The
online portal offers the potential for a new level of collaboration
between political operators and certain media outlets — one in which
candidates can easily seek to customize news stories without the
public’s knowledge. The use of the tactic in Illinois has caught the
attention of allies of former president Donald Trump, who have discussed
the potential of expanding the operation, according to people familiar
with the discussions.
The
network is run by Brian Timpone, a businessman and former television
broadcaster who told federal regulators in 2016 that his publishing
company was filling the void left by the decline of community news,
“delivering hundreds and sometimes thousands of local news stories each
week.” He did not respond to requests for comment.
The
Illinois-centric outlets form just one part of a broader network of
sites, estimated to number more than 1,200 nationally, that the Tow
Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University has connected to Timpone. The Lumen portal shares technical features, including an online performance tracking ID,with
multiple sites that form part of what Priyanjana Bengani, a fellow in
computational journalism at the Tow Center, described as Timpone’s
extended network.
---------------------------------
While political operatives and others ensuredaccess to Lumen for thetop
Republicans in the state, including the party’s candidates for governor
and attorney general, major Democratic campaigns were unaware of the
portal’s existence, according to those with knowledge of the situation.
In
one example, the campaign of Darren Bailey, the Republican running to
unseat Illinois’ governor, Democrat J.B. Pritzker, used the portal to
pitch a story days before last November’s election about an endorsement
from Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democrat and onetime congresswoman from
Hawaii, according to documents reviewed by The Post. A story
soon appeared in the Dupage Policy Journal, whose website describes
itself as a product of Local Government Information Services.
The
Dupage Policy Journal quoted Gabbard’s effusive comments about Bailey,
ticked off Bailey’s other endorsements and reported that the GOP
candidate was “honored” by the vote of confidence. Other Chicago-area outlets reporting
on the Gabbard endorsement, by contrast, offered additional context.
They noted that Gabbard had previously called Donald Trump, who was also
backing Bailey’s run, “unfit to serve” and quoted Pritzker criticizing
Gabbard as a “conspiracy theorist.” Bailey, who failed to unseat
Pritzker, did not respond to a request for comment.
Timpone has spoken to two Trump allies about expanding his operation, according to people with knowledge of the interactions.The
discussions suggest that Illinois could be a testing ground for much
broader work leading into 2024. One person familiar with his comments
said the conglomerate could seek to form “tens of thousands” of new
websites.
The
goal, one of the people briefed on the project said, is to create
“center-right websites” in communities where there is “little or no
local news.”
---------------------------------
The
reach of the outlets is difficult to measure. But since its founding,
Local Government Information Services has more than doubled its sites
and also ramped up print publication. Last year, the growing presence of
the Dupage Policy Journal and other papers in Timpone’s network caused
the Illinois Press Association to release a statement clarifying that the nonpartisan association had not certified the outlets.
“Technology
has significantly lowered the barrier for entry into publishing,” the
statement warned,
Top
Democrats, seeing Local Government Information Services papers
increasingly appearing on doorsteps around Illinois, also objected,
citing the network’s leadership and what they saw as its skewed
coverage. At the time, the way stories were pitched through Lumen was
veiled from public view.
America’s natural wonders help define who we are as a Nation. They
unite and renew us, a constant reminder of something bigger than
ourselves. But nature is not only a catalyst for reflection — it
demands action. On Earth Day, we celebrate the modern environmental
movement that kicked off 53 years ago, when millions of Americans of
every age and background first rallied together to change our laws and
become better stewards of our planet. Because of their courage and
commitment, the Environmental Protection Agency was created to safeguard
our environment and the health of all Americans, and the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration was established to help protect
our ocean. The Congress passed the Clean Water Act to restore our
rivers and streams; the 1970 Clean Air Act to slash deadly emissions;
and the Endangered Species Act, which has helped prevent 99 percent of
potential extinctions of species under its care. Advocates have since
built a global coalition that today will see a billion people worldwide
take action to protect the Earth. Their work has called us all to
conscience and has inspired us to reject the false choice between a
sustainable planet and a strong economy. Today we are continuing to
prove that we can and must demand both.
This work has never been more urgent. Climate change is a clear and
present danger — in the words of UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres,
it is a “code red for humanity.” We see it across the world and in
every corner of our country: more destructive hurricanes and tornadoes;
more severe and longer-lasting droughts; and wildfires that have
destroyed millions of acres — more land than many whole States. Extreme
weather is disrupting our supply chains and overwhelming our energy
grids, costing America $165 billion in damages last year alone and often
hitting low-income communities hardest. Deforestation, biodiversity
loss, toxic spills, and plastic pollution only make things worse. Our
economy, our national security, and our children’s futures are at stake.
When I was sworn in as President, we set groundbreaking goals to cut
America’s greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 and achieve net-zero
emissions by 2050 in order to keep global warming below the critical
1.5-degrees-Celsius threshold. We immediately rejoined the Paris
Agreement and have worked to strengthen global resilience — rallying 130
nations to commit to slashing methane emissions, working to halt
deforestation, and putting healthy ecosystems at the heart of healthy
economies. At home, we are in the midst of a generational upgrade in
our infrastructure; and we passed the most aggressive climate investment
law in history, making record investments in green manufacturing, clean
public transit, and climate-smart agriculture while giving families tax
credits to make their homes more energy efficient. In the first 2
years of my Administration, more solar, wind, and battery storage
technology were deployed in the United States than any prior 2-year
period. In 2022 alone, wind and solar provided nearly three-quarters of
new power generation capacity in the United States. We are making the
United States the world’s electric vehicle leader, building a nationwide
network of 500,000 charging stations and providing tax credits to help
families afford electric cars and save on the cost of gasoline.
Throughout, we are making sure that the technology powering our clean
energy future is made in America by American workers, creating
good-paying union jobs. Since we know environmental factors can impact
businesses and markets, I have made sure that pension fund managers can
continue to take those factors into account.
As we unleash this new era of economic growth powered by clean
energy, we are also making historic investments in environmental justice
— cleaning up toxic waste, improving air quality, capping old oil and
gas wells, and expanding safe outdoor spaces across the country so
communities smothered by the legacy of pollution can rebuild. We are
working to replace every lead pipe left in America so children
everywhere can turn on the faucet and drink clean water, and we are
partnering with communities to get dangerous “PFAS” chemicals out of
their water supplies. To complement and enable these efforts, today
I signed an Executive Order committing the Federal Government to
incorporating environmental justice perspectives, values, and
considerations into our work. I have also committed to working with the
Congress to quadruple American support for global climate finance,
unlocking the additional pools of private investment needed to bring the
world along. There is no denying that we are in this together.
At home, we have also deepened our conservation work, preserving our
natural wonders as bridges to our past and future. Our “America the
Beautiful” Initiative aims to conserve at least 30 percent of our
Nation’s lands and waters by 2030; in its first year, we protected more
territory than any administration since President John F. Kennedy’s.
Last Earth Day, I signed an Executive Order strengthening America’s
forests to harness their power in the fight against climate change and
reduce wildfire risk. I have designated magnificent lands from Avi Kwa
Ame –- or Spirit Mountain –- in Nevada to Camp Hale in Colorado as
national monuments, restored protections to treasures like Bears Ears
and Grand Staircase-Escalante in Utah, and acted to protect the Tongass
National Forest and Bristol Bay in Alaska.
The environmentalist and author Rachel Carson once wrote: “Those who
contemplate the beauty of the Earth find reserves of strength that will
endure as long as life lasts.” Today, we renew that strength to keep
building on our progress. The challenges we face are great, but our
capacity is greater. The inspiring passion of young people and climate
activists, civil society and Indigenous communities, and thoughtful
consumers and forward-thinking businesses is galvanizing the world to
finally deliver a more equitable, prosperous, and just planet, preserved
for generations to come.
NOW, THEREFORE, I, JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR., President of the United
States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the
Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim April
22, 2023, as Earth Day. Today, I encourage all Americans to reflect on
the need to protect our precious Earth; to heed the call to combat our
climate and biodiversity crises while growing the economy; and to keep
working for a healthier, safer, more equitable future for all.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this
twenty-first day of April, in the year of our Lord
two thousand twenty-three, and of the Independence of the United States
of America the two hundred and forty-seventh.
American Oversight Issues Statement Against Wisconsin Assembly Bill 128
A
new bill in the Wisconsin Assembly is another attempt by Republican
lawmakers to cast doubt on the legitimacy of courts that have ruled
against them. Under AB 128,
lawsuits involving the Wisconsin legislature would be randomly assigned
to one of the state’s 69 circuit courts, rather than being litigated in
the county designated by the plaintiff, as has been the rule since 2011 and would remain the rule for other cases against the state.
The bill is being pushed by lawmakers who claim
that judges in Dane County, the home of the state capital, are biased
against Republican legislators. These claims have followed rulings
holding these legislators accountable under the law. In particular,
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos has repeatedly disparaged the rulings of judges in American Oversight’s lawsuits
for records from the partisan investigation of the 2020 election headed
by Michael Gableman, whom Vos himself had criticized and fired.
In response to AB 128, American Oversight Executive Director Heather Sawyer issued the following statement: “This bill is another effort by
conservative lawmakers to undermine faith in our public institutions and
find excuses for rulings that didn’t go in their favor. Wisconsin’s
code of judicial conduct requires judges to act impartially. The
suggestion that Dane County judges are ruling against Republican
lawmakers based on political bias is simply absurd. Instead of crafting
special rules for their cases, these lawmakers should just follow the
law.”
In 2022, after Vos was held in contempt
by Dane County Circuit Court Judge Valerie Bailey-Rihn for failing to
turn over records from the review, he said, “It’s a liberal judge in
Dane County trying to make us look bad.” He also ridiculed a recent decision by another judge who in March ordered Vos to pay American Oversight’s legal fees in one of our lawsuits.
In 2011, the state passed a law
specifying that plaintiffs would choose the venue in lawsuits against
the state. Before then, all lawsuits against the legislature were
litigated in Dane County. AB 128 would change the rules only for cases
involving the legislature and would require the clerk of the Wisconsin
Supreme Court to randomly assign such lawsuits to one of Wisconsin’s
circuit courts. All involved parties would then have to travel to the
assigned jurisdiction, which could result in increased expenses for
plaintiffs, lawyers, and Wisconsin taxpayers. The bill does not allow
for any changes of venue at either party’s request once an assignment is
made.
Notably, the bill only applies to
cases involving the legislature, which could have a deterrent effect on
people choosing to bring cases against the legislature. By contrast,
lawsuits against the governor would still be tried in the venue
designated by the plaintiff.
More than 30% of the Democrat-turned-independent's haul this
quarter came from employees of just five major companies, including
hedge funds, investment groups and private equity firms.
She
received $287,000 from employees of Blackstone, the major investment
firm, and its affiliates, as well as almost $196,000 from employees of
the Carlyle Group and its affiliates, according to a NBC News analysis
of her campaign finance filing.
Sinema also received over $51,000 from employees of Elliott Advisors
and their affiliates, over $71,000 from employees of Ryan LLC, and over
$53,000 from employees of the firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and its
subsidiaries.
The first chapter of the black-and-white PDF
magazine begins with an ominous warning. Over four dense pages, the
anonymous writers paint a picture of “an anti-tech revolution, beginning
with the annihilation of the U.S. energy grid.”
irst chapter of the black and-white PDF
magazine begins with an ominous warning. Over four dense pages, the
anonymous writers paint a picture of “an anti-tech revolution, beginning
with the annihilation of the U.S. energy grid.”
“The
horrific effects of a nationwide blackout cannot be understated.
Hospitals would fail. … Financial collapse,” the magazine reads,
continuing to detail traffic chaos, dwindling supplies of clean water
and spreading disease before concluding that a successful attack
targeting key points on the electrical grid would lead to “the collapse
of the system … chaos, agony, and death”
The magazine was obtained
by TPM in a chat group on the encrypted app Telegram dedicated to
“Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski. Along with the breathless depiction of a
widespread blackout, it included a precise list of the locations of “THE
MOST CRITICALLY IMPORTANT ELECTRIC SUBSTATIONS IN THE UNITED STATES.”
This
apocalyptic brand of extremist rhetoric — and the focus, specifically,
on targeting substations — is part of a growing phenomenon that has
captured the attention of both the far right and law enforcement. The
trend has resulted in a dramatic rise in attacks that have left tens of
thousands of people without power. Experts have attributed the wave to
the digital spread of right-wing accelerationist ideology, which aims to
hasten societal collapse, and materials like this magazine that
encourage and provide instructions for targeting the grid.
Participants
in the Telegram chat where TPM obtained the magazine shared it on
multiple occasions, along with Kaczynski’s writings, details on how he
made his “boom packages,” bomb making manuals and plans to build
homemade, untraceable “ghost guns.” They also hurled racial slurs and
anti-gay rhetoric while talking about plans for staging attacks.
“I
think you guys should start writing some manifesto papers but keep them
hidden so no one will find them,” wrote one member of the chat in
August 2022. “Then one day if you unexpectedly die, there will be some
papers on what you believed in.”
A few days later, the
member, whose avatar featured a glaring bald eagle, posted an even more
specific vision naming a major provider of abortion care and
reproductive health services.
“If I were to do something (If
society doesn’t start changing i might) I will take my time and plan
carefully,” they wrote, adding, “There is a planned parenthood not too
far away.”
Due to the inflammatory and potentially dangerous
nature of the content, TPM is not naming the magazine, the alias of its
writers, or the chat group in which we obtained it. One of the members
who posted the magazine said it had been “removed” from other sites and
“marked as terrorism.” They noted that it “contains the addresses of
those substations and how to deal with them” and encouraged other
members of the chat to “download” it or keep it “somewhere you can
access it.”
CASCADING FAILURE
It
is easy to dismiss these writings as digital bluster, but law
enforcement and academic experts have repeatedly attributed the
frightening online rhetoric to the real-world rise in assaults on power
stations. And data indicates white supremacists are the driving force
behind the uptick in these dangerous attacks.
The electric grid
has increasingly come into the crosshairs of extremists and other
criminals since an April 2013 sniper attack on a Pacific Gas and
Electric substation in Metcalf, California. That attack was “the most
significant incident of domestic terrorism involving the grid that has
ever occurred,” according to Jon Wellinghoff, who headed the nation’s top utility regulator at the time.
At
least one gunman came to the remote Metcalf substation after midnight,
authorities have said. The individual or individuals avoided security
cameras, cut telecommunication cables, and fired over 120 rounds that
took out 17 large transformers at the facility, which provides
electricity to Silicon Valley.
Despite the damage and the sophistication of the operation, which the Los Angeles Times described
as a “military-style raid,” it did not result in any major blackout.
Officials were able to reroute power around the site. The lack of
disruption after Metcalf underscores how difficult it is to pull off the
wild scenarios that online enthusiasts envision when they discuss these
attacks.
However, while it didn’t shut off the lights, the
Metcalf incident has been cited as an inspiration for similar incidents
that followed — some of which caused greater disruption. Experts have described
Metcalf as a “wake up call” and a “dress rehearsal,” though the
motivations behind the attack remain mysterious. In 2015, a DHS official
told CNN they had “some indication” an “insider” at the facility was involved. The FBI later suggested
it believed the Metcalf attack was staged by a disgruntled employee and
that it was not connected to terrorism. No suspects have been
identified.
“We can confirm the Metcalf power
substation incident remains under investigation,” an FBI spokesperson
told TPM. “No additional information can be provided at this time.”
Since 2013, the idea of shooting attacks on the power grid has gained traction online.
“From
our standpoint, what has shifted in the last ten years since Metcalf is
the awareness of the tactic and the attention that has gotten,” a
Department of Homeland Security official, who requested anonymity due to
the sensitive nature of their work, told TPM.
“In the publicly
available forums we can see tactics and references to the previous,
successful incidents getting discussion, diagrams being passed,” the
official said. “It’s all happening kind of in the overt space.”
The
proliferation of extremist materials online is one of several reasons
these attacks present a challenge for law enforcement. According to the
Department of Homeland Security, there are over 79,000 substations that
play a vital part in the nation’s electrical grid. Many are in remote
locations and are privately owned, which means they have varying
standards for security. DHS is trying to address the issue by gathering
intelligence in the open web to produce bulletins and informational
materials and by making security recommendations to the private companies that own much of the electrical grid.
According
to multiple officials, DHS has done over 1,200 security assessments
within the electricity subsector, including 24 visits to facilities in
the last month alone.
RAGING AGAINST THE ‘ANTI-WHITE SYSTEM’
While
there are myriad risks to power stations, relatively simple shooting
attacks from far-right white supremacist terrorists have emerged as a
major threat to the grid. Thirteen individuals associated with the white
supremacist movement faced federal charges related to “planning attacks
on the energy sector” between 2016 and 2022, according to a report
from the George Washington University Program on Extremism that was
released last September. And those numbers are growing — 11 of the 13
cases cited in the report came after 2020. This far-right fixation on
power stations comes as there is a consensus among federal law enforcement agencies that white supremacists have become the top domestic terror threat.
DHS
does not have a definitive figure for the number of attacks on
substations since they only track incidents with a clear ideological
component. However, in just the past six months, there have been
multiple new, notable attacks — and one major plot — to take down power
stations. Not all of these incidents are politically motivated. After
one of these attacks, which took place in Washington State in December
and left thousands of people without power, authorities arrested two men
who they said hoped to use the blackout as cover to commit a burglary.
But other plots show how the idea of taking down the electric grid
appeals to the far right, particularly adherents of the violent end
times philosophy known as “accelerationism.”
In February, the FBI announced
that it had arrested a duo, Brandon Russell and Sarah Clendaniel, and
charged them “with conspiracy to destroy an energy facility.” According
to an affidavit filed by the FBI in support of the criminal complaint,
Russell and Clendaniel allegedly corresponded with a confidential
informant and worked on a plan to take out five power stations in the
Baltimore area with rifles. The FBI affidavit suggested Russell and
Clendaniel were in a romantic relationship. Photos obtained by the FBI
showed Clendaniel in tactical gear decorated with a swastika.
Based
on encrypted chats quoted in the affidavit, Russell and Clendaniel
allegedly intended for attacks on multiple power stations to spark a
cascading failure that would lead to a widespread outage. That type of
catastrophe is the dream scenario for accelerationists.
In
exchanges that took place during September 2022, Russell allegedly
provided the informant “a white supremacist publication that provided
instructions on how to attack critical infrastructure” and encouraged
them to “use Mylar balloons to short out a power transformer.” The next
month Russell again urged the informant to target a substation.
“Putting holes in transformers though is the greatest thing somebody can do,” Russell allegedly wrote.
Russell
has a troubled history in the neo-Nazi movement. In May 2017, he lived
with three roommates in Tampa, Florida. The four men had started a local
chapter of the neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen Division with Russell as their
leader. One of the roommates, Devon Arthurs, eventually left the group
and murdered two of the others. Russell, who was not home during the
crime, was arrested when he was found to be in possession of explosive
materials during the murder investigation. Arthurs later claimed that
his roommates were plotting to attack critical infrastructure, including
power lines.
Atomwaffen, which rebranded
as National Socialist Order in mid-2020 as it faced investigations in
multiple countries, is perhaps the best-known modern white supremacist
accelerationist group. In general, accelerationism is an ideology that
believes modern society is evil and encourages acts that would bring it
downl. Many white supremacist accelerationists expect this cataclysm to
come through a race war.
“Accelerationists believe that there is
nothing redeemable about contemporary society,” said Michael Edison
Hayden, a senior investigative reporter and spokesperson for the
Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups.
The power
grid is a natural target for white supremacist accelerationists, who
view it as the backbone of “the anti-white system,” Hayden said.
“Thinking
about how the power lines function in that context, this is the central
nervous system of contemporary society, and that’s why it’s so
important to accelerationists in particular,” Hayden said. “As they see
it … the system that is oppressing them cannot function … without
power.”
“I would much rather turn the lights out and then fight them in the quiet dark afterwards.”
White
supremacists are not the only adherents of accelerationism. There are
anarchists and some on the far left who could be described as
accelerationists. Indeed, one of the writers of the magazine that listed
locations of substations and described the methodology of the Metcalf
attack described themselves as something of an eco-anarchist who rejects
all political movements.
“It is our view that the
techno-industrialist machine is a violent, destructive, and irreparable
system of subjugation, and because of this we do not support any social
or political efforts to rehabilitate it,” they wrote. “It is our belief
that the techno-industrial system presents an absolute and urgent
existential threat to all life on earth. Thus, we are not a partisan
movement, nor do we have any interest in furthering the ideologies of
any movement on the left-right political spectrum.”
TPM emailed
with one of the writers of the magazine. They said the publication was
produced by a “small group.” While this writer denounced racism as
“fucking stupid” and said they would prefer “militant groups of educated
anarchists” to use the magazine, they said they would not necessarily
be opposed to working with the far right towards the larger goal of “the
destruction of techno-industrial society.”
“It is another
unpleasant reality that the far-right is far better armed and has easier
access to a lot of the locations listed than the Left or post-Left,”
the magazine writer explained. “If the question then, is whether toward
the ultimate goal of rapid global deindustrialization, I would accept
the assistance or ‘alliance’ with any far-right group, I would hesitate
to say no. I would much rather turn the lights out and then fight them
in the quiet dark afterwards.”
The DHS official who spoke to TPM explained that they see accelerationism coming in “different ideological bins”
“We’ve
seen discussions across the spectrum,” the official said, explaining
that foreign terror organizations, anti-government activists, and what
the DHS has termed “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists”
(RMVEs) are all drawn to the idea that taking down the power grid could
cause the “downfall of society.”
The term RMVE can encompass
other racial identity movements. However, in recent years, data has
shown that white supremacists are far more active than other racially motivated groups when it comes to domestic terrorism.
Hayden,
who has researched and written extensively about the far-right
accelerationists, agreed that white supremacist accelerationists have
proven to be the most capable of doing real-world damage.
“Accelerationism
is not exclusively a white supremacist ideology. We refer to that
specifically as white power accelerationism,” Hayden explained. “There
are people who believe that, like, we need a fall of society in order to
build a communist utopia and things like that. I just don’t know to
what degree they’re organized in the same way.”
INSIDE ‘TERRORGRAM’
Accelerationism
is not a new idea. The DHS official noted the concept has existed “for
decades.” However, the official said the availability of tools like
Telegram has been crucial to its recent growth and to the dissemination
of ideological material and instructions for violent attacks.
As
an example, the official pointed to “The Turner Diaries,” the 1978 book
authored by neo-Nazi William Pierce that inspired multiple terrorists,
including Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.
“When you’re
talking about ‘The Turner Diaries’ or something 20, 25 years ago,
someone had to go out and actually buy the book,” the official said.
“Right now, everyone can get on there and pass stuff around.”
McVeigh is one of several terrorists who are venerated as “saints”
on “Terrorgram,” the name both researchers and extremists have embraced
to describe the more extreme and violent corners of the Telegram app.
Kaczynski, the “Unabomber,” is another “Terrorgram” icon, who is often
referred to as “Uncle Ted” by his fans on the app.
The magazine
that detailed methods for targeting substations and identified potential
targets features a smiling portrait of Kaczynski in prison. After
listing off the locations of various substations, the magazine concluded
with an ominous accelerationist poem of sorts:
“we will be free.
we will find peace.
we will have our revenge.”
Telegram, which was created by a Russian tech billionaire
whose libertarian attitude towards free speech led him to clash with
the Kremlin and flee the country in 2014, is encrypted and largely
unmoderated. As a result, it has become a haven for the far right and
for discussion of terrorist activity.
Hayden described Telegram
as “sort of a free for all” and said many far-right extremists had made a
“huge migration” there after losing access to more mainstream social
media networks in 2019 and 2020.
“It has really become the home
base for anything that is against society, outside of society, and so
extreme that it is criminal,” Hayden said of Telegram.
Spokespeople for Telegram did not respond to a request for comment on this story.
“Accelerationists believe that there is nothing redeemable about contemporary society.”
A
recent spate of incidents in North Carolina demonstrated both the
persistent threats to the grid and the way neo Nazi online
accelerationists are excited by the idea of attacks on power stations.
On
Dec. 3, 2022, there was a high-powered rifle attack on a pair of power
stations in Moore County, North Carolina that caused 45,000 people to
lose power, some for days.
While investigators have not
identified a suspect or motive, the incident coincided with a drag show
in the county that had drawn death threats and far-right protests. Days
after the attack, CNN reported that law enforcement was investigating
links to extremist writing online that encouraged targeting the power
grid and the recent rise in threats and armed protests against the LGBTQ
community and drag shows in particular.
A spokesperson for the
Charlotte, North Carolina field office of the FBI, which is
investigating the attack with the Moore County Sheriff’s Office, told
TPM aprobe into the incident is “ongoing.”
“It would be fair to say we are looking at any investigative leads or tips,” the FBI spokesperson said.
While
the DHS official who spoke to TPM stressed that law enforcement has not
identified a link between the drag show and the power station attack,
they noted white supremacists have also targeted the gay community.
“I
don’t have any information on the motivation of the actors in Moore. I
think that’s still being investigated, which is part of the challenge
here,” the DHS official said, adding, “I think, intuitively, one of the
things we see with racially, ethnically motivated violence here,
strictly on the what we call white supremacist side, is they have a very
structured view of how the kind of ideal society should be. Certainly
we’ve seen the LGBTQ community be an enduring target of people with that
ideology based on their perception of how they are corrupting their
ideal of a white society.”
Hayden, the SPLC investigator, said
anti-LGBTQ extremism has had a “unifying” effect on the right of late.
He suggested this is due to the fact it is increasingly a focus of more
mainstream conservative politicians and because, after extensive
backlash to racism in recent years, the fringe has seen it as a topic
where they can gain “a little bit of ground.”
“Things around
gender and sexuality right now … are animating extremists on the right
more than race,” Hayden said. “That reverberates from the White House
when Trump was there all the way down to these accelerationist cells.”
After
the Moore County blackout, North Carolina continued to be a flashpoint.
On Dec. 18, 2022, just 15 days after the attack, a banner was unfurled
on a highway in a town just to the east of the two power stations. The
banner advertised a chat room on the encrypted chat app Telegram. A
local news station, WGHP, reported
that the chat room contained graphics showing slogans “superimposed
over a picture of what appears to be an electrical substation.”
Major
Andy Conway of the Moore County Sheriff’s Department told TPM they are
investigating possible links between the threats to the drag show and
the power station attack as well as links between the incident and the
banner drop. No suspects have been identified.
“We have not
excluded anything at this point,” Conway said in a phone call on
Wednesday afternoon. “I can’t say that they are linked, but I can’t say
that they are not either. … We have multiple agencies working on this,
so it’s quite the work in progress.”
Along with the Telegram
address, the banner that was dropped in the county was festooned with
swastikas. It also featured an ominous accelerationist slogan: “BRING IT
ALL DOWN”
A federal disclosure law passed after Watergate requires justices and other officials to disclose the details of most real estate sales over $1,000. Thomas never disclosed his sale of the Savannah properties. That appears to be a violation of the law, four ethics law experts told ProPublica.
The disclosure form Thomas
filed for that year also had a space to report the identity of the buyer
in any private transaction, such as a real estate deal. That space is
blank.
Leaker of U.S. secret documents worked on military base, friend says
THE DISCORD LEAKS | The online group that received hundreds of pages of classified material included foreigners, members tell The Post
By Shane Harris
and
Samuel Oakford
April 12, 2023 at 9:36 p.m. EDT
The man behind a massive leak of U.S. government secrets that has exposed spying on allies, revealed the grim prospects for Ukraine’s war with Russia and ignited diplomatic fires for the White House is a young, charismatic gun enthusiast who shared highly classified documents with a group of far-flung acquaintances searching for companionship amid the isolation of the pandemic.
United by their mutual love of guns, military gear and God, the group of roughly two dozen — mostly men and boys — formed an invitation-only clubhouse in 2020 on Discord, an online platform popular with gamers. But they paid little attention last year when the man some call “OG” posted a message laden with strange acronyms and jargon. The words were unfamiliar, and few people read the long note, one of the members explained. But he revered OG, the elder leader of their tiny tribe, who claimed to know secrets that the government withheld from ordinary people.
The young member read OG’s message closely, and the hundreds more that he said followed on a regular basis for months. They were, he recalled, what appeared to be near-verbatim transcripts of classified intelligence documents that OG indicated he had brought home from his job on a “military base,” which the member declined to identify. OG claimed he spent at least some of his day inside a secure facility that prohibited cellphones and other electronic devices, which could be used to document the secret information housed on government computer networks or spooling out from printers. He annotated some of the hand-typed documents, the member said, translating arcane intel-speak for the uninitiated, such as explaining that “NOFORN” meant the information in the document was so sensitive it must not be shared with foreign nationals.
OG told the group he toiled for hours writing up the classified documents to share with his companions in the Discord server he controlled. The gathering spot had been a pandemic refuge, particularly for teen gamers locked in their houses and cut off from their real-world friends. The members swapped memes, offensive jokes and idle chitchat. They watched movies together, joked around and prayed. But OG also lectured them about world affairs and secretive government operations. He wanted to “keep us in the loop,” the member said, and seemed to think that his insider knowledge would offer the others protection from the troubled world around them.
“He’s a smart person. He knew what he was doing when he posted these documents, of course. These weren’t accidental leaks of any kind,” the member said.
A member of the Discord group where classified intelligence documents were posted shares information on the man behind the leak, who some call “OG.” (Video: Whitney Shefte, Jon Gerberg/The Washington Post)
The transcribed documents OG posted traversed a range of sensitive subjects that only people who had undergone months-long background checks would be authorized to see. There were top-secret reports about the whereabouts and movements of high-ranking political leaders and tactical updates on military forces, the member said. Geopolitical analysis. Insights into foreign governments’ efforts to interfere with elections. “If you could think it, it was in those documents.”
In those initial posts, OG had given his fellow members a small sip of the torrent of secrets that was to come. When rendering hundreds of classified files by hand proved too tiresome, he began posting hundreds of photos of documents themselves, an astonishing cache of secrets that has been steadily spilling into public view over the past week, disrupting U.S. foreign policy and aggravating America’s allies.
This account of how detailed intelligence documents intended for an exclusive circle of military leaders and government decision-makers found their way into and then out of OG’s closed community is based in part on several lengthy interviews with the Discord group member, who spoke to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity. He is under 18 and was a young teenager when he met OG. The Post obtained consent from the member’s mother to speak to him and to record his remarks on video. He asked that his voice not be obscured.
Dozens of highly classified documents have been leaked online, revealing sensitive information intended for senior military and intelligence leaders. In an exclusive investigation, The Post also reviewed scores of additional secret documents, most of which have not been made public.
Where did they come from?
The top-secret documents appear to be — at least partly — from the Pentagon and many seem to have been prepared for senior military officials. Post reporting revealed that a man in his early to mid-20s allegedly shared them with members of an invitation-only Discord group.
What do the leaked documents reveal about Ukraine?
The documents reveal profound concerns about the war’s trajectory and Kyiv’s capacity to wage a successful offensive against Russian forces. According to a Defense Intelligence Agency assessment among the leaked documents, “Negotiations to end the conflict are unlikely during 2023.”
What else do they show?
The files include summaries of human intelligence on high-level conversations between world leaders, as well as information about advanced satellite technology the United States uses to spy. They also include intelligence on both allies and adversaries, including Iran and North Korea, as well as Britain, Canada, South Korea and Israel.
What happens now?
The leak has far-reaching implications for the United States and its allies. In addition to the Justice Department investigation, officials in several countries said they were assessing the damage from the leaks.
His account was corroborated by a second member who read many of the same classified documents shared by OG, and who also spoke on the condition of anonymity. Both members said they know OG’s real name as well as the state where he lives and works but declined to share that information while the FBI is hunting for the source of the leaks. The investigation is in its early stages, and the Pentagon has set up its own internal review led by a senior official.
“An interagency effort has been stood up, focused on assessing the impact these photographed documents could have on U.S. national security and on our Allies and partners,” Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh said in a statement.
Discord said in a statement that it is cooperating with law enforcement and has declined to comment further.
The Post also reviewed approximately 300 photos of classified documents, most of which have not been made public; some of the text documents OG is said to have written out; an audio recording of a man the two group members identified as OG speaking to his companions; and chat records and photographs that show OG communicating with them on the Discord server.
The young member was impressed by OG’s seemingly prophetic ability to forecast major events before they became headline news, things “only someone with this kind of high clearance” would know. He was by his own account enthralled with OG, who he said was in his early to mid-20s.
“He’s fit. He’s strong. He’s armed. He’s trained. Just about everything you can expect out of some sort of crazy movie,” the member said.
In a video seen by The Post, the man who the member said is OG stands at a shooting range, wearing safety glasses and ear coverings and holding a large rifle. He yells a series of racial and antisemitic slurs into the camera, then fires several rounds at a target.
The member seemed drawn to OG’s bravado and his skill with weapons. He felt a certain kinship with a man he described as “like an uncle” and, on another occasion, as a father figure.
“I was one of the very few people in the server that was able to understand that these [documents] were legitimate,” the member said, setting himself apart from the others who mostly ignored OG’s posts.
“It felt like I was on top of Mount Everest,” he said. “I felt like I was above everyone else to some degree and that … I knew stuff that they didn’t.”
A member of the Discord group where classified intelligence documents were leaked describes the contents of the files. (Video: Whitney Shefte, Jon Gerberg/The Washington Post)
‘A tightknit family’
The member met OG about four years ago, on a different server for fans of Oxide, a popular YouTuber who streams videos about guns, body armor and military hardware. He said a group of avid members found the server too crowded and wanted a quieter place to talk about video game tactics, so they broke off into their own, small group.
More like-minded Oxide fans joined the private Discord server, which came to be named “Thug Shaker Central,” and whose membership OG would effectively control as the administrator.
“We all grew very close to each other, like a tightknit family,” the member said. “We depended on each other.” He said that other members, and OG especially, counseled him during bouts of depression and helped to steady him emotionally. “There was no lack of love for each other.”
OG was the undisputed leader. The member described him as “strict.” He enforced a “pecking order” and expected the others to read closely the classified information he had shared. When their attention waned, he got angry.
Late last year, a peeved OG fired off a message to all the members of the server. He had spent nearly an hour every day writing up “these long and drawn-out posts in which he’d often add annotations and explanations for stuff that we normal citizens would not understand,” the member said. His would-be pupils were more interested in YouTube videos about battle gear.
“He got upset, and he said on multiple occasions, if you guys aren’t going to interact with them, I’m going to stop sending them.”
That’s when OG changed tactics. Rather than spend his time copying documents by keyboard, he took photographs of the genuine articles and dropped them in the server. These were more vivid and arresting documents than the plain text renderings. Some featured detailed charts of battlefield conditions in Ukraine and highly classified satellite images of the aftermath of Russian missile strikes on Ukrainian electrical facilities. Others sketched the potential trajectory of North Korean ballistic nuclear missiles that could reach the United States. Another featured photographs of the Chinese spy balloon that floated across the country in February, snapped from eye-level, probably by a U-2 spy plane, along with a diagram of the balloon and the surveillance technology attached to it.
OG shared several documents a week, beginning late last year. Posting pictures to the server took less time. But it also exposed OG to greater risk. In the background of some images, they could see items and furniture that they recognized from the room where OG spoke to them via video on the Discord channel — the kind of clues that could prove useful for federal investigators.
The dramatic and yet nonchalant presentation also reminded the group that OG could lay his hands on some of the most closely guarded intelligence in the U.S. government. “If you had classified documents, you’d want to flex at least a little bit, like hey, I’m the big guy,” the member said. “There is a little bit of showing off to friends, but as well as wanting to keep us informed.”
In a sense, OG had created a virtual mirror image of the secretive facility where he spent his working hours. Inside the Discord server, he was the ultimate arbiter of secrecy, and he allowed his companions to read truths that “normal citizens” could not.
A member of the Discord group where classified intelligence documents were leaked describes the online community. (Video: Whitney Shefte, Jon Gerberg/The Washington Post)
A breach of secrecy
The photographs of printed secret documents now seen by millions may offer clues to the federal agents searching for OG. Reality Winner, who leaked secret National Security Agency documents to the news website the Intercept in 2017, was compromised by secret markings on printouts that helped narrow the search. OG’s documents look to have been printed on ordinary paper and were creased after having been folded in four. Sometimes, the photographs OG took of the documents appeared to have been taken over a bed. Items such as Gorilla Glue, a scope manual and nail clippers appeared in the margins. Other previously unreported images reviewed by The Post showed printed documents lying on top of a glowing red keyboard.
The breadth of the military and intelligence reports was extensive. For months, OG regularly uploaded page after page of classified U.S. assessments, offering a window into how deeply American intelligence had penetrated the Russian military, showing that Egypt had planned to sell Russia tens of thousands of rockets and suggesting that Russian mercenaries had approached Turkey, a NATO ally, to buy weapons to fight against Ukraine.
At least one of the documents appeared to have been printed from Intellipedia, a data-sharing system that intelligence agencies use to collaborate and post reports and articles.
The documents were another lesson for younger members in how OG thought the world really worked. The member said OG wasn’t hostile to the U.S. government, and he insisted that he was not working on behalf of any country’s interests. “He is not a Russian operative. He is not a Ukrainian operative,” the member said. The room on the server where he posted the documents was called “bear-vs-pig,” meant to be a snide jab at Russia and Ukraine, and an indication that OG took no sides in the conflict.
But OG had a dark view of the government. The young member said he spoke of the United States, and particularly law enforcement and the intelligence community, as a sinister force that sought to suppress its citizens and keep them in the dark. He ranted about “government overreach.”
OG told his online companions that the government hid horrible truths from the public. He claimed, according to the members, that the government knew in advance that a white supremacist intended to go on a shooting rampage at a Buffalo supermarket in May 2022. The attack left 10 dead, all of them Black, and wounded three more. OG said federal law enforcement officials let the killings proceed so they could argue for increased funding, a baseless notion that the member said he believes and considers an example of OG’s penetrating insights about the depth of government corruption.
OG’s group itself had a dark side. The Discord server’s eventual name, Thug Shaker Central, was a racist allusion, and signaled to members that they were free to hurl epithets and crude jokes. The young member expressed some regret for their behavior but seemed to shrug off the offensive remarks as a clumsy attempt at humor.
It was not “a fascist recruiting server,” he told The Post.
One thing the members were not supposed to do was talk about the secrets OG had shared with them, including the classified documents.
“Most people in the server were smart enough as to kind of realize that … they shouldn’t be posted anywhere else,” the member said. And yet, the group contained foreign citizens — including from Russia and Ukraine, the members said — a defiance of the NOFORN warning printed across the top of so many documents OG shared.
The member estimated that the server hosted people from Europe, Asia and South America. “Just about every walk of life.” Of the roughly 25 active members who had access to the bear-vs-pig channel, about half were located overseas, the member said. The ones who seemed most interested in the classified material claimed to be from mostly “Eastern Bloc and those post-Soviet countries,” he said. “The Ukrainians had interest as well,” which the member chalked up to interest in the war ravaging their homeland.
For years, U.S. counterintelligence officials have eyed gaming platforms as a magnet for spies. Russian intelligence operatives have been suspected of befriending gamers who they believe work for intelligence agencies and encouraging them to divulge classified information, a senior U.S. official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information.
It’s not clear whether any of those efforts have been successful. But if foreign operatives finagled an invitation to OG’s server, they would have been free to view the documents and make copies of them, as some members did.
The server sprouts a leak
All winter, OG uploaded documents to the server. No one talked about sharing them elsewhere. Then, unbeknown to the group, on Feb. 28, another teenage user from the Thug Shaker Central server began posting several dozen photographs showing classified documents on another Discord server affiliated with the YouTuber “wow_mao.” Some of the documents offered detailed assessments of Ukraine’s defense capabilities and showed how far U.S. intelligence could see into Russia’s military command.
On March 4, 10 documents appeared on “Minecraft Earth Map,” a Discord server focused on the popular video game. A user operating the account that posted the smaller tranche of images told The Post they obtained them on wow_mao.
Secret and top-secret documents were now available to thousands of Discord users, but the leak wouldn’t come to the attention of U.S. authorities for another month. Meanwhile, OG stopped sharing images in the middle of March. On April 5, classified documents assessing the war in Ukraine were posted on Russian Telegram channels and the message board platform 4chan, and began migrating to Twitter. One image, showing a March 1 Ukraine status update, had been crudely doctored to inflate the number of Ukrainian casualties and downplay those on the Russian side.
The next day, shortly before the New York Times first reported on the leak, OG came into the server “frantic, which is unusual for him,” the member said.
“He said something had happened, and he prayed to God that this event would not happen. … But now it’s in God’s hands.”
Not a whistleblower
For all OG’s disdain for the federal government, the member said there was no indication that he was acting in what he thought was the public interest by exposing official secrets. The classified documents were intended only to benefit his online family, the member said.
“I would definitely not call him a whistleblower. I would not call OG a whistleblower in the slightest,” he said, resisting comparisons to Edward Snowden, who shared classified documents about government surveillance with journalists.
Remarkably, the member said he has been in touch with OG in the past few days, even as an FBI manhunt is underway and the Pentagon launches its own inquiry into the leaks. After shuttering the Thug Shaker Central server, OG moved the community to another server to communicate with his online family.
He “seemed very confused and lost as to what to do,” the member said. “He’s fully aware of what’s happening and what the consequences may be. He’s just not sure on how to go about solving this situation. … He seems pretty distraught about it.”
In his final message to his companions, OG admonished them to “keep low and delete any information that could possibly relate to him,” the member said. That included any copies of the classified documents OG had shared.
When it dawned on them that OG was in grave peril and intended to disappear, the members of Thug Shaker Central “full-on sobbed and cried,” the young member said. “It is like losing a family member.”
In hours of interviews, he continued to express admiration and loyalty to a man who may have endangered his young followers by allowing them to see and possess classified information, exposing them to potential federal crimes.
“I figured he would not be putting us in any sort of harm’s way,” the member said.
The exposure of the documents has severed friendships and cut him off from the man who buoyed his confidence and made him feel safe. The member said that the stress of the loss, coupled with the enormity of the leaks, has left him worried and sleepless.
Now he says he believes that the world should see the secrets OG passed along to a tiny group. He argued that the public deserves to know how intelligence agencies spend their tax dollars, and was particularly outraged that the documents show U.S. surveillance of foreign allies.
But what the young man regarded as a revelation will come as no surprise to the countries whose officials the U.S. has been monitoring for decades. While rarely discussed, and embarrassing for Washington when exposed, it’s widely understood that the U.S. intelligence community monitors many friendly governments, just as foreign allies try to do the same.
Thousands of military personnel and government employees around OG’s age, working entry-to-low-level positions, could plausibly have access to classified documents like the ones he allegedly shared, according to U.S. officials and experts who have seen the documents reported in the media. Despite what his young followers thought, OG would have had no special knowledge compared with his peers. He possessed no special power to predict events. Rather, he appears to have persuaded some highly impressionable teenagers that he’s a modern-day gamer meets Jason Bourne.
The member said he’s confident the authorities will find OG. But when they do, he won’t be charged. Instead, he believes, OG will be imprisoned without due process at Guantánamo Bay or disappeared to a “black site,” if he’s not “assassinated” for what he knows.
The member, as well as the OG follower who corroborated his account, found no fault in their leader’s actions and instead said they blame the teen who posted the documents on the wow_mao server for wrecking their community.
“Maybe we should have had better opsec,” the member said, harnessing the jargon of military and intelligence personnel for “operations security.”
He said he will not divulge OG’s identity or location to law enforcement until he is captured or can flee the United States. “I think I might be detained eventually. … I think there might be a short investigation on how I knew this guy, and they’ll try to get something out of me. They might try to threaten me with prison time if I don’t reveal their identity.”
To date, no federal law enforcement officials have contacted the young group member. Asked why he was prepared to help OG even at the risk of his own freedom, the young man replied without hesitation: “He was my best friend."
Some of these are a little quirky but overall a fairly strong revealed preference for cities without radical progressive prosecutors who let violent felons out on bond repeatedly and coddle criminals. also the urban areas are tech hubs
Downtowns with the strongest recovery:
- Salt Lake City - Central Valley CA - mostly SW cities
Weakest recovery: - San Francisco - Midwest cities - Seattle, Portland
Jack Ewing spent nearly two weeks in Ohio interviewing auto executives and workers for this story.
Erick
Belmer has seen how tough the car business can be. He was working at a
General Motors plant in Lordstown, Ohio, when it shut down in 2019,
devastating the community.
Mr. Belmer,
an industrial mechanic, got another job at a G.M. transmission factory
in Toledo, but his commute is now 140 miles each way. His schedule gives
him just a few hours with his family and a few hours of sleep.
Yet
far from being bitter, Mr. Belmer says he is excited. G.M. is
converting his factory to produce electric motors, part of an industrial
transformation that will redefine manufacturing regions and jobs around
the world.
G.M., Ford Motor and other
carmakers announced investments of more than $50 billion in new
factories in the United States last year, according to the Center for
Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich. All but a small fraction of that
money was to build and retool plants for electric vehicles and
batteries.
Mr.
Belmer is one of thousands of people who will also have to pick up new
skills. “It’s going to be a little bit of a learning curve,” he said at
the Toledo factory. “But our guys are well equipped to handle this.”
Mr.
Belmer and Ohio are bellwethers of how the transition to electric
vehicles will play out. G.M., Jeep, Honda Motor and parts makers employ
many thousands of people across this state.
Ohio
produces more internal combustion engines than any other state, making
an adjustment to electric cars particularly urgent. Nearly 90,000 people
work in Ohio for carmakers or parts suppliers, and several times that
many are employed by businesses that serve those autoworkers and their
families.
The
changes are putting Ohio at the forefront of a new technology that is
critical to fighting climate change. But some jobs will become obsolete,
and some companies will go bankrupt. It’s an open question whether the
winners will outnumber the losers.
“This
is the largest transition in our industry since its inception,” said
Tony Totty, the president of a United Auto Workers local that represents
G.M. workers in Toledo.
Mr. Totty is optimistic about the members
of his local. But he is worried about other colleagues whose jobs are
tied to gasoline engines, he said.
There is “an expiration date on those facilities and those communities,” Mr. Totty said.
Warren,
in eastern Ohio, knows what happens when a carmaker leaves town. The
city has lost one-third of its population, about 20,000 people, since
the 1970s, a process that accelerated after G.M. closed the factory in
nearby Lordstown, which produced Chevrolet Cruze sedans, in 2019. Sales
of that car had been fading as more Americans chose sport utility
vehicles.
Even before that shutdown, auto production jobs had been declining. U.S. automakers and their parts suppliers employed about one million people at the end of 2018,
down from more than 1.3 million in 2000. In the years before G.M.
closed the Lordstown plant, it had reduced shifts and pared its work
force.
“Our biggest
export for the last 20 years has been talented young people,” said Rick
Stockburger, the president of Brite Energy Innovators, an organization
in Warren that offers work space, advice and funding to start-ups.
Today,
things are looking somewhat better. Ultium Cells, a joint venture of
G.M. and LG Energy Solution, is ramping up production of batteries near
the defunct factory.
Foxconn,
a Taiwanese manufacturer, has taken over the old G.M. plant and plans
to produce electric vehicles and tractors there. The complex will also
house an “electric vehicle academy” established by Foxconn and
Youngstown State University to train workers.
That
surge in investment is helping to revive Warren’s tidy but sleepy
downtown. Doug Franklin, the mayor, who worked for G.M. in Lordstown,
said he was pleased recently to step into a local restaurant where
“nobody knew me, because we had so many new people.”
Mr.
Franklin represents the optimistic view — that an industrial
renaissance is underway. The pandemic and the supply chain chaos that it
caused have made companies leery of components produced far away. That
experience, plus billions in federal subsidies approved by Democrats
last year, motivated manufacturers to build vehicles, batteries and
other components in the United States.
“We’re seeing a new level of hope that I haven’t seen in decades,” Mr. Franklin said.
But community leaders in Warren are also aware that the transition comes with risks.
Hopes
that the old plant will become a buzzing electric vehicle factory have
not panned out, so far. G.M. sold the factory to Lordstown Motors, a
fledgling electric pickup truck company that ran into trouble and resold
the plant to Foxconn.
Executives at
Foxconn, which has long assembled electronic devices but has little
experience making cars, declined interview requests. It’s not clear when
the company will mass-produce electric vehicles in Lordstown, if ever.
The
Rev. Todd Johnson, the pastor of the Second Baptist Church in Warren
and a member of the City Council, worries that his mostly African
American parishioners won’t benefit from the new jobs.
Mr.
Johnson, whose parents worked for G.M., encourages young people to
study subjects like robotics and coding, and has led after-church trips
to a science and technology center in nearby Youngstown.
“There
are going to be opportunities coming,” he said, “and I desperately
don’t want to see the next generation of our children miss out.”
One pressing question is what will happen to people whose skills are no longer needed.
G.M.
is dealing with that issue at the Toledo factory, Toledo Propulsion
Systems, which makes transmissions that electric cars won’t need. The
automaker has committed to retraining the Toledo workers to make
electric motors, and to investing $760 million to convert assembly lines
at the plant.
If anything, G.M. will
need more workers, said Eric Gonzales, the executive director of the
factory, as it replaces gasoline models with electric cars. “We’re
taking the employees with us.”
The
G.M. factory in Toledo will show whether established automakers can
compete with Tesla, the fast-growing automaker that can focus all of its
resources on electric vehicles because that’s all it makes. Established
carmakers need to keep earning money from internal combustion vehicles
while ramping up a new technology that is not yet profitable.
G.M.
has an advantage, Mr. Gonzales said, because it has factories equipped
with sprinkler systems, high-voltage power and other essentials. “We
already have the four walls here with the infrastructure,” he said,
speaking above the din of clanking machinery. “Somebody new, they have
very expensive capital costs.”
Other
auto executives prefer to start fresh. Volkswagen’s new Scout Motors
unit looked at sites in Ohio and other states to produce electric pickup
trucks and S.U.V.s, but chose to build a $2 billion factory in South
Carolina.
It’s cheaper and easier to
build from scratch, said Scott Keogh, the chief executive of Scout.
“You’re not juggling this classic dynamic of a legacy internal
combustion engine plant where you need to inject a new electric
vehicle,” he said.
Ohio
is in intense competition with other states to attract investment. But
Midwestern states, including Michigan, Indiana and Illinois, have been
less successful than states in the South where Republican political
leaders have courted investment aggressively — even as they denounce the Democratic policies that helped create the boom.
Since
2020, automakers have announced investments of $51 billion in electric
vehicle and battery production in the South, compared with $31 billion
in states in the Great Lakes region, according to the Center for
Automotive Research.
Southern states
tend to have lower labor costs, in part because most auto plants there
are not unionized. This could pose a problem for the United Auto Workers
and President Biden, who want the switch to electric vehicles to create
more high-paying union jobs. It could well be that most of the new
electric car and battery jobs will end up in the South, where unions
face political opposition, and not in the Midwest, where unions have
political clout — and where most of the jobs lost in combustion engine
vehicles once were.
Ohio has some
things going for it. In March, Honda Motor said it would convert one of
two assembly lines at its decades-old plant in Marysville, near
Columbus, to build electric vehicles. Honda, a Japanese company, is also
building a battery factory about an hour away, in Jeffersonville, with
LG Energy Solution.
In Ohio, Honda
employs more than 14,000 people making cars and motors, and the
company’s plans will show whether electric vehicles, which require fewer
parts than gasoline cars, will create or destroy jobs.
Clarence Thomas’s Billionaire Benefactor Collects Hitler Artifacts
Harlan Crow also reportedly has a garden full of dictator statues.
Written by Sylvie McNamara
| Published on April 7, 2023
When Republican megadonor Harlan Crow isn’t lavishing Justice Clarence Thomas with free trips on his private plane and yacht (in possible violation of Supreme Court ethics rules), he lives a quiet life in Dallas among his historical collections. These collections include Hitler artifacts—two of his paintings of European cityscapes, a signed copy of Mein Kampf, and assorted Nazi memorabilia—plus a garden full of statues of the 20th century’s worst despots.
Crow, the billionaire heir to a real estate fortune, has said that he’s filled his property with these mementoes because he hates communism and fascism. Nonetheless, his collections caused an uproar back in 2015 when Marco Rubio attended a fundraiser at Crow’s house on the eve of Yom Kippur. Rubio’s critics thought the timing was inappropriate given, you know, the Hitler stuff.
“I still can’t get over the collection of Nazi memorabilia,” says one person who attended an event at Crow’s home a few years ago and asked to remain anonymous. “It would have been helpful to have someone explain the significance of all the items. Without that context, you sort of just gasp when you walk into the room.” One memorable aspect was the paintings: “something done by George W. Bush next to a Norman Rockwell next to one by Hitler.” They also said it was “startling” and “strange” to see the dictator sculptures in the backyard.
In 2014, when Crow’s house was included in a public tour of historic homes, a reporter from the Dallas Morning News visited. Apparently, Crow was visibly uncomfortable with questions about his dictator statues and Hitler memorabilia, preferring to discuss his other historical collections: documents signed by the likes of Christopher Columbus and George Washington; paintings by Renoir and Monet; statues of two of Crow’s heroes, Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher.
But despite Crow’s discomfort, the reporter did manage to see the garden of dictator statues, describing it as a “historical nod to the facts of man’s inhumanity to man.” Among the figures in the “Garden of Evil” are Lenin and Stalin, Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, and Yugoslav dictator Josip Broz Tito.
These are apparently not statues that Crow has commissioned—Crow has said that they’re bona-fide artifacts from public squares across Europe and Asia that citizens toppled at the end of dictatorial regimes. According to Crow, the white streaks on the Lenin statue are the remnants of paint thrown by furious Russians, and the chunks missing from Stalin are evidence of the wrath of the anti-Communist hordes. Crow says that the Gavrilo Princip statue had to be smuggled across the border between Serbia and Croatia disguised as rubble for fear that the Croatian border guards might destroy it in a rage.
The person we talked to who visited Crow’s home says that it felt sort of like a museum (“just a bunch of collectibles everywhere from major historical events”) and describes the Crows as “such hospitable Texas hosts.” The evening wasn’t unpleasant, they say, “just strange—they had family photos in one room, then all this WWII stuff in another room, and dictators in the backyard.”
No One Should Be That Shocked by What’s Happening in Tennessee
I covered the statehouse for years. It’s been heading in this direction for a while.
By Natalie Allison
04/08/2023 07:00 AM EDT
Updated: 04/08/2023 09:20 AM EDT
The world of politics experienced a collective shock this week as Tennessee Republicans expelled two young, Black, Democratic House members for protesting gun laws on the chamber floor after a deadly school shooting in Nashville.
But for those who have closely watched the chamber in recent years, the events were of little surprise. The place has been defined by partisan vitriol, pique, scandal, racism and Olympic-level pettiness for years.
I know. I covered it.
The protest and subsequent expulsion over decorum rules took place in a chamber where a GOP member, for years, rang a cowbell every day of session as a raucous, attention-grabbing substitute for applause.
When I covered the Tennessee Capitol from 2018 to 2021, the family-values espousing Republican House speaker had to explain why his text message trail included discussions of pole-dancing women and his chief of staff’s sexual encounters in the bathroom of a hot chicken restaurant.
After a Republican lawmaker was accused of sexually assaulting 15- and 16-year-old girls he had taught and coached, he was made chairman of the House education committee.
Protesters filled the halls week after week, year after year, calling for the removal of the bust of the Ku Klux Klan’s first Grand Wizard, a piece of art featured prominently between the House and Senate chambers. Democrats pushed for its removal, while Republicans resisted.
A Democrat who declined to support the current speaker’s reelection had her office moved into a small, windowless room. In a twist of fate, that same Democrat, Rep. Gloria Johnson, a white woman, narrowly escaped expulsion on Thursday. (Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson fared differently.)
And then, of course, there was the famous peeing incident, where a legislator’s office chair was urinated on in an act of intraparty retribution over shitposting. The actual identity of the Republican urinator is a closely-held secret among a small group of operatives who have bragged about witnessing it. But it’s generally accepted that former state Rep. Rick Tillis, a Republican and the brother of U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis, did indeed have his chair peed on in the Cordell Hull legislative office building.
It wasn’t always quite like this.
There was a time before when one-upmanship wasn’t the organizing principle inside the Tennessee statehouse. Not so long ago, there was more balance in power and, with that, more comity in the chamber. But as Republicans have made bigger gains, they’ve also become more politically confrontational.
The modern Tennessee Republican Party was forged by Howard Baker and others in the 1960s and 70s by tapping into a bipartisan coalition of voters — bringing the GOP from near irrelevance within the state to soon producing some of the nation’s top Republican talent.
“This kind of scene Thursday was the last thing they would have wanted to see happen,” said Keel Hunt, an author of books on Tennessee politics who worked as an aide to then-Gov. Lamar Alexander, a Republican.
I’m reminded of an evening I was sitting in the House press corps box in April 2021, when the House honored Alexander — a Republican and champion of civility, now remembered for his moderate flavor of politics — after his recent retirement from the Senate. Moments later, Republican leadership brought far-right conservative commentator and MAGA firebrand Candace Owens onto the floor, describing her as one of the party’s leading thought leaders of the day, fighting against “creeping socialism and leftist political tyranny.” The Tennessee House passed a resolution thanking her for moving to the state.
The state party knows that it’s drifting. Some openly and proudly admit it. It’s also evidenced by Sen. Bob Corker’s decision not to seek reelection in 2018, and Gov. Bill Haslam’s opting out of running for Alexander’s open seat in 2020. Both Corker and Haslam know they were unlikely to have survived a primary in the state, had they stayed true to their own brands of more moderate conservatism. Corker’s Senate seat ended up going to Marsha Blackburn, a Trump loyalist, and Bill Hagerty, now in Alexander’s seat, handily won the GOP primary after securing his own endorsement from Trump.
The same dynamic is on display at the state Capitol, where former Rep. Eddie Mannis — a John Kasich-Gary Johnson voter in 2016 and a gay Republican — entered the legislature in 2021 with plans of voting like a moderate, in line with his Knoxville district. Last year, he bowed out after just one term, later saying there were “too many people there who are just mean and vindictive,” only caring about “winning at all costs.” Other members live under the fear and dread of a possible primary challenge — the only election that now matters in most districts in Tennessee — if they stray from the party orthodoxy on guns, access to abortion and other issues.
But even for the jaded, Thursday’s expulsions were still extraordinary to watch play out. Longtime political insiders around the Capitol on Monday were stunned to see how quickly expulsion resolutions were drawn up against the three members. Mannis, who now occasionally opines on his former colleagues’ behavior, posted to Facebook: “Today is such a sad day for our State…”
For them and others, the speed with which the Tennessee House acted this week to throw out two young Black legislators must be put into perspective by all the other issues the legislature has declined to act on.
For more than four years, House Republicans declined to expel one of their own, Rep. David Byrd, after he was accused of sexually assaulting three teenage girls, students he taught and coached on a high school basketball team. Byrd was on tape apologizing to one of them, decades later. Even the Republican governor said he believed the allegations to be credible. But House Republicans — some conceding in private that they suspected Byrd may actually have preyed on minors — dug their heels in, saying he was fairly elected.
The debate around removal of the bust of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest went on for years, even as Black lawmakers pleaded with their colleagues to take down the statue. Republicans punted on opportunities to authorize removal, with many wanting to keep the statue in place. In return, protesters — often led by Jones, one of the expelled representatives — rallied at the Capitol on a regular basis, their shouts outside the chambers carrying through the thick, shuttered wooden doors as lawmakers took up other legislative business. (The bust was finally removed in 2021, with resistance from Lt. Gov. Randy McNally and House Speaker Cameron Sexton, after GOP Gov. Bill Lee whipped votes on the necessary state commissions to resolve the issue once and for all.)
The undercurrent of race is present in many of the Capitol’s controversies.
“Black people are idiots,” Cade Cothren, the chief of staff to former House Speaker Glen Casada, once wrote in a text message during a conversation about Common Core curriculum. It was one of several uncovered prior to his resignation in 2019. Both Casada and Cothren are now awaiting federal trial in a case involving alleged bribery and kickbacks at the legislature. Cothren has since apologized for the racist comment, and more recently has even condemned the legislature’s decision to expel the Black Democratic legislators.
A former GOP legislative staffer told me that in 2020, a member of House Republican leadership in a text message referred to Jones, then an activist, and another Black lawmaker as “baboons.” Former GOP Rep. Brandon Ogles, then vice-chair of the Republican caucus, at the time also recorded the staffer discussing the text. He shared a copy of the recording with POLITICO. The member of leadership in question denies sending the text. The comments were allegedly made while Jones was taking part in protests following George Floyd’s murder by police.
A member presenting a bill about sanctuary cities in 2018 used the term “wetback” while telling a story. On two separate occasions in 2020, Republican legislators publicly cracked jokes about Black people eating fried chicken.
And on and on.
Politics changes over time, of course. It was the Tennessee Democrats who led the charge to install the Forrest bust in the 1970s and who made life difficult for Republicans when they ran the state legislature for decades.
The state’s Republicans may very well transition too. Perhaps — though there is not an ounce of evidence supporting this theory — that bygone era of Howard Baker bipartisanship will be resuscitated.
But we are clearly not living in it now. Instead, the current era of the Tennessee legislature has been defined by a non-stop stream of befuddling scandals and unforced errors by a Republican supermajority that is seemingly insulated from being punished for them. That body has given the state’s Capitol press corps — a fraction of the size it was decades earlier — no shortage of things to uncover and try to explain to readers. Sometimes, the audience becomes global.
When I departed Tennessee less than two years ago to cover national politics — leaving after a whirlwind of a few years at the state Capitol and the ouster of a House speaker — I wondered if the legislative news there would settle down. Maybe things will become boring back in Tennessee, I thought.
I got my answer pretty quickly.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misspelled Rep. Justin Pearson’s name.
