‘Fox News Sunday’ anchor Chris Wallace provides insight on ‘America’s Newsroom’ into President Biden’s first month in office.
President Biden is hitting the road again – getting out of Washington for the second time this week as he makes the case for his top priority in the early days of his administration – a $1.9 trillion COVID relief package.
Biden on Friday visited Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine manufacturing facility near Kalamazoo, Michigan. Increasing vaccinations is a crucial element in the president’s recovery plan. The stop came two days after the president held a town hall in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on Wednesday, where Biden pushed his proposal, which has seen GOP pushback over the price tag.
Michigan and Wisconsin also happen to be crucial battleground states where Biden narrowly edged out then-President Trump in his presidential election victory.
President Joe Biden tours a Pfizer manufacturing site, Friday, Feb. 19, 2021, in Portage, Mich. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
The itinerary this week has some political pundits wondering if a 2024 re-election is on the mind of the president and his political advisers.
But a longtime Democratic strategist and veteran of presidential campaigns said these trips are all about passing the rescue package – with maybe a touch of 2022 midterm election politics added in.
“These states check several boxes. You have unemployment numbers that are slightly above the national average. In Wisconsin, you have competitive Senate and gubernatorial races that are going to heat up. There’s political reasons and real policy reasons, and the rescue package resonates in these midwestern rust belt states in a particular way,” noted the strategist, who asked to remain anonymous to speak more freely.
As for 2024, the consultant said “I don’t think it’s top of mind for them.”
There’s been widespread speculation ever since Biden launched his 2020 presidential campaign nearly two years ago that he might only serve one term. Biden made history last year as the oldest person ever elected president – and if he ran for re-election and won, he’d be 82 at the time of his second inauguration.
But a longtime Biden ally and supporter says the president is “planning to run again.”
Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware told Politico days before last month’s inauguration that Biden “knows that we are at the middle of an absolute turning point, a pivot point in American history. And he’s up for the challenge.”
As the energy crisis in Texas deepened this week, leaving millions without power, heat, and even running water, conservative commentators and politicians persistently peddled a myth that wind turbines are to blame.
“It seems pretty clear that a reckless reliance on windmills is the cause of this disaster,” Tucker Carlson said Monday on Fox News. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott also used wind power as a scapegoat for the crisis when he appeared on Fox Tuesday night, but he later walked back his comments.
Let’s get the facts straight. Every type of power plant — whether powered by coal, natural gas, nuclear, solar, or wind sources — in Texas was impacted by the ice and freezing temperatures that arrived with Winter Storm Uri over the weekend. But it was natural gas — the state’s top source of electricity — that failed most significantly as wellheads and power plants froze over. Wind turbines, meanwhile, were responsible for 13 percent of the total lost electricity output, according to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), the state’s nonprofit grid operator.
But there is nothing innate about wind power — or natural gas — that caused these power plants to fail. It’s merely a matter of preparation, Hui Hu, a professor of aerospace engineering at Iowa State University who studies wind turbines, told Vox.
Places reliant on wind energy that are no strangers to cold and ice —from Sweden to Iowa — are proof that the freezing of turbines in Texas was not inevitable. The difference: Unlike in Texas, those turbines were weatherized to operate in the cold.
Does this mean that, as wind power contributes a greater and greater share of electricity in states like Texas, all wind turbines have to be storm-proofed to avoid a future mass blackout like this week’s? This is ultimately a risk calculation that lawmakers and scientists will have to make going forward, but the scale of the damage from this blackout suggests the upfront investment would be worthwhile.
So, how exactly do cold veteranslike Iowa keep their turbines turning, and what can we learn from them?
Why only some ice is problematic for wind turbines
To understand how to winterize wind turbines, we first need to take a slightly deeper dive into why ice caused some turbines to fail in Texas.
The answer has to do with the specific intersection of temperature and humidity. At Iowa State, Hu and his research team pinpointed these factors through a decade of research to figure out why some ice impacts wind turbines and what can be done to stop it.
Hu oversees experiments at what he proudly tells Vox is the largest wind tunnel at any US university. Originally set up to test de-icing methods for airplanes, Hu’s lab converted the tunnel to blow icy wind at wind turbine blades when Iowa started to go big on wind power a decade ago. These experiments have given us a lot of information about how to keep wind turbines moving in the winter.
The researchers identified one kind of ice — wet “glaze” ice — that is particularly of concern. This ice creates a cottage cheese-like texture on turbine blades, which slows down airflow. In a field experiment, researchers found that during a 30-hour period when blades iced over, power production dropped by up to 80 percent.
Even worse, this ice can cause turbines to become severely unbalanced and vibrate, potentially even breaking under the stress. So if turbines aren’t winterized, operators will shut them down before they reach that point, Hu explained.
It was exactly this wet ice that formed on turbine blades in Texas when Arctic air met Gulf humidity, Hu said. Meanwhile, in Iowa, the temperatures are usually so low and the air so dry that smooth “rime” ice forms over turbine blades, which doesn’t affect the turbines as much. You can see the difference in the photo from one of Hu’s team’s experiments below.
The difference between dry “rime” ice and wet “glaze” ice — the latter is what impacted Texas’s turbines.Iowa State University
Low temperatures alone can also cause some turbine components to malfunction without proper protective technologies. But Hu pointed out that the higher density of cold air actually boosts wind power generation in the winter.
How some of the coldest regions keep their turbines turning
So, how do wind farms respond to these different types of ice, to keep their turbines from shutting down as they did in Texas?
In wetter places like Scandinavia and Scotland,some turbines are filled with hot air while others have a special coating to prevent ice from forming. These winter-ready turbines cost about 5 percent more than regular turbines, and the heating process uses up some of their energy output, Stefan Skarp, who oversees wind power for Swedish utility Skellefteå Kraft, told Bloomberg News. Hu’s team is working on more energy-efficient technologies that could be cheaper.
Because Iowa is blessed with drier ice, wind farms there haven’t had to invest in such elaborate measures while reaching the highest share of wind electricity generation in the country: 42 percent in 2019.
Midwestern utility company MidAmerican Energy Company has shown that wind energy is highly reliable, even in harsh Iowa conditions. In 2020, 80 percent of the utility’s electricity was generated by renewable energy — the majority of which comes from its 3,300 wind turbines, said Geoff Greenwood, a spokesperson for MidAmerican Energy.
“This year it’s been cold, but our wind fleet continues to generate clean energy for our customers,” he said. All that’s needed is a few extra measures in the turbine design to make sure certain components don’t freeze up.
Some Iowa wind operators use flashier action movie techniques to keep their turbines going. Helicopters and drones swoop over turbines dropping hot water or de-icing chemicals. But this is typically just a one-off measure if bad ice hits, Hu said.
Should Texas winterize all of its turbines?
Given that winterizing turbines costs more, should Texas wind developers take a cue from Sweden and pay that price upfront to help avoid future disasters?
Jesse Jenkins, an assistant professor of energy systems engineering at Princeton University, argued in a New York Times op-ed on Wednesday that electricity systems need to be ready for future risks. “Preparing for extreme events is like buying [a] home or health insurance: it costs you every year and you hope you’ll never use it. But when a crisis strikes, paying the premiums can look like the perfect decision in hindsight.”
After this crisis comes to an end, “Texans will have to determine just how much insurance is worth taking out,” he added.
This doesn’t just apply to one type of power generation. “Because wind is the new kid on the block, it’s getting a lot of attention,” said Kerri Johannsen, energy program director at the Iowa Environmental Council. But all grids have to consider whether their systems can weather the extremes brought by climate change.
Oversight is increasing to ensure grids are up to the challenge. The Texas Tribune reported that the North American Electric Reliability Corporation is working on establishing mandatory requirements for power plants to prepare for winter extremes. Even though Texas operates its own grid, it would also be subject to these rules.
Texas has ignored previous guidance. In 2011, after a storm caused a severe blackout, ERCOT developed winterization guidelines, but they weren’t enforced. Now, facing the consequences, Gov. Abbott has called for these winterization measures to be required and for the state legislature to fund the necessary upgrades.
As the old saying goes, “You should never let a crisis go to waste.” After all the havoc that the grid failures have wreaked this week, it’s critical that these calls for action don’t just fade away as they did after 2011. Texans should know wind itself isn’t the problem; it’s a question of how much insurance state leaders are willing to purchase to prevent another disaster of this magnitude.
During their last meeting ahead of the winter storm that left millions of Texans without electricity and potable water for days on end, top officials at the state electric grid operator spent less than one minute discussing the impending storm and whether the state was prepared.
Bill Magness, president and chief executive officer of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, spoke briefly about the winter weather during his report to the board at the Feb. 9 meeting, the only mention of the incoming storm during the public portion of the virtual meeting, which spanned two hours, 28 minutes.
Magness spoke about the approaching cold front for about 40 seconds:
“It is actually going to be winter here pretty soon. As those of you in Texas know, we do have a cold front coming this way. We’ll probably see our winter peak later this week or in the very early part of next week. And Operations has issued an operating condition notice just to make sure everyone is up to speed with their winterization and we’re ready for the several days of pretty frigid temperatures to come our way.
“So more on that in the next couple of days, but it does look like we’ll have a little bit of winter weather to contend with during the course of the rest of this week. We do have a cold front coming this way.”
When the front arrived, it brought subfreezing temperatures, ice and snow. On Sunday evening, major generation units begin failing in rapid succession, and early Monday morning, operators at ERCOT ordered a series of rolling blackouts intended to protect the electric grid from a catastrophic failure that could have lasted for months.
But instead of rolling blackouts, millions of Texans were left without power for days. ERCOT on Friday ended its emergency conditions and reported that operations had “returned to normal,” five days after the blackouts started.
In an Extreme Weather Reliability Assessment filed Jan. 15 with the Texas Public Utility Commission, ERCOT wrote that a “review of plants indicates that the majority of plants are following their weatherization plans.”
Pete Warnken, ERCOT’s manager of resource adequacy, said in the council’s Seasonal Assessment for Resource Adequacy prepared in November: “We studied a range of potential risks under both normal and extreme conditions … and believe there is sufficient generation to adequately serve our customers.”
The agenda for the Feb. 9 ERCOT meeting did not include discussion of weatherization or the impending winter storm, as first reported by KSAT-TV, San Antonio’s ABC affiliate.
During the meeting, members approved minor consent agenda items and heard reports from ERCOT’s Finance and Audit Committee and the Human Resources and Governance Committee, in addition to remarks by Magness.
It also included nominations and elections of a new chair and vice chair for the ERCOT Board of Directors.
Sally Talberg, a former state utility regulator from Michigan, was elected to serve as chairwoman of the board and joked during the meeting that she has “large cowboy boots” to fill as she assumes her new position.
Peter Cramton, an economics professor at Germany’s University of Cologne and the University of Maryland, was elected as vice chairman.
The residency of some board members, including the two new leaders, faced scrutiny this week from state lawmakers. Five of the 15 current members do not reside in Texas, including Talberg, who lives in Michigan, and Cramton, who lives in California.
Board member Vanessa Anesetti-Parra lives in Toronto, Terry Bulger lives in Illinois, and Raymond Hepper lives in Maine.
The 591-page bill, which House Democrats officially unveiled Friday, also includes a new round of $1,400 stimulus checks. Coming on top of $600 stimulus payments approved in December, that would make good on Biden’s promises of $2,000 stimulus checks to voters.
“We’re asking vaccine administration sites to extend their hours even further and offer additional appointments and to try to reschedule the vaccinations over the coming days and weeks as significantly more supply arrives,” Mr. Slavitt said.
The delay was a sign of how interconnected the nation’s vaccine distribution network is, vulnerable to substantial interruptions because of extreme weather. Mr. Slavitt said that FedEx, U.P.S. and McKesson — the drug distribution giant that manages Moderna’s vaccine — had been impeded, with workers snowed in and unable to package and ship vaccines, including the supplies that go with them.
FedEx and U.P.S., which have vaccine shipping hubs in Memphis and Louisville, Ky., would make Saturday deliveries this week, he said.
Closed roads on delivery routes were also forming a bottleneck, and more than 2,000 vaccination sites in areas with power failures could not receive doses. That prompted federal officials to hold off shipping to areas that might not be able to keep them at the frigid temperatures required.
Shipment delays have been reported in California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Nevada, New Jersey, Ohio, Oregon, Utah and Washington, among other states. In Texas, where millions of residents lost power during the powerful storm this week, a delivery of more than 400,000 first doses and 330,000 second doses had been delayed in anticipation of the bad weather.
Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin will vote against Neera Tanden’s nomination to lead the Office of Management and Budget, jeopardizing her confirmation to a key Biden administration post.
Unless a Republican backs Tanden, Manchin’s opposition would sink her confirmation in a Senate split 50-50 by party. In a statement to NBC News on Friday, the West Virginia senator cited Tanden’s tweets skewering sitting senators across the political spectrum.
“I believe her overtly partisan statements will have a toxic and detrimental impact on the important working relationship between members of Congress and the next director of the Office of Management and Budget,” said Manchin, a conservative Democrat who has already bucked Biden on some coronavirus relief issues. “For this reason, I cannot support her nomination.”
If she fails to garner enough support, Tanden would be the first Biden administration pick not to win Senate confirmation. No Republicans have said they would vote for her yet. President Joe Biden’s choice of Tanden sparked more backlash than any of his other picks for executive branch jobs.
Tanden, president of the left-leaning think tank Center for American Progress and an advisor to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, faced a grilling in the Senate earlier this month over her criticism of lawmakers. Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, pointed out tweets in which she compared Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to the Harry Potter villain Voldemort and said “vampires have more heart” than GOP Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas.
A demonstrator wears an Oath Keepers anti-government organization badge on a tactical vest during a protest outside the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 5, 2021.
Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg via Getty Images
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Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg via Getty Images
A demonstrator wears an Oath Keepers anti-government organization badge on a tactical vest during a protest outside the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 5, 2021.
Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg via Getty Images
The Justice Department charged six more people Friday it says are members of a right-wing militia group that plotted in advance of Jan. 6 to attack the U.S. Capitol.
The indictment offers the most sweeping evidence so far that members of the far-right extremist group known as the Oath Keepers had spent months allegedly planning to prevent Congress from certifying President Joe Biden’s victory in a bid to keep former President Donald Trump in power.
The federal charges say 52-year-old Kelly Meggs, the self-described leader of the Florida chapter of the Oath Keepers, and his wife Connie, joined four other alleged militia members to breach the Capitol.
According to the indictment, the group ascended a flight of stairs outside the Capitol in military-style formation and then went on to breach the building. Federal prosecutors say Meggs parroted language from a tweet from Trump weeks before the siege. Trump had encouraged his supporters to come to Washington on Jan. 6, saying it would be “wild.”
“He wants us to make it WILD that’s what he’s saying,” Meggs allegedly wrote in a Facebook post. “He called us all to the Capitol and wants us to make it wild!! Sir Yes Sir!!! Gentleman we are heading to DC.”
Last month, the Justice Department charged three members of the Oath Keepers with conspiring to undermine President Biden’s win. Officials said that Thomas Edward Caldwell, Jessica Marie Watkins, and Donovan Ray Crowl had allegedly set up training for urban warfare and riot control in preparation for the Jan. 6 siege shortly after then-President-elect Joe Biden’s election victory and had allegedly briefly discussed bringing weapons into Washington, D.C., by boat.
The latest indictment adds six more people to the alleged conspiracy, including a retired Ohio couple, Sandra and Bennie Parker, and another suspected Florida Oath Keeper, Graydon Young, who allegedly arranged to get members of the group trained in firearms and combat.
Almost 1.1 million signatures have been submitted in support of a recall election against Gov. Gavin Newsom, state elections officials reported Friday, though supporters said a sizable number of voter petitions have yet to be reviewed as the effort approaches next month’s official deadline.
The tally released by Secretary of State Shirley Weber shows that 1,094,457 signatures had been turned in as of Feb. 5, with 668,202 confirmed as valid. The majority of signatures that remained — more than 296,000 — had not yet been reviewed by elections officials in California’s 58 counties, making it difficult to fully assess the likelihood of a special statewide election later this year. An additional 130,108 signatures were deemed invalid during the review process.
One factor in favor of recall backers is the relatively low rate of rejected signatures. Only about 16% of those that have been checked for accuracy were rejected, significantly better than most ballot measure campaigns in recent years.
“We’ve crossed some big hurdles,” said Orrin Heatlie, the official proponent of the recall effort. “We aren’t stopping.”
The groups seeking to remove Newsom from office, with Heatlie’s organization coordinating the effort, must submit 1,495,709 valid voter signatures by March 17 to trigger a recall election. Similar to the process of qualifying a statewide ballot measure, backers are gathering more signatures than needed as a buffer for any petitions that are rejected because of unverifiable or inaccurate information.
Because signatures must be submitted to elections officials in the county where the voter lives, the process can be difficult to track in real time. And it might be slower than usual, as a number of county government offices are operating under COVID-19 workplace rules that seek to limit employee exposure. Counties have until April 29 to finish their verification of recall signatures, which could mean a potential recall election wouldn’t be held until early November.
As a snapshot in time, the report issued by Weber could fail to fully capture the political risk faced by the Democratic governor, under fire over his efforts to address the COVID-19 pandemic by what recent polls have shown is a growing cross section of Californians.
“People have just completely lost confidence in his ability to lead,” said Heatlie, a retired sheriff’s deputy in Yolo County. “They’re frustrated with him.”
More than a third of the state’s registered voters said they would vote to oust Newsom from office if the recall qualified for the ballot, though 45% said they would oppose such a move, a Berkeley IGS poll found.
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Heatlie said the campaign has collected some 1.7 million signatures to date, with almost 1.3 million submitted to elections officials — though not all of those were delivered in time to be included in the report released Friday.
The threshold for qualifying a recall petition — enough signatures to equal 12% of the votes cast in the last gubernatorial election — is set in state law. If successful, it would fall to Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis to schedule the election, no later than 80 days after certification by Weber. A number of other steps are built into the elaborate process, including reviews of the election cost by state finance officials and the Legislature, and a 30-day window in which voters who signed the recall petition can ask to have their signatures withdrawn if they’ve changed their mind.
Dan Newman, a campaign spokesman for Newsom, said the recall is not what voters want to think about in the coming weeks and months.
“Californians want to stay focused on vaccinations, reopenings, relief and recovery — without the distraction and expense of a $100 million, hyperpartisan Republican recall circus,” he said in a statement.
While every California governor since 1960 has faced one or multiple petitions seeking his ouster, the campaign waged against Newsom is the most far-reaching and successful of any such movement since 2003, when voters recalled then-Gov. Gray Davis nine months into his second term in office. The Democratic incumbent was replaced by Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger, the top vote-getter in a field of 135 hopefuls whose names were listed on the second part of the recall ballot.
Like the campaign against Davis, the Newsom recall effort has been fueled largely by Republican activists and donors. Several prominent donors to GOP campaigns and candidates contributed cash to help collect voter signatures. Prior to their involvement, though, the campaign relied primarily on volunteers. In some cases, the most visible and vocal supporters of the effort were activists aligned with far-right causes that simultaneously promoted extremist views and QAnon conspiracy theories.
Conceived by fierce partisanship, the recall campaign against Gov. Gavin Newsom will hinge on his leadership.
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As the recall campaign has grown, mainstream Republican groups have taken up the cause. The California Republican Party supports the campaign and two high-profile GOP hopefuls — former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer and 2018 candidate John Cox — have announced they intend to run as replacement candidates if the recall qualifies.
Perhaps no decision has benefitted the recall supporters more than a Nov. 17 ruling by a Sacramento County Superior Court judge that extended the signature-gathering period an additional four months due to COVID-19 restrictions that supporters said had hampered their efforts.
Only three governors in U.S. history have ever faced a recall election, the most recent in 2012 when Wisconsin voters rejected the effort to unseat then-Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican.
Should the Newsom recall effort qualify for the ballot, one feature of the election will be unique to the pandemic era. On Friday, the governor signed legislation extending last year’s election rules — requiring that every registered voter be mailed a ballot — for all special elections held in 2021. The bill was prompted by a pair of vacancies in the Legislature, but its provisions would also apply to a statewide recall election.
“I don’t see any Republican, at this point, bailing out her nomination. She seems to have burned too many bridges,” said Brian Riedl, a former Portman aide now at the Manhattan Institute, a right-leaning think tank. “Lawmakers are human, too, and do not like to confirm people who insult them.”
Syracuse, N.Y. — Texas Republicans were quick to blame the state’s wind turbines for the massive power outages that millions of Texans experienced this week during an unusual blast of cold weather.
Texas leads the nation in wind power, with nearly 15,000 wind turbines producing 23% of the Lone Star State’s electricity last year. Many of the turbines shut down when the cold descended on Texas.
It turns out that only a third of the power outages in the state resulted from wind turbines failing in the cold. Power plants that use fossil fuels — coal and natural gas ― accounted for two-thirds of the power outages.
But we couldn’t help but wonder why wind turbines in cold-weather states like New York can operate in the winter with seemingly little trouble when their counterparts in Texas can’t.
The huge Maple Ridge Wind Farm, in fact, operates year-round in the Tug Hill north of Syracuse, an area famous for its bitter cold winters that often pile up 200 inches or more of snow.
So we went to the experts — EDP Renewables, which operates Maple Ridge and other wind farms.
EDPR is the largest owner and operator of wind power in New York and the fourth-largest in the United States. Locally, in addition to Maple Ridge, it operates the Madison Wind Farm in Madison County. EDPR’s New York wind farms produce enough clean electricity to power more than 298,000 New York homes.
Amy Kurt, senior manager of regional government affairs for EDP, said EDP and other wind power operators in this neck of the woods equip their turbines to handle the cold and, even more importantly, the ice that often comes with the cold.
“There are a variety of cold weather and anti-icing technologies that are used on wind turbines in the coldest regions,” she said. “These technologies help prevent the buildup of ice on turbine blades, detect ice when it cannot be prevented, and remove ice safely when it is detected.”
Ice clinging to the blades of a wind turbine poses big problems. It adds weight and can throw the spinning blades out of balance, potentially damaging vital gear mechanisms. It also can change the aerodynamics of the blades, preventing the wind from making them spin.
Kurt said EDP’s turbines are equipped with sensors that detect ice by sensing the imbalance the ice causes.
“When there’s an imbalance, we know something is not right,” she said.
The sensors can even tell which blades have ice on them and which ones don’t. When ice is detected, heating elements inside the blades turn on to melt the ice.
A wind turbine on Flat Rock Road, part of the Maple Ridge Wind Farm in Lowville. Gary Walts | syracuse.com
For safety reasons, the turbines are shut down while the heating elements melt off the ice, Kurt said. That way, there’s no chance of ice flying off spinning blades, potentially damaging the turbines or, worse, striking someone on the ground, she said.
“We’d rather the ice drop below the turbine,” she said.
Once the ice is removed, the turbines are turned back on and the blades can safely spin in the wind again.
In Texas, wind turbines are not equipped with such de-icing packages because operators there never expected to need them, Kurt said.
“Turbines in Texas are built for the type of temperatures they usually get in Texas, where it’s 110 degrees, not 10 degrees,” she said. “It’s a cost thing.”
Rick Moriarty covers business news and consumer issues. Got a tip, comment or story idea? Contact him anytime: Email | Twitter | Facebook | 315-470-3148
(CNN)House Democrats took another step Friday in their effort to advance a $1.9 trillion stimulus bill, releasing the full bill text, which includes an increase in the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour, $1,400 direct checks for Americans making $75,000 or less a year, an extension of $400 federal unemployment benefits and more money for small businesses struggling amid the pandemic.
Six more defendants were added to a federal conspiracy case Friday accusing associates of the para-military Oath Keepers group with coordinating their alleged roles in the deadly assault on the Capitol last month.
Federal prosecutors said that one the new suspects, Kelly Meggs, a 52-year-old Florida man, allegedly referred to former President Donald Trump directly in a Facebook campaign to draw more recruits to the Jan. 6 protest in Washington that later left five people dead, including a Capitol police officer.
“Trump said It’s gonna be wild!!!!!!! It’s gonna be wild!!!!!!! He wants us to make it WILD that’s what he’s saying,” Meggs allegedly wrote just weeks before the Capitol siege. “He called us all to the Capitol and wants us tomakeitwild!!! SirYesSir!!! Gentlemen we are heading to DC pack your s—!!”
Trump was acquitted of inciting the riot in his second impeachment case before the Senate on Saturday. However, the former president still faces both criminal investigations and civil litigation.
Meggs was charged along with his wife, Connie Meggs, 59; Laura Steele, 52, of North Carolina; Graydon Young, 54, of Florida; Bennie Parker, 70, of Ohio; and his wife, Sandra Parker, 60.
The charges represent an expansion of an existing conspiracy case charging three Oath Keeper members, including Virginia organizer Thomas Caldwell in connection with the riots.
Federal prosecutors have detailed how Caldwell and the others alleged planned their roles in the attack weeks in advance, then coordinated by radio as they moved into the Capitol in group formation, wearing helmets, reinforced vests and military-style insignia.
In a New Year’s Eve post on Facebook, Caldwell alerted the group that the protest against the Biden election “begins for real Jan 5 and 6 …”
“Let them try to certify some crud on capitol hill with a million or more patriots in the streets,” he allegedly state. “This kettle is set to boil…”
On the day of the attack, prosecutors charged that eight members of the group “prepared themselves for battle before heading to the Capitol by equipping themselves with communication devices and donning reinforced vests, helmets, and goggles.”
The Oath Keepers are known to recruit current and former military, law enforcement and first-responder personnel.
The conspiracy charges are among the most serious offenses alleged in the far-reaching riot investigation involving a diverse group of Trump supporters — members of far-right and anti-government groups and others whose paths to the Capitol started in communities across the country.
Among those facing charges in the riot are current and former police officers, a fashion student, grandparents, a fishing boat captain, former athletes and elected officials.
Other groups with whom defendants have been associated include:
QAnon, a once-fringe internet conspiracy movement that recently grew into a powerful force in mainstream conservative politics.
Proud Boys, a misogynistic, anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic group with ties to white supremacism.
Three Percenters, an anti-government militia movement.
“Super Happy Fun America,” a group with ties to white nationalists known for organizing a “straight pride” parade in downtown Boston in 2019
Center for Industrial Progress founder Alex Epstein discusses how the reliability of renewable energy was tested in Texas.
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) – Texas’ grid operators said Friday that the electrical system has returned to normal for the first time since a winter storm knocked out power to more than 4 million customers.
Smaller outages still remained Friday. But Bill Magness, president of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, says the grid again has enough capacity to provide power throughout the entire grid.
As electricity and heat returned to Texas homes, water problems remained as cities continued boil-water notices and repaired broken pipes and water mains.
Victor Hernandez, left, and Luis Martinez fill their water containers with a hose from a spigot in Haden Park, Thursday, Feb. 18, 2021 in Houston. Texas officials have ordered 7 million people to boil tap water before drinking it following days of record low temperatures that damaged infrastructure and froze pipes. (Brett Coomer/Houston Chronicle via AP)
More than 190,000 homes and businesses remained without power in Texas according to poweroutage.us, down from about 3 million two days earlier.
Winter storms also left more than 330,000 from Virginia to Louisiana without power and about 71,000 in Oregon were still enduring a weeklong outage following a massive ice and snow storm.
The snow and ice moved into the Appalachians, northern Maryland and southern Pennsylvania, and later the Northeast as the extreme weather was blamed for the deaths of at least 58 people, including a Tennessee farmer trying to save two calves that apparently wandered into a frozen pond and 17-year-old Oklahoma girl who fell into a frozen pond.
A growing number of people have perished trying to keep warm. In and around the western Texas city of Abilene, authorities said six people died of the cold — including a 60-year-old man found dead in his bed in his frigid home. In the Houston area, a family died from carbon monoxide as their car idled in their garage.
Federal Emergency Management Agency acting administrator Bob Fenton said Friday that teams were in Texas with fuel, water, blankets and other supplies.
“What has me most worried is making sure that people stay warm,” Fenton said on “CBS This Morning,” while urging people without heat to go to a shelter or warming center.
Allan Woodson rests in a warming shelter at St. Martin’s Lutheran Church on West 15th Street in downtown Austin, Texas, Thursday, Feb. 18, 2021. Church members opened the shelter Sunday and have been sheltering and feeding more than 20 homeless people during the winter storm. (Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman via AP)
Rotating outages for Texas could return if electricity demand rises as people get power and heating back, said Dan Woodfin, the council’s senior director of system operations.
Adding to the misery: The weather jeopardized drinking water systems. Authorities ordered 7 million people — a quarter of the population of the nation’s second-largest state — to boil tap water before drinking it, following the record low temperatures that damaged infrastructure and pipes. In Abilene, a man who died at a health care facility when a lack of water pressure made medical treatment impossible.
Water pressure dropped after lines froze and because many people left faucets dripping to prevent pipes from icing, said Toby Baker, executive director of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. Abbott urged residents to shut off water to prevent more busted pipes and preserve municipal system pressure.
The White House is asking social media companies to clamp down on chatter that deviates from officially distributed COVID-19 information as part of President Biden’s “wartime effort” to vanquish the coronavirus.
A senior administration official tells Reuters that the Biden administration is asking Facebook, Twitter and Google to help prevent anti-vaccine fears from going viral, as distrust of the inoculations emerges as a major barrier in the fight against the deadly virus.
“Disinformation that causes vaccine hesitancy is going to be a huge obstacle to getting everyone vaccinated and there are no larger players in that than the social media platforms,” the White House source told the news agency.
“We are talking to them … so they understand the importance of misinformation and disinformation and how they can get rid of it quickly,” the source added.
President Joe Biden receives a COVID-19 vaccination from Tabe Mase, Nurse Practitioner and Head of Employee Health Services, at the Christiana Care campus in Newark, Delaware on Dec. 21, 2020.AFP via Getty Images
The news out of Washington is the first sign that officials are directly engaged with Silicon Valley in censoring social media users; Biden’s chief of staff Ron Klain previously said the administration would try to work with major media companies on the issue.
The Democratic administration is specifically pushing to make sure unfavorable material does “not start trending on such platforms and become a broader movement,” like the recent anti-vaccine protests at Dodger Stadium, the source said.
The Los Angeles rally was organized on a Facebook page and briefly blocked access to the mass vaccination site that serves more than 8,000 people a day.
Anti-vaccine activists in the US have seen their footprints grow larger on social media, with accounts attracting nearly 8 million new followers since 2019, according to a July report by the Center for Countering Digital Health.
A protester holds an anti-vaccination sign as supporters of Donald Trump rally to reopen California on May 16, 2020 in Woodland Hills, California.David McNew/Getty Images
Social media leaders have vowed to squash anti-vaccine “disinformation” on their platforms, but the spreading of such content has persisted.
Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal slammed social media companies Thursday, tweeting: “Each piece of misinformation, each person bullied for getting vaccinated, is a setback in our effort to end this deadly pandemic. Facebook & Twitter have moved far too slowly in responding to this targeted harassment & these dangerous conspiracy theories.”
A Facebook spokeswoman said the social network has offered the White House “any assistance we can provide,” and recently unveiled a policy to remove COVID-19 misinformation and remove pages, groups and accounts that violate the guidelines.”
Vaccine protesters join people gathering for a “Stop the Steal” rally in support of Donald Trump on Nov. 14, 2020, in Lansing, Michigan.AFP via Getty Images
A Twitter spokesman said the company is “in regular communication with the White House on a number of critical issues including COVID-19 misinformation.”
Alphabet Inc.’s Google did not comment on its political engagement but referred reporters to its company blog on eliminating fake news.
The White House source said Facebook, Twitter and Google “were receptive,” adding, “it is too soon to say whether or not it translates into lessening the spread of misinformation.”
Saudi and Emirati officials, for their part, were silent on Friday. Watching the Biden administration’s outreach to Tehran with resignation, the two Gulf States — which were outraged at being excluded from the last negotiations — can only hope that the United States will keep its promises to consider Gulf interests in the talks, analysts said.
“We just have to trust the new administration,” said Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, an Emirati political scientist. “We don’t have any option. They really are determined to reach out to Iran, so there’s no way that anybody could stop them.”
But he acknowledged there could be something to gain, saying, “If the end result is less confrontation with Iran, a less aggressive Iran, a less expansionist Iran, it’s a dream of a sort.”
The Israeli government’s reticence reflects a less combative approach to the Biden administration’s policymaking than with President Barack Obama’s, at least initially, said Amos Yadlin, a former head of Israeli military intelligence.
“Practically, they will not confront the Biden administration directly,” he said. “They will wait a little bit to see whether the Iranians are reacting and how the negotiations develop.”
But behind the scenes, Israel is already lobbying the United States for an agreement that is much tougher on Iran. The Mossad chief, Yossi Cohen, and a team of experts will soon travel to Washington to brief senior American officials about what they see as the threats still posed by Iran, hoping to persuade the United States to hold out for harsher restrictions on Iran in any deal, two senior Israeli officials said.
Israeli intelligence suggests that Iran has blatantly violated the terms of the original nuclear deal and is still taking steps to develop a nuclear warhead, the officials said, claims that Iran denies.
Winter weather has also cut off water in the city of Jackson, Mississippi – home to around 150,000 people – as well as the largest county in Tennessee that includes the city of Memphis, with over 651,000 residents.
WASHINGTON (AP) — In his first big appearance on the global stage, President Joe Biden called on fellow world leaders to show together that “democracies can still deliver” as he underscored his administration’s determination to quickly turn the page on Donald Trump’s “America First” approach.
Biden, in a virtual address Friday to the annual Munich Security Conference, said it was a critical time for the world’s democracies to “prove that our model isn’t a relic of our history.”
“We are in the midst of a fundamental debate about the future direction of our world,” Biden said in the address just after taking part in his first meeting as president with fellow Group of Seven world leaders. That debate is “between those who argue that – given all of the challenges we face, from the fourth industrial revolution to a global pandemic – autocracy is the best way forward and those who understand that democracy is essential to meeting those challenges.”
Biden made his address to a global audience as his administration has begun reversing Trump administration policies.
Biden also spoke out about the economic and national security challenges posed by Russia and China, as well as the two-decade war in Afghanistan, where he faces a May 1 deadline to remove the remaining 2,500 U.S. troops under a Trump administration negotiated peace agreement with the Taliban.
As he underlined challenges facing the U.S. and its allies, Biden tried to make clear that he’s determined to repair a U.S.-Europe relationship that was strained under Trump, who repeatedly questioned the value of historic alliances.
’I know the past few years have strained and tested the transatlantic relationship,” Biden said. “The United States is determined to reengage with Europe, to consult with you, to earn back our position of trust and leadership.”
His message was girded by an underlying argument that democracies — not autocracies — are models of governance that can best meet the challenges of the moment, according to a senior administration official who previewed the president’s speech for reporters.
At the G-7, administration officials said, Biden focused on what lies ahead for the international community as it tries to extinguish the public health and economic crises created by the coronavirus pandemic. He said the U.S. will soon begin releasing $4 billion for an international effort to bolster the purchase and distribution of coronavirus vaccine to poor nations, a program that Trump refused to support.
Both the G-7 and the annual security conference were held virtually because of the pandemic.
Biden’s turn on the world stage came as the U.S. on Friday officially rejoined the Paris climate agreement, the largest international effort to curb global warming. Trump announced in June 2017 that he was pulling the U.S. out of the landmark accord, arguing that it would undermine the American economy.
Biden announced the U.S. intention of rejoining the accord on the first day of his presidency, but he had to wait 30 days for the move to go into effect. He has said that he will bake considerations about climate change into every major domestic and foreign policy decision his administration faces.
“This is a global existential crisis,” Biden said.
His first foray into international summitry will inevitably be perceived by some as simply an attempted course correction from Trump’s agenda. The new president, however, has made clear that his domestic and foreign policy agenda won’t be merely an erasure of the Trump years.
“I’m tired of talking about Donald Trump,” Biden lamented earlier this week at a CNN town hall in Milwaukee.
Biden on the campaign trail vowed to reassert U.S. leadership in the international community, a role that Trump often shied away from while complaining that the U.S. was too frequently taken advantage of by freeloading allies.
To that end, Biden encouraged G-7 partners to make good on their pledges to COVAX, an initiative by the World Health Organization to improve access to vaccines, even as he reopens the U.S. spigot.
Trump had withdrawn the U.S. from WHO and refused to join more than 190 countries in the COVAX program. The Republican former president accused WHO of covering up China’s missteps in handling the virus at the start of the public health crisis that unraveled a strong U.S. economy.
It remains to be seen how G-7 allies will take Biden’s calls for greater international cooperation on vaccine distribution given that the U.S. refused to take part in the initiative under Trump and that there are growing calls for the Democrat’s administration to distribute some U.S.-manufactured vaccine supplies overseas.
French President Emmanuel Macron has called on the U.S. and European nations to allocate up to 5% of current vaccine supplies to developing countries — the kind of vaccine diplomacy that China and Russia have begun deploying.
And earlier this week, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres sharply criticized the “wildly uneven and unfair” distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, noting 10 countries have administered 75% of all vaccinations.
Biden, who announced last week that the U.S. will have enough supply of the vaccine by the end of July to inoculate 300 million people, remains focused for now on making sure every American is vaccinated, administration officials say.
Allies will also were listening closely to hear what Biden had to say about a looming crisis with Iran.
Iran informed the International Atomic Energy Agency this week that it would suspend voluntary implementation next week of a provision in the 2015 deal that allowed U.N. nuclear monitors to conduct inspections of undeclared sites in Iran at short notice unless the U.S. rolled back sanctions by Feb. 23.
“We must now make sure that a problem doesn’t arise of who takes the first step,” German chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters in Berlin after a videoconference of G-7 leaders. “If everyone is convinced that we should give this agreement a chance again, then ways should be found to get this agreement moving again.”
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Associated Press writer Geir Moulson in Berlin and Darlene Superville in Washington contributed reporting.
Former Trump DOJ official Ian Prior with insight on ‘Fox & Friends First.’
CNN anchor Chris Cuomo’s reference Thursday to a little-known former Texas mayor drew a wave of criticism given the predicament of his far more prominent older brother, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, D.
Cuomo tweeted about ex-Mayor Tim Boyd of Colorado City, Texas, who drew extensive attention this week for scolding “lazy” citizens to not look to their local government for help during the snowstorm that left huge swaths of the state without power.
“Resign or apologize and learn and become a better leader?” Cuomo tweeted.
Cuomo was swiftly reminded of a scandal far closer to home, as the elder Cuomo faces investigations of his suspected cover-up of nursing home coronavirus deaths. He also has been accused of threatening a Democratic lawmaker for not doing more to contain the political fallout.
Not that Chris Cuomo could tweet about his brother at the moment, anyway. CNN announced this week it reinstated a ban on its 9 p.m. ET host, covering or interviewing his older brother.
The left-leaning network gave the developments last year little airtime in spite of his reversal on his nursing home policy, instead allowing the younger Cuomo to conduct friendly interviews that included family jokes and even prop comedy. The media overall gushed over Cuomo throughout 2020; CNN’s Brian Stelter at one point told viewers he would pass on his advice about enduring hardships to his own children.
There appeared to be some confusion in the media about whether Boyd resigned over his comments. After criticism poured in over his caustic post, Boyd wrote a follow-up saying he stood by his first missive but added he would choose his words better.
He also said he had already turned in his resignation and was speaking as a private citizen, but it’s not clear when he stepped down. The Dallas Morning News reported he was scheduled to lead a town meeting as recently as Feb. 9.
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