh the interests of the particular outcome of the particular lawsuit,” Robertson said.

Brent Coon, an attorney representing about 1,500 concertgoers who was interviewed in the documentary, said he doesn’t think the film would impact the ability to choose an impartial jury if the case goes to trial, which could be years away.

“I don’t think any lawyer in this case could fan the flames much to change ... what the public’s perception of all this is going to be,” Coon said.

Robertson, who is not involved in the litigation, said the fact that one of the film’s co-producers, Rick Ramos, is representing concertgoers who have filed lawsuits could raise some ethical concerns. It was unclear how Ramos was benefitting financially from his involvement in the documentary.

Ramos declined to comment Thursday.

“I personally would not co-sponsor something like that during pending civil litigation. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it. It’s just something I wouldn’t do,” Coon said.

Minn said the questions asked about Ramos’ participation are valid but he never hid his involvement.

“People have to watch the film and judge it for what that is,” Minn said.

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Follow Juan A. Lozano on Twitter: https://twitter.com/juanlozano70

Kenya's drought hits children the hardest

The drought in Kenya threatens the survival of Turkana communities. Many children suffer from malnutrition and dehydration. NGOs call for increased funding for aid and a quick response to the humanitarian disaster.

Heat wave scorches India’s wheat crop, snags export plans

By ANIRUDDHA GHOSAL

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A woman harvests wheat on the outskirts of Jammu, India, Thursday, April 28, 2022. An unusually early, record-shattering heat wave in India has reduced wheat yields, raising questions about how the country will balance its domestic needs with ambitions to increase exports and make up for shortfalls due to Russia's war in Ukraine. (AP Photo/Channi Anand)

NEW DELHI (AP) — An unusually early, record-shattering heat wave in India has reduced wheat yields, raising questions about how the country will balance its domestic needs with ambitions to increase exports and make up for shortfalls due to Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Gigantic landfills in India’s capital New Delhi have caught fire in recent weeks. Schools in eastern Indian state Odisha have been shut for a week and in neighboring West Bengal, schools are stocking up on oral rehydration salts for kids. On Tuesday, Rajgarh, a city of over 1.5 million people in central India, was the country’s hottest, with daytime temperatures peaking at 46.5 degrees Celsius (114.08 Fahrenheit). Temperatures breached the 45 C (113 F) mark in nine other cities.

But it was the heat in March — the hottest in India since records first started being kept in 1901 — that stunted crops. Wheat is very sensitive to heat, especially during the final stage when its kernels mature and ripen. Indian farmers time their planting so that this stage coincides with India’s usually cooler spring.

Climate change has made India’s heat wave hotter, said Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at the Imperial College of London. She said that before human activities increased global temperatures, heat waves like this year’s would have struck India once in about half a century.

“But now it is a much more common event — we can expect such high temperatures about once in every four years,” she said.

India’s vulnerability to extreme heat increased 15% from 1990 to 2019, according to a 2021 report by the medical journal The Lancet. It is among the top five countries where vulnerable people, like the old and the poor, have the highest exposure to heat. It and Brazil have the the highest heat-related mortality in the world, the report said.

Farm workers like Baldev Singh are among the most vulnerable. Singh, a farmer in Sangrur in northern India’s Punjab state, watched his crop shrivel before his eyes as an usually cool spring quickly shifted to unrelenting heat. He lost about a fifth of his yield. Others lost more.

“I am afraid the worst is yet to come,” Singh said.

Punjab is India’s “grain bowl” and the government has encouraged cultivation of wheat and rice here since the 1960s. It is typically the biggest contributor to India’s national reserves and the government had hoped to buy about a third of this year’s stock from the region. But government assessments predict lower yields this year, and Devinder Sharma, an agriculture policy expert in northern Chandigarh city. 

The story is the same in other major wheat-producing states like Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.

Overall, India purchased over 43 million metric tons (47.3 million U.S. tons) of wheat in 2021. Sharma estimates it will instead get 20% to nearly 50% less.

Even though it is the world’s second-largest producer of wheat, India exports only a small fraction of its harvest. It had been looking to capitalize on the global disruption to wheat supplies from Russia’s war in Ukraine and find new markets for its wheat in Europe, Africa, and Asia.

That looks uncertain given the tricky balance the government must maintain between demand and supply. It needs about 25 million tons (27.5 million U.S. tons) of wheat for the vast food welfare program that usually feeds more than 80 million people.

Before the pandemic, India had vast stocks that far exceeded its domestic needs — a buffer against the risk of famine.

Those reserves have been strained, Sharma said, by distribution of free grain during the pandemic to about 800 million people — vulnerable groups like migrant workers. The program was extended until September but it’s unclear if it will continue beyond then.

“We are no longer with that kind of a surplus . . . with exports now picking up, there would be a lot of pressure on the domestic availability of wheat,” Sharma said.

India’s federal agriculture and commerce ministries didn’t respond to questions sent to them via email.

Beyond India, other countries are also grappling with poor harvests that hinder their ability to help offset the potential shortfall of supplies from Russia and Ukraine, normally the world’s largest and fifth-largest exporters of wheat.

China’s agriculture minister, Tang Renjian, said last month that the winter wheat harvest was likely to be poor, hindered by flooding and by delays in planting.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

New gas pipeline boosts Europe’s bid to ease Russian supply

By DEREK GATOPOULOS

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Heavy machines install a pipeline near Komotini town, northern Greece, Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2020. Crossing a remote border area of Greece and Bulgaria, a new pipeline nearing completion will help countries in the region dependent on Russian imports get greater access to the global natural gas market. The pipeline will ensure that large volumes of gas will flow between the two countries in both directions. (AVAX via AP)


ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Mountainous and remote, the Greek-Bulgaria border once formed the southern corner of the Iron Curtain. Today, it’s where the European Union is redrawing the region’s energy map to ease its heavy reliance on Russian natural gas.

A new pipeline — built during the COVID-19 pandemic, tested and due to start commercial operation in June — will ensure that large volumes of gas will flow between the two countries in both directions to generate electricity, fuel industry and heat homes.

The energy link takes on greater importance following Moscow’s decision this week to cut off natural gas supplies to Poland and Bulgaria over a demand for ruble payments stemming from Western sanctions over the war of Ukraine.

The 180-kilometer (110-mile) project is the first of several planned gas interconnectors that will allow eastern European Union members and countries hoping to join the 27-nation bloc access to the global gas market.

In the short term, it’s Bulgaria’s backup.

The pipeline connection will give the country access to ports in neighboring Greece that are importing liquefied natural gas, or LNG, and also will bring gas from Azerbaijan through a new pipeline system that ends in Italy.

It’s one of many efforts as member states scramble to edit their energy mix, with some reverting back to emissions-heavy coal while also planning expanded output from renewables. Germany, the world’s biggest buyer of Russian energy, is looking to build LNG import terminals that would take years, and Italy, another top Russian gas importer, has reached deals with Algeria, Azerbaijan, Angola and Congo for gas supplies.

The European Union wants ax its dependence on Russian oil and gas by two-thirds this year and completely over five years through alternative sources, wind and solar, and conservation.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is likely to accelerate changes in the EU’s long-term strategy, adapting to energy that is more expensive but also more integrated among member states, said Simone Tagliapietra, an energy expert and research fellow at the Brussels-based think tank Bruegel.

“It’s a new world,” he said. “And in this new world, it’s clear that Russia doesn’t want to be part of an international order as we think of it.”

Tagliapietra added: “The strategy — particularly by Germany — over the last 50 years was always one of engaging with Russia on energy. ... But given what we are seeing in Ukraine and given Russia’s view of international relations, it’s not the kind of country with which we would like to do business.”

EU policymakers argue that while Eastern European members are some of the most dependent on Russian gas, the size of their markets makes the problem manageable. Bulgaria imported 90% of its gas from Russia but only consumes 3 billion cubic meters each year — thirty times less than lead consumer Germany, according to 2020 data from Eurostat, the EU statistics agency.

Officially called the Gas Interconnector Greece-Bulgaria, the new pipeline will complement the existing European network. Much of that dates to the Soviet era, transporting gas from vast energy fields in Russia westward, when Moscow sought badly needed funds for its faltering command economy and Western suppliers to help build its pipelines.

The link will run between the northeastern Greek city of Komotini and Stara Zagora, in central Bulgaria, and will give the country and neighbors with new grid connections access to the expanding global gas market. That includes a connection with the newly built Trans Adriatic Pipeline carrying gas from Azerbaijan as well as suppliers of liquefied natural gas that arrives by ship, likely to include Qatar, Algeria and the United States.

As many as eight additional interconnectors could be built in eastern Europe, reaching as far as Ukraine and Austria.

The 240 million euro ($250 million) pipeline will carry 3 billion cubic meters of gas per year, with an option to be expanded to 5 billion. It received funding from Bulgaria, Greece and the EU and has strong political support from Brussels and the United States.

On the ground, the project faced multiple holdups because of supply chain snags during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Receiving specialized parts and moving personnel after construction got underway in early 2020 soon became increasingly difficult, said Antonis Mitzalis, executive director of the Greek contractor AVAX that oversaw the project.

Construction finished in early April, he said, while work and testing at two metering stations and software installation are in the final stages.

“We had a sequence in mind. But the fact that some materials did not arrive made us rework that sequence, sometimes with a cost effect,” Mitzalis said.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis missed a tour of the site last month after contracting COVID-19. He spoke Wednesday with his Bulgarian counterpart, Kiril Petkov, to provide assurances of Greek support.

“Bulgaria and Greece will continue to work together for energy security and diversification — of strategic importance for both countries and the region,” Petkov later tweeted. “We both are confident for the successful completion of the IGB on time.”

Racial split on COVID-19 endures as restrictions ease in US

By ANNIE MA and HANNAH FINGERHUT

People wait in line for a COVID-19 test in Los Angeles, Tuesday, Jan. 4, 2022. Sixty-three percent of Black Americans and 68% of Hispanic Americans say they are at least somewhat worried about themselves or a family member being infected with COVID-19, compared to 45% of white Americans, according to an April poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. 

(AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)

Black and Hispanic Americans remain far more cautious in their approach to COVID-19 than white Americans, recent polls show, reflecting diverging preferences on how to deal with the pandemic as federal, state and local restrictions fall by the wayside.

Despite majority favorability among U.S. adults overall for measures like mask mandates, public health experts said divided opinions among racial groups reflect not only the unequal impact of the pandemic on people of color but also apathy among some white Americans.

Black Americans (63%) and Hispanic Americans (68%) continue to be more likely than white Americans (45%) to say they are at least somewhat worried about themselves or a family member being infected with COVID-19, according to an April poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Throughout the pandemic, Black and Hispanic communities have experienced higher rates of illness and death from COVID, said Amelia Burke-Garcia, public health program area director at NORC. Those experiences have resulted in greater levels of stress, anxiety and awareness of the risks of catching COVID-19, she said, which means people of color are more likely to feel measures like mask mandates are needed.

“We’ve seen these trends endure throughout the entire pandemic,” Burke-Garcia said. “What we’re seeing now as mitigation measures are being rolled back is there’s still great concern amongst Black Americans and Hispanic Americans around the risk of getting sick.”

Seventy-one percent of Black Americans say they favor requiring face masks for people traveling on airplanes, trains and other types of public transportation. That’s more than the 52% of white Americans who support mask mandates for travelers; 29% of white Americans are opposed. Among Hispanic Americans, 59% are in favor and 20% are opposed. The poll was conducted before a ruling by a federal judge scuttled the government’s mask mandate for travelers.

In Indiana, Tuwanna Plant said she sees fewer and fewer people wearing masks in public, even though she said she has been diligent in always wearing one. Plant, who is Black, said she sees people treating the pandemic like it’s over, and she wants the mask mandate to continue.

Plant, a 46-year-old sous chef, said she had some concerns about getting the vaccine and took every other precaution, such as cleaning and masking, to avoid getting sick but recently was hospitalized for COVID.

The experience scared her — she has a preexisting lung condition, and knew family members who died from COVID. She said she plans to get vaccinated as soon as she can.

“I called my children while I was in the emergency room,” Plant said. “I didn’t know ... if it was going to get better or worse, I didn’t know. So it was the experience for me altogether.”

Dr. Celine Gounder, an infectious disease specialist and epidemiologist and editor-at-large at Kaiser Health News, said people’s lived experiences deeply shape how they perceive the pandemic. Anecdotes and personal experience can have a larger impact on behavior than numbers, she said, and people of color are more likely to have had negative experiences with health care prior to and during the pandemic.

While new medicines and vaccines have made it easier to treat COVID-19, Gounder said many people still face systemic barriers to accessing that medical care. Others risk losing their jobs or are unable to take time off if they do fall ill, she said, or cannot avoid things like public transit to reduce their exposures.

“When people argue that they don’t have to mask on the plane, that means something very different for someone who has access to all of these new innovations than it does for somebody who has no health insurance, who struggles to care for an elderly parent and their children, who’s maybe a single mom working in a job where she has no paid sick and family medical leave,” Gounder said. “It’s just a completely different calculation.”

In January, an AP-NORC poll showed Black and Hispanic Americans were more likely than white Americans to feel certain things would be essential for getting back to life without feeling at risk of infection. For example, 76% of Black Americans and 55% of Hispanic Americans said it was essential for getting back to normal that most people regularly wear face masks in public indoor places, compared with 38% of white Americans.

Last month, an AP-NORC poll showed Black and Hispanic Americans, 69% and 49%, were more likely than white Americans, 35%, to say they always or often wear a face mask around others.

Lower support for mask mandates and other precautions among white Americans may also reflect less sensitivity towards what occurs in communities of color. In a 2021 study of mask wearing during the early part of the pandemic, researchers found that mask wearing among white people increased when white people were dying at greater rates in the surrounding community. When Black and Hispanic people were dying, mask usage was lower.

Berkeley Franz, a co-author of the paper, said that in addition to residential segregation that separates white people from communities of color, past research has shown that white people can display ambivalence towards policies that they believe mostly help people of color.

“Anti-Blackness is really pervasive and has tremendous consequences, both in terms of the policies that get passed, and what doesn’t,” Franz said. “White people can still have really racist actions without seeing themselves that way and understanding the consequences. It’s largely below the surface and unintentional but has tremendous consequences in terms of equity.”

Communities of color also have a different perception of risk from the pandemic than their white counterparts, said Michael Niño, a sociology professor at the University of Arkansas who co-authored a paper on race, gender and masking in the pandemic.

“Masking is something that is relatively cheap, it’s effective, and it’s something that can be easily done,” he said. “It doesn’t require any sort of governmental response. These broader histories of racism and sexism in the United States are most certainly shaping some of the patterns we’re seeing.”

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The AP-NORC poll of 1,085 adults was conducted April 14-18 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 3.9 percentage points.

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Ma covers education and equity for AP’s Race and Ethnicity team. Follow her on Twitter: https://www.twitter. Fingerhut, an AP polling writer, is based in Washington.

The Associated Press’ reporting around issues of race and ethnicity is supported in part by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

New report calls out corporations who have resumed campaign contributions to GOP election deniers
Timothy Evans
April 28, 2022

Home Depot. (Shutterstock.com)

Toyota Motor Corp. was targeted by the anti-Trump group The Lincoln Project with a digital ad campaign this week assailing the company for resuming its political donations to members of Congress who voted against certifying the 2020 election on Jan. 6, 2021.

A new report by the liberal group Accountable.US finds that the carmaker is just one of many Fortune 500 companies that have resumed giving money to election certification deniers.

Vice News indicates that the group says that "hardware giant Home Depot and agricultural equipment manufacturer Deere & Company, donated more than $800,000 last month to Republicans who voted to overturn the 2020 election results."

Just in March, the home improvement retailer gave $95,000 to 20 House Republicans who voted to overturn the 2020 election results last January. Deere tossed $75,000 to more than a dozen Republicans and aerospace giant Boeing - the second-largest federal contractor in the U.S. - donated $45,000 to 32 different Republicans who objected to the 2020 results, according to FEC records. Boeing has more than $23 billion in federal contracts in FY2021, including the construction of the new planes that will serve as Air Force One.

Also donating more than $20,000 each to multiple GOP members in March were General Dynamics, Motorola Solutions, FedEx and Tyson Foods, according to the data.

According to Accountable.US, House Republicans who voted against the certification of the 2020 election raked in more than $800,000 from corporate and trade group PACs last month. Those groups have donated more than $12 million to Jan. 6 objectors since the insurrection.

“Corporations that have failed to align their political spending with their stated values supporting democracy should stop misleading the public about what they value far more - amassing political influence,” Kyle Herrig, president of Accountable.US, said in a statement to VICE News.

“It’s short-sighted for any corporation to marginalize concerns from its customers and shareholders when it comes to democracy, because a healthy democracy will always be what’s best for business.”

By far, Home Depot has been the biggest corporate donor to Republicans who voted to overturn the election. Its top recipients include House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy ($456,000), House Minority Whip Steve Scalise ($353,000), and Missouri Rep. Sam Graves ($290,000).

‘Racism is institutionalized’ after GOP interference at the University of North Carolina: professors

Bob Brigham
April 28, 2022

Silent Sam UNC-Chapel Hill (Screen Capture)

Republicans in North Carolina are receiving harsh criticism after a devastating 38-page report was released on their attempts to meddle with the University of North Carolina.

"A prestigious national academic group charged on Thursday that North Carolina’s legislature had politically interfered with the operations of the University of North Carolina for more than a decade, creating a hostile academic and racial climate at its campuses, including the flagship in Chapel Hill," The New York Times reported Thursday. "A report by the American Association of University Professors details how Republican lawmakers, after taking over the General Assembly in 2010, wrested control of the university system’s Board of Governors as well as the trustees of its 17 individual campuses, influencing chancellor appointments and closing academic centers dedicated to fighting poverty, pollution and social injustice."

The report describes a "new era" after Republicans gained control of the legislature in 2010. The Times says "the report concludes that racism is institutionalized in the system."

WRAL says the report, which was "based on interviews with more than 50 people across the UNC system, decried a lack of faculty input on key decisions and said system leaders are reinforcing structural racism and classism in North Carolina."

"Because of the report’s findings, the AAUP is considering a rare sanction for the state’s university system, and its Committee on College and University Governance will decide the issue at an early summer meeting, AAUP spokesperson Kelly Benjamin said via email," WRAL reported. "Michael Behrent, an Appalachian State University history professor and North Carolina’s AAUP president, said there’s still “a window” for system and political leaders to respond. He also called for professors to organize and said that, if sanctions are levied, it could make it more difficult for the UNC system to recruit top professors."

Watch:

Republican neofascists are playing a dangerous game that will rip America apart

Thom Hartmann
April 28, 2022

Greg Abbott playing a fiddle. (official campaign photo on Abbott's Facebook page)

Florida’s Republican Governor Ron DeSantis has declared war on Disney, while his colleague in Texas, Republican Governor Greg Abbott, is on a jihad against the parents of trans children.

This is how fascism progresses through its later stages toward tyranny.

Democracies typically don’t turn into fascist oligarchies by being invaded or losing wars. It usually happens from within, and is driven by an alliance between demagogic politicians, corrupt religious leaders, bigoted street brawlers, and some of the wealthiest people in society.

First, fascists identify groups of people they believe are both vulnerable and sufficiently powerless that they won’t be able to fight back. Typically, these are racial, religious, political or gender/sexuality minorities.

Enormous efforts go into demonizing the people the fascists have identified; members of the group who’ve committed crimes are heavily publicized, while “think tanks” and fascist allies in the media identify malicious “reasons” for those folks’ “deviance.”

Efforts by members of the demonized groups to achieve parity or equality in society are characterized as a “theft” of privilege and assets from the majority, legitimizing both verbal, legal, and physical attacks on members of the group.

For example, the billionaire Murdoch family’s top-rated morning show, Fox & Friends, recently wandered into a discussion about white people being “marginalized” by the possibility of our public schools teaching the actual racial history of America.

“[T]hey are not only trying to raise up minorities and make sure the playing field is even,” Brian Kilmeade said, “they’re trying to take down the white culture!”

Kilmeade, in full “White people are the victims!” mode, went on:
“Why are we being marginalized on a daily basis…? And it’s not even subtle! It’s actually out there! It is written in black-and-white!”

It’s played out this way in every democratic country that has fallen to tyranny from within. It’s how it happened in the 1930s in Italy, Germany, Japan and Spain, and today in Hungary, Poland, Egypt, Russia, The Philippines, and Turkey, among others.

More recently, Swanson Food Heir Tucker Carlson went on a rant about the Great Replacement Theory.

After identifying targeted minorities — for today’s GOP that includes Black people, trans kids (and their parents), pregnant women, and Democrats — and encouraging legal and physical violence against them, fascists move to the second major step: seizing enough economic and political power that they can reshape society itself.

This requires bringing in morbidly rich people and enlisting the aid of big business.

So, first, they go after the biggest businesses. One of the biggest businesses in Florida is Disney, so Ron DeSantis tried to get them on his bigoted side. They didn’t go along with it, so now, in typical strongman fashion, DeSantis feels he has to destroy them to save face.

As German industrialist Fritz Thyssen writes in his book I Paid Hitler, he pressured German President von Hindenburg to appoint Hitler as chancellor, and then lobbied the Association of German Industrialists, that country’s and era’s version of the US Chamber of Commerce, to donate 3 million Reichsmarks to the Nazi Party for the 1933 election. It brought Hitler to power.

Hitler’s sales pitch to the German people was that Jews, gays, and socialists had “stabbed Germany in the back” and were trying to “strip” good white Christian Germans of their “rights” and twist society to conform with their “perverted” ideas and lifestyles.

Hitler blamed the 1933 economic crisis on German minorities, Jews and gays, and accused Germany’s second largest political party of complicity with them; the German people went along with him. Once the Nazis took power, they changed election laws in such a way that they would never again lose.

Republicans and rightwing billionaires, of course, are doing much the same thing right now in America. One wonders if they’ll have the retrospective angst that haunted Thyssen until the day he died. He wrote about it in I Paid Hitler:
“I am not a politician, but an industrialist, and an industrialist is always inclined to consider politics a kind of second string to his bow — the preparation for his own particular activity. In a well-ordered country, where the administration is sound, where taxes are reasonable, and the police well organised, he can afford to abstain from politics and to devote himself entirely to business.

“But in a crisis-ridden state, as Germany was from 1918 to 1933, an industrialist is drawn, willy-nilly, into the vortex of politics. After 1930 the aspirations of German industry may be summed up in one phrase: ‘a sound economy in a strong state.’ This was, I remember, the slogan of a meeting of the Ruhr industrialists in 1931. …

“I, too, approved this slogan, 'To surmount the crisis it was necessary to reinforce the authority of the state.’ … I believed that by backing Hitler and his party I could contribute to the reinstatement of real government and of orderly conditions, which would enable all branches of activity — and especially business — to function normally once again.”

Unlike Thyssen, who volunteered to support Hitler’s rise to power with massive financial and business backing, Disney is pushing back against DeSantis’ efforts to remake society in an American neofascist mode.

Unless they soon cave in, Disney’s executives probably won’t one day write in their memoirs, as Thyssen did in his:

“But it is no use crying over spilled milk. The strong state of which I then dreamed had nothing in common with the totalitarian state or, rather, caricature of a state, erected by Hitler and his minions.
“Not for an instant did I imagine that it was possible, one hundred and fifty years after the French Revolution and the proclamation of the Rights of Man, to substitute arbitrary action for law in a great modern country, to strangle the most elementary rights of the citizen, to establish an Asiatic tyranny in the heart of Europe, and to foster anachronistic aspirations of conquest and world dominion.”

This is not America’s first brush with oligarchic fascism, as I lay out in The Hidden History of American Oligarchy. President Franklin Roosevelt and Vice President Henry Wallace struggled with it in the 1930s with Charles Lindberg’s infamous Nazi-aligned America First movement.

In early 1944, the New York Times asked Vice President Henry Wallace to, as Wallace noted, “write a piece answering the following questions: What is a fascist? How many fascists have we? How dangerous are they?”

Vice President Wallace’s answer to those questions was published in The New York Times on April 9, 1944, at the height of the war against the Axis powers of Germany and Japan.
“The really dangerous American fascists,” Wallace wrote, “are not those who are hooked up directly or indirectly with the Axis. The FBI has its finger on those. The dangerous American fascist is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way.”

As if he had a time machine and could see the “conservative” media landscape today, Wallace continued:
“The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power.”

But Disney refused to use their media platform to advance the fascists’ agenda. It has only, however, slowed them down a bit.

Ultimately, as fascists gain more power and grow bolder, nothing is off the table. This is the threshold we’re approaching today, where they don’t just trash minorities and march through the streets displaying weapons and huge flags, but began asserting justification for violence and even murder.

Alleging crimes against the majority’s children is a fascist favorite, as Hitler charged with his repeated attacks on Jewish teachers, leading 15% of the nation’s teachers and professors (including a guy named Albert Einstein) to flee the country when he began his attacks on education in 1933.

Fascist politicians start alleging the most vile of crimes by the groups they hope to destroy: words like “grooming” roll off their lips with a smarmy ease.

Soon vigilante groups set out to destroy those accused, sometimes politically, sometimes physically.

German Nazis were particularly fond of accusing people they intended to destroy or kill of sexual “crimes.” As Thyssen wrote:
“General von Fritsch’s affair is also a good sample of the peculiar methods used by the Hitler regime. Fritsch was to be ‘liquidated.’ To achieve this, it is said, the head of the Gestapo personally reproached him with practising homosexuality.
“Fritsch, who denied this from the very start, was ordered to call at the chancellery of the Reich, where he was to be unmasked in the presence of the Supreme Leader. … It seems certain that General von Fritsch has subsequently committed suicide. I can at least say that whatever the actual circumstances of his death may have been, he was anxious to die.”

While history usually sides with the victims of fascists, as we’re seeing today with the people Putin is starving to death in Mariupol, that’s small comfort as they confront terror and death.

DeSantis, Abbott and the other Republican neofascists are playing a dangerous game, using Disney as a proxy for the racial and gender minorities they want as whipping boys. It’s a high-stakes political game that has torn societies apart and destroyed millions of lives in the past.

Standing against them are their victims and the Democratic Party, albeit hobbled in their efforts by the perfidy of Manchin and Sinema. This autumn’s elections may well be the last chance for people of good will who believe in American values and eschew fascism to rise in opposition.

Make sure everybody you know is registered to vote, regularly double-check your own registration to make it through a voter purge if you live in a Republican-controlled state, and volunteer to help out inside the Democratic Party or through any of the great groups fighting for a more just America.

Time is short, as Fritz Thyssen and Vice President Wallace would tell you were they alive today.

New York's MoMA exhibits Matisse's paintings within a painting

2022/4/28 
© Agence France-Presse

New York (AFP) - When Henri Matisse painted "The Red Studio" in 1911 he portrayed 11 of his artworks on a single canvas. An exhibition in New York is about to display all the surviving works together for the first time.

In "The Red Studio," the French artist reproduced almost a dozen miniature versions of his paintings and sculptures as a way to depict his workshop in the Paris suburbs -- not to mention play with perspective, color, time and space.

All the pieces seen in the painting have survived apart from one that Matisse, considered among the greatest artists of the 20th century, had asked to be destroyed after his death in 1954 at age 84.

The Museum of Modern Art has tracked down the surviving 10 works and will put them on show alongside "The Red Studio" at an exhibition that opens next week.

"We did the treasure hunt of finding these things all over the world," the curator, Ann Temkin, told AFP during a preview.

"Now you can do the treasure hunt of, 'Oh this one's over there and he has eyes in the real painting but no eyes in 'The Red Studio,'" she added.

"Matisse: The Red Studio" runs from May 1 to September 10.

It includes six paintings, two sculptures, a terracotta piece and a ceramic dish. They were made between 1898, when Matisse was 28, and 1911.

"Some of the paintings were very recent, that he had just made a month or two before he made 'The Red Studio,'" said Temkin.

"We had the idea four years ago (of) why don't we see if we can find the real life equivalent of each of the pictures or sculptures that are represented in this painting in an abbreviated way and have a reunion," she added.

MoMA already had two of the works and the main piece. It gleaned three from the National Gallery of Denmark in Copenhagen and others from various museums and private collections.

The paintings include "Le Luxe II," and "Young Sailor II."

In creating "The Red Studio" Matisse "was really making a portrait of his own life as an artist," said Temkin.

"How rare is it that an artist invites us into his universe in such an open way?"

AFP