Landmark human study finds a link between 'forever chemicals' in cookware and liver cancer


Andrea Michelson
Wed, August 10, 2022 

Human liver tissue under a microscope. Sebastian Condrea/Getty Images

Researchers have confirmed a link between liver cancer risk and exposure to manmade chemicals.

PFAS, or "forever chemicals," are thought to cause health problems including cancer and developmental delays.

People with high levels of PFAS in their blood may be more than 4 times more likely to develop liver cancer.

Exposure to chemicals used in nonstick cookware and long-lasting makeup has been linked to elevated liver cancer risk, according to researchers at the University of Southern California.

Scientists have theorized that manmade "forever chemicals" (also known as PFAS) were harmful to the liver, based on extensive animal studies and a few analyses involving humans.

However, studying cancer risk in humans has proven tricky. It comes with a unique set of challenges, as many factors can affect overall risk and it would be unethical to expose people to potential carcinogens.

The new study from USC's Keck School of Medicine, published Monday in JHEP Reports, is the first to use human samples to confirm a link between PFAS exposure and liver cancer risk.

The team at Keck had access to blood and tissue samples from more than 200,000 people living in Los Angeles and Hawaii, thanks to a previous collaboration between the medical school and the University of Hawaii.

Within that population, the research team found 50 participants who eventually developed liver cancer, according to a news release from Keck. Analysis of blood samples taken prior to these individuals' cancer diagnoses revealed relatively high levels of certain PFAS chemicals.

There are several different types of PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances. PFOA and PFOS are some of the oldest and most well-studied kinds. PFOS had the strongest association with liver cancer risk in this particular study.

People in the top 10% of PFOS exposure were four and a half times more likely to develop liver cancer compared to people with the lowest levels of PFOS in their blood, the researchers found. To prove the association, the research team compared the 50 people who developed liver cancer with a similar sample of 50 people who did not develop the disease.

The team said it's possible that PFOS interferes with normal liver function, causing a buildup of fat that can progress to non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). More research is needed to determine exactly what that disruption looks like, and when it happens.

Rates of NAFLD have been rising globally in recent years, and the disease is expected to affect 30% of all adults in the US by 2030, according to a 2018 study published in the journal Hepatology. By then, scientists predict that NAFLD will become the leading reason for liver transplants, Insider previously reported.

Satellite data finds landfills are methane 'super emitters'


A person picks through trash for reusable items as a fire rages at the Bhalswa landfill in New Delhi, April 27, 2022. Landfills are releasing far more planet-warming methane into the atmosphere from the decomposition of waste than previously thought, a study suggests. Smoke hung over New Delhi for days after the massive landfill caught fire as the country was sweltering in an extreme heat wave. 

(AP Photo/Manish Swarup, File)

SIBI ARASU
Wed, August 10, 2022

BENGALURU, India (AP) — Landfills are releasing far more planet-warming methane into the atmosphere from the decomposition of waste than previously thought, a study suggests.

Scientists used satellite data from four major cities worldwide — Delhi and Mumbai in India, Lahore in Pakistan and Buenos Aires in Argentina — and found that emissions from landfills in 2018 and 2019 were 1.4 to 2.6 times higher than earlier estimates.

The study, published in Science Advances on Wednesday, is aimed at helping local governments carry out targeted efforts to limit global warming by pinpointing specific sites of major concern.

When organic waste like food, wood or paper decomposes, it emits methane into the air. Landfills are the third-largest source of methane emissions globally, after oil and gas systems and agriculture.

Although methane only accounts for about 11% of greenhouse gas emissions and lasts about a dozen years in the air, it traps 80 times more heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide does. Scientists estimate that at least 25% of today’s warming is driven by methane from human actions.

“This is the first time that high-resolution satellite images have been used to observe landfills and calculate their methane emissions,” said Joannes Maasakkers, lead author of the study and atmospheric scientist at the Netherlands Institute for Space Research.

“We found that these landfills, which are relatively small compared to city sizes, are responsible for a large fraction of total emissions from a given area,” he said.

Satellite data to detect emissions is still a relatively new field, but it's being used more and more to observe gases across the world. It means more independent organizations are tracking greenhouse gases and identifying big emitters, whereas previously local government figures were the only source available.

“This new work shows just how important it is to manage landfills better, especially in countries like India where landfills are often on fire, emitting a wide range of damaging pollutants,” said Euan Nesbit, an Earth scientist at Royal Holloway, University of London, who wasn't part of the study.

Earlier this year, smoke hung over New Delhi for days after a massive landfill caught fire as the country was sweltering in an extreme heat wave with temperatures surpassing 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit). At least two other landfill fires have been reported in India this year.

Nesbit added that the newer satellite technology, combined with on-the-ground measurements, makes it easier for researchers to identify “who is polluting the world.”

China, India and Russia are the world’s biggest methane polluters, a recent analysis by the International Energy Agency found.

At last year's United Nations climate conference, 104 countries signed a pledge to reduce methane emissions by 30% by 2030 compared with 2020 levels. Both India and China are not signatories.

The authors plan to carry out more research into landfill sites across the world in future studies.

“It is a quickly developing field and we expect more interesting data to come out soon,” said Maasakkers.

Four cities’ landfills emit as much methane as 2 million cars: study



Zack Budryk
Wed, August 10, 2022

Landfills are responsible for methane emissions equivalent to that of hundreds of thousands of cars, according to research from the SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Technology.

Researchers analyzed satellite data to identify cities with above-average methane emissions, including Buenos Aires, Argentina, and the Indian cities of Mumbai, Lahore and Delhi.

Zooming in determined landfills comprise large amounts of those emissions within the cities. For example, Buenos Aires’s landfill emits about 28 tons of methane an hour, about the same as 1.5 million cars, while the Indian landfills collectively emit 20 tons per hour, equivalent to up 500,000 cars.

“That is painful to watch because you can solve it with relatively little effort. You could for example separate and compost the organic waste, which would drastically reduce methane production. And even in the case of mixed waste, you can still collect or flare the methane produced,” lead author Bram Maasakkers said in a statement.

“Methane has a lifetime of only about ten years in the atmosphere, so if we act now, we will quickly see results in the form of less global warming. Of course, reducing methane emissions is not enough, we also need to limit CO2, but it does slow down near-term climate change.”

Methane emissions have been identified as a major contributing factor for climate change, as the gas has caused an estimated 0.5 degrees Celsius-worth of warming and, in its first 20 years, is about 80 times as potent a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide.

It is also viewed as a relatively simple form of greenhouse gas emissions to reduce, however, because it also has a considerably shorter half-life in Earth’s atmosphere compared to other greenhouse gases.

A July study by environmental groups Ceres and the Clean Air Task Force indicated four companies are the primary source of U.S. methane emissions, more than 300,000 metric tons’ worth: Exxon Mobil, ConocoPhillips, Hilcorp and Occidental Petroleum.

Methane ‘Loophole’ Shows Risk of Gaming New US Climate Bill





Zachary Mider
Wed, August 10, 2022

(Bloomberg) -- Range Resources Corp. claims to have one of the cleanest natural-gas operations in the US. Year after year, the western Pennsylvania shale pioneer reports a lower emissions rate for methane than virtually all its peers.

The landmark climate legislation that cleared the US Senate this week is meant to push more companies to be like Range. The bill would impose a first-of-its-kind fee on releases of the potent greenhouse gas from energy infrastructure.

But an examination of Environmental Protection Agency data reveals one of the pitfalls of that approach: companies have broad leeway to decide how much pollution they report, based on how they interpret more than 100 pages of complex agency rules.

An unorthodox reading of a single word in the EPA regulations allowed Range to slash its reported emissions from energy production by 93% in 2020 compared with the approach used by most oil and gas companies. That’s enough to move the company from the bottom of its peer rankings to the top. The EPA says this interpretation isn’t valid, although Range insists that it is.

Such wrangling could become more widespread if the bill becomes law and the EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program, now a low-stakes counting exercise, starts hitting companies with millions of dollars in fees. Expected to move to the House this week, the Inflation Reduction Act would impose a levy of as much as $1,500 a ton on methane releases above a certain threshold. It’s one of the only noteworthy sticks in Democratic climate-and-energy legislation that focuses on carrots, such as subsidies for buyers of electric cars and for the development of wind and solar power.

“The entire approach to measuring and reporting methane needs to be rebuilt,” said Andrew Logan, who tracks company emissions at the investor group Ceres. “This is no longer an academic exercise. It’s something that will have real financial consequences for companies and investors.”

The stakes are high because one of the biggest sources of climate-warming pollution is natural gas itself. It consists mostly of methane, which has more than 80 times the short-term planet-warming impact of carbon dioxide and often leaks or is intentionally released in the course of energy extraction. Researchers have pointed out for years that EPA formulas, even when applied correctly, tend to undercount methane emissions. A 2018 study found about 60% more emissions from the oil and gas supply chain than what appears in EPA inventories.

Range is one of a handful of companies identified by Bloomberg Green that use the unorthodox interpretation in annual disclosures to the agency. EPA data suggest units of BP Plc and Coterra Energy Inc. have used the interpretation for years. Two privately held firms, Terra Energy Partners LLC and Flywheel Energy LLC, appear to have started using it for the first time in 2020, resulting in a sharp drop in reported emissions. (BP said without elaborating that its disclosures comply with EPA rules. Representatives of Coterra, Terra, and Flywheel did not respond to requests for comment.)

“Some companies just saw it as a loophole that they could take advantage of,” said Logan.

As of now, there’s little to stop companies from exploiting such ambiguities. Regulators review companies’ emissions disclosures for potential inconsistencies and can ask them to resubmit, but the figures are ultimately the companies’ responsibility, said EPA spokeswoman Shayla Powell. Of the oil and gas emissions reports with questionable disclosures identified by Bloomberg Green, only a few were flagged by the EPA as not compliant or still undergoing verification.

Most of the numbers in oil and gas producers’ emissions reports aren’t based on field measurements. Instead, the companies tally up the equipment they use — like compressors, tanks, valves and flares — and apply EPA formulas to determine estimated emissions rates.

An EPA proposal from June to update the rules noted “confusion” over a class of oilfield gizmos called intermittent-bleed pneumatic devices. These controllers use gas pressure to automatically open and close valves at remote well sites. By design, they sometimes release methane. Because there are hundreds of thousands in service, these devices are considered a major contributor to warming temperatures.

To tally their methane output, energy companies must determine how many controllers they have and how many hours they are operational. Then they plug these numbers into an EPA formula to calculate how much gas they’re probably releasing. Most companies report that their controllers are operational virtually all the time — 23 or 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

But a few companies have taken the word “operational” to refer only to the brief moments when a device is actually releasing gas. Range, for instance, estimated its 11,610 controllers were operational an average of just 8 minutes a day in 2020, the latest year for which disclosures have been published. Cabot Oil & Gas Corp., which merged with another company to form Coterra last year, reported its controllers were operational for just 4 minutes a day in 2020. BP said controllers in a field in Louisiana operated for a daily average of 10 minutes, although it used much higher figures in other basins.

In the June proposal, the agency said that interpretation is wrong, and that companies are supposed to include all of the times the devices are in service, not just when they’re releasing gas. It noted that the factor used to ballpark emissions from the devices — 13.5 cubic feet of gas per hour per device — was based on measurements over sustained periods of time.

But Range says its reading is valid, and notes that the recent clarification doesn’t have the force of law because it hasn’t been formally adopted as a final rule.

“We believe our reported data meets the current agency definition. If this, or any definition were to change, we would meet those definitions with our reporting,” Mark Windle, a Range spokesman, said in an email.

Windle provided an 8-page letter that Range sent to the EPA in 2019 laying out its reasoning for using the lower number of hours. “This letter was received and not disputed by the EPA,” he said. The agency said it never approved such an interpretation.

If Range had interpreted the rule the way most other energy companies do, it probably would have reported releasing an additional 22,000 metric tons of methane in 2020. That amount of gas has the same short-term global warming impact as adding 380,000 cars to U.S. roads. Range’s methane intensity, a measure of emissions per unit of energy produced, would have gone from being the best of its Appalachian peers to among the worst.

Windle said that Range inspects sites for leaks more frequently than required under EPA rules. The company has also voluntarily installed monitors at some well sites to keep better track of methane emissions and has installed equipment to minimize releases.

After the methane penalty becomes law, it is expected to generate as much as $1.9 billion a year from oil and gas companies, according to the Congressional Budget Office, with fees for some individual companies potentially reaching into the tens of millions of dollars. But even without the financial prod, some companies appear to be gravitating to Range’s reading of the rule.

Last year, a report commissioned by Ceres and the Clean Air Task Force identified Terra and Flywheel as among the largest methane emitters in the country, generating rare media attention for the two small, privately-held producers. A few months later, a new round of EPA disclosures appeared to show that both companies had slashed their emissions by more than half in a single year. Behind both drops: a cut in the amount of time their controllers were reported to be in operation. Terra dropped its estimate from 24 hours a day in 2019 to about 6 hours a day the following year. Flywheel went from 19 hours a day to about 14 seconds a day.

“All they really did was join the crowd of companies taking this questionable approach,” Logan said.

Terra, which operates in western Colorado, told National Public Radio last year that its earlier disclosures had “significantly overstated” emissions. The EPA, for its part, says that Terra’s later numbers are still undergoing verification.

Agency rulemakers are already proposing to base more of companies’ climate disclosures on actual measurements, rather than rough estimates derived from equipment counts. The pending bill mandates that the EPA carry out that plan, and to revamp the reporting system for oil and gas companies within two years. The fee begins to kick in in 2024.

Companies that do undertake their own methane measurements sometimes discover a significant gap with assumptions baked into the EPA’s accounting formulas. Jonah Energy LLC, a Wyoming gas producer, deliberately uses a low hours-in-operation figure for its equipment — about an hour a day — because the standard approach would overstate how much methane is actually leaking, said Howard Dieter, a Jonah vice president. Unlike most producers, Jonah conducts detailed measurements across its operations. It was the first US company to earn a “gold standard” rating from the United Nations-backed Oil & Gas Methane Partnership last year.

After determining how much gas was spewing from its devices in 2020, Dieter said, Jonah reported an hours-in-operation figure that would result in the right amount of emissions under EPA formulas. He said Jonah has discussed the matter with agency officials. The EPA hasn’t yet said whether it’s comfortable with that approach.

Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek

Renewable Energy Company Closes $4.3M Capital Round to Convert Landfill Methane Into Bitcoin



Aoyon Ashraf
Tue, August 9, 2022 

Vespene Energy, a Berkeley, Calif.-based company that converts methane gas released from landfills into power for bitcoin mining, closed a $4.3 million funding round led by blockchain investment firm Polychain Capital and other climate-focused funds.

The company installs efficient micro-turbines on municipal landfills, which convert otherwise wasted methane gas into electricity to power bitcoin-mining data centers, according to a statement.

According to a U.N. report, methane is a harmful greenhouse gas with a 100-year global warming potential that is 28 times to 34 times greater than carbon dioxide. Citing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Vespene said that U.S. landfills account for 15% of U.S. methane emissions, but a recent NASA survey indicated that these numbers may be two times to three times higher.

“Due to the high costs and long lead times associated with building grid-connected landfill energy projects, over 70% of the country’s roughly 2,600 municipal landfills do not have a viable use for the methane they produce,” the company said in the statement.

Vespene enables landfill owners to turn harmful methane gas, which is a financial and environmental liability, into a potential revenue stream. Vespene, in turn, gets a cheap, renewable energy source for its bitcoin mining data centers.

“By using wasted methane to power bitcoin mining, Vespene is killing two birds with one stone – mitigating harmful GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions and helping transition Bitcoin mining toward carbon-neutral and carbon-negative energy sources,” the company said in the statement.

Bitcoin mining technology has shown promise for mitigating some greenhouse emission-related problems, despite outcries by some lawmakers that miners are harming the environment by using too much energy.

Miners have recently been setting up remote facilities to use otherwise-wasted natural gas to power mining operations. In the process, they have been reducing the amount of methane gas released into the atmosphere.

Vespene will use the fresh capital to launch its pilot site in California, making it the first company to convert wasted landfill methane into bitcoin, the company said. One Vespene module will take about four to six months to establish. Each module will have a power capacity of about 1.5 megawatts (MW) and eliminate 270,000 metric tons of CO2-equivalent per year, Vespene added.

The company’s business model also allows landfill owners to participate in a profit-sharing agreement that has a predetermined floor and ceiling. By letting the company set up its facility, landfill owners can capture a certain amount of upside via a profit-sharing arrangement during a bitcoin bull-run.

Meanwhile, having set limits on how much profit it has to relinquish, Vespene is able to hedge its downside during bearish markets.

“Our goal is to mitigate a major source of greenhouse gas emissions and help fuel the transition to a renewable energy future by using bitcoin mining to turn landfill methane streams into revenue streams for our customers,” Vespene Energy co-founder and CEO Adam Wright said in the statement.

Global heating has caused ‘shocking’ changes in forests across the Americas, studies find


Oliver Milman
Wed, August 10, 2022 


Photograph: Ashley Cooper/Alamy

Forests from the Arctic to the Amazon are transforming at a “shocking” rate due to the climate crisis, with trees advancing into previously barren tundra in the north while dying off from escalating heat farther south, scientists have found.

Global heating, along with changes in soils, wind and available nutrients, is rapidly changing the composition of forests, making them far less resilient and prone to diseases, according to a series of studies that have analyzed the health of trees in north and South America.

Many areas of forest are now becoming more susceptible to ferocious wildfires, causing the release of further greenhouse gases from these vast carbon stores that heat the planet even more. “It’s like humans have lit a match and we are now seeing the result of that,” said Roman Dial, a biologist at Alaska Pacific University.

Dial and his colleagues have discovered that a patch of white spruce trees in north-west Alaska have “hopped” north into an area of the Arctic tundra that hasn’t had such trees in millennia. The scientists’ new research paper, published in Nature, estimates the spruce are advancing north at a rate of around 4km a decade, aided by warming temperatures and changes to snow and wind patterns influenced by the shrinkage of sea ice in the region.

“It was shocking to see trees there. No one knew about them but they were young and growing fast,” said Dial, who first spotted the shadows of the trees on satellite imagery and then took a single-engine plane journey, followed by a five-day hike, to find and study the advancing forest.

“The trees basically hopped over the mountains into the tundra. Going by climate models, this wasn’t supposed to happen for a hundred years or more. And yet it’s happening now.”

The Arctic is heating up several times faster than the global average and the emergence of dark conifers on previously pristine white tundra threatens to absorb, rather than reflect, more sunlight, causing further heating. The trees may also disturb the migration of various local species. “These trees are moving very quickly,” said Dial.

Farther south, separate research has found a transformation is under way at the boundary between the boreal and temperate forests, with species of spruce and fir increasingly unable to cope with the hotter conditions. Scientists estimate that even small amounts of further heating, caused by human activity, could cause up to a 50% die-off of traditional boreal forest trees in certain places, with many other trees becoming stunted in their growth.

“Boreal species do very poorly even with modest warming. They grow more slowly and have greater mortality,” said Peter Reich, a researcher at the University of Minnesota who co-authored the research. “Intuitively, I thought they would do slightly worse with 1.5C of warming, but they do much worse, which is worrisome.”

Reich and his colleagues spent five years raising nine different tree species from seedlings under different conditions in northern Minnesota, subjecting them to different amounts of heat and water. The boreal species were found to have suffered when soils dried out due to the heat while other more temperate species, such as oak and maple, were able to cope better and may be able to slowly shift into the boreal zone as the world warms further.

“Given how fast climate change is, we could get a 50 to 150 year period where spruce and fir over thousands of miles, including from Siberia to Scandinavia, don’t regenerate, so you’ll have this strange new system of invasive shrubs that won’t provide us with the economic and ecological services we are used to,” Reich said.

The impact of the climate crisis is also being felt in the heart of the Amazon, a further study has underlined. Scientists have raised concerns that the huge rainforest ecosystem is in danger of tipping into a new, altered state, eventually becoming a savannah, and the new research found that a lack of phosphorus in the Amazon’s soils could have “major implications” for its resilience to global heating.

Ex-Miss America Mund: Abortion ruling prompted US House run


In this Sept. 10, 2017, photo, Miss North Dakota Cara Mund reacts after being named Miss America during the Miss America 2018 pageant in Atlantic City, N.J. The Former Miss America Mund said Wednesday, Aug. 10, 2022, that her concern about abortion rights prompted her to launch her independent bid for the U.S. House in her home state. Mund would face an uphill battle in deeply conservative North Dakota, but told The Associated Press that the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling to overturn a constitutional right to abortion was "just a moment where I knew we need more women in office." (AP Photo/Noah K. Murray, File)

JAMES MacPHERSON
Wed, August 10, 2022 

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — Former Miss America Cara Mund said Wednesday that her concern about the erosion of abortion rights prompted her independent bid for the U.S. House in her home state of North Dakota.

Mund, who is running against the odds in deeply conservative North Dakota, told The Associated Press that the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling to overturn the constitutional right to abortion was “just a moment where I knew we need more women in office.”

The 28-year-old recent Harvard Law School graduate announced her candidacy Saturday, just weeks before early voting begins in the state where Republicans hold every statewide office.

Her run comes as North Dakota’s only abortion clinic is Fargo prepares to relocate across the border to Minnesota to avoid recrimination if courts allow a law banning all abortions except in cases of rape, incest or to protect the life of the pregnant woman to be enforced.

Having the government “make women have to travel across state lines is going to impact women, and women of lower social economic status," she said.

Acting as her own campaign manager and without any fundraising machinery, the Bismarck native has begun gathering the 1,000 signatures she needs to get on the ballot. If she makes it, in November she will face Republican U.S. Rep. Kelly Armstrong, who has held the state’s lone House seat since 2019, and Democrat Mark Haugen of Bismarck, a University of Mary graduate adviser who has long worked as a paramedic.

Mund’s stance on abortion runs contrary to North Dakota’s active evangelical conservatives. But the issue could draw votes from endorsed candidates from both parties, and it especially could be a spoiler for Haugen, a Roman Catholic who opposes abortion.

“If she’s pro-choice, then she’s running to the left of me on that issue,” he said.

Armstrong, an ardent supporter of former President Donald Trump and the former state GOP party chairman, said Mund appears to have all the trappings of a Democrat.

“Seems like people pretty high up in Democratic politics are excited about it,” Armstrong said about Mund’s attempt to get in the race. “It doesn’t change anything we are doing.”

Mund is seeking to present herself as independent of Republicans and Democrats, a candidate with the public’s best interest in mind who would seek common ground. She believes she would appeal to a large portion of the electorate who are fed up with the two-party system that controls politics.

“It’s not fair to make Americans have to pick one side or the other,” she said.

Even with no party apparatus for support, Mund is a known entity in North Dakota and is known for speaking her mind.

She won the Miss North Dakota crown on a platform of increasing the number of women elected to political office. At Miss America in 2017, she said Trump was wrong to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate accords that seek to rein in greenhouse gas emissions.

Mund said in 2018 that she had been bullied and silenced by leaders within the Miss America organization. The head of the organization’s board later resigned.

Mund said win or lose, she intends to stay in North Dakota and someday raise a family. She took the state bar exam recently and is awaiting the results.

She intends to keep pursing public office if she loses, and looks at the House run as a personal challenge, if daunting.

The biggest failures in her life, she said, “are the things that I was too afraid to try.”

16 Comments On Same Sex Marriages From Republicans That I Can't Believe I Am Reading In 2022

BUZZFEED Wed, August 10, 2022

The year is 2022. We pride ourselves on being woke human beings and believe that we know better than the previous generation's bigotry. Wait a minute, though! Read these comments made by Republicans on marriage equality. Maybe we aren't living in 2022 after all...

1.When Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas said that the Supreme Court has the duty to "correct the error" of legalizing same-sex marriages.

While reacting to the Roe v. Wade decision, Clarence Thomas said that the Supreme Court should reconsider opinions protecting same-sex relationships, marriage equality, and access to contraceptives. He also said that they "have the duty to 'correct the error' established in the precedents."

Drew Angerer / Getty Images

2.When Sen. Marco Rubio said he wouldn't vote to codify same-sex marriage into law because it is a "non-issue" and a "stupid waste of time."

On July 20, 2022, Marco Rubio confirmed that he wouldn't vote to codify same-sex marriage. "I don't know why we're doing that bill; there's no threat to its status in America," he told the Insider. "But I know plenty of gay people in Florida that are pissed off about gas prices." He also went on to say that it is a "stupid waste of our time on a non-issue."

Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images

3.When Ben Shapiro tweeted that the "founders would have died laughing" about same-sex marriages.

4.When Sen. John Cornyn of Texas called the Supreme Court’s marriage equality ruling an “edict.”

The senator from Texas made this comment when questioning nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson during her confirmation hearing on March 22, 2022. He said that it is an example of policy-making by the court and that the court added a "new right that is not in the Constitution."

"When the Supreme Court decides that something that is not even in the Constitution is a fundamental right and no state can pass any law that conflicts with the Supreme Court’s edict, particularly in an area where people have sincerely held religious beliefs, doesn’t that necessarily create a conflict between what people may believe as a matter of their religious doctrine or faith and what the federal government says is the law of the land?" Cornyn asked.

Anna Rose Layden / Getty Images

5.When Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said that "nobody is taking away gay marriage rights" and that the Marriage Equality Bill is a "shiny object to rile up voters."

6.When Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana called the Marriage Equality Bill a "silly messaging bill."

While clarifying his stance on the Marriage Equality Bill, he said to CNN, "It's a pure messaging bill. I mean, it's obviously settled law right now. This is a pure messaging bill by a party which has failed on substantive issues, be it inflation, crime, or the border, and now is looking for cultural issues in order to somehow do better in November. It's such a silly messaging bill, I'm just not going to address that."

Joe Raedle / Getty Images

7.When Sen. Steve Daines said that "marriage should be between a man and a woman."

"I believe marriage is between a man and a woman. I’m opposed to this bill and believe it’s another attempt by Speaker Pelosi and the Democrats to distract the American people from the inflation crisis, energy crisis, and the southern border crisis they’ve created," Steve Daines, US senator for Montana, explained in a statement released on July 25, 2022.

Pool / Getty Images

8.When cartoonist Pat Cross said that "same-sex marriage just won't fly."

9.When Roger Severino said that the Marriage Equality Bill is just radical activists “manufacturing a phantom crisis.”

In a statement issued to HuffPost, Roger Severino, the Heritage Foundation’s vice president for domestic policy, said radical activists are “manufacturing a phantom crisis” because the Supreme Court has given no indication it plans to overturn a 2015 decision recognizing the right to same-sex marriage.

“Instead of criticizing those who point out how the hastily written legislation actually works, perhaps they should ask why the liberals in Congress drafted those provisions in the first place,” he said.

Jacquelyn Martin / AP

10.When Fox News anchor Tomi Lahren asked the LGBT community to stop "attacking traditional men and marriage at every turn."

11.When South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem said that she never supported same-sex marriages because of her faith.

“I’ve never supported gay marriage as far as the legality of it in our state. For me, a lot of my faith has to do with that and the legal documentation of that. But I do know that a lot of people are still continuing to have those discussions,” she said to the Guardian.

The Washington Post / The Washington Post via Getty Images

12.When Sen. Ted Cruz said that the Supreme Court was "overreaching" when it legalized same-sex marriages nationwide.

On July 17, 2022, Sen. Ted Cruz from Texas, a longtime opponent of same-sex marriage, commented on his podcast Verdict with Ted Cruz that the Supreme Court was "overreaching" and "clearly wrong" in the landmark Obergefell v. Hodges ruling in 2015. He also said that the landmark judgement, along with Roe v. Wade "ignored two centuries of our nation’s history."

Tom Williams / CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

13.When Sen. Mitt Romney's spokesperson said that he "believed that strong religious liberty protections are essential to any legislation" on LGBTQ+ equality.

On February 16, 2021, Sen. Mitt Romney said that he would oppose the Equality Act, the legislation to expand the prohibition on anti-LGBTQ discrimination under federal law. "Sen. Romney believes that strong religious liberty protections are essential to any legislation on this issue, and since those provisions are absent from this particular bill, he is not able to support it," Arielle Mueller, his spokesperson clarified to Washington Blade.

Back in 2012, he clarified his stand on same-sex marriage. "I have the same view on marriage that I had when I was governor. I believe marriage is a relationship between a man and a woman," Romney said. "I have the same view I've had since, well, running for office."

"Given the fact that the law is settled on this…I don’t think we need to lose sleep over it unless there was a development that suggested the law was going to be changed," Romney told reporters in Washington in July 2022.

Tom Williams / CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

14.When Sen. John Thune said that marriage equality is an issue that Democrat politicians "have concocted because they would like to shift the issue."

15.When Sen. Josh Hawley said that the Supreme Court went "too far" and that "we should let the states decide."

"The problem with Obergefell is that I don't think there is any constitutional basis for the Supreme Court to say, 'This is what the definition of marriage is according to the Constitution. I don't think the Constitution has marriage in it,'" Hawley told Raw Story. "And I think the states — traditionally that has been — because the definition of marriage, that has been a big controversy in this country all around the country. And the states have defined it one way or another and I think that that's the right difference," he clarified.

Tom Williams / CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

16.When this Trump supporter said that she doesn't "believe in gay marriage" because "that's how she has been brought up."

A year after Biden's Afghanistan exit, accountability in short supply


Wed, August 10, 2022
By Idrees Ali and Jonathan Landay

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - As weary U.S. military planners wrapped up the evacuation and pullout from Afghanistan one year ago, officials across the government steeled themselves for intense public scrutiny into how America's longest war ended in shambles with the Taliban retaking power.

But as the United States marks the first anniversary of the withdrawal this month, some U.S. officials and experts say President Joe Biden's administration has moved on without properly assessing lessons from the 20-year war and the Taliban victory.

Nor has there been public accountability for the chaotic evacuation operation that saw 13 U.S. service members killed at Kabul's airport and hundreds of U.S. citizens and tens of thousands of Afghans left behind, they said.

"We need to open up that ugly history book called the 20 years in Afghanistan and see why we fail," said John Sopko, the U.S. special inspector general tapped with tracking some $146 billion in reconstruction aid.

These lessons are especially crucial now as the administration pumps billions of dollars of assistance into Ukraine's fight against Russia, Sopko told Reuters.

U.S. policymakers, however, are now preoccupied with Russia's onslaught against Ukraine and soaring tensions with China, even as the Taliban erase women's rights, harbor al Qaeda militants and execute and torture former government officials.

The Biden administration portrays the pullout and extraction operation - one of the largest airlifts ever - as an "extraordinary success" that wound up an "endless" conflict that killed more than 3,500 U.S. and allied foreign troops, and hundreds of thousands of Afghans.

The evacuation ferried more than 124,000 Americans and Afghans to safety over 15 days. Tens of thousands of Afghans, many of whom worked for U.S. forces, now have resettled in the United States in the largest U.S. refugee operation since the Vietnam war.

To be sure, Biden was left a mess by his predecessor Donald Trump, who committed to completing the troop pullout by May 2021 without processing a massive backlog of visa applications from Afghans who worked for the U.S. government.

"We inherited a deadline in Afghanistan, but not a plan for withdrawal," a National Security Council spokesman said.

But some U.S. officials, experts and private evacuation organizers say the administration has avoided taking responsibility for misreading the speed of the Taliban advance.

The U.S. military and the State Department have been preparing so-called "after-action reviews" on their roles in the withdrawal. But it is unclear if those reports will be made public.

"It's accountability for the Americans that were left behind, the allies that were left behind that are still being hunted down, for the 13 Gold Star families (of slain U.S. troops)," said U.S. Representative Michael Waltz, a Republican lawmaker who commanded special forces in eastern Afghanistan.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin sent back the military's initial draft review because he was dissatisfied with the limited insight it provided, two U.S. officials said.

The report is now complete and Austin is reviewing it, one official said. A State Department spokesman could not say when, or in what form, it would release its report.

"We're going to have to take a black eye on our performance over the past year," said another official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

'REARVIEW MIRROR'

In December, the Air Force inspector general concluded that no U.S. military personnel would be held accountable for a drone strike in Kabul that killed 10 civilians, including seven children, in the final days of the evacuation.

The Pentagon said it would compensate the family and relocate them. But nearly a year has passed without either happening, though U.S. officials said there has been progress.

A congressional commission approved by Biden to study the history of the U.S. intervention and the pullout has yet to begin work because Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has not named the Republican co-chair.

Afghanistan momentarily returned to the headlines this month after a CIA drone strike killed al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, Washington's first known strike in Afghanistan since U.S. troops left, with Biden giving a televised address to mark the success.

The strike could complicate already difficult talks that U.S. officials are pursuing with the Taliban on releasing billions in foreign-held Afghan central bank assets and ending human rights abuses. The United States also remains Afghanistan's largest humanitarian aid donor.

But over the past year, Afghanistan largely has faded into the background in Washington. Congress has held few hearings to dissect how the U.S. effort there failed and many limited gains in Afghanistan reversed.

Current and former officials say that despite the Zawahiri killing, they remain concerned about the U.S. intelligence gathering capability. And the military has been unable to come to any basing agreements with countries near Afghanistan.

Michael Kugelman, a senior associate for South Asia at the Wilson Center think-tank, said that Washington had not shown a willingness to think about what went wrong in Afghanistan.

"I have been struck that much of Washington has appeared keen to essentially put Afghanistan in the rearview mirror and try to move on," Kugelman said.

(Reporting by Idrees Ali and Jonathan Landay in Washington; Additional reporting by Phil Stewart; Editing by Mary Milliken and Peter Graff)