Politics

Republicans, Once Harsh Ukraine Critics, Pivot to Strong Support

Published

3 years ago

March 9, 2022

Republicans, Once Harsh Ukraine Critics, Pivot to Strong Support

Mr. Trump’s first impeachment grew out of his effort to withhold navy help from Ukraine till Mr. Zelensky agreed to research Mr. Biden and his son, Hunter, and their involvement in a Ukrainian power firm, Burisma.

After each Senate Republican besides Mitt Romney of Utah voted to acquit Mr. Trump, Senators Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, and Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, turned the tables and started a proper investigation into whether or not Mr. Biden, as vice chairman, had tried to strain Ukrainian authorities to guard his son, who was on the Burisma board.

Even some Republicans on the time, like Mr. Graham and Senator Richard M. Burr of North Carolina, nervous that the Johnson-Grassley investigation was being utilized by Russia to unfold disinformation forward of the 2020 election. The inquiry in the end discovered no proof of wrongdoing.

Now, that investigation is a distant reminiscence, and Republicans are working to elucidate their stark change in perspective.

“Corruption’s with politicians more often than not, or with large enterprise individuals,” Mr. Grassley stated on Tuesday. “On this case, you’ve bought kids being killed by bombs. There’s no connection.”

Senator Christopher S. Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut and one other longtime defender of Ukraine, famous that for a lot of the Trump administration, Senate Republicans quietly bolstered Ukraine’s defenses and backed Mr. Zelensky, at the same time as they remained silent on Mr. Trump’s undermining of the Zelensky authorities. Mr. Trump was withholding deadly navy assist that Congress had supplied to Ukraine with broad bipartisan help.

“I want they’d have made clear that there ought to be penalties to a president who makes use of Ukraine as a political chess piece,” he stated. “There’s been a subset of Republicans which might be keen to make use of Ukraine as a political piece in no matter narrative they’re attempting to spin to win elections.”

Politics

Meet the 9 new House members from California

Published

3 minutes ago

January 3, 2025

Press Room

Meet the 9 new House members from California

WASHINGTON — Friday was the first day of work for California’s nine new House members, and their first order of business involved typical congressional chaos, as Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) narrowly won reelection to his role after almost losing the first round of voting.

The nine new representatives — all Democrats, including three who flipped Republican seats — cast their votes for Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.). But Johnson, who has presided over the chamber since fall 2023, eked out a win.

For the record:

4:31 p.m. Jan. 3, 2025An earlier version of this report said former Rep. Michelle Steel flipped a congressional seat in 2020 held by Rep. Katie Porter. She defeated Rep. Harley Rouda.

As a Democratic stronghold on the West Coast, California is home to a bevy of Democratic leaders in Congress. Reps. Pete Aguilar (D-Redlands) and Ted Lieu (D-Torrance) hold the positions of House Democratic Caucus chair and vice chair, respectively.

The state lost many of its heavyweights in recent years, however — notably Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), who stepped down as House speaker to pass the torch of leadership to Jeffries. Although she no longer holds a position of leadership, Pelosi remains a powerful figure among her congressional colleagues. Still recovering from a hip surgery, Pelosi smiled from the House floor Friday as she hugged Jeffries after casting her vote for him as speaker.

Kevin McCarthy, the Bakersfield Republican who served as House speaker before a historic ouster, left Congress in 2023. Longtime Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein died in 2023. And after Vice President Kamala Harris lost the presidential election, California will no longer have a leader in the White House.

Still, as the most populous state in the nation, California enjoys the most representation in the House with 52 delegates — down one after the 2020 census showed a population decline. Nine Californians officially took their oath of office Friday afternoon to join the 119th Congress.

Here are California’s newest representatives:

Rep. Derek Tran (D-Garden Grove): Tran won a razor-thin election against incumbent Rep. Michelle Steel, a Republican who held the 45th Congressional District seat in Orange County for two terms. Steel herself flipped the seat in 2020 from Democratic Rep. Harley Rouda.

Rep. David Min (D-Irvine): When Democratic Rep. Katie Porter decided to run for U.S. Senate, Min, then a state senator, ran and won the seat, keeping it under Democratic control.

Rep. Gil Cisneros (D-Covina): Cisneros is a familiar name around California politics, having served in a different congressional district previously. He easily glided to victory in his safely Democratic San Gabriel Valley district, succeeding retiring Rep. Grace Napolitano.

Rep. Laura Friedman (D-Glendale): Friedman, a former Assembly member, is now representing central Los Angeles County, taking over the seat long held by Adam B. Schiff, who handily won California’s open Senate seat.

Rep. Luz Rivas (D-North Hollywood): Rivas, a former California Assembly member and nonprofit leader, easily won the Democratic 29th Congressional District, representing the San Fernando Valley.

Rep. George Whitesides (D-Agua Dulce): Whitesides defeated GOP Rep. Mike Garcia, flipping the northeastern Los Angeles County seat from red to blue.

Rep. Adam Gray (D-Merced): The race in the Central Valley’s 13th Congressional District was the last election in the country to be called, as Gray flipped the seat from Republican Rep. John Duarte. Gray, a former state lawmaker, pitched himself as a centrist Democrat to win over the Central Valley’s largely agricultural population.

Rep. Sam Liccardo (D-San José): Liccardo, a former mayor of San José, is representing the Bay Area in Congress.

Rep. Lateefah Simon (D-Oakland): Simon is taking over the seat vacated by Rep. Barbara Lee, the longtime Democratic representative who lost the primary race for U.S. Senate.

Politics

This Tiny Fish’s Mistaken Identity Halted a Dam’s Construction

Published

8 hours ago

January 3, 2025

Press Room

This Tiny Fish’s Mistaken Identity Halted a Dam’s Construction

For such a tiny fish, the snail darter has haunted Tennessee. It was the endangered species that swam its way to the Supreme Court in a vitriolic battle during the 1970s that temporarily blocked the construction of a dam.

On Friday, a team of researchers argued that the fish was a phantom all along.

“There is, technically, no snail darter,” said Thomas Near, curator of ichthyology at the Yale Peabody Museum.

Dr. Near, also a professor who leads a fish biology lab at Yale, and his colleagues report in the journal Current Biology that the snail darter, Percina tanasi, is neither a distinct species nor a subspecies. Rather, it is an eastern population of Percina uranidea, known also as the stargazing darter, which is not considered endangered.

Dr. Near contends that early researchers “squinted their eyes a bit” when describing the fish, because it represented a way to fight the Tennessee Valley Authority’s plan to build the Tellico Dam on the Little Tennessee River, about 20 miles southwest of Knoxville.

“I feel it was the first and probably the most famous example of what I would call the ‘conservation species concept,’ where people are going to decide a species should be distinct because it will have a downstream conservation implication,” Dr. Near said.

The T.V.A. began building the Tellico Dam in 1967. Environmentalists, lawyers, farmers and the Cherokee, whose archaeological sites faced flooding, were eager to halt the project. In August 1973, they stumbled upon a solution.

David Etnier, a dam opponent and a zoologist at the University of Tennessee, went snorkeling with students in the Little Tennessee River at Coytee Spring, not far from Tellico. There, they found a fish on the river bottom that Dr. Etnier said he had never seen before, and he named it the snail darter.

The fish became a “David” to pit against “Goliath” — because if it were to be protected under the Endangered Species Act, the dam’s construction would be blocked.

“Here’s a little fish that might save your farm,” Dr. Etnier told a local farmer, according to the book “The Snail Darter and the Dam,” by Zygmunt Plater, an emeritus law professor at Boston College.

Elected officials were eager to finish the dam, and grew increasingly frustrated.

“This two-inch fish, which surely kept the lowest profile of all God’s creatures until a few years ago, has been the bane of my existence and the nemesis of what I fondly hoped would be my golden years,” Senator Howard H. Baker Jr., of Tennessee said about the snail darter in 1979.

That year, Representative John Duncan Sr., a Tennessee Republican, also described the snail darter as a “worthless, unsightly, minute, inedible minnow.”

After the Supreme Court upheld the protection of the snail darter, President Jimmy Carter signed a bill that exempted the Tellico Dam from the Endangered Species Act. The dam began operating in 1979.

Jeffrey Simmons, an author of the study who formerly worked as a biologist at the T.V.A., discovered what appeared to be snail darters in 2015 on the border of Alabama and Mississippi, far from the Tellico Dam.

“Holy crap, do you know what this is?” Mr. Simmons said to a colleague in the creek that day.

Mr. Simmons knew it shouldn’t be there if it were truly a snail darter.

Ava Ghezelayagh, now at the University of Chicago, and colleagues conducted analysis of the fish’s DNA and compared snail darter physical traits with other fish. That led to confirmation that it was a match with the stargazing darter.

Dr. Plater, who also argued successfully for the fish in the Supreme Court case, took issue with the Yale study. He said the approach favored by Dr. Near and colleagues makes them genetic “lumpers” instead of “splitters,” meaning they reduce species instead of making more. He believes the findings also lean too heavily on genetics.

“Whether he intends it or not, lumping is a great way to cut back on the Endangered Species Act,” Dr. Plater said of Dr. Near.

Dr. Near said being described as a “lumper” was a pejorative in his world, and he added that most of the research he and colleagues had performed had resulted in speciation splits, including a 2022 study.

“The work strengthens the Endangered Species Act, because it shows how science can be revised with additional information and newer perspectives,” he said. “The methods we use in this study are leading to the discovery of scores of new species, many of which are more endangered.”

Decades after the Tellico Dam battle, the fish formerly known as the snail darter is thriving. It left the endangered species list in 2020.

“This is still a success story,” Mr. Simmons said. “Its listing under the Endangered Species Act worked, regardless of what you call this fish.”

While Mr. Duncan died in 1988, his son, former Representative John J. Duncan Jr., known as Jimmy, said his father would have felt vindicated.

“He felt the project should have never been stopped by that little snail darter,” he said.

Politics

Federal courts will not make criminal referrals to DOJ over separate ethics complaints against Justice Thomas

Published

9 hours ago

January 3, 2025

Press Room

Federal courts will not make criminal referrals to DOJ over separate ethics complaints against Justice Thomas

Separate ethics complaints filed by members of Congress and an advocacy group against Justices Clarence Thomas and Ketanji Brown Jackson will not be referred to the Justice Department, federal court officials announced.

The U.S. Judicial Conference said Thomas has agreed to follow updated guidelines on listing free private travel and gifts from friends, following previous reporting on undisclosed hospitality.

For her part, Jackson has amended her financial disclosures following complaints about her husband’s consulting income as a physician.

Democratic Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Ron Wyden (D-OR), along with Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA), had asked for an investigation by the judiciary itself into undisclosed hospitality provided to Thomas by billionaire friend Harland Crow. ProPublica reported on several instances of private travel and lodging over the years.

SUPREME COURT CHEIF JUSTICE ROBERTS ISSUES WARNING ON ‘JUDICIAL INDEPENDENCE’ WEEKS BEFORE TRUMP’S INAUGURATION

Judge Robert Conrad, who heads the judicial conference policymaking body, said in letters to the lawmakers that Thomas had filed amended financial disclosures “that address several issues identified in your letter.”

Additionally, Conrad said that it was not clear whether the judiciary itself could make criminal referrals against a sitting Supreme Court member.

“Because the Judicial Conference does not superintend the Supreme Court and because any effort to grant the Conference such authority would raise serious constitutional questions, one would expect Congress at a minimum to state any such directive clearly. But no such express directive appears in this provision,” Conrad said.

DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE SPENT OVER $100 MILLION ON DEI EDUCATION PROGRAMS OVER LAST FOUR YEARS

The U.S. Supreme Court is seen during sunset. (Aaron Schwartz/SIPA USA)

Conrad noted that Whitehouse and Wyden had separately asked Attorney General Merrick Garland to name a special counsel to investigate then-former President Donald Trump. Garland has not acted yet on that request.

Whitehouse, in a statement, criticized the Judicial Conference’s decision.

“By all appearances, the judicial branch is shirking its statutory duty to hold a Supreme Court justice accountable for ethics violations,” said Whitehouse.

The complaint filed against Jackson came from Citizens for Renewing America, led by Russ Vought, who was nominated by President-elect Trump to lead the Office of Management and Budget.

Questions over ethics, including unreported private travel by some justices, have led the court to adopt its first code of ethics last year.

Supreme Court Justices in formal portrait sitting

United States Supreme Court (front row L-R) Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, Chief Justice of the United States John Roberts, Associate Justice Samuel Alito, and Associate Justice Elena Kagan, (back row L-R) Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch, Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson pose for their official portrait at the East Conference Room of the Supreme Court building on October 7, 2022 in Washington, DC. The Supreme Court has begun a new term after Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was officially added to the bench in September. ((Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images))

However, compliance is left to each of the nine justices, leading to concerns the court is not taking its own ethics enforcement standards seriously.

A two-year investigation by Senate Democrats released last week found additional luxury travel by Justice Thomas in 2021 was not noted on his annual financial disclosure form.

Fix the Court, a group which advocates for greater judicial transparency, urged Congress to act.

“The Conference’s letters further underscore the need for Congress to create a new and transparent mechanism to investigate the justices for ethics violations since the Conference is unwilling to act upon the one method we had presumed existed to do that,” said Executive Director Gabe Roth.

Shannon Bream currently serves as anchor of FOX News Sunday. She joined the network in 2007 as a Washington D.C- based correspondent covering the Supreme Court.