Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
As I predicted (and this time correctly), the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled—unanimously—that the ban on implementing part of Trump’s immigration order will stand. (Remember that one of those judges was appointed by George W. Bush.)
The ruling, as I hear on the news, is very strong, calling part of those orders unconstitutional. This is a strong rebuke to Trump and his program, and stands as a monument to the power of the judiciary in curbing the executive branch of government. This is what we’ll have to count on, and why when Gorsuch takes his seat on the Supreme Court things will become more dire.
But right now, an appeal to the Supreme Court will probably be fruitless: if the Court divides on the usual lines, it will be a 4-4 tie, which will allow the lower court’s stay to stand. (The Trump administration can always ask for a temporary “emergency” overruling of the appeals court decision.)
And Gorsuch won’t be able to break that tie since he can’t adjudicate this case: he’s not even on the bench.
Our benighted President has already issued a tw**t:
SEE YOU IN COURT, THE SECURITY OF OUR NATION IS AT STAKE!
Last night, on the floor of the Senate, Elizabeth Warren was reading a letter from Coretta Scott King that, she said, was relevant to the nomination of Jeff Sessions to be Attorney General. King’s letter, detailing Jeff Session’s actions against black voters when he was the U.S. Attorney for Alabama, was written to Strom Thurmond and the Judiciary Committee in 1986, when Sessions was nominated for a federal district court judgeship. This was part of Warren’s objection to Jeff Sessions’ nomination to be a federal court justice, and the letter was admitted to the record in 1986. And indeed, the Republican-controlled Senate refused to confirm Sessions then; I suspect the letter from King played a role in that. Now, however, simply reading the letter was considered as Warren herself impugning another Senator. (See the letter below.) That was interpreted by Mitch McConnell as violating Senate rules.
She was ordered to sit down, something that almost never happens in the Senate. As CNN reported in an email:
McConnell determined the Massachusetts Democrat had violated a Senate rule against impugning another senator. The ruling means Warren will be barred from speaking on the floor until Sessions’ debate ends, McConnell’s office confirmed.
“She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted,” McConnell said on the Senate floor.
The emotional exchange occurred during debate on the nomination of Sessions to be attorney general. Warren was reading from a 1986 letter from Coretta Scott King, the widow of Dr. Martin Luther King, which was critical of Sessions, then a nominee to be a federal judge.
I don’t think Warren was out of line. Yes, Sessions is another Senator, but Warren is speaking of his record, not simply denigrating him as one Senator to another. And if the letter was admitted in 1986, why not now?
Here’s the exchange: Ignore the Trumpite who introduces the video, and start watching at 0:36.
CNN further reports:
You stated that a sitting senator is a disgrace to the Department of Justice,” said Daines, explaining what Warren had done to violate the rule.
About 20 minutes later, with Warren continuing to speak out critically of Sessions,
McConnell went to the floor and told Warren she was in violation of the rule. At that point, Warren asked for a roll call vote on her appeal of the decision but it was defeated.
Warren is now barred from speaking on the floor for the remainder of the debate on Session’s nomination, McConnell’s office said. The debate is expected to wrap up about 7 p.m. ET Wednesday when a final confirmation vote is planned.
She later read King’s letter outside the Senate floor on Facebook.
I’ll be brief; we have two items, one good and one bad. Good one first.
1.) After a federal judge struck down two provisions of Trump’s anti-immigration bill, the Department of Justice appealed the decision. They lost, so the travel bans are still blocked. The upholding was done by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco, which added that a response from the Trump administration was due tomorrow. (The provisions struck down included the 7-nation “Muslim ban” and the new limits on overall immigration.) This one may go all the way to the Supreme Court, which, in the absence of Trump’s nominee, is in a 4-4 liberal/conservative split. The New York Times reports that the new judicial decisions are nebulous:
Judge Robart’s order left many questions, said Josh Blackman, a professor at South Texas College of Law in Houston.
“Does the executive order violate the equal protection of the laws, amount to an establishment of religion, violate rights of free exercise, or deprive aliens of due process of law?” Professor Blackman asked. “Who knows? The analysis is bare bones, and leaves the court of appeals, as well as the Supreme Court, with no basis to determine whether the nationwide injunction was proper.”
Now the bad news, but I suspect it won’t come to fruition:
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) has drafted a bill to “completely abolish” the Environmental Protection Agency, according to an email obtained by The Huffington Post.
The freshman congressman sent the email on Tuesday morning to lawmakers who might co-sponsor the legislation, which would shutter the EPA by the end of next year.
“Our small businesses cannot afford to cover the costs associated with compliance, too often leading to closed doors and unemployed Americans,” Gaetz wrote. “It is time to take back our legislative power from the EPA and abolish it permanently.”
. . . For Gaetz, that wouldn’t go far enough. In his email to lawmakers, he cited a statistic from the American Action Forum, a conservative policy group launched in 2010 by Republican heavyweights, stating that “it would take more than 94,200 employees working full-time to complete one year of EPA paperwork.”
“Today, the American people are drowning in rules and regulations promulgated by unelected bureaucrats,” Gaetz said, “and the Environmental Protection Agency has become an extraordinary offender.”
Gaetz has a history of opposing environmental regulations. He began fighting to repeal a requirement that all gasoline in Florida contain ethanol when he first took office as a Florida state lawmaker in 2010. When his bill finally passed in 2013, he called it “one more mandate off the books.”
Here’s the entire text of the bill from Congress.gov. It’s short, and I’m betting it dies in committee. (Of course, I also bet that Trump would lose the election.):
Okay, I’m going to try to avoid highlighting all the missteps and stupid things the Tr*mp administration is doing, for if I did that I’d post nothing else. Let me just call to your notice four bad things that his administration just did:
1.) Trump signed an executive order yesterday barring any NGO (“non-governmental organization) that gets US funding from providing abortions or evening mentioning them as a possibility. As the Guardian noted,
The rule will put thousands of international healthcare workers in the difficult position of deciding whether to continue to offer family planning care that includes abortion at the expense of a critical funding stream. Many international health advocates insist that their efforts are not comprehensive without abortion services. Unsafe abortions are a major cause of maternal mortality and kill tens of thousands of women every year.
The US is the single largest donor to global health efforts, providing nearly $3bn toward health efforts through the United States Agency for International Development (USAid) alone. The state department and groups like the Peace Corps offer additional funding. A spokeswoman for International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) said the group will not abide by the gag rule and stands to lose up to $100m it currently receives from the US. None of that money is used for abortion services.
Public health advocates across the globe warned that a change in funding would have grave consequences.
“It would be devastating,” said Amu Singh Sijapati, president of the Family Planning Association of Nepal, a member of IPPF. Her association has used the funds to train healthcare workers and open clinics in remote parts of the country that offer long-acting, reversible contraceptives to disadvantaged women.
The loss of funds would limit the reach of her organization, she said. “Funding cuts would mean we can’t support … the government of Nepal’s effort on sexual and reproductive health and rights. Additionally we would not be able to run community clinics or mobile health days or train healthcare workers. The impact also means we would lose essential medical staff like nurses, doctors and health experts.”
Here’s a photo of Tr*mp signing the executive order. The number of people equals the number of Y chromosomes. In a Guardian commentary on the photo, an enraged Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett says this:
The stupidity of the blinkered, religiously motivated agenda on display here is that no matter what legislation these men implement, they will never succeed in banning abortion, per se, only safe, legal abortion. Marie Stopes estimates that, as a result of the reimposition of the global gag order, the loss of their services alone could result in 6.5m unintended pregnancies during Trump’s first term, 2.1m unsafe abortions, and 21,700 maternal deaths. In passing this law, these patriarchs have fathered millions of unwanted children, helping to create lives that could very well turn out to be painful and potentially motherless.
(from Guardian): Reince Priebus, Peter Navarro, Jared Kushner, Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon watch as Donald Trump signs the executive orders in the Oval Office, 23 January 2017. Photograph: Evan Vucci/AP
2.) Today Tr*mp on signed another executive action to facilitate construction of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access oil pipelines. After the Obama administration blocked construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline last year because it endangered waters on Native American lands, Trump simply overturned that. So much for considering the wishes of those whom we displaced. (The Keystone XL pipeline was blocked in November of 2015 by the Obama Administration, which claimed it didn’t serve the needs of Americans.) It’s clear the that the Tr*mp administration will simply run roughshod over environmental concerns.
3.)The US Environmental Protection Agency has been not only given a gag order (no press releases, no social media, no blog posts, and no new content on any website), but also ordered to freeze all of its grants, including ongoing ones. As the Daily Kos reports, (partly quoting a PuffHo piece):
EPA staff has been instructed to freeze all its grants ― an extensive program that includes funding for research, redevelopment of former industrial sites, air quality monitoring and education, among other things ― and told not to discuss this order with anyone outside the agency, according to a Hill source with knowledge of the situation.
These grants power everything from sampling pollution around Superfund sites to community recycling programs and environmental education programs used in schools. The grant lockdown follows reports that Trump intends to cut $815 million from the EPA’s budget, destroying not only the ability to fund research, but to enforce existing standards.
Requests for comment from the EPA drew no response. Of course.
4.) Tr*mp and his minions blocked any release of information from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. As BuzzFeed reported,
The US Department of Agriculture has banned scientists and other employees in its main research division from publicly sharing everything from the summaries of scientific papers to USDA-branded tweets as it starts to adjust to life under the Trump administration, BuzzFeed News has learned.
According to an email sent Monday morning and obtained by BuzzFeed News, the department told staff — including some 2,000 scientists — at the agency’s main in-house research arm, the Agricultural Research Service (ARS), to stop communicating with the public about taxpayer-funded work.
“Starting immediately and until further notice, ARS will not release any public-facing documents,” Sharon Drumm, chief of staff for ARS, wrote in a department-wide email shared with BuzzFeed News.
“This includes, but is not limited to, news releases, photos, fact sheets, news feeds, and social media content,” she added.
Can governmental denialism of anthropogenic global warming be far behind?
I can’t tell you how much dread I feel knowing that, one week from today, Donald Trump will begin his first full day as President of the United States. “President Trump”! Would any of us have not laughed at that possibility a year ago?
Well, the nightmare is about to begin. We’re going to get a young and extremely conservative Supreme Court justice to replace Scalia, ensuring a right-wing Court for years to come, and both houses of Congress are majority Republican, which all but ensures that Trump will get his agenda passed. And we have a mentally unstable president driven solely by his ego and hatred of criticism.
Now the Republicans, as promised, are beginning their repeal of “Obamacare.” Yesterday, according to The Atlantic and many other venues, the House of Representatives voted by 227-198, largely along Party lines (a few brave Republicans voted with the Democrats), to begin its repeal of the healthcare law. (The Senate voted the same way earlier in the week.) The first step was a measure called “budget reconciliation”:
What Congress approved this week was a necessary procedural step giving Republicans the power to repeal the tax and spending provisions of Obamacare, and the party demonstrated the ability to overcome some internal resistance to moving so quickly to dismantle the system enacted by President Obama and congressional Democrats.
The next step is to actually repeal Obamacare, which requires strong Republican support, and that won’t be as easy given the consequences if that law isn’t replaced by another that gives poor people some kind of healthcare. After all, over 20 million people have benefited from Obamacare, and, as House minority leader Nancy Pelosi admitted yesterday, the Democrats were far poorer at advertising their successes than at getting the bill passed in the first place. If Republicans are simply going to take away healthcare from 20 million citizens without a replacement, they’re going to look mighty bad.
So what will their healthcare plan look like? I have no idea, but can’t imagine that it will be better than Obamacare, flawed as it was. And, although I consider myself reasonably informed on American politics—but not nearly informed as many readers here—I can’t for the life of me see any reasons why the Republicans are dismantling Obamacare save two:
1). They want to elminate an important part of Obama’s legacy, and do it as fast as possible.
2). They don’t like poor people and don’t particularly care if they have reasonably-priced access to healthcare. Their palaver about the costs of Obamacare is simply a smokescreen for their anti-poor agenda.
Some of you may poo-poo the second reason, but over the years Republicans have shown a persistent callousness toward the poor, adhering as they do to a “just world” theory that the poor deserve what they get. But as determinists we know that isn’t true: poor people are the victims of their genes and environments, not poor “choices”. This is one reason why determinism needs to be embraced by people (especially Republicans), for it breeds more empathy towards the dispossessed.
I am scared about what will happen to America within a week, and of course that will affect other nations as well. Our president will be an overgrown, emotion-ridden baby who has no idea what he’s doing; his one agenda is to puff himself up and tear down his enemies, and, I suspect, he doesn’t give a damn about what happens to America in the process.
I’m not quite sure what these articles from theWashington Post and Scientific American mean, but they augur yet more anti-scientific attitudes from the incoming Trump administration, which will take over in (horrors!) only nine days. (The words “President Trump” still stick in my craw.) From Sci Am we hear about a position reportedly offered to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., son of Bobby Kennedy and thus the nephew of JFK. RFK Jr. is an environmental activist but has some wonky ideas about vaccines:
WASHINGTON—Outspoken vaccine critic Robert Kennedy Jr. has accepted a position within Donald Trump’s administration as chair of a panel on vaccine safety and scientific integrity—the clearest sign yet of the president-elect’s suspicions about vaccines.
The offer, which came in a Wednesday meeting between Trump and the scion of America’s most prominent Democratic family, is likely to concern scientists and public health experts who fear the incoming administration could give legitimacy to skeptics of childhood immunizations, despite a huge body of scientific research demonstrating that vaccines are safe.
“President-elect Trump has some doubts about the current vaccine policies and he has questions about it,” Kennedy told reporters after the meeting. “His opinion doesn’t matter but the science does matter and we ought to be reading the science and we ought to be debating the science. And that everybody ought to be able to be assured that the vaccines that we have—he’s very pro-vaccine, as am I—but they’re as safe as they possibly can be.”
Kennedy has repeatedly questioned the safety of vaccines and advanced arguments that there is a link between the immunizations and autism. He has suggested that thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative used in vaccines, can be harmful to children, a notion that has been widely debunked.
Public health agencies did suggest manufacturers eliminate or reduce the amount of thimerosal in vaccines and many have done so. But a number of studies have also discredited the idea of thimerosal is a cause of autism.
Kennedy’s work on autism has created controversy over the years. In 2005 he wrote an expose, co-published by Salon and Rolling Stone, contending that scientists were hiding the link between thimerosal and autism. Years later, Salon retracted the story, noting its basic thesis was inaccurate. Rolling Stone deleted it.
But Kennedy was not finished with the subject. He edited a 2014 book called “Thimerosal: Let the Science Speak: The Evidence Supporting the Immediate Removal of Mercury—a Known Neurotoxin—from Vaccines.” The volume makes the case that thimerosal is still causing autism and other neurological problems, and should be eliminated worldwide.
Both of the sources above, while noting that RFK, Jr. was asked to head that commission, also add, as did CNN, that Trump hasn’t really decided whether to set up a commission on autism.
But the Trump transition says no decision has been made on setting up a commission on autism, despite Robert Kennedy Jr. telling reporters he was asked by Trump to chair a committee on vaccination safety.
“The President-elect enjoyed his discussion with Robert Kennedy Jr. on a range of issues and appreciates his thoughts and ideas. The President-elect is exploring the possibility of forming a commission on Autism, which affects so many families; however no decisions have been made at this time. The President-elect looks forward to continuing the discussion about all aspects of Autism with many groups and individuals,” said Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks in statement.
My question is whether the commission on autism is the same as the commission on “vaccine safety and scientific integrity” for which RFK, Jr. was vetted. If they are, then this report is dubious. It still shows, however, that Trump has no fricking idea how to appoint good people, something we already know from the Cabinet nominations. Let’s hope that this commission doesn’t materialize, or else gets a scientifically-minded chair.
But we ain’t seen nothing yet. What scares me the most (besides Trump) is his upcoming Supreme Court nominee to replace Antonin Scalia.
“I would build a great wall, and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me, and I’ll build them very inexpensively — I will build a great, great wall on our southern border. And I will have Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words.” —Donald Trump
Well, even before he becomes President—and it’s just a scant two weeks—Donald Trump has reneged on another of his campaign promises: to build the Big Anti-Mexican Wall along the border and then get Mexico to pay for it. That was an insane proposal from the outset, and Mexico rightly ignored it. According to CNN, Trump’s team has said that it will fund the Wall through Congressional appropriations. That means we Americans will pay for this folly. To be sure, Trump has issued one of his stupid tw**ts saying that the “dishonest media” doesn’t see that we’ll get the dosh back from Mexico:
The dishonest media does not report that any money spent on building the Great Wall (for sake of speed), will be paid back by Mexico later!
New York Rep. Chris Collins said Friday that American taxpayers would front the cost for the wall but that he was confident Trump could negotiate getting the money back from Mexico.
“When you understand that Mexico’s economy is dependent upon US consumers, Donald Trump has all the cards he needs to play,” Collins, congressional liaison for the Trump transition team, told CNN’s Alisyn Camerota on “New Day.” “On the trade negotiation side, I don’t think it’s that difficult for Donald Trump to convince Mexico that it’s in their best interest to reimburse us for building the wall.”
Yeah, right!
How much will this cost? Well, here’s one estimate from CNBC:
According to a Government Accountability Office 2009 report, the cost to build 1 mile of fencing at the border averaged between $2.8 million and $3.9 million. But that figure may be low relative to costs for future sections of the wall. It’s based only on the first 220 miles fenced and does not include other factors, such as topography, transportation logistics in harder-to-reach areas (i.e. road-building and earth and drainage work), labor costs, land acquisition costs and surveillance equipment.
“The first miles of fencing were in the easiest” places, said Marc Rosenblum, deputy director of the U.S. Immigration Policy Program at the Migration Policy Institute. These were fencing areas in or close to cities and accessible transportation, rather than deep in deserts or mountains. Additionally, the first miles were on public lands, while completing a border wall would require the government to acquire land from private holders. The GAO estimate for one difficult section of fencing near San Diego was $16 million.
But wait! There’s more:
The actual cost for the rest of the border wall (roughly 1,300 miles) could be as high as $16 million per mile, with a total price tag of $15 billion to $25 billion. Rosenblum said the $15 billion low-end estimate is “probably an underestimate,” because the parts that have yet to be fenced are the most difficult — the most dense and arid. At $16 million per mile and with 1,300 miles to secure, the estimated cost would be $12 billion, and the price of private land acquisitions and maintenance of fencing could push that total cost higher.
The U.S. government would have to pay to maintain the wall, which could cost as much as $750 million a year, according to an analysis conducted by Politico. And then if it wanted to man it with personnel, that would be an additional cost — border patrol has an operating budget of $1.4 billion for 21,000 agents.
Assuming a total cost of $25 billion and a total American population of 319 million, that works out to be about $80 for every man, woman, and child in the U.S. What a bargain! (Of course, that doesn’t include maintenance.)
I’m betting it won’t be built, but I’d bet a lot that Mexico won’t contribute a peso.
