But by early August, the Ukrainians were struggling to get clear answers from their American contacts about the status of the assistance, according to American officials familiar with the Ukrainians’ efforts.
In the days and weeks after top Ukrainian officials were alerted to the aid freeze, Gordon D. Sondland, the United States ambassador to the European Union, and Kurt D. Volker, then the State Department’s special envoy to Ukraine, were working with Mr. Giuliani to draft a statement for Mr. Zelensky to deliver that would commit him to pursuing the investigations, according to text messages between the men turned over to the House impeachment investigators.
The text messages between Mr. Volker, Mr. Sondland and the top Zelensky aide did not mention the hold up of the aid. It was only in September, after the Warsaw meeting, that Mr. Taylor wrote in a text message to Mr. Sondland, “I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign.”
After being informed on Sept. 1 in Warsaw that the aid would be released only if Mr. Zelensky agreed to the investigations, Ukrainian officials, including their national security adviser and defense minister, were troubled by their inability to get answers to questions about the freeze from United States officials, Mr. Taylor testified.
Through the summer, Mr. Zelensky had been noncommittal about the demands from Mr. Volker, Mr. Sondland and Mr. Giuliani for a public commitment to the investigations. On Sept. 5, Mr. Taylor testified, Mr. Zelensky met in Kiev with Senators Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, and Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut.
Mr. Zelensky’s first question, Mr. Taylor said, was about the security aid. The senators responded, Mr. Taylor said, that Mr. Zelensky “should not jeopardize bipartisan support by getting drawn into U.S. domestic politics.”
But Mr. Sondland was still pressing for a commitment from Mr. Zelensky, and was pressing him to do a CNN interview in which he would talk about pursuing the investigations sought by Mr. Trump.
Pollsters discovered that 55 percent of respondents approved of the inquiry, while 43 percent opposed it. Last week, 51 percent supported it while 45 percent did not.
Democrats, at 93 percent, overwhelmingly support the inquiry in the new poll, as do a majority of independents — 58 percent. Almost 9 in 10 Republicans — 88 percent — disapproved. Support jumped 8 points among independents, pollsters noted, adding that more Democrats and Republicans also said in the new survey that they back the inquiry.
Almost half of all respondents — 48 percent — backed impeachment and removal of Trump, up 2 percentage points from last week. Forty-six percent said they are now against impeaching and removing him.
Support for removing the president was highest among Democrat respondents at 86 percent, compared to 49 percent of independents. Ninety-one percent of Republicans said they are against removing the president from office.
The president’s approval rating also dipped under 40 percent for the first time since the inquiry began, with 38 percent approving of his performance and 58 percent disapproving. Trump’s approval stands the lowest net rating since July 2018, Quinnipiac noted.
President Trump’s lawyer argued in court on Wednesday that he should, as president, be immune from criminal prosecution — even if he murders someone in broad daylight with a gun.
The argument was made as part of Trump v. Vance, a case asking whether Manhattan prosecutors can subpoena Trump’s tax records as part of an ongoing criminal investigation. In the case, as Judge Victor Marrero explained in an opinion, Trump’s lawyers argued that “the person who serves as President, while in office, enjoys absolute immunity from criminal process of any kind.” (Marrero rejected that argument.)
On Wednesday, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit heard Trump’s appeal of Marrero’s decision. During that hearing, Trump lawyer William Consovoy confirmed just how far his argument goes. In response to a question by appellate Judge Denny Chin, Consovoy argued that Trump is immune from criminal investigation even if he were to shoot someone on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue:
Here is Trump’s lawyer, William Consovoy, telling Judge Denny Chin that if Trump were to shoot someone on fifth avenue, he could not be criminally investigated while in office.
The question is a callback to Trump bragging in January 2016 that he could “stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and … wouldn’t lose voters.”
Consovoy did concede that “once a president is removed from office” then he could be subject to criminal investigation. “This is not a permanent immunity,” in Consovoy’s words.
Nevertheless, when Chin asked whether “nothing could be done” while Trump remains in office, Consovoy stated, “That is correct.”
To be clear, Consovoy is not correct about the law. As the Supreme Court explained in Clinton v. Jones (1997), “it is settled law that the separation-of-powers doctrine does not bar every exercise of jurisdiction over the President of the United States. Moreover, the Court added that “we have never suggested that the President, or any other official, has an immunity that extends beyond the scope of any action taken in an official capacity.”
Thus, because murdering people on Fifth Avenue is not part of the president’s official duties, Trump’s immunity argument would likely fail. Similarly, because the financial information sought by prosecutors also does not relate to Trump’s official duties, Trump’s claim of immunity in Vance is weak.
Former deputy assistant attorney general John Yoo and Harvard law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz on concerns about Mulvaney’s future.
President Trump fired off a late-night Twitter message Tuesday, slamming as “Fake News!” a story that said top aides Kellyanne Conway and Steve Mnuchin were under consideration to replace acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney.
“Wrong, never even discussed this with Kellyane Conway or Steve Mnuchin,” the president wrote. “Just more Fake News!”
The president was referring to a story posted earlier in the day by Bloomberg that said Trump “for weeks” has been “privately testing” the idea of dismissing Mulvaney – and that counselor Conway and Treasury Secretary Mnuchin were both seen as possible replacements.
“You have such great ideas, why don’t you be my chief?” Trump supposedly said to Mnuchin during a gathering of White House staffers about a month ago, according to the report.
Other sources told Bloomberg the president was seeking opinions from top advisers on whether Conway could handle the job.
Mulvaney has come under fire recently for his remarks at a news conference at which he tried to explain the Trump administration’s interactions with Ukraine.
Mulvaney seemed to contradict President Trump’s claim that there was no “quid pro quo” during his July 25 phone call with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky, by telling reporters at the White House Thursday that the release of military aid to Ukraine was tied to the administration’s demands that Kiev investigate purported corruption by the Democrats during the 2016 presidential election campaign.
When questioned by reporters about the administration’s decision to withhold $400 million in aid from Ukraine, Mulvaney said Trump told him at the time: “This is a corrupt place. Everyone knows this is a corrupt place. … Plus, I’m not sure that the other European countries are helping them out either.”
Mulvaney added: “Did [Trump] also mention to me, in the past, the corruption related to the DNC server? Absolutely. No question about that. But that’s it. And that’s why we held up the money. … They look back to what happened in 2016 certainly was part of the thing that he was worried about in corruption with that nation. And that is absolutely appropriate.”
Both Conway and Mnuchin have been staunch defenders of the president.
Last month Conway appeared on Fox News’ “The Story” and took aim at the still-unidentified “whistleblower” who raised concerns about trump’s July phone call with the Ukrainian president.
“The whistleblower is someone who does not have firsthand knowledge of what happened,” Conway said at the time, calling the individual “more blowhard than whistleblower.”
During an August appearance on “Fox News Sunday,” Mnuchin described the president as “determined as ever” in working out a trade agreement with China.
“Free, fair and reciprocal trade with China is a major goal of the president,” Mnuchin said, “and … he will do whatever he needs to in order to achieve this. That includes planned sanctions, and a willingness to deal with any Chinese retaliation accordingly.”
Mulvaney, 52, became acting White House chief of staff in January, replacing retired Marine Corps Gen. John Kelly. The former congressman from South Carolina also remains director of the Office of Management and Budget, the office he assumed in February 2017.
Fox News’ Joshua Nelson, Charles Creitz and Ronn Blitzer contributed to this report.
In June 2000, the bodies of 58 Chinese immigrants were found in the back of a truck container in English port city of Dover. The following year, a Dutch driver was sentenced to 14 years in jail for manslaughter. The immigrants, who paid a smuggling gang $26,000, suffocated to death after the driver closed the air vent on the truck during a five-hour ferry ride across the English Channel.
A top U.S. diplomat gave explosive testimony Tuesday tying Ukraine aid to politically motivated investigations, a development Democrats called a game changer that could extend the impeachment inquiry into 2020.
Taylor’s testimony, that he understood the Trump administration was pushing for a quid pro quo, added more fuel to the Democrats’ hard-charging investigation.
“[T]he push to make President Zelensky publicly commit to investigations of Burisma and alleged interference in the 2016 election showed how the official foreign policy of the United States was undercut by the regular efforts led by Mr. Giuliani,” he told House investigators.
Some Democrats on Tuesday said Taylor’s “credible” testimony means some witnesses, including U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, may need to be called back to testify a second time to resolve what Democrats now see as inconsistencies in their statements.
Taylor testified that Sondland told him Trump said he wanted the Ukrainian government to state publicly it would launch investigations into the Bidens and the 2016 elections and that “everything,” including the military aid, depended on it.
“During our call on September 8, Ambassador Sondland tried to explain to me that President Trump is a businessman. When a businessman is about to sign a check to someone who owes him something, he said, the businessman asks that person to pay up before signing the check,” Taylor told investigators.
“Ambassador Sondland also told me that he now recognized that he had made a mistake by earlier telling the Ukrainian officials to whom he spoke that a White House meeting with President Zelensky was dependent on a public announcement of investigations — in fact, Ambassador Sondland said ‘everything’ was dependent on such an announcement, including security assistance,” Taylor said.
He stood by that assessment in his opening statement Tuesday.
“I believed that then, and I still believe that,” Taylor said.
Trump has repeatedly denied any quid pro quo.
Still, Taylor’s testimony comes just days after Mulvaney said aid for Ukraine was linked to Trump’s desire for the country to pursue a political probe related to the 2016 election. He later walked back the remarks.
Democrats say there are still more witnesses they want to interview before turning to the next phase of impeachment: public hearings, releasing transcripts and making recommendations for how to proceed before reaching a floor vote on articles of impeachment.
At least two more witnesses are scheduled to appear this week: Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Laura Cooper and acting Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs Philip Reeker.
The Foreign Affairs, Intelligence and Oversight and Reform committees are leading the impeachment probe. Any public hearings are likely weeks away.
While virtually every Democrat says it’s necessary to take the time to gather all the facts, they also face a balancing act of trying to prevent a months-long impeachment process from completely eclipsing their policy priorities.
That puts centrists who resisted endorsing impeachment for months — for fear it would overshadow the issues they campaigned on last year — in a tough spot.
“Whatever it takes, it takes. But I hope that it doesn’t take excessively long, because it’s going to run right into the election,” said freshman Rep. Jefferson Van Drew (D-N.J.), who said it would be ideal for the inquiry to wrap up before the Iowa caucuses in early February.
Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), who represents a deep-blue district outside of Washington, also has concerns that the impeachment probe could drag on too long.
“I think it’s going as fast as it can, responsibly, ethically,” Beyer told The Hill. “But I think getting it done sooner rather than later is really important for us, because we have so many other things that we’re doing.”
“We don’t want it to interfere too much with the 2020 election. It’s not up to me, but I would just assume [an impeachment vote] would happen before we leave for the Christmas break this year,” he said.
Other freshmen in competitive districts are resigned to an investigation that could drag on for months.
When Pelosi first endorsed the impeachment inquiry on Sept. 24, many House Democrats believed it might wrap up by Thanksgiving. Lawmakers now say the widening probe could last beyond the holiday season.
“I’d be surprised if it doesn’t go into January,” said Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.), a Pelosi ally who has been talking to colleagues on the trio of investigating committees.
“This testimony is a sea change. I think it could accelerate matters,” said Lynch, a member of the Oversight and Reform Committee. “This will, I think, answer more questions than it raises.”
Lynching, the extrajudicial murder of an untried suspect, usually by a mob and often by hanging, has a unique history in the United States because of its direct link to slavery and racism. In the United States, more than 4,700 lynchings were recorded between 1882 and 1968, according to the NAACP. Of those murdered people, almost three-quarters were black men, women and children. An untold number of runaway slaves were lynched after being captured.
Remains believed to be those of Kamille “Cupcake” McKinney, abducted 10 days ago from a Birmingham birthday party, were found by police and FBI agents Tuesday night inside of a dumpster at a landfill.
If the body is that of the child, the discovery will mark a tragic end to a massive search that has kept Birmingham, and all of Alabama, on edge for nearly two weeks.
“I wish I had all of you gathered here with good news. I wish I could share a high five or some other type of celebratory salutation but I cannot,” said Birmingham Police Chief Patrick Smith.
The Birmingham Police Department, along with the FBI, found Kamille’s remains inside of a Santek dumpster that had been parked in the Center Point area and later moved to a landfill near Warrior.
Smith said investigators have been sifting through about 12 tons of trash collected from in and around the Birmingham area for several days.
“Our investigators, along with the FBI, have worked tirelessly, 24 hours a day, to locate this young child and bring her back home and to hold those accountable who were involved in her disappearance … and ultimately her demise,” Smith said.
The Alabama Law Enforcement Agency at 9:29 p.m. Tuesday cancelled the Amber Alert that was issued hours after the abduction.
“This is a tough moment for this city. This is a tough moment for this family,” said Mayor Randall Woodfin.
“Given the tragic news that is breaking this evening, I offer my heartfelt condolences to Kamille’s family,” a statement from Gov. Kay Ivey read.
“I offer profound thanks to law enforcement and to all the volunteers who have worked tirelessly in search of this precious little girl. The heart of our state is broke, but we must do all we can to avoid this happening to another family. Our prayers remain with Kamille’s family and all who have been touched by this nightmare.”
Charges planned for two suspects
Police plan to charge Patrick Stallworth, 39, and 29-year-old Derick Irisha Brown with capital murder and kidnapping in Kamille’s death, Smith said.
The day after Kamille’s abduction, police arrested Stallworth and Brown, his girlfriend, and impounded his Toyota SUV after he was identified as a man seen in surveillance footage at an Avondale store near the time of Kamille’s abduction. His Toyota Sequoia matched the description given by other children in the area at the time who said a man had been handing candy to kids at Tom Brown Village.
Stallworth’s attorney, Emory Anthony, declined to comment Tuesday night on the planned charges against his client.
Anthony has previously said Stallworth has an alibi for the time frame in which police said Kamille was abducted and that his client does not know any of Kamille’s family members.
Brown was held on a bond revocation from a previous kidnapping case involving her children. Stallworth was charged with seven counts of possession of child pornography after investigators found multiple images in his phone. None of those images were of Kamille. He was released on $500,000 bond but taken back into custody about 7 p.m. Tuesday.
Adam Danneman, a public defender whose office represents Brown, has previously said she “adamantly denies” knowing anything about the abduction and is “horrified” by the girl’s disappearance. AL.com is reaching out to Danneman for comment in the wake of the planned charges in Kamille’s death.
‘Our entire city is mourning’
Smith has not released specific details about what may have happened to Kamille while she was in captivity, or how long she was in captivity before she was killed.
“We believe that this was something they thought about and acted upon. They saw an opportunity to take a young child and they did. Our further investigation will reveal whatever happened after that,” Smith said.
Smith said police have not established any link between Stallworth and Brown and Kamille’s family and addressed speculation of the family’s involvement. Kamille’s mother did not give interviews at the request of the police, Smith said.
“People have asked and commented, ‘Where’s the mother and why isn’t she out here appealing to the public about the safe return of her child?’” he said. “It was our call not to put the family out there. We asked everyone to remain back and allow us to do our job. This is not a movie. This is reality.”
Kamille’s family was summoned to Birmingham police headquarters about an hour before the 8 p.m. press conference announcing the discovery of the body. It was then investigators delivered the heartbreaking news to them.
“This moment for our city right now is very hard. It is the hardest for April Thomas, Kamille’s mother, Dominic McKinney, Kamille’s father, who have received this information and I know without a doubt are in tears right now,” Woodfin said. “They’re not in tears alone, they’re not crying alone, they’re not mourning alone. Tonight our entire city is mourning.”
Woodfin sought to assure the public that those responsible for Kamille’s death will be brought to justice.
“Tonight, right now, at this moment that we’re standing in, I ask one of this community – not to take sides, not to finger point but if there is any finger pointing to do it’s at the perpetrator who would kidnap and innocent 3-year-old. We stand in solidarity beside this broken family,” Woodfin said.
“To the family of Kamille, your pain, your grief, your tears, your anger, your sadness, your many questions, your pain is not ignored,” Woodfin said. “Your cries for help have not gone unanswered and will not go unanswered. I ask that we all in solidarity lift Kamille’s entire family up in prayer. A 3-year-old has been snuffed out from her family.”
‘It only takes a split second’
Within 24 hours of Kamille’s abduction, police were confident that Stallworth and Brown were responsible for the crime. Smith said Tuesday night the investigation is ongoing, but did not indicate whether anyone else would be arrested in connection with Kamille’s disappearance and slaying.
Smith thanked everyone who helped in the search for Kamille, especially the community members who provided tips, video and cooperation.
He also thanked the FBI, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, the Jefferson County EMA, Gov. Kay Ivey, Crime Stoppers and generous donors who stepped up with offers of money for rewards. He also thanked Birmingham Fire and Rescue Service and the volunteers who trudged through brush, streams and sifted through trash during the searches.
“There were a ton of people who were involved who wanted to see this young child come home,” he said.
The chief said he hopes that this message is not lost: “To young mothers, to grandmothers and to the entire Birmingham community, it only takes a split second. We can no longer assume that everyone is a part of the village that is trying to raise the child.”
“We cannot take these things for granted. We must work incredibly hard to do more to save the children in this community,” he said. “This young child has touched the nation. This young child as definitely sent a message across the nation that we must all be diligent in protecting them all.”
Dangerous fire conditions Monday fueled blazes in Pacific Palisades and San Bernardino, where at least three homes burned and evacuations were underway nearly into the night, as firefighters throughout the state braced for extreme fire conditions in coming days.
Much of California is under high fire risk with high temperatures, dry conditions and windy weather through Friday. Moderate to strong Santa Ana winds are predicted to bring an “extreme Red Flag Warning event” in parts of Southern California on Thursday and Friday, with the possibility that “very rapid fire spread and extreme fire behavior could threaten life and property,” according to National Weather Service reports.
Even in light winds on Monday, firefighters rushed to stop a blaze that quickly chewed through about 40 acres in Pacific Palisades, burning dangerously close to multimillion-dollar homes in a hillside neighborhood and sending a plume of smoke visible throughout the basin.
Firefighters responded about 10:40 a.m. to the fire, which erupted near 500 N. Palisades Drive. The fire, initially reported at one acre, grew to an estimated 30 acres in less than an hour before reaching about 40 acres by midday, Los Angeles Fire Department officials said.
About 200 homes in the area bordered by Charmel Lane, Bienveneda Avenue, Merivale Lane and Lachman Lane were under evacuation orders for most of the day, largely because of the amount of smoke and aircraft in the area, fire officials said.
“We will be expecting more fire weather as the week progresses, and because of that, we’re not going to leave any stone unturned in this community because our concern is to make sure that these lines are contained and make sure the fire doesn’t go outside,” said Assistant Chief Patrick Butler, the incident commander of the Pacific Palisades fire.
The fire started shortly after 5 p.m. Monday in thick brush near West 39th Street and North Severance Avenue. Aided by wind gusts of up to 30 mph, the fire raced up hills, burning about 20 acres and damaging at least three homes.
Jimmy Schiller, a field public information officer with San Bernardino County Fire, said Little Mountain is an area that’s prone to fires, in part because it is in the direct path of wind that comes through a nearby mountain pass.
Firefighters regularly perform prescribed burns in the area, the latest about three months ago. Firefighters burned about 100 acres in hopes of mitigating fire risk, he said.
Little Mountain has a small number of hydrants, meaning firefighters were taking frequent trips up and down the hill to fetch more water.
“It was a recipe for an unfortunate afternoon,” Schiller said.
National Weather Service forecasters predict weak to moderate Santa Anas will develop in Los Angeles, Ventura, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties through Wednesday with temperatures spiking into the high 80s and low 90s.
By Thursday and Friday, fire weather conditions could be as severe as seen during the first two days of Saddleridge fire, which burned almost 8,800 acres, damaged 88 structures and destroyed 19, including some homes.
Los Angeles firefighters got a taste of the unpredictable nature of brush fire dangers as they fought the Pacific Palisades blaze.
Before noon, fire crews had largely beaten back a significant portion of the flames that were threatening homes. Several helicopters were fighting the fire with water drops as crews scaled a section of the hillside in an effort to extinguish the smoldering blaze.
“This is an extremely challenging fire for hand crews,” Butler said. “They’re essentially clawing their way up this hillside with rocks coming down on them.”
An all-female inmate firefighting crew retreated just before 1 p.m. as the fire jumped toward them over the ridge.
One firefighter was taken to Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center with heat exhaustion. Roughly 30 minutes later, a group of people received an evacuation alert on their phones as rocks began to slide down the ridge.
One person was taken to the hospital after complaining of moderate respiratory distress.
Fire officials say no homes sustained significant damage, in part because of firefighters’ efforts and the lack of wind in the area.
Tom Danco said he had told his wife, Lynne, to evacuate when she called him Monday morning. She had been walking their dog and said she could see flames several hundred yards from their home in the Palisades Highlands. She took her dog and some important documents from their safe and left.
Danco, who was nearby, headed home to try to retrieve more items but was stopped at a roadblock on Palisades Drive. He said he wasn’t concerned at the moment about their home, citing favorable weather conditions.
“As long as there’s not a lot of wind, the fire department is really good,” he said.
Ash rained down nearby on Pacific Coast Highway as the canyon smoldered.
Saleem Major, 34, was taking a walk on the beach with his service dog, Eve, near Coastline Drive when he heard several firetrucks zooming by on Pacific Coast Highway, sirens blaring.
He checked Twitter to see where the fire was. Then, he looked up.
“Next thing you know, I look to my left and it was right behind the hill where I’m at,” said Major, who lives in Venice. “I didn’t even notice it.”
At Palisades Charter High School, less than two miles southeast of the fire, a number of students left school early because their families were in the evacuation zone, Palisades High spokeswoman Ashley Austin said.
Tracey Price, 45, picked up her daughter Audrey, 6, and several of her daughter’s classmates from Calvary Christian after neighborhood friends sent her photos of smoke near the campus on Palisades Drive.
“I got here as soon as I could,” she said as she packed the children into the car.
Vince Downey, the head of the school, waved as the last few dozen students got picked up from campus.
Downey said that although many parents came to collect their children, the school didn’t instruct anyone to do so, partly to prevent street congestion as officials tried to keep the area clear for fire engines.
Downey said it was middle school students who alerted school officials to the fire in between classes. Teachers attempted to continue classes as usual, despite the distraction.
“We tried to make it as normal a day as possible,” he said.
Times staff writers Sonali Kohli, Alejandra Reyes-Velarde, Colleen Shalby and Sonja Sharp contributed to this report.
During a public meeting Monday, an elected official in Tennessee made homophobic comments about presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg and claimed white men in America “have very few rights.”
“We’ve got a queer running for president, if that ain’t about as ugly as you can get,” Sevier County Commissioner Warren Hurst said to the crowd after telling them to “wake up.”
Sevier County Commissioner Warren Hurst.via WBIR
“I’m not prejudiced, but by golly,” continued Hurst, waving his finger in the air, “a white male in this country has very few rights, and they’re getting took more every day.” While one member of the crowd walked out in protest, Hurst was met with whistles and applause from the audience after he finished speaking.
Hurst’s “queer” comment, which was caught on camera, was presumably referring to Buttigieg, the mayor South Bend, Indiana, and the only openly gay 2020 presidential candidate.
Hurst’s remarks — made during a commission meeting about whether the county should become a gun sanctuary — set off a controversy in one of Tennessee’s major tourist areas. Sevier County is home to Dollywood, the Dolly Parton theme park.
The official Twitter account for Sevier County posted a statement on Tuesday denouncing Hurst’s comments.
“The statements made by Commissioner Hurst at the Sevier County Commission meeting of October 21, 2019, do not reflect the opinion or position of Sevier County administration,” the statement said. “Sevier County is an Equal Opportunity Employer and does not discriminate based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, or status in any other group protected by law.”
Hurst did not respond to NBC News’ requests for comment, but LGBTQ advocates said the impact of his remarks could have consequences far beyond the county.
The Tennessee Equality Project, a statewide LGBTQ advocacy group that has been leading the campaign against the state’s “Slate of Hate” — a series of 12 bills that activists have deemed harmful to the LGBTQ community — called for Hurst’s resignation.
“Tennessee Equality Project condemns the commissioner’s racist and homophobic rant,” Chris Sanders, the group’s executive director, told NBC News. “The County Commission should censure Commissioner Hurst and he should consider resigning unless he is willing to sponsor some ordinances to make county government more inclusive.”
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Sander’s said Hurst’s remarks “speak to an ongoing need for local organizing around the state, outside of its urban areas.”
Sanders said that over the summer, the equality project was at the Tennessee Soybean Festival, “which isn’t billed as an LGBTQ event, but we were there to build more of a base there locally, and we need more of that.”
Sanders’ organization is now urging community members to rally at the next Sevier County Commission meeting, on Nov. 18, to protest Hurst’s statements.
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National LGBTQ rights organizations, including the Human Rights Campaign and GLAAD, were also swift to condemn Hurst’s comments.
“Sevier County Commissioner Warren Hurst is using his position of power to publicly spew bigotry against LGBTQ people — people who are very likely his own constituents,” Nick Morrow, the organization’s deputy communications director, said in a statement. “A group of people having rights doesn’t take away those of another. But with LGBTQ people running for office at every level of government and more and more people voting for candidates who support equality, he should be more worried about losing his seat than losing his rights.”
A freshman California congresswoman reportedly carried on a long-term “throuple” with her husband and a younger female staffer — which has come to light amid her now contentious divorce.
Democratic Rep. Katie Hill, 32, became involved in the unconventional long-term relationship in late 2017 with her now-estranged husband, Kenny Heslep, and a female campaign worker, according to RedState.
The conservative outlet backed up its claim with photos of Hill and the staffer — who was not identified by name — embracing and locked in a kiss.
Another photo posted by the site shows a nude Hill brushing the staffer’s hair.
A source close to the staffer told RedState that the trio, who often vacationed together, agreed to continue their relationship when Hill moved to Washington D.C. in January 2019, but that Hill ultimately broke it off in a series of text messages.
“No. I mean I guess partially,” Hill wrote in one published message, in response to the staffer’s questioning whether the “political risk” was to blame for the relationship’s demise.
“I don’t want to be accountable to anyone else,” Hill wrote in another message, according to RedState. “I want to be entirely focused on this work that I think is so important.”
But another set of published text messages between Heslep and an unidentified friend purport that Hill was carrying on a solo affair with her legislative director Graham Kelly.
On his since-deleted Facebook account, Heslep wrote that he and Hill are in the process of divorcing over that alleged affair, reported RedState.
“Being with husband (me) for almost 15 years and then leaving me for another MAN, not woman, whom she is still seeing, is not her being a lesbian,” the post said of Hill, who has publicly identified as bisexual.
“I didn’t file for divorce [because] she was bi!,” another Facebook post read. “I just didn’t know she opened our relationship. Lol.”
Rep. Katie HillGetty Images
In a statement to Politico on Tuesday, Hill said that she was being smeared amid the divorce, and alleged that Heslep was “abusive.”
“The fact is I am going through a divorce from an abusive husband who seems determined to try to humiliate me,” she told the Beltway outlet.
“I am disgusted that my opponents would seek to exploit such a private matter for political gain. This coordinated effort to try to destroy me and people close to me is despicable and will not succeed,” she added.
“Intimate photos of me and another individual were published by Republican operatives on the internet without my consent,” continued Hill’s statement. “I have notified Capitol Hill police who are investigating the situation and potential legal violations of those who posted and distributed the photos, and therefore will have no further comment on the digital materials.”
Hill additionally denied that she was involved with Kelly.
Democratic sources told Politico that Hill reached out to House Speaker and fellow California Rep. Nancy Pelosi — as well as House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, of Maryland, to deny the allegations that she had an improper relationship.
Neither Heslep nor Kelly responded to requests for comment by Politico.
China claims Taiwan is part of its territory, and Hong Kong, a semiautonomous region of China, is wary of any arrangement that would seem to confer recognition on Taiwan’s government. Taiwanese officials, for their part, have complained about a lack of cooperation from Hong Kong, and they have questioned whether they would receive enough assistance from the city’s authorities to successfully prosecute Mr. Chan.
“According to the Hong Kong side, if we make a request for evidence with regards to Chan’s surrender, the Hong Kong side will actively cooperate. But it also said there is no law for cooperating with Taiwan on criminal justice,” Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council said in a statement on Sunday. “We plan to ask the Hong Kong government, based on this contradictory statement, how can you provide assistance to us?”
Hong Kong officials say such reservations risk undermining the opportunity to prosecute Mr. Chan. The city’s No. 2 official, Chief Secretary Matthew Cheung, on Tuesday urged Taiwan not to “complicate a simple issue” or “try to exploit politics in order to achieve certain gain at the expense, particularly, of justice.”
Mr. Chan, 20, a Hong Kong resident, was sentenced in April to 29 months in prison for money laundering over possession of valuables that had belonged to his girlfriend, Poon Hiu-wing, also from Hong Kong. He had traveled with her to Taiwan in February 2018, but returned alone.
Mr. Chan later told the Hong Kong police that he had strangled Ms. Poon, put her body in a suitcase and hid it in some bushes. Investigators found her body near a subway station in northern Taiwan.
How we got here: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the beginning of an official impeachment inquiry against President Trump on Sept. 24, 2019. Here’s what has happened since then.
What’s happening now: Lawmakers are conducting an inquiry, which could lead to impeachment. An impeachment would mean the U.S. House thinks the president is no longer fit to serve and should be removed from office. Here’s a guide to how impeachment works.
It now means that the U.K. is almost certainly not going to leave the U.K. on October 31 and the EU will provide an extension to prevent a no-deal Brexit occurring.
Earlier, MPs had voted, in principle, for the government’s Withdrawal Agreement Bill to proceed, but now the passage of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s agreement looks in real doubt. The Conservative government won that vote by 30 — the first time that U.K. lawmakers have, by a majority, backed any Brexit deal agreed between Brussels and London.
In response, the prime minister said he was disappointed with the delay but “one way or another we will leave the EU with this deal.”
The leader of the opposition, Jeremy Corbyn, said he would offer to work with the Conservative government to agree on “a reasonable timetable.”
President Trump discusses re-election and impeachment during an exclusive interview on ‘Hannity.’
President Trump described House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry as a “lynching” on Tuesday, claiming the way it’s being conducted opens the door for future presidents to be impeached “without due process or fairness or any legal rights.”
“So some day, if a Democrat becomes President and the Republicans win the House, even by a tiny margin, they can impeach the President, without due process or fairness or any legal rights,” Trump tweeted. “All Republicans must remember what they are witnessing here—a lynching. But we will WIN!”
The language recalled the famous charge by now-Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who is black, that his 1991 confirmation process was akin to a “high-tech lynching,” as he denied allegations at the time of sexual harassment against Anita Hill.
But Trump was swiftly condemned by Democrats for using such racially charged language on Tuesday.
“You think this impeachment is a LYNCHING?” tweeted Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill. “What the hell is wrong with you? Do you know how many people who look like me have been lynched, since the inception of this country, by people who look like you. Delete this tweet.”
“It’s beyond shameful to use the word ‘lynching’ to describe being held accountable for your actions,” Julian Castro, a Democratic presidential candidate, tweeted.
House Democratic Caucus Chairman Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., slammed Trump’s comments when asked about them during a press conference on Tuesday morning.
“Thousands of African Americans were slaughtered during the lynching epidemic in this country for no reason other than the color of their skin,” he said. “The president should not compare a constitutionally mandated impeachment inquiry to such a dangerous and dark chapter in American history.”
The president’s tweet comes amid the escalating impeachment inquiry in the House. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., announced the formal process last month, following revelations surrounding the president’s summer phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in which he pressed for politically charged investigations.
As detailed in a whistleblower complaint and transcript of the call, Trump pushed the Ukrainian president to launch an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, over their dealings in Ukraine—specifically, why the elder Biden pressured the former Ukrainian president to fire a top prosecutor who was investigating a natural gas firm where Hunter sat on the board.
The president’s request also came after millions in U.S. military aid to Ukraine had been frozen, something critics have cited as evidence of a quid pro quo arrangement. The White House and the president’s allies have denied a quid pro quo — though Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney seemed to say otherwise, before walking it back — and the Bidens have maintained that they did “nothing wrong.”
Meanwhile, House Republicans have blasted House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff for the way he has handled the inquiry thus far, claiming last week that he and other Democratic committee chairs are withholding critical impeachment-related documents and records from them.
On Monday night, Republicans introduced a resolution to censure Schiff, who is from California, over his handling of the impeachment inquiry, but the Democratic-led House voted to set aside the measure.
The vote was 218-185. All Democrats voted to table the censure resolution, with all Republicans voting to take action–a move Trump praised Tuesday morning.
After the vote, House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy condemned Schiff’s “grave missteps” and “reckless behavior.”
“Each member of Congress must uphold a high standard of honesty and integrity. When it comes to matters of our national security, that responsibility is even greater,” McCarthy, R-Calif., said. “Chairman Schiff has fallen short of his duty. From claiming he had evidence of Russian collusion with the Trump campaign to covering up his committee’s relationship with the whistleblower, he has demonstrated a pattern of lying to the American people on matters of intelligence.”
Schiff, though, tweeted Monday night: “It will be said of Republicans, when they found they lacked the courage to confront the most dangerous and unethical president in American history, they consoled themselves by attacking those who did.”
Schiff has said that he “should have been more clear” regarding his committee’s prior contact with the whistleblower, which was not initially revealed.
Schiff previously said that “we have not spoken directly to the whistleblower,” referring to his intelligence committee — although his office later narrowed the claim, saying Schiff himself “does not know the identity of the whistleblower, and has not met with or spoken with the whistleblower or their counsel” for any reason.
Fox News’ Gregg Re and Tyler Olson contributed to this report.
After being taken to a hospital for observation and treatment of a minor pelvic fracture, former President Jimmy Carter “is in good spirits and is looking forward to recovering at home,” the Carter Center says.
Dale Zanine/USA Today Sports / Reuters
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Dale Zanine/USA Today Sports / Reuters
After being taken to a hospital for observation and treatment of a minor pelvic fracture, former President Jimmy Carter “is in good spirits and is looking forward to recovering at home,” the Carter Center says.
Dale Zanine/USA Today Sports / Reuters
Former President Jimmy Carter suffered a “minor pelvic fracture” after falling down in his home in Plains, Ga., Monday night, the Carter Center says. It’s the second time Carter has been hurt in a fall this month; he got a black eye from a fall days after he turned 95 on Oct. 1.
Carter “has been admitted to Phoebe Sumter Medical Center for observation and treatment of a minor pelvic fracture,” the Carter Center said in an announcement Tuesday. The center adds, “He is in good spirits and is looking forward to recovering at home.”
Shortly after his earlier fall, Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, 92, returned to their work volunteering with Habitat for Humanity, attending a rally to build a house in Nashville, Tenn. Carter’s appearance — bandaged and bruised, with 14 stitches above his eye — was hailed as both a relief and an inspiration by many of his supporters.
“I fell down and hit my forehead on a sharp edge and had to go to the hospital. And they took 14 stitches in my forehead and my eye is black, as you’ve noticed,” Carter said, according to CNN. “But I had a No. 1 priority, and that was to come to Nashville and build houses.”
Carter also had a bad fall earlier this year: He broke his hip in May as he prepared to go turkey hunting. That mishap resulted in hip replacement surgery.
The resilient Carter — who at 95 is now the longest-lived U.S. president — is also a cancer survivor, having been successfully treated for brain cancer that was diagnosed in 2015.
Seemingly overnight, California has been forced to confront a grim new reality: Hundreds of thousands of its residents are regularly going to have their power cut off for days at a time so that their electric utilities can avoid starting wildfires.
The problem — which I described in detail last week — is intrinsic to what the state is trying to do, namely deliver electricity to millions of residents in often mountainous, forested areas growing hotter and dryer every year. There is probably no way for utilities to do that without starting some fires and/or cutting off the power to avoid them. (Southern California Edison is thinking of cutting off power this week.)
But California is doing just about everything to make the problem worse and handle it poorly. Even as global warming extends its droughts, decades of poor forest and land management have made the state a tinderbox. More and more Californians are living in the most remote, fire-prone areas in the state, doing too little to make their houses and communities resilient in the face of fire. Meanwhile, the state’s biggest utility, PG&E, is a debt-ridden, mismanaged omnishambles currently being chewed over by a bankruptcy court. Covering its enormous maintenance and fire-prevention backlog is going to cause rates to rise even as power becomes less reliable.
It is the proverbial perfect storm, a collision of nature’s wrath and human myopia. There is much blame to spread and much suffering to come.
So what can California do about it? Must it accept having the nation’s highest electricity rates and least reliable electric power? Is this, in fact, the “new normal”?
On one hand, as long as the state gets hotter and dryer and people keep pushing the boundary of wilderness, there will be wildfire risk from electricity infrastructure. No amount of forecasting or tree-trimming can eliminate the possibility of high winds blowing electrical lines into dry vegetation and starting fires, not with hundreds of thousands of miles of overhead lines to contend with. The choice between the uncertain but terrible risk of a fire and the certain but manageable risks of a deliberate blackout will likely remain a recurrent feature of electricity management in California, in perpetuity. That much is the new normal.
But California can do better or worse in these conditions. It can grow more resilient and learn to better manage risks. The state’s fate is still in its own hands.
Confronting its latest electricity crisis will require reform across a number of institutions, policies, and practices. The reforms fall into four broad categories: hardening the grid and improving the fire safety of grid infrastructure; changing housing and land-use policies that encourage people to move outward into fire-prone areas; reforming a dysfunctional and bankrupt PG&E; and making the electricity system more localized through solar panels, batteries, microgrids, and other forms of distributed energy.
That’s a lot! In this post, we’ll take a close look at the first three. The fourth, which I consider the only true long-term solution to California’s mess, we’ll save for a post of its own.
There are ways to make the grid less fire-prone, but they are expensive and slow
California’s SB 901, passed late last year, requires all state utilities to submit wildfire mitigation plans. The overwhelming focus of those plans is on reducing wildfire risks around existing grid infrastructure.
One strategy is grid hardening: replacing old transmission towers and power poles with new, stronger, more fire-resistant ones; replacing worn-out parts; updating power lines with synchrophasors and other tech that can help grid operators detect and limit faults more quickly; insulating lines; and using remote and drone sensing to identify far-off problems quickly.
Grid hardening also involves the brute-force problem of inspecting and properly trimming around the state’s 250,000 miles of overhead power lines. PG&E is responsible for 100,000 miles of those lines, and many of them go through the state’s most remote regions. It could hire every qualified tree trimmer in the country, and it would still take years to get out from under its “vegetation management” backlog. (Utility line work is not easy; among other things, it is one of the 10 most dangerous jobs in the US.)
Grid hardening can also, in some cases, involve burying power lines. However, while underground lines are certainly safer when it comes to sparking wildfire, they are not entirely safe (earthquakes, animals, and weather can get to them) nor are they suitable in every area. They are also incredibly expensive: According to PG&E, the cost of converting an overhead distribution line to an underground line is about $3 million a mile, more in dense urban areas. It’s between $1 and $3 million a mile to build them new, depending on the circumstances.
If PG&E buried all its distribution lines, it would have to recoup around $15,000 from every one of its customers. And that’s just distribution lines. Burying high-voltage transmission lines that travel hundreds of miles through forests and over mountains would be a financial (and environmental) nightmare.
Where undergrounding does happen, it is slow. PG&E says it will take five years just to do it in Paradise. Fewer than 100 miles a year are undergrounded; at that rate, it will take PG&E 1,000 years to bury them all.
Undergrounding might play a limited role in select locations — probably urban locations, for safety and aesthetic reasons, and a few key high-risk long-distance lines — but it is far from a silver bullet. (People fascinated by this subject, as many seem to be, can check out this 2012 report from the Edison Electric Institute and PG&E’s factsheet on it.)
Alongside grid hardening is fire safety. In 2007, San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) was blamed for wildfires in San Diego County; investigators found it hadn’t done proper vegetation management. It ultimately paid $2.4 billion to settle lawsuits related to those fires. It wanted to pass on remaining costs, some $379 million, to ratepayers in the form of higher rates, but the California Public Utility Commission (CPUC) wouldn’t let it. The case was appealed all the way up to the California Supreme Court, which found against SDG&E. Earlier this month, the US Supreme Court announced that it would not take the case, leaving SDG&E to eat the costs. (This ruling is relevant to how PG&E’s liability will ultimately be divided up.)
Since 2007, the scare of those lawsuits has prompted SDG&E to spend $1.5 billion upgrading its fire detection and response capabilities. And in its recently announced wildfire mitigation plan, it proposes spending $3 million more on such measures as aggressive grid hardening and vegetation management, improved meteorology with more weather stations, more remote, high-definition cameras for fire-detection, a multi-level community outreach and education program, and a series of community resource centers where people can go when power is shut off to receive information and basic needs. (T&D World — yes, there is a T&D world — has a great piece on ways to reduce transmission-system wildfire risk. CPUC’s Elizaveta Malashenko also has a good piece rounding up options.)
These are the same basic measures that all of California’s utilities must ultimately take, but SDG&E already has a huge head start, which is one reason its plan has a lower price tag. PG&E says its wildfire mitigation plan will cost $2.3 billion to implement, in part reflecting its much larger and more difficult territory and in part reflecting its decades of delayed upkeep. And even that plan is only a start. Speaking to the Press Democrat, Sonoma County Board of Supervisors Chairman David Rabbitt “questioned whether the new proposal went far enough, noting for example that PG&E plans to harden 150 miles of electrical wires, while Sonoma County alone has over 7,000 miles of PG&E wires.”
It will take a decade for PG&E to implement its plan to catch up with SDG&E. Meanwhile, it is less than one-third finished with its 2019 tree trimming. For it and for all California utilities, investments in grid hardening and fire safety will be an ongoing affair, not something that is ever completed.
Ultimately, no amount of grid hardening or fire safety can compensate for the fact that California’s forests are now tightly packed with dry dead trees, the result of decades of mismanagement. Cal Fire, the state agency charged with fire safety, is trying to catch up, but it has a long way to go.
Power lines strung through those forests are going to start wildfires. They can be minimized but not eliminated.
California must reverse the housing crisis that’s sending people out of cities into remote, forested areas
As I explained in the last post, some of the factors that have increased wildfire risk are out of the hands of power utilities. Most notably, the risk is increased when Californians move to fire-prone areas, receive subsidized insurance, settle in communities with insufficient fire readiness and evacuation plans, build houses from materials vulnerable to fire, and surround those houses with flammable shrubs and trees. Most of those choices are now incentivized by state law and regulation; none are particularly discouraged.
Unless it wants to become a perpetual rolling disaster, California will eventually have to address all parts of its land-use and housing crisis.
First, foremost, and above all, California must build more housing in its cities. When people come to the state, they want to live in cities, near jobs. But incumbent homeowners fight to preserve exclusionary zoning and it becomes next to impossible to build anything, so existing housing stock becomes prohibitively expensive (the median home price in San Francisco recently hit $1.7 million); new development is dominated by small, high-end units; and homelessness increases. Working-class families flee to where they can afford to live, to the suburbs, the exurbs, and eventually out into the undeveloped wilderness, where they bump up against wealthy tech execs with second homes.
The centrifugal force pushing people out of cities must be reversed by both widespread upzoning and aggressive social housing and homelessness policies. Unfortunately, California doesn’t have a great record on this. Earlier this year, a suite of bills backed by Gov. Gavin Newsom that would have helped the housing and affordability crises died in Sacramento.
Speaking of centrifugal force, Prop 13 needs to go. That amendment to the state constitution, passed in 1978, establishes that properties are assessed for property taxes only when they are sold (otherwise property taxes can rise just 2 percent a year). Businesses and homeowners can sit on a building for decades and pay absurdly low property taxes, depriving localities of billions in revenue and pushing them to systemically advantage new development over infill. A ballot measure to repeal the commercial half of Prop 13 is on the ballot in 2020.
Second, insurance rates must eventually be allowed to reflect the true risks of living in fire-prone areas. Already, homeowners in high-risk or fire-damaged areas are seeing their rates double or triple. This is being framed as a “crisis” because high rates can slow growth in those areas, or price people out. More and more high-risk homeowners’ insurance is being taken on by California’s FAIR Plan, an industry-funded, bare-bones insurance of last resort. The California Department of Insurance reports that FAIR policies rose by 177 percent between 2015 and 2018; more than half are now in fire-prone areas.
The unavoidable truth is that when people move to those areas, it creates risk. If insurance doesn’t fully cover the risk, someone else will. And insurance rates are beginning to fall short. “Homeowners’ coverage, an $8 billion-a-year business in California, has become an unmitigated disaster for carriers,” reports the Sacramento Bee. “For every $1 they collected in premiums from Californians last year, they paid $1.70 in claims, according to data collected by the Department of Insurance.” That might just be a one-time spike in claims, but given everything we know about California forests, probably not.
So on one side, you have homeowners angry that insurance rates are rising, and on the other, you have the economics of homeowners’ insurance turning sour for the industry. There is going to be intense pressure on California legislators to fill in this gap with some kind of public subsidy.
They should resist. Speaking to the Bee, state Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara said, “we need to take proactive steps to protect our consumers.” He proposes, for instance, subsidies for low-income homeowners in these areas.
There’s an equity argument for that, but state officials shouldn’t do much more. If private insurance rates don’t pay for these risks, taxpayers will. It’s unclear why a state facing intense wildfire risk should subsidize people living in fire-prone areas.
No one wants to say it out loud, but it may simply be that people shouldn’t live in tier 3, high-risk fire zones in the wildland-urban interface (WUI), and the 15 percent of Californians that live in them now will eventually have to move, just as southern Floridians will eventually have to move out of flooded coastal areas. Denser, safer areas of the state will have to make room for them.
Another route would be to simply prohibit development in some areas, but given the housing crisis, state lawmakers are leery of anything that might suppress new housing construction. Newsom says he doesn’t want to limit where people can live because it violates California’s “pioneering spirit,” but really, no one wants to confront the united might of angry state developers and homeowners.
Finally, developers and homeowners must be pushed to use fire-resistant materials and to clear their properties of flammable materials. When they don’t, they put entire communities at risk.
But this is also a political challenge. Last week, Newsom vetoed AB 1516, which would have required homeowners to clear a “defensible space” around their property, saying that it “takes a broad swath” approach that does not reflect the needs of individual communities. (He did not explain what part of neighborhood character is served by unsafe buildings.)
Meanwhile, building inspections are falling woefully short. Cal Fire has inspected only a tiny fraction of buildings — just 6 percent in some fire-prone areas of northern California.
How cooperative will California homeowners be in this undertaking? Well, let’s check in on the Berkeley Hills, where city officials are trying to create a few small no-parking zones so that emergency vehicles can access the area’s narrow, winding streets. Berkeleyside reports:
Despite the program proceeding slowly on just three streets (Alvarado, Bridge, and Vicente roads) and assurances that the program would maintain “some parking for the neighborhoods,” residents are already warning Wengraf that they plan to fight.
“One woman on Tamalpais told me she’d lay down in the street and block our trucks,” said Wengraf. “Some people think they own the street in front of their houses.”
Residents in the Oakland hills are protesting the same thing. Some homeowners, resident Daniel Matthews told the East Bay Times, “have no parking, so if you say ‘no one can park in the street,’ then I don’t know what they’re doing.”
Meanwhile, over in Mill Valley, the city council passed an ordinance requiring around 75 percent of residents (the ones who live in the WUI) to remove plants and other flammable materials from the area immediately around their homes. Oops. After a homeowner revolt and a packed-to-spillover meeting in September, the Marin Independent Journal reports, “the council voted unanimously to amend the municipal law so that the hardscape would be voluntary, rather than mandatory as originally proposed.”
Local officials simply don’t want to limit local growth or inconvenience local residents. It’s a collective action problem, and the answer — on building codes, zoning codes, and other issues with direct impact on the state’s collective safety — is for state lawmakers to implement equitable state-wide solutions. Local control over land-use cannot be allowed to drag the state into perpetual crisis.
Californians, from entitled homeowners to cowardly public officials, bear plenty of responsibility for the wildfire crisis, which is not unrelated to the state’s housing crisis, for which they also bear plenty of responsibility. They can’t just blame all of this on utilities.
Nonetheless, their biggest utility, PG&E, really does suck. So let’s take a look at what to do about that.
The question of how to reform PG&E is vexed. Vexed, I tell you.
For the long-term health of the state’s electricity system, one of its most urgent, consequential, complicated, and difficult tasks is fixing PG&E. And despite what many people seem to think, there is no simple or easy answer for how to do that.
Right now, the utility is in bankruptcy court. Its fate lies in the hand of Judge Dennis Montali.
PG&E shareholders have submitted a plan for reorganization, but a few weeks ago, Montali ruled that shareholders would no longer have the exclusive right to form a plan. He opened up proceedings to a separate plan submitted by a set of bondholders allied with groups representing fire victims. The two factions are now vying in court.
It is difficult, from the outside, to assess which of the two plans is better. PG&E shareholders and their Wall Street backers want to raise money for both debts to pay off creditors and equity to invest in grid safety. They propose a cap of $18.9 billion on fire payouts, and since they agreed a few weeks ago to settle insurance claims for $11 billion, that would leave about $8 billion to compensate individual fire victims.
The plan alienated fire victims, who then allied with bondholders (who had already tried unsuccessfully to submit a plan of their own) to create a plan the judge accepted for consideration.
The bondholder plan would treat existing shareholders much more harshly, dilute the stock more, put more money toward debt, create a bigger fund to pay for fire claims, and leave bondholders and fire victims with the largest stake in the company. It would also fire PG&E’s entire board of directors, ensuring the replacements included “one seat to the company’s employees, one seat to a ratepayer advocacy group, and one seat to the state wildfire fund.”
It might be easy to see the shareholders as the bad guys in this fight, since they’re mostly the ones who mismanaged PG&E for so long, but it’s not that simple.
For one thing, it seems relevant that the bondholders in question are dominated by Elliott Management, which is run by Paul Singer, a longtime GOP mega-donor who recently warned that “socialism is on the march again.” Singer is chair of the board of trustees for the libertarian Manhattan Institute, which frequently argues against renewable energy.
Singer is known for pushing utilities to adopt a “back to basics” approach, which among other things tends to mean ditching renewable energy. In 2017, Elliott invested heavily in NRG Energy, which shortly thereafter announced a “transformation plan” that would “raise $2.5 to $4 billion by divesting 50 to 100 percent of its NRG Yield renewable energy business and some of its conventional energy assets.” Last year, Elliott and Bluescape Resources called for an overhaul of Sempra Energy, in which they shared a 5 percent stake. Among their recommendations was that Sempra sell its renewables division. (The company ultimately didn’t, though it did “streamline” in a number of ways.)
The hedge fund business model is to focus on immediate returns to shareholders at the expense of diversification and long-term investing. That model might benefit PG&E investors more in the near term — it might even benefit existing wildfire victims more in the near term — but what the state needs now more than ever is some long-term thinking.
PG&E couldn’t just ditch renewables in California as Singer has counseled utilities elsewhere. The CPUC and legislators will force it to obey existing clean-energy mandates. And the sheer size and significance of PG&E give it some stability. But having Singer involved in shaping the company’s future is, at the very least, of dubious value in a state committed to decarbonization.
So for now it’s hedge fund versus hedge fund, with Californians pinning their hopes on a bankruptcy judge to ensure that they see some of the proceeds and that PG&E starts doing what’s right.
I’m sure this guy will help.Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
Another wrinkle: Through a quirk of bankruptcy law, any new wildfire-damage claimants that come along during bankruptcy are automatically put in line for payment ahead of “pre-bankruptcy creditors,” including pre-bankruptcy fire victims. Yet those pre-bankruptcy creditors must be paid in full before PG&E can exit bankruptcy. So additional wildfires this season or next could delay PG&E’s exit and drive up its liabilities, possibly to the point that it will be difficult to attract private investment at all. It’s a ticking time bomb.
Very few bankruptcy proceedings deal with an entity this large and this connected to the public welfare, with such giant, unpredictable, ongoing liabilities. It’s a bit of a nightmare.
Some on the left advocate for making PG&E a public utility, having California buy it outright and possibly break it up into smaller municipal utilities. But these arguments rarely grapple with the trade-offs; they proceed directly from “PG&E is guilty of criminal mismanagement,” which is indisputably true, to “PG&E should be public,” skipping several important steps in between. (Note: The restructuring plan put forward by bondholders and wildfire victims explicitly disavows municipalization, mainly because the utility union opposes it.)
For one thing, PG&E being so big has the effect of socializing costs among its 5.4 million electricity accounts. As places like San Francisco municipalize, the wealthiest ratepayers with the cheapest electricity will peel off, leaving (often poorer) residents of more sparsely populated areas facing ever-rising costs, further accelerated by wildfires. Whatever you think of rural residents paying more for electricity, it raises serious equity issues and promises political blowback.
Regardless, municipalization could take years, a decade or more, as it did in Sacramento, especially if PG&E fights it, as it likely will. San Francisco is attempting it now and San Jose is considering it, but it’s still too early to know if the process has gotten any easier. It is unlikely to prove a short-term solution in either case.
For another thing, PG&E doesn’t just come with assets. It comes with $30 billion in debt and virtually unlimited liabilities.
The problem isn’t just existing debt. If California took over PG&E, all those decisions about whether or not to shut down the electricity grid to avoid wildfires would be made by public officials. All responsibility for raising electricity rates to invest in grid hardening (while regularly cutting off electricity) would fall to public officials. All the liability for wildfire damages caused by power lines would be born by Californian taxpayers. The state would effectively be inheriting a shitshow of private capital’s making, allowing private capital to escape paying for it.
Given how little the state has been able to do to solve the housing crisis, it is at the very least not obvious that it would do a better job handling this adjacent crisis.
PG&E’s profits need to be tied to doing a good job
Ultimately, the question of public versus private is somewhat orthogonal to the quality of utility service — there are dirtier and cleaner municipal utilities, dirtier and cleaner IOUs, good and bad actors in both categories. A better lens through which to view the debate is one that is virtually absent from the conversation around PG&E: the incentive structure in which utilities operate.
As a fully regulated, investor-owned utility, PG&E does not make profits for its investors through the sale of electricity. It only recoups costs on power sales. (It is a monopoly, and no monopoly can be allowed to set the price of its own product.)
Rather, investors make money through a guaranteed rate of return on investments approved by the CPUC, generally investments in building and maintaining grid infrastructure. Naturally, this gives PG&E great incentive to pitch the CPUC on new investments. Getting new ones approved — “rate basing” them (i.e., raising customer rates to pay for them) — is how the company best serves shareholders.
Actually making those investments, ensuring quality service, is largely left in the utility’s hands. That creates an incentive to keep returns high for shareholders by skimping on implementation, which PG&E did repeatedly.
It also creates an incentive to avoid anything that might lead customers to needless utility infrastructure, like energy efficiency, batteries, or microgrids. All those things are against shareholders’ interests. That’s why IOUs tend to invest only as much in them as required by law, and no more. They want to build more stuff, not less stuff.
The problem here is not so much the profit motive as what makes profits. The incentive structure is completely wrong.
That can be fixed. Regulated monopoly utilities are not operating in free markets; they are operating in environments built entirely by law and regulation. The fact that they make profits solely through big capital investments is an artifact of that regulatory environment. The environment could be designed to produce other results.
This is not the place to get into utility regulatory design (I recommend the Regulatory Assistance Project for a deeper dive), but the key concept to understand is “performance-based regulation.” The goal is to reduce the amount of IOU shareholder compensation that comes from fixed returns on investments and increase the amount that comes from variable returns on performance-based metrics.
In plain English, that means reforming regulations so that utilities make more money if they achieve particular outcomes. Those outcomes can be determined by legislators and PUCs, ranging from service uptime (minimizing blackouts) to customer satisfaction, renewable-energy penetration, electrification, efficiency, or resiliency.
Other, incremental efforts to adjust PG&E’s incentives are forlorn. Earlier this year, California state Sen. Scott Wiener introduced a bill that would fine PG&E for planned blackouts. His reasoning was that the utility now has enormous financial incentive to avoid wildfires but very little incentive to avoid blackouts. And that is true, as far as it goes, but it is an incredibly crude instrument for balancing PG&E’s incentives. It would make more sense to simply tie PG&E’s profits to reliable power delivery.
Another necessary regulatory reform is to break up governance of the electricity transmission and distribution systems. Local electricity distribution systems need to get smarter, able to generate, store, and manage more of their own power, and they need to be run by local entities.
In other words, California needs a more distributed energy system. That is the only true long-term solution to the wildfire mess. It’s going to happen one way or another, so the state ought to do it deliberately and equitably, with some foresight (as much as that might break precedent).
The question of how to properly distribute power — the electrical kind and the political kind — is a complicated subject in its own right. I will dive into that in my next post.
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