quinta-feira, 30 de junho de 2022

E.P.A. Ruling Is Milestone in Long Pushback to Regulation of Business



E.P.A. Ruling Is Milestone in Long Pushback to Regulation of Business

 

The decision created greater opportunities for business interests to challenge regulations, reflecting conservative legal theories developed to rein in administrative agencies.

 

The Supreme Court’s decision shifts power back to Congress, which could pass a law to regulate carbon emissions from power plants, but is unlikely to do so.

 


Charlie Savage

By Charlie Savage

June 30, 2022, 7:27 p.m. ET

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/30/us/supreme-court-epa-administrative-state.html

 

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruling in the Environmental Protection Agency case on Thursday was a substantial victory for libertarian-minded conservatives who have worked for decades to curtail or dismantle modern-style government regulation of the economy.

 

In striking down an E.P.A. plan to reduce carbon emissions from power plants, the court issued a decision whose implications go beyond hobbling the government’s ability to fight climate change. Many other types of regulations might now be harder to defend.

 

The ruling widens an opening to attack a government structure that, in the 20th century, became the way American society imposes rules on businesses: Agencies set up by Congress come up with the specific methods of ensuring that the air and water are clean, that food, drugs, vehicles and consumer products are safe, and that financial firms follow the rules.

 

Such regulations may benefit the public as a whole, but can also cut into the profits of corporations and affect other narrow interests. For decades, wealthy conservatives have been funding a long-game effort to hobble that system, often referred to as the administrative state.

 

“This is an intentional fight on the administrative state that is the same fight that goes back to the New Deal, and even before it to the progressive era — we’re just seeing its replaying and its resurfacing,” said Gillian Metzger, a Columbia University professor who wrote a Harvard Law Review article called “1930s Redux: The Administrative State Under Siege.”

 

When the United States was younger and the economy was simple, it generally took an act of Congress to impose a new, legally binding rule addressing a problem involving industry. But as complexity arose — the Industrial Revolution, banking crises, telecommunications and broadcast technology, and much more — this system began to fail.

 

Congress came to recognize that it lacked the knowledge, time and nimbleness to set myriad, intricate technical standards across a broad and expanding range of issues. So it created specialized regulatory agencies to study and address various types of problems.

 

While there were earlier examples, many of the agencies Congress established were part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal program. Wealthy business owners loathed the limits. But with mass unemployment causing suffering, the political power of elite business interests was at an ebb.

 

The Eisenhower-style Republicans who returned to power in the 1950s largely accepted the existence of the administrative state. Over time, however, a new backlash began to emerge from the business community, especially in reaction to the consumer safety and environmental movements of the 1960s. Critics argued that government functionaries who were not accountable to voters were issuing regulations whose costs outweighed their benefits.

 

In 1971, a lawyer who had represented the tobacco industry named Lewis F. Powell Jr. — whom President Richard M. Nixon would soon put on the Supreme Court — wrote a confidential memo for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce titled “Attack on American Free Enterprise System.” It is seen as an early call to action by corporate America and its ideological allies.

 

Mr. Powell acknowledged that “the needs and complexities of a vast urban society require types of regulation and control that were quite unnecessary in earlier times.” But he declared that the United States had “moved very far indeed toward some aspects of state socialism” and that “business and the enterprise system are in deep trouble, and the hour is late.”

 

His memo set out a blueprint to fund a movement to turn public opinion against regulation by equating “economic freedom” for business with individual freedom. In line with that vision, wealthy elites financed a program to build political influence, including steering funding to organizations that develop and promote conservative policies like the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation.

 

In 1980, the billionaire David H. Koch ran a quixotic campaign as the Libertarian Party’s nominee for vice president on a platform that included abolishing the range of agencies whose regulations protect the environment and ensure that food, drugs and consumer products are safe.

 

His ticket failed to win many votes. But with his brother Charles G. Koch, he would become a major funder of like-minded conservative causes and candidates and built a campaign funding network that pushed the Republican Party further in a direction it had already started to move with the election in 1980 of President Ronald Reagan.

 

The “Reagan Revolution” included appointing officials to run agencies with a tacit mission of suppressing new regulations and scaling back existing ones — like Anne Gorsuch Burford, the mother of Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, whom critics accused of trying to gut the E.P.A. when she ran it.

 

In parallel, the conservative legal movement, whose origins also trace back to the 1970s and spread with the growth of the Federalist Society in the 1980s, has focused its long game as much on a deregulatory agenda as on higher-profile goals like ending abortion rights.

 

That movement has now largely taken control of the federal judiciary after President Donald J. Trump appointed three Supreme Court justices. The chief architect of Mr. Trump’s judicial appointments, Donald F. McGahn II, the first Trump White House counsel and a Federalist Society stalwart, made skepticism about the administrative state a key criterion in picking judges.

 

Adherents of the movement have revived old theories and developed new ones aimed at curbing the administrative state.

 

To give (usually Republican) presidents more power to push deregulatory agendas in the face of bureaucratic resistance, they have put forward the “unitary executive theory” under which it ought to be unconstitutional for Congress to give agencies independence from the White House’s political control — even though the Supreme Court upheld that arrangement in 1935.

 

A 2020 ruling by the five Republican appointees then on the Supreme Court was a step toward that goal. They struck down a provision of the law Congress enacted to create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that had protected its head from being fired by a president without a good cause, like misconduct.

 

And to invalidate regulations even when (usually Democratic) presidents support them, movement conservatives have argued for narrowly interpreting the power Congress has given or may give to agencies.

 

Some of those theories have to do with how to interpret statutes. The E.P.A. ruling, for example, entrenched and strengthened a doctrine that courts should strike down regulations that raise “major questions” if Congress was not explicit enough in authorizing such actions.

 

“In certain extraordinary cases,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote, the court needed “something more than a merely plausible textual basis” to convince it that an agency has the legal ability to issue specific regulations. “The agency,” he wrote, “instead must point to ‘clear congressional authorization’ for the power it claims.”

 

The strict version of that doctrine signaled by the ruling will give businesses a powerful weapon with which to attack other regulations.

 

The ruling was foreshadowed by short, unsigned rulings last year in which the court blocked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s moratorium on evictions to prevent overcrowding during the coronavirus pandemic, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s requirement that large employers get workers vaccinated or provide testing.

 

But both of those decisions involved tangential exercises of authority by agencies trying to address the pandemic emergency: The C.D.C., a public health agency, was getting into housing policy, and OSHA, a workplace safety agency, was getting into public health policy.

 

The ruling on Thursday involved the E.P.A.’s primary mission: to curb pollution of harmful substances, which the court previously ruled included carbon dioxide emissions. Moreover, the text of the Clean Air Act empowers the agency to devise the “best system of emission reduction.” Even so, the majority ruled that the agency lacked authorization for its Clean Power Plan.

 

In dissent, one of the court’s three remaining Democratic appointees, Justice Elena Kagan — who once wrote a scholarly treatise about the administrative state — accused the majority of having discarded the conservative principle of interpreting laws based closely on their text to serve its “anti-administrative state” agenda.

 

“The current court is textualist only when being so suits it,” she wrote. “When that method would frustrate broader goals, special canons like the ‘major questions doctrine’ magically appear as get-out-of-text-free cards. Today, one of those broader goals makes itself clear: Prevent agencies from doing important work, even though that is what Congress directed.”

 

Conservatives have also developed other legal theories for attacking the administrative state.

 

They have argued, for example, that the Supreme Court should end so-called Chevron deference, named for the case that established it. Under that doctrine, judges defer to agencies’ interpretations of the authority that Congress gave them in situations where the text of a law is ambiguous and the agency’s interpretation is reasonable.

 

Conservatives have also argued for a more robust version of the so-called nondelegation doctrine, under which the Constitution can bar Congress from giving regulatory power to agencies at all — even if lawmakers unambiguously sought to do so.

 

Chief Justice Roberts’s majority opinion, in keeping with his preference for incremental approaches to major issues, left those other theories and arguments for another day. But a concurring opinion by Justice Gorsuch, joined by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., discussed the nondelegation doctrine with apparent relish.

 

“While we all agree that administrative agencies have important roles to play in a modern nation, surely none of us wishes to abandon our Republic’s promise that the people and their representatives should have a meaningful say in the laws that govern them,” Justice Gorsuch wrote.

 

In theory, undercutting the administrative state does not necessarily subtract from the government’s ability to act when a new problem — or a better way of solving an old one — arises. Rather, it shifts some of the power and responsibility from the agencies to Congress.

 

For example, lawmakers could theoretically enact a law explicitly declaring that the E.P.A.’s power to curb air pollution under the Clean Air Act includes regulating carbon dioxide pollution from power plants in the way the agency had proposed. Congress could even pass a law directly requiring the detailed system for reducing emissions.

 

As a matter of political reality, however, agencies’ issuing of new rules based on old laws is often the only way the government remains capable of acting.

 

Congress is increasingly polarized and dysfunctional, sometimes too paralyzed to pass even basic spending bills to keep the government operating. And the ideology of the contemporary Republican Party, combined with the Senate’s filibuster rule, which allows a minority of senators to block votes on substantive legislation, means that it is unlikely that Congress will enact new laws expanding regulations.

 

The prospect that the Republican-appointed supermajority on the court may be just getting started in assaulting the administrative state over the coming years is alarming those who say the United States needs regulations to have a civilized society.

 

“If you don’t have regulations, then the only people who will benefit will be those who, with no rules, will make more money,” said Marietta Robinson, a former Obama appointee on the Consumer Product Safety Commission who teaches about administrative agencies at George Washington University’s law school. “But it will be to the great detriment to the rest of us.”

 

Charlie Savage is a Washington-based national security and legal policy correspondent. A recipient of the Pulitzer Prize, he previously worked at The Boston Globe and The Miami Herald. His most recent book is “Power Wars: The Relentless Rise of Presidential Authority and Secrecy.” @charlie_savage • Facebook


President Biden accuses Supreme Court of “devastating blow” against climate action - BBC News

Tory deputy chief whip resigns after ‘drunkenly groping two men’

 



In letter to Boris Johnson, Chris Pincher said he ‘drank far too much’ and apologised to ‘those concerned’.

Tory deputy chief whip resigns after ‘drunkenly groping two men’

 

Chris Pincher’s resignation is latest in a series of allegations of sexual misconduct by Conservative MPs

 

Jessica Elgot, Rowena Mason and Aubrey Allegretti

Thu 30 Jun 2022 21.51 BST

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jun/30/tory-deputy-chief-whip-resigns-after-embarrassing-myself-and-others

 

The Conservative deputy chief whip has resigned after admitting he had “embarrassed myself and other people” following reports that he drunkenly groped two men at a private club.

 

Chris Pincher wrote to Boris Johnson saying he was standing down after drinking too much. However, he did not address the allegations that he was reported to the whips by Conservative MPs who had witnessed his behaviour towards two men at the Carlton Club in Piccadilly.

 

It is the latest in a series of allegations of sexual misconduct by Tory MPs and will put further pressure on Boris Johnson to clean up the culture in Westminster. It is also the second time that Pincher has resigned from the whips’ office following allegations made against him, raising questions about Johnson’s judgment in promoting him to a role in charge of MP discipline and pastoral affairs.

 

In a letter to the prime minister, Pincher said: “Last night I drank far too much. I’ve embarrassed myself and other people which is the last thing I want to do and for that I apologise to you and to those concerned.

 

“I think the right thing to do in the circumstances is for me to resign as deputy chief whip. I owe it to you and the people I’ve caused upset to, to do this.”

 

In the short letter, which did not address the complaints about his sexual conduct, first reported in the Sun, Pincher added: “I want to assure you that you will continue to have my full support from the back benches … It has been the honour of my life to have served in Her Majesty’s Government.”

 

The government had no comment on the allegations about his behaviour but he is not thought to be losing the Conservative whip after taking the decision to step down. Pincher has not issued any comment on the allegations of groping two men.

 

An MP present at the Carlton Club on Wednesday night said Pincher was asked to leave by several people and was so drunk “he could barely stand up”.

 

The victims were said to be two staffers, and multiple MPs who witnessed the alleged groping messaged chief whip Chris Heaton-Harris to demand a meeting after the incident.

 

One of those who reported Pincher was fellow whip Sarah Dines, two sources said.

 

The MP for Tamworth previously stood down from the whips’ office in 2017 after he was reported by the Mail on Sunday as making an unwanted pass at the former Olympic rower and Conservative activist Alex Story. The alleged incident reportedly took place with Pincher dressed in a bathrobe at his London home.

 

He was later cleared in a Conservative party investigation. At the time, a party spokesperson said: “Following an investigation, a panel headed by an independent QC considered the evidence and has concluded there has not been a breach of the code of conduct.”

 

There was disquiet among some Tory MPs that Pincher had resigned rather than been sacked, and had been allowed to keep the Conservative whip. “That’s not going to last,” one MP predicted.

 

Another said Pincher had only been given his role because of his loyalty helping run Johnson’s “shadow whipping operation” in the spring to shore up support.

 

They added that Johnson’s judgment had been shown to be catastrophic and that given a byelection had just been held for a colleague watching porn in parliament, the same should happen in Pincher’s seat because “this is much worse”.

 

Angela Rayner, the Labour deputy leader, said: “This latest episode shows how far standards in public life have been degraded on Boris Johnson’s watch. Boris Johnson has serious questions to answer about why Chris Pincher was given this role in the first place and how he can remain a Conservative MP.

 

“The Conservative party is so mired in sleaze and scandal that it is totally unable to tackle the challenges facing the British people.”

 

Boris Johnson’s government has been hit by a string of sexual misconduct scandals in recent months. Last month, a Conservative MP was arrested on suspicion of rape and sexual assault offences spanning seven years between 2002 and 2009. He was later bailed without being charged, pending further inquiries.

 

Scotland Yard said the unnamed man in his 50s was also detained on suspicion of indecent assault, abuse of position of trust and misconduct in public office. The MP has not been suspended by the Conservative party but Heaton-Harris asked him to stay away from parliament.

 

Imran Ahmad Khan, the Conservative MP for Wakefield, was found guilty in April of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old boy after plying him with gin at a party in 2008. Khan assaulted the boy in Staffordshire in January 2008, 11 years before he became an MP. He resigned as an MP two weeks after he was found guilty.

 

Neil Parish, the Conservative MP for Tiverton and Honiton, also stood down in April after admitting to watching porn on his phone in the House of Commons, with the party subsequently losing its huge majority in the seat to the Liberal Democrats.

 

Another Conservative MP, David Warburton, lost the whip after the Sunday Times reported he was facing allegations from three women.

 

Warburton, 56, was accused by one of the women of climbing into bed with her naked. She told the newspaper she repeatedly warned that she did not want to have sex with him, but alleged that he ground his body against her and groped her breasts.

 

He is said to have denied any wrongdoing, and insisted he had “enormous amounts of defence, but unfortunately the way things work means that doesn’t come out first”.

 

Rob Roberts, the Conservative MP for Delyn, was allowed to rejoin the party despite an independent investigation finding that he sexually harassed a junior member of staff.

 

Roberts was suspended for 12 weeks after the independent panel found he had made “significant” repeated and unwanted sexual advances towards a former member of staff and used “his position as his employer to place him under pressure to accede”.

 

He had his membership to the party restored but continued to sit as an independent MP in parliament.

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Hutchinson Testimony Exposes Tensions Between Parallel Jan. 6 Inquiries

 


Hutchinson Testimony Exposes Tensions Between Parallel Jan. 6 Inquiries

 

That the House panel did not provide the Justice Department with transcripts of Cassidy Hutchinson’s interviews speaks to the panel’s reluctance to turn over evidence.

 


Glenn ThrushLuke BroadwaterMichael S. Schmidt

By Glenn Thrush, Luke Broadwater and Michael S. Schmidt

June 29, 2022

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/29/us/politics/jan-6-committee-justice-department-trump.html

 

WASHINGTON — The explosive testimony of a former Trump White House aide on Tuesday may have increased the likelihood of new prosecutions stemming from the attack on the Capitol, but it also bared lingering conflicts between the Justice Department and congressional investigators.

 

The federal prosecutors working on the case watched the aide’s appearance before the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, riot and were just as astonished by her account of former President Donald J. Trump’s increasingly desperate bid to hold on to power as other viewers. The panel did not provide them with videos or transcripts of her taped interviews with committee members beforehand, according to several officials, leaving them feeling blindsided.

 

The testimony from the aide, Cassidy Hutchinson, who worked for Mr. Trump’s final chief of staff, Mark Meadows, came at a critical moment in parallel investigations that will soon converge, and possibly collide, as the committee wraps up a public inquiry geared for maximum political effect and the department intensifies a high-stakes investigation aimed at securing airtight convictions.

 

Her revelations ramped up calls that the committee summon a former White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, who could verify some of her disclosures and who repeatedly resisted efforts to subvert the election. Late Wednesday, the panel said it had subpoenaed Mr. Cipollone after he refused to publicly testify.

 

Committee members have repeatedly suggested that Attorney General Merrick B. Garland has not moved fast enough to follow up their investigative leads. But for reasons that are not entirely clear — classic Washington bureaucratic territorialism, the department’s unwillingness to share information or the desire to stage-manage a successful public forum — members have resisted turning over hundreds of transcripts until they are done with their work.

 

Senior Justice Department officials say that has slowed their investigation. Ms. Hutchinson’s name has not yet appeared on subpoenas and other court documents related to their investigation into the effort to overturn the 2020 election, and she did not seem to be a primary witness before the hearings.

 

The committee and its supporters say its independence has allowed it to create an investigative road map for the department’s subsequent inquiries, even if members remain divided over whether to make an official criminal referral to Mr. Garland.

 

“It’s fair to regard this series of most recent hearings as a slow-motion referral in plain view of conduct warranting, at minimum, criminal investigation and potential prosecution,” said David H. Laufman, a former federal prosecutor and senior Justice Department official. “They haven’t held back anything.”

 

At each of its hearings this month, the panel has presented evidence that members believe could be used to bolster a criminal investigation. The committee has provided new details about cases that could be built around a conspiracy to defraud the American people and Mr. Trump’s own donors, as well as plans to submit false slates of electors to the National Archives and obstruct an official proceeding of Congress.

 

At its hearing on Tuesday, the committee laid out how Mr. Trump had forewarning of violence, allowed a mob of his loyalists to attack the Capitol and, in fact, agreed with what they were doing.

 

A person familiar with the panel’s work said Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming and vice chairwoman of the committee, took a leading role overseeing the team investigating Mr. Trump’s inner circle and was instrumental in organizing the surprise hearing featuring Ms. Hutchinson.

 

Over the past month, the committee has aired hours of testimony — none more significant than Ms. Hutchinson’s narrative of Mr. Trump’s actions on the day of the attack — that legal experts believe bolstered a potential criminal case against Mr. Trump for inciting the mob or attempting to obstruct the special session of Congress.

 

That, in turn, has escalated the already intense pressure on Mr. Garland and his top aides. The now familiar meme — exhorting Mr. Garland to do his “job” by indicting Mr. Trump — began to emerge on social media even before Ms. Hutchinson left the hearing room.

 

“We need some action from the D.O.J., and we need it now,” Representative Ruben Gallego, Democrat of Arizona, said in an interview. “We’re in a time crunch now. Every day these criminals walk free is one more day of them evading justice. As we get closer to the midterm elections, I fear not acting will only empower the complicit Republicans more if they take power.”

 

For their part, members of the committee have repeatedly and publicly called for Mr. Garland to do more, even as the panel has denied the Justice Department access to its transcripts. (A committee spokesman has said the panel is negotiating with the Justice Department and could turn over its transcripts as early as July when it finishes its public hearings.)

 

“I have yet to see any indication that the former president himself is under investigation,” Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and a member of the committee, said on “Meet The Press” on NBC recently, adding, “It’s not a difficult decision to investigate when there’s evidence before you.”

 

That followed a steady drumbeat of similar statements from members of the panel who have urged the Justice Department to investigate Mr. Trump and charge with contempt his allies who will not cooperate with the committee’s investigation.

 

Mr. Garland and his top advisers have repeatedly declined to comment on the details of their investigations, other than to say they will follow wherever the evidence leads them. His spokesman had no comment on Ms. Hutchinson’s testimony and what it meant for the Justice Department’s work.

 

In recent weeks, the panel has openly debated whether it should ratchet up additional pressure on the department by issuing a criminal referral at the end of its investigation.

 

After Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the committee’s chairman, indicated to reporters on Capitol Hill that the panel was unlikely to do so, other members, including Mr. Schiff and Ms. Cheney, quickly disputed that assertion.

 

“The January 6th Select Committee has not issued a conclusion regarding potential criminal referrals,” Ms. Cheney wrote on Twitter this month. “We will announce a decision on that at an appropriate time.”

 

Making a case against Trump. The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack appears to be laying out evidence that could allow prosecutors to indict former President Donald J. Trump, though the path to a criminal trial is uncertain. Here are the main themes that have emerged so far:

 

An unsettling narrative. During the first hearing, the committee described in vivid detail what it characterized as an attempted coup orchestrated by the former president that culminated in the assault on the Capitol. At the heart of the gripping story were three main players: Mr. Trump, the Proud Boys and a Capitol Police officer.

 

Creating election lies. In its second hearing, the panel showed how Mr. Trump ignored aides and advisers as he declared victory prematurely and relentlessly pressed claims of fraud he was told were wrong. “He’s become detached from reality if he really believes this stuff,” William P. Barr, the former attorney general, said of Mr. Trump during a videotaped interview.

 

Pressuring Pence. Mr. Trump continued pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to go along with a plan to overturn his loss even after he was told it was illegal, according to testimony laid out by the panel during the third hearing. The committee showed how Mr. Trump’s actions led his supporters to storm the Capitol, sending Mr. Pence fleeing for his life.

 

Fake elector plan. The committee used its fourth hearing to detail how Mr. Trump was personally involved in a scheme to put forward fake electors. The panel also presented fresh details on how the former president leaned on state officials to invalidate his defeat, opening them up to violent threats when they refused.

 

Strong arming the Justice Department. During the fifth hearing, the panel explored Mr. Trump’s wide-ranging and relentless scheme to misuse the Justice Department to keep himself in power. The panel also presented evidence that at least half a dozen Republican members of Congress sought pre-emptive pardons.

 

Trump’s rage. Cassidy Hutchinson, ​​a former White House aide, delivered explosive testimony during the panel’s sixth hearing, saying that the president knew the crowd on Jan. 6 was armed, but wanted to loosen security. She also revealed that Mr. Trump, demanding to go to the Capitol, tried to grab his vehicle’s steering wheel from a Secret Service agent.

 

The panel has also suggested Mr. Trump and unnamed people close to him were involved in inappropriately influencing witnesses.

 

Its members have suggested, for instance, that the former president may have swayed Representative Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader, when he refused to cooperate with the investigation.

 

On Tuesday, Ms. Cheney displayed what she said were two examples of unnamed Trump associates trying to influence witnesses. One witness was told to “protect” certain individuals to “stay in good graces in Trump World.” In the other instance, a witness was encouraged to remain “loyal.”

 

“Most people know that attempting to influence witnesses to testify untruthfully presents very serious concerns,” Ms. Cheney said. “We will be discussing these issues as a committee and carefully considering our next steps.”

 

According to Punchbowl News, Ms. Hutchinson received such a warning. A person familiar with the committee’s investigation confirmed that account. Her lawyer did not respond to a message seeking comment.

 

The allegations were reminiscent of other questions that have emerged about Mr. Trump and his allies’ use of intimidation to stop witnesses from implicating Mr. Trump.

 

During the Russia investigation, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, John Dowd, dangled a pardon to Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn.

 

Mr. Trump later pardoned Mr. Flynn after he stopped cooperating with investigators. Mr. Trump himself had similar overtures made to his personal lawyer and fixer, Michael D. Cohen.

 

 

Luke Broadwater covers Congress. He was the lead reporter on a series of investigative articles at The Baltimore Sun that won a Pulitzer Prize and a George Polk Award in 2020. @lukebroadwater

 

Michael S. Schmidt is a Washington correspondent covering national security and federal investigations. He was part of two teams that won Pulitzer Prizes in 2018 — one for reporting on workplace sexual harassment and the other for coverage of President Trump and his campaign’s ties to Russia. @NYTMike

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Pedro Nuno Santos não se demite. Decisão nas mãos de Costa

 


GOVERNO

Pedro Nuno Santos não se demite. Decisão nas mãos de Costa

 

O PÚBLICO apurou que o ministro das Infra-estruturas e da Habitação não tenciona apresentar um pedido de demissão e que já comunicou essa decisão ao primeiro-ministro. Desta forma o ónus fica totalmente nas mãos de António Costa.

 


David Santiago e Ana Sá Lopes

30 de Junho de 2022, 12:55

https://www.publico.pt/2022/06/30/politica/noticia/pedro-nuno-santos-nao-demite-decisao-maos-costa-2011983

 

Pedro Nuno Santos não se irá demitir e já comunicou essa mesma decisão ao chefe do Governo, segundo apurou o PÚBLICO junto de diversas fontes. O ministro das Infra-estruturas e da Habitação deixa assim a decisão de uma eventual demissão à responsabilidade do primeiro-ministro António Costa que, segundo soube também o PÚBLICO, irá demitir Pedro Nuno Santos no caso deste não sair pelo próprio pé.

 

O PÚBLICO apurou ainda que a publicitação do despacho que abria via à solução aeroportuária para Lisboa com base na fórmula Montijo/Alcochete apanhou o primeiro-ministro de surpresa, desde logo porque ficara decidido no órgão (uma estrutura de carácter informal) de coordenação política do executivo socialista que antes de qualquer decisão António Costa falaria primeiramente com o líder eleito do PSD, Luís Montenegro, que assume em pleno a presidência social-democrata no congresso marcado para o próximo fim-de-semana, no Porto.

 

O também líder do PS disse mesmo publicamente que esperaria por Luís Montenegro antes de qualquer decisão sobre o aeroporto. Esta quarta-feira, já depois de noticiada a intenção do ministério tutelado por Pedro Nuno Santos avançar para a solução Montijo/Alcochete, Luís Montenegro garantiu não ter recebido qualquer informação sobre o assunto.

 

Pedro Nuno Santos fintou o que estava combinado no seio do executivo precisamente numa altura em que António Costa estava fora do país, mais precisamente em Madrid onde participa numa cimeira da NATO. Já ao final da manhã desta quinta-feira, António Costa recusou, a partir da capital espanhola, comentar o assunto por não estar em Portugal. No entanto, o primeiro-ministro admitiu falar em breve uma vez chegado ao país.

 

Desta forma, mais explicações sobre este assunto poderão chegar durante o briefing do Conselho de Ministros que deverá ocorrer ao início da tarde, esperando-se que pelo menos a ministra da Presidência, Mariana Vieira da Silva, esteja nessa conferência de imprensa. Pedro Nuno Santos não marcou presença na reunião do Conselho de Ministros.

 

Surpreendido pela decisão, o primeiro-ministro deu indicações ao seu gabinete para, ao início da manhã desta quinta-feira, enviar um comunicado às redacções a dar conta da “revogação do despacho ontem publicado sobre o Plano de Ampliação da Capacidade Aeroportuária da Região de Lisboa”.

 

Esta descoordenação na comunicação do executivo socialista acontece poucas semanas depois de João Cepeda ter assumido funções como director de comunicação do Governo.

 

tp.ocilbup@ogaitnas.divad

tp.ocilbup@sepol.as.ana

O Governo transformado numa associação de estudantes

 


 EDITORIAL

O Governo transformado numa associação de estudantes

 

Todas as organizações têm falhas, mas anunciar a solução para a maior obra pública em muitas décadas num dia para a travar no dia seguinte é muito mais do que isso: é um sinal de tumulto no seio do Governo entre os seus dois homens politicamente mais fortes

 


Manuel Carvalho

30 de Junho de 2022, 11:03

https://www.publico.pt/2022/06/30/politica/editorial/governo-transformado-associacao-estudantes-2011958

 

O anúncio da nova solução para o aeroporto de Lisboa foi uma das maiores surpresas políticas das últimas semanas, mas só conservou esse estatuto durante parcas horas. Nesta manhã de quinta-feira, uma nota do primeiro-ministro demoliu essa mesmíssima solução e elevou a surpresa para a categoria do espanto. O faz e desfaz do aeroporto não é coisa pouca, custa a acreditar. Em causa está uma obra estratégica. Logo, o que se passou é sinal de que algo profundamente errado se passa no Governo de António Costa. Pode ser descoordenação, pode ser excesso de voluntarismo, pode ser uma falha de comunicação, mas, podendo ser isso tudo, é também a demonstração que a guerra larvar de facções no seio do PS está viva e consegue expor o Governo ao ridículo.

 

Todas as organizações têm falhas, mas anunciar a solução para a maior obra pública em muitas décadas num dia para a travar no dia seguinte é muito mais do que isso: é um sinal de tumulto no seio do Governo entre os seus dois homens politicamente mais fortes. Pedro Nuno Santos só poderia ter revelado num despacho oficial uma solução que contrariava tudo o que o primeiro-ministro tinha dito sobre a opção Montijo/Alcochete se essa solução política fosse discutida e aprovada por António Costa. Sabemos agora que ou não foi ou essa discussão foi de tal forma ambígua que o primeiro-ministro teve de a desfazer em público. Em todos os casos, é impossível não ver nesta contradição uma competição de testosterona.

 

O que a nota assinada pelo gabinete de António Costa nos diz é que Pedro Nuno Santos exorbitou das suas competências, que decidiu a sorte da obra à revelia do primeiro-ministro, que avançou contrariando a estratégia política de envolver o PSD e de avisar o Presidente. Ao fazê-lo, Pedro Nuno Santos pôs em causa a “unidade, credibilidade e colegialidade da acção governativa”, como se pode ler na nota para que fique clara a repreensão e a culpa do ministro. Perante esta sova política feita em público, Pedro Nuno Santos só tem um caminho, que de resto António Costa lhe traçou: ou demitir-se do Governo ou ser demitido.

 

Ainda assim, temos de esperar pelas suas explicações para que se possa dispor de uma visão integral do mais grave incidente político de todos os governos de António Costa. Pedro Nuno Santos é arrojado, voluntarista e determinado, um político que gosta mais de agir do que conversar. Mas não é tonto nem tem défice de inteligência. É corajoso, mas já deu provas de dispor de sentido estratégico. Custa a perceber o que o levaria a avançar com uma solução para o aeroporto sem ter tudo combinado com Costa. Se fosse a compra de uma locomotiva, percebia-se a ausência do primeiro-ministro no processo de decisão. Agora, um aeroporto para a capital?

 

Faltando ainda muito por se esclarecer, o que já se sabe deixa marcas indeléveis no Governo. Aos sinais de cansaço, de desinspiração, de um vago imobilismo, da preocupação com a propaganda e uma total ausência de vontade de atacar as causas dos problemas junta-se agora um incidente gravíssimo que põe em causa a credibilidade e a coesão do Governo. Os episódios suspeitos de deslealdade, traição ou desrespeito pelo conselho só prosperam em ambientes fétidos.

 

Aconteça o que acontecer, a sequência dos factos permite desde já prever quem ganha, se é que se pode falar de vitória neste conflito digno das eleições académicas, e quem perde. António Costa mostra quem manda e não se coíbe de pôr o seu maior rival no partido na linha; Pedro Nuno Santos poderá ter delapidado boa parte do seu capital político. Mas não o seu futuro, porque é novo e um dia António Costa mudará de vida.

Indigenous Karipuna take Brazil to court over Amazon deforestation | DW ...

Markets: ‘You’re getting closer to a bottom,’ strategist says / After Stock Market’s Worst Start in 50 Years, Some See More Pain Ahead


After Stock Market’s Worst Start in 50 Years, Some See More Pain Ahead

 

At the halfway point of the year, it’s been a historically horrible time for stocks. Bonds are in bad shape, too.

The stock market is on track for its worst first half of the year since at least 1970.

 



Isabella Simonetti

By Isabella Simonetti

June 30, 2022, 5:00 a.m. ET

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/30/business/stock-market-worst-start-50-years.html

 

Wall Street set records in the first half of the year, none of them good.

 

The economy is on the cusp of a recession, battered by high inflation and rising interest rates, which eats into paychecks, dents consumer confidence and leads to corporate cutbacks. As it has teetered, markets have tanked.

 

The stock market is on track for its worst first six months of the year since at least 1970. The S&P 500 index, the cornerstone of many stock portfolios and retirement accounts, peaked in early January and has fallen 19.9 percent over the past six months.

 

The sell-off has been remarkably broad, with every sector except energy down this year. Bellwethers including Apple, Disney, JPMorgan Chase and Target have all fallen more than the overall market.

 

And that’s only part of the horror story for investors and companies this year.

 

Bonds, which are seen as providing lower but more stable returns for investors, have had a terrible six months, too. Because bonds are particularly sensitive to economic conditions, reflecting shifts in inflation and interest rates more directly than stocks, this is perhaps an even more worrying sign about the state of the economy.

 

An index tracking the 10-year Treasury note, a benchmark for borrowing costs on mortgages, business loans and many other kinds of debt, has fallen by about 10 percent in price. Analysts at Deutsche Bank had to go all the way back to the late 18th century to find a worse first-half-year performance for equivalent bonds.

 

“Make no mistake, this has been a torrid first half,” said Jim Reid, the head of credit strategy and thematic research at Deutsche Bank.

 

For the average investor with a diversified portfolio of stocks and bonds, it probably feels like “nothing worked,” according to Victoria Greene, the chief investment officer at G Squared Private Wealth. That’s especially true for investors who bought at the start of the year, when markets were in a more buoyant mood. “The venerable 60-40 portfolio hasn’t held up at all,” Ms. Greene said, referring to the mix of 60 percent stocks and 40 percent bonds that financial advisers traditionally suggest to investors to protect them from a downdraft.

 

Since the start of the year, stubbornly high inflation, which is now running at the fastest pace in more than 40 years and made worse by soaring food and energy prices because of the war in Ukraine, has eroded corporate profit margins. That has come on top of the persistent supply chain snarls that have also made it harder for companies to fill customer orders and manage inventories.

 

As investors have been reassessing the outlook for companies and sold their stocks, a few weeks ago the S&P 500 fell into a bear market, a rare and grim sign of pessimism, which Wall Street defines as a 20 percent fall from a recent peak. The index has fallen in 10 of the past 12 weeks, with occasional rallies quickly fizzling as a new bout of worries wash over the market.

 

The Federal Reserve’s determination to tame inflation by raising interest rates is a major factor in the market turmoil. Higher borrowing costs cool the economy by lowering demand, which in turn reduces the pressure on prices. Sharply higher bond yields, which move in the opposite direction as prices, have saddled bond investors’ portfolios with losses.

 

And if the Fed’s fight against inflation requires rates to rise so high, so quickly that the economy tips into recession, that would limit companies’ ability to hire new staff, spend on new projects and repay their debts, which is ominous for both stocks and bonds.

 

Assets that were thought to be unaffected by these trends have also provided little refuge. Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency, has fallen more than 50 percent this year.

 

Surveying the financial wreckage, the question arises: How bad could it get?

 

In the next few weeks, companies will begin to report their second-quarter earnings, updating investors on how their finances are faring. These reports will be scrutinized for signs that the shaky economy may be taking a turn for the worse, which will factor into buying and selling decisions.

 

As important as what companies reveal about their latest quarter is what they say about how things are shaping up for the quarters to come, according to Steve Sosnick, the chief strategist at Interactive Brokers.

 

“In general, expectations remain very high,” he said. That’s either a sign that conditions may not be as bad as some fear, or that they are set to disappoint. Analysts’ forecasts for profits at companies like Apple and JPMorgan Chase have remained relatively stable over the past month.

 

Andy Sieg, the president of Merrill Lynch Wealth Management, said he has not seen a major increase in trading activity among clients, which might be expected during a period of turmoil. There has, however, been a big uptick in clients seeking conversations about financial planning over the past year, which he described as a “constructive” approach to dealing with the downturn.

 

“When markets are more volatile, emotions rise,” Mr. Sieg said. “That’s just a normal human reaction to the kind of environment that we’re living in.”

 

Even if the news on corporate earnings or the economy is not as bad as some fear, it may take time for the gloomy mood to shift, and for what many think is another false dawn to mark a decisive turning point. “Typically a bear market turns when the world still feels horrible,” said Ms. Greene of G Squared Private Wealth.

 

“There’s only ever one true bottom,” Mr. Sosnick of Interactive Brokers said. “That’s really the final turning point. And so to me it’s not clear that we’ve seen the circumstances that signal one of those yet.”

 

For Mr. Reid of Deutsche Bank, “a lot depends on the recession timing,” he said. The fall in stocks so far would be an extreme outlier if it weren’t accompanied by a recession, according to his research.

 

Economists have been raising the probability that the U.S. economy is about to go into recession, and a shrinking economy is more in keeping with the scale of market decline that Mr. Reid expects. He thinks that it’s “plausible” for the stock market to fall 35 to 40 percent from its January peak, meaning that the current decline is only about halfway finished.

 

Isabella Simonetti is the 2022 David Carr Fellow at The New York Times. @thesimonetti


Swedish and Finnish NATO deal with Turkey triggers fears over Kurdish deportations

 


Swedish and Finnish NATO deal with Turkey triggers fears over Kurdish deportations

 

Opponents of President Erdoğan in Sweden and Finland worry the deal will bolster efforts by Ankara to extradite them to Turkey

 

BY CHARLIE DUXBURY

June 29, 2022 2:40 pm

https://www.politico.eu/article/sweden-finland-nato-deal-turkey-trigger-fears-kurdish-deportations/

 

STOCKHOLM — Relief over Tuesday night’s deal with Turkey unblocking the NATO accession process for Sweden and Finland was palpable on Wednesday, but there were also fears that the two Nordic states could have conceded too much to Ankara over deportations.

 

Political adversaries of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan based in Sweden were quick to label the deal as a sellout, which could strengthen Turkey’s efforts to secure extraditions of Kurdish rights activists and other opponents.

 

“This is a black day in Swedish political history,” said Amineh Kakabaveh, an independent Swedish lawmaker and longtime advocate for Kurdish rights. “We are negotiating with a regime which does not respect freedom of expression or the rights of minority groups,” Kakabaveh, a former fighter with Kurdish Peshmerga forces in Iran, told the SVT Nyheter television channel.

 

Since mid-May, Turkey has threatened to veto the NATO applications from Sweden and Finland unless the two states complied with, among other things, its demands to crack down on groups Ankara regards as terrorists.

 

This has caused political tension because Stockholm and Helsinki don’t agree that all the groups on Ankara’s list are terrorists. For example, all three regard the PKK as terrorists but only Turkey sees the Syria-based Kurdish groups the YPG and PYD as terrorists.

 

Over the past two months, officials from the three states, as well as from NATO headquarters, have sought to secure a compromise that would allow Erdoğan to claim a diplomatic victory while not undermining Swedish or Finnish human rights laws.

 

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (L), NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg (C) and Sweden’s Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson take part in a meeting on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Madrid | Henrik Montgomery/TT News Agency/AFP via Getty Images

The 10-point deal published late Tuesday ahead of a key NATO summit in Madrid was that compromise.

 

The most sensitive element was arguably point eight, which included a commitment by Sweden and Finland “to address Türkiye’s pending deportation or extradition requests of terror suspects expeditiously and thoroughly.”

 

Loose wording

While loosely worded, and arguably vague enough to be potentially insignificant, that clause rattled some Kurds in Sweden.

 

Kurdo Baksi, a prominent Sweden-based Kurdish writer, told Swedish TV he was worried that Sweden and Finland might have promised to extradite Kurds and other democratically minded Turks who have sought a refuge in the two countries back to Turkey.

 

“I hope that Sweden will enter NATO with the same view of democracy and human rights as it had before (Foreign Minister) Ann Linde and (Prime Minister) Magdalena Andersson traveled to the NATO meeting in Madrid,” he said.

 

In an interview with Sweden’s national broadcaster on Wednesday, Prime Minister Andersson sought to play down the implications of Swedish and Finnish commitments to Turkey.

 

“I know there are people who are worried that we are going to start hunting them and deporting them and I think it is important to say that we always work in accordance with Swedish law and existing international conventions,” she said. “If you are not involved in terrorism, you don’t need to worry,” she added.

 

Reassurance needed

But a raft of opposition lawmakers, including from longtime NATO membership opponents the Left Party, weren’t reassured.

 

Håkan Svenneling, the party’s foreign policy spokesperson, said Sweden had made “shameful concessions.”

 

Before Sweden and Finland decided to apply to join NATO, the Swedish Left Party had argued that joining an alliance with Turkey could have serious negative consequences and its lawmakers were quick to claim vindication.

 

“Selling us out to Erdoğan went quickly,” said Ulla Andersson, the Left Party’s former economic policy spokesperson.

 

In Finland, the reaction to the deal seemed notably more muted with the focus more squarely on the brighter prospects for NATO accession the Turkish deal entailed, rather than any eventual damage to human rights the agreement might cause.

 

This was in part a reflection of the broader parliamentary consensus in Finland behind applying to join NATO than had been achieved in Sweden.

 

In Sweden, the Left Party and the Green Party remain vocal critics of the NATO membership application, and Green Party joint-leader Märta Stenevi on Wednesday called on Sweden’s foreign minister to explain to the parliament’s foreign affairs select committee what she called “very worrying” developments regarding extraditions to Turkey.

 

For her part, Kakabaveh, a former member of the Left Party, said she might launch a vote of no-confidence against Foreign Minister Linde.

 

It was unclear how much support such a move would command in parliament, but a similar vote targeting Justice Minister Morgan Johansson in early June almost brought down the Swedish government, three months ahead of scheduled general election.

 

Kakabaveh struck a deal with Prime Minister Andersson’s governing Social Democrats as recently as last November guaranteeing more support for the Syria-based PYD and its military affiliate, the YPG.

 

But Tuesday’s 10-point deal with Turkey said the Swedish and Finnish governments had agreed not to provide such support leaving the Social Democrats’ deal with Kakabaveh on an unclear footing.

 

Kakabaveh said she hoped the Left Party and the Green Party would join her in seeking to apply pressure to the Swedish government over its concessions to Turkey.

 

“This is not just about the Kurds, this is about Sweden not bowing to a regime like Erdoğan’s,” she said.