Flooded battery park tunnel is seen after Hurricane Sandy in 2012.
Credit: CC/2.0
President Trump has long touted the efficacy of walls, funneling billions of Defense Department dollars to build a wall on the southern border. However, when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) released a study that included plans for a sea wall to protect New Yorkers from sea-level rise and catastrophic storms like Hurricane Sandy, Trump mocked it as ineffective and unsightly.
Now, six-weeks after plans for a sea wall drew the President’s derision, the federal government abruptly decided to halt the project, according to The New York Times.
The sudden announcement from USACE to indefinitely postpone plans for a sea wall surprised some of its own officials, local politicians and environmental activists, all of whom see a mounting threat to New York City from the climate crisis, as The New York Times reported. The USACE official in charge of the project said it was […]
Carina Johansen/Bloomberg/Getty
A government research report produced by Finland warns that the increasingly unsustainable economics of the oil industry could derail the global financial system within the next few years.
The new report is published by the Geological Survey of Finland (GTK), which operates under the government’s Ministry of Economic Affairs. GTK is currently the European Commission’s lead coordinator of the EU’s ProMine project, its flagship mineral resources database and modeling system.
Signed off by GTK’s director of scientific research Dr Saku Vuori, the report is written by GTK senior scientist Dr Simon Michaux of the Ore Geology and Mineral Economics Unit. It conducts a comprehensive global assessment of scientific research into the state of the global oil industry with goal of determining how the risks of a global supply […]
Critics of President Donald Trump frequently use the word “kleptocracy” to describe his leadership, administration, and imprint on American policy writ large.
Before 2016 — before Trump’s election and presidency flipped assumptions about America’s liberal democratic project on its head — the word, which literally means “rule of thieves,” was mostly only used by academics and foreign policy wonks.
Thanks to Trump’s reign, though, “kleptocracy” is having an unprecedented moment.
It’s not hard to see why. As Vox’s Zack Beauchamp argued in 2017, “Trump’s kleptocratic instincts” share significant overlap with post-Soviet dictators and autocratic strongmen elsewhere, from his nepotistic corruption to his insistence on targeting opponents with all the levers of power at his disposal — as seen most obviously in his attempt to strong-arm a foreign government into trying to investigate a political rival.
All of that is, of course, true: Trump’s illiberalism, and his predilection for inserting and expanding corruption wherever he can, is hardly a secret.
But this administration is merely the culmination of the US’s decades-long slide toward becoming the center of modern kleptocracy. The US has become the world’s greatest offshore haven, allowing the crooked and the criminal to launder and stash their ill-gotten gains across the […]
Ken Cuccinelli, acting U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services director.
Credit: Jose Luis Magana/AP
A D.C.-based federal judge ruled Sunday that President Donald Trump’s appointment of Ken Cuccinelli as acting U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services director violated the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, a decision that suspends two policies Cuccinelli implemented while leading the agency.
Cuccinelli, an immigration hard-liner who was previously attorney general in Virginia, became acting head of USCIS in June, assuming the newly created role of “principal deputy director.” In November, Cuccinelli also assumed the position of “senior official performing the duties of the deputy secretary” at USCIS’ parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security.
In his ruling, U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss said Cuccinelli was never eligible to become acting USCIS chief.
Because Cuccinelli’s USCIS position was designated initially as “first assistant” to […]
Betsy DeVos
Credit: The Washington Post
Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos came under fire after her department made a bookkeeping change that would result in major funding cuts for America’s rural schools.
The Department of Education quietly informed state education officials that it would change how districts report the number of students who live in poverty, which could result in funding cuts for more than 800 of the “poorest” and “most geographically isolated” schools, according to The New York Times.
The changes to the Rural and Low-Income School Program came after the department found that some districts “erroneously” received funding despite being ineligible. The department previously allowed schools to report the percentage of students who qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, which it used to calculate poverty rates, for nearly two decades. Under the new rule, districts will be required to use data from the Census Bureau’s Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates to determine if they meet the threshold of 20% of students living below the poverty line to qualify for the program.
Education spokeswoman Liz Hill told The Times […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
