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25 December 19
Greg Evans, Deadline
Excerpt: "'I'd like to see a bag of sh*t right in his face,' De Niro says on the newly launched podcast Rumble with Michael Moore."
EXCERPT:
And De Niro doesn’t let Trump’s congressional supporters off the hook. “I know I live in New York and I’m living in a certain world,” the actor says. “It’s not out there in the Midwest and other parts of the country. But there’s right and there’s wrong. I know when I see what’s being done, that’s wrong. And those people are supposed to represent us and they are supposed to know and stand up for what’s right in the country, and they’re not doing that.”
“[Kevin] McCarthy, Lindsey Graham. Shame on him. Shame on them. What are their families, what are their grandkids — if they have any, I don’t know — but it’s, it’s, it’s awful.”
De Niro finds one silver lining to Trump, though: “The only thing he’s done, the only contribution I see that he’s given to this country and the world is that he’s taught us that we can never allow it to happen again.”
Former White House counsel Don McGahn. (photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney, Politico
Excerpt: "The House is open to the prospect of impeaching President Donald Trump a second time, lawyers for the Judiciary Committee said Monday."
EXCERPT:
House Counsel Douglas Letter said in a filing in federal court that a second impeachment could be necessary if the House uncovers new evidence that Trump attempted to obstruct investigations of his conduct. Letter made the argument as part of an inquiry by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals into whether Democrats still need testimony from former White House counsel Don McGahn after the votes last week to charge Trump with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
“If McGahn’s testimony produces new evidence supporting the conclusion that President Trump committed impeachable offenses that are not covered by the Articles approved by the House, the Committee will proceed accordingly — including, if necessary, by considering whether to recommend new articles of impeachment,” Letter wrote.
It’s the first impeachment-related filing by the House since lawmakers voted, mostly along party lines, to impeach Trump over allegations stemming from efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate his Democratic rivals. It comes just hours after the Justice Department argued that the impeachment votes undercut lawmakers’ ongoing court case demanding testimony from McGahn, who was special counsel Robert Mueller’s central witness.
In a brief filed early Monday morning, DOJ lawyers acknowledge that the House’s approval of two articles of impeachment — focused on Trump’s alleged effort to withhold aid from Ukraine and his blockade of the House inquiry — do not render moot the legal fight over McGahn.
Protest against gerrymandering. (photo: Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)
Nick Martin, The New Republic
Martin writes: "In September 2010, Jon Stewart, then the popular host of The Daily Show, sat behind his desk and held up a bright yellow poster. On it were scrawled the words: 'I disagree with you, but I'm pretty sure you're not Hitler.'"
EXCERPT:
North Carolina has long functioned as a convenient microcosm of America. Demographically, it has a sizable population, 10 million strong at last count, and is among one of the most diverse states in the nation, with healthy populations and communities built up by Native, black, and Latino citizens. Economically, it was among the states hit hardest by the international trade deals signed in the 1980s and 1990s, which killed its textile industry and consolidated farm ownership. In response, the state looked to rebrand itself as a destination spot for tech companies and manufacturers seeking cheap labor and for the banking industry looking for lower state taxes than could be found in New York. Charlotte quickly and quietly became one of the nation’s most important financial hubs, as Amazon facilities began to infest the state’s rural communities and Dollar Trees replaced mom-and-pop groceries.
Politically, while North Carolina has always harbored a nasty strain of Jesse Helms–style social conservatism, it managed during the latter half of the twentieth century to carve out a surprising legacy of providing its citizens top-tier social services, for instance in the form of a strong public K–12 and university system. But after the 2010 elections, North Carolina, once a progressive beacon in the South, changed course. The rapid reconfiguration of the state would provide a playbook for GOP chapters far and wide.
The first goal of those with power is always to find a way to retain that power. In 2011, with control of the legislature, North Carolina Republicans accomplished this by redrawing the electoral maps, gerrymandering poor and black voters into irrelevance. (The state court that finally ruled on the move in October 2019 found the redistricting illegal, and rife with “partisan intent.”) They also went after the Democratic strongholds in the state’s college towns, passing a law stipulating that if parents wanted to claim their child as a dependent, the young voter would have to submit their ballot in their home district and not at on-campus polling stations. Consequently, in the 2012 elections, 51 percent of North Carolinians voted for a Democratic candidate yet the GOP claimed nine of the state’s 13 available seats in the U.S. House.
With their power thus secured, the state’s Republicans set about winding the clocks back a half-century. House Bill 2, otherwise known as HB2 or “the bathroom bill,” sought to limit the ability of transgender citizens to use the bathroom of their choice; more insidiously, and noted less by the press initially, the bill also kneecapped the few existing legal protections for the trans community against discrimination from employers. The bill sailed through the legislature, and Governor Pat McCrory, elected in 2012, happily adorned it with his signature, kicking off a national boycott campaign by musical artists and the NCAA alike. This was in addition to an outright ban on gay marriage—an unenforceable constitutional amendment achieved through a 2012 referendum.
Immigration detention center. (photo: USA TODAY)
Deaths in Custody. Sexual Violence. Hunger Strikes. What We Uncovered Inside ICE Facilities Across the US
USA TODAY
Excerpt: "At 2:04 p.m. on Oct. 15, a guard at the Richwood Correctional Center noticed an odd smell coming from one of the isolation cells. He opened the door, stepped inside and found the lifeless body of Roylan Hernandez-Diaz hanging from a bedsheet."
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Pete Buttigieg. (photo: Cheriss May/NurPhoto/Getty Images)
USA TODAY
Excerpt: "At 2:04 p.m. on Oct. 15, a guard at the Richwood Correctional Center noticed an odd smell coming from one of the isolation cells. He opened the door, stepped inside and found the lifeless body of Roylan Hernandez-Diaz hanging from a bedsheet."
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Pete Buttigieg. (photo: Cheriss May/NurPhoto/Getty Images)
Pete Buttigieg Fundraiser Dangles Influence for Cash
Jonathan Swan and Alayna Treene, Axios
Excerpt: "'If you want to get on the campaign's radar now before he is flooded with donations after winning Iowa and New Hampshire, you can use the link below for donations,' the fundraiser, H.K. Park, wrote in an email to the donor, which was reviewed by Axios."
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Armie Hammer, Joan Smalls and Wilmer Valderrama attend the MDL Beast Festival Lunch at the historical city of Diriyah in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. (photo: Daniele Venturelli/Getty Images)
Jonathan Swan and Alayna Treene, Axios
Excerpt: "'If you want to get on the campaign's radar now before he is flooded with donations after winning Iowa and New Hampshire, you can use the link below for donations,' the fundraiser, H.K. Park, wrote in an email to the donor, which was reviewed by Axios."
READ MORE
Armie Hammer, Joan Smalls and Wilmer Valderrama attend the MDL Beast Festival Lunch at the historical city of Diriyah in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. (photo: Daniele Venturelli/Getty Images)
'Shameless' Influencers Face Backlash for Promoting Saudi Arabia Music Festival
Alyx Gorman, Guardian UK
Gorman writes: "MDL Beast had all the markings of a big budget electronic music festival. The line-up included big name acts like David Guetta and Steve Aoki."
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Alyx Gorman, Guardian UK
Gorman writes: "MDL Beast had all the markings of a big budget electronic music festival. The line-up included big name acts like David Guetta and Steve Aoki."
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Oil and gas refinery. (photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
Big Oil Spent $3.6 Billion to Clean Up Its Image, and It's Working
Kate Yoder, Grist
Yoder writes: "If you've ever seen an ad featuring ExxonMobil scientists handling beakers of green goo, the algae that will supposedly fuel the future, you've been the target of an oil company's advertisement."
Kate Yoder, Grist
Yoder writes: "If you've ever seen an ad featuring ExxonMobil scientists handling beakers of green goo, the algae that will supposedly fuel the future, you've been the target of an oil company's advertisement."
Exxon isn’t trying to sell you a product, exactly — but it is hoping to sell you on the idea that it’s committed to a greener future.
Over the past 30 years, the world’s five biggest oil companies have forked over more than $3.6 billion for reputation-building ads like this one. “When we looked at the dollar amounts, we were sort of blown away,” said Robert Brulle, a visiting professor of environment and society at Brown University.
Promotional ad spending from Exxon, BP, Chevron, Shell and ConocoPhillips has fluctuated a lot over the years, so Brulle’s research team decided to figure out why. The results, published in the journal Climatic Change this month, suggest that oil companies pour money into promotional campaigns for two main reasons: to boost their reputation when they’re getting negative media coverage, and to influence policymakers when Congress is considering climate legislation.
Consider the Deepwater Horizon spill in 2010, when BP’s oil rig exploded, filling the Gulf of Mexico with nearly 5 billion gallons of oil. Unsurprisingly, the news coverage was not exactly favorable. BP’s spending on promotions ads jumped from just $10,000 the year before the spill to a whopping $168 million in 2010, adjusted for inflation.
“If you want to make your case in a legal court, you gotta go get a lawyer,” Brulle said. “If you want to make your case in the court of public opinion, you gotta go get a public relations agent.”
It’s worth noting that Big Oil’s PR history is coming under increased scrutiny. In October, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey sued Exxon, arguing in part that its advertising was misleading people into believing the oil behemoth was taking action on climate change. And earlier this month, the nonprofit legal group ClientEarth filed a complaint with the British authority that handles corporate rulebreaking for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, an intergovernmental group of the world’s biggest economies, accusing BP of something similar.
The rise and fall of oil spending on promotional ads over the last three decades roughly tracks the federal government’s interest in taking climate action. Big Oil ramped up its ad spending in 1997, around the time countries were working on the Kyoto Protocol, an international attempt to set legally binding cuts to greenhouse gas emissions. Spending didn’t drop until 2001, when President George W. Bush took office and withdrew from the treaty. A similar pattern happened leading up to 2010, when Congress considered the Waxman-Markey bill, which would have established a national cap-and-trade program. It died, and just like that, spending dropped.
Oil companies could start matching their green words with action. Spain’s biggest oil and gas company, Repsol, committed to becoming a net-zero carbon emitter by 2050. And Exxon is actually buying solar and wind in West Texas … except it’s for powering Exxon’s expanding oil field operations.
The promotional ad campaigns are part of oil companies’ broader effort to burnish their image. Many corporations, for example, donate large sums to the arts, affiliating themselves with prestigious museums, galleries, and opera houses. In an analysis of its promotional efforts from 1970 to 1981, Mobil Corporation claimed to have molded the “‘collective unconsciousness’ of the nation” through its branding of things like PBS’ Masterpiece Theater. In 1973, the company’s chair, Rawleigh Warner Jr, remarked that one of the most “effective” strategies was to buy prime advertising space in the New York Times every week. “The space is large enough for essay-type ads,” he said before the Economic Club of Detroit, “and is an integral part of the editorial section that is ‘must’ reading for opinion leaders, policymakers, educators, journalists, legislators, business executives, and intellectuals.”
Oil companies have been criticized for putting profits over the environment for more than a century now, which means they’ve had a long time to figure out damage control. Back in 1904, Ida Tarbell, the famous investigative journalist, wrote The History of the Standard Oil Company. It exposed unfair practices, raised public fury, and was credited with leading to the breakup of Standard Oil’s monopoly. No wonder Big Oil is willing to shell out billions to boost its public image.
“You want to know one of the reasons we’re not acting on climate change?” Brulle asked. “$3.6 billion spent on corporate propaganda might have something to do it.”
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