#sharpiegate

Gabrielle Canon at The Guardian:

Two high-ranking officials at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration were placed on administrative leave on Friday, fueling speculation that the Trump administration was retaliating against them for actions taken during the president’s first term. Jeff Dillen, who was serving as deputy general counsel, and Stephen Volz, who heads the agency’s satellites division, led the investigation into whether agency administrators abdicated their scientific ethics when they altered the forecast of a deadly hurricane to match statements made by the president. First reported by CNN, the two were placed on leave just days before Neil Jacobs – the former Noaa chief at the center of the scandal – returns for a confirmation hearing as Donald Trump’s pick to lead the agency once again. During the 2019 debacle known as “Sharpiegate”, named for erroneous marks added by marker on a National Hurricane Center map to justify incorrect claims made by the president that Hurricane Dorian would reach Alabama – a path not in line with what forecasters initially reported – left a blemish on the science-focused agency’s record. The investigation, it was announced in June 2020, found Jacobs and another official had violated the agency’s “scientific integrity policy”, when they succumbed to political pressure. On Friday, the agency disputed the association between the officials being placed on leave and Jacobs’s nomination.

“Mr Dillen was placed on administrative leave by the department’s senior career attorney pending a review of performance issues over the past several weeks,” Noaa’s communications director, Kim Doster, said in an email responding to a request for more information about the incident. She added that Volz was placed on leave “on an unrelated matter”. Doster did not answer questions about the specifics that led to these actions or about whether workers at Noaa were briefed about the decisions. Noaa staffers, who asked for anonymity out of fear of reprisal for speaking out about the issue, told the Guardian they were not told about what happened and had to learn about it on the news. They also questioned the agency’s explanation. “It is laughable that anyone could look at this and say that their situations are ‘separate’ when both were leads on the Sharpiegate investigation,” one staffer said. “Both of them are brilliant, dedicated civil servants.”

Part of Trump's plan to fire competent specialists in the federal government and replace them with MAGA hacks includes NOAA - the agency which forecasts hurricanes and monitors climate change.

If NOAA isn't around to report temperatures and compile data on tropical weather, then climate change doesn't exist – at least in the feeble minds of MAGA zombies. And with climate change not a factor in US decision making, then fossil fuel companies which lavishly fund the Trump campaign can "drill drill drill" unhindered and do irreparable damage to the planet.

Remember when Trump tried to change the forecast for Hurricane Dorian with a Sharpie marker? Imagine what storm predictions would be like if MAGA political quacks were completely running weather predictions.

Bill McKibben is an outspoken critic of climate wreckers. In the video above he has praise for Joe Biden's willingness to stand up to dirty energy. He contrasts Biden with convicted felon Donald Trump who would turn the planet over to fossil fuel oligarchs for a $1 billion campaign contribution so they can complete their destruction of Planet Earth. McKibben says that the difference between Biden and Trump on climate change "could not be clearer".

Monica Medina, President and CEO of the Wildlife Conservation Society who served in the Obama and Clinton administrations, said in the same video that Trump will "weaponize weather against his political enemies" in a second term.

Here's a peek at what hurricane forecasts would look like in a Trump second term...

More blatant lies from Donald Trump:

"The Arizona Senate hearing 'showed 168,000 fraudulent ballots printed on illegal paper (unofficial ballots).'"

"In Maricopa County there were '74,000 mail in ballots received that were never mailed (magically appearing ballots).'"

"'All the access logs to the machines were wiped, and the election server was hacked during the election. ... the voting system was breached or hacked (by who?).'"

Every one of these claims is false. #SharpieGate has been debunked repeatedly. The 74,000 figure is based on data that ignores all requests for ballots made less than eleven days before the election; in reality, Maricopa County received 2,364,426 requests for mail-in ballots, of which 1,918,024 were returned. No access logs were wiped, and although there was a data breach it was completely unrelated to the county's Election Management System, which isn't even connected to the Internet.

Even Doug Logan--fervent Trump supporter and CEO of the firm Cyber Ninjas, which the GOP hired to conduct this audit even though it had absolutely no prior experience auditing elections (and lied about it)--couldn't point to one single instance of actual voter fraud, but only speculated about things that he claimed "could" have happened and demanded further auditing.

Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs puts “Sharpiegate” and rumors of improperly cancelled ballots to rest on Twitter

[Text: IMPORTANT: If you voted a regular ballot in-person, your ballot will be counted, no matter what kind of pen you used (even a Sharpie)!

Voters who received an early ballot in the mail but chose to instead vote in-person will see their early ballot status as “Canceled” on their Ballot-by-Mail/Early Ballot Status update. This is because the early ballot is canceled so the ballot cast-in person can be counted.

Seeing a “Canceled” early ballot status does not mean the in-person ballot you cast was not counted.

Some of the funniest responses on Twitter (so far) to Trump’s use of a Sharpie to alter the NOAA’s Hurricane Warning Map so it appeared to include Alabama

(here he is showing the doctored map which kicked off the fun)

But hey, dont worry. He'll accept our apologies for our fake news on the event.

Donald Trump came to the presidency a complete novice to government and often found his corrupt, authoritarian impulses frustrated by its bureaucracy. But he is slowly learning how to control the machine that has stymied him. This is the story of 2019, as Trump has replaced institutionalists attempting to curtail his grossest instincts with loyalists happy to indulge them. It is playing out across multiple dimensions. This is the through-line between several seemingly disconnected episodes from the last several days.

The pattern played out in its most absurd form via Trump’s manic insistence on justifying his inaccurate warning that Alabama “likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated” from Hurricane Dorian, at a time when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration was forecasting the state faced no risk. At first, Trump attempted to justify his lie by brandishing a chart he crudely doctored.

More ominously, on Friday, the NOAA issued an official statement backing up Trump’s original false claim. And the Washington Post reported the agency had instructed its staff not to contradict Trump’s claims. “This is the first time I’ve felt pressure from above to not say what truly is the forecast,” an NOAA meteorologist told the Post. “It’s hard for me to wrap my head around. One of the things we train on is to dispel inaccurate rumors and ultimately that is what was occurring.”

The controversy might appear absurd and contentless. But Trump views the stakes as high, not without reason. Among his supporters, Trump has created a cultlike devotion to his competence and honesty, both of which are threatened by acknowledging his falsehood about the hurricane.

Also on Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported the Department of Justice is launching an antitrust investigation of automakers who had agreed with California to raise their emissions standards. Trump is driven by a desire to overturn an Obama-era rule increasing mileage standards out of an obsession with destroying his predecessor’s legacy and an automatic rejection of any policy to limit climate change. Trump took the agreement as a personal affront, raging publicly at the automakers for dealing with California and undercutting his leverage to loosen emissions standards.

The antitrust investigation is a preposterous abuse. The automakers are not conspiring to fix prices. They are negotiating pollution regulations with a state that is legally entitled to set its own air-pollution rules. But the threat of retribution has already dissuaded automakers from dealing with California. “One person with direct knowledge of negotiations said that Daimler AG’s Mercedes-Benz had indicated an interest in joining, but later abstained due to fears of political fallout,” reports the Journal. The New York Times notes that other auto firms steered clear of dealing with California because they “fear retribution from an unpredictable administration.”

It is not new for firms to tiptoe around a temperamental president. What’s novel is the Department of Justice being used as Trump’s legal muscle. The threat of a nasty tweet is now bolstered with the threat of massively expensive litigation.

Also on Friday, the Washington Post editorial page reported an explosive new development in Trump’s Ukraine scandal. The president has sent Rudy Giuliani to Ukraine to pressure its government to supply evidence of misconduct by Joe Biden – even though there isn’t any sign Biden has done anything wrong. Here is another field where, by conscripting foreign countries to rough up domestic political rivals, Trump has broken new ground.

But Trump is not relying solely on Giuliani’s efforts at persuasion. Trump has refused to allow Ukraine’s president a White House visit, and suspended $250 million in military aid, to pressure its government into complying. To be sure, weakening Ukraine’s military dovetails neatly with Trump’s pro-Russian stance. But the Post reports that Trump is using the aid, which enjoys bipartisan support, as an extortion device.

Finally, the New York Times supplied more details on the ongoing scandal of Trump profiting from his office. During the presidential campaign, Trump waved away concerns about the unprecedented conflicts of interest that would arise from him running a business at the same time he wields enormous power. Republicans in Congress have evinced no concern whatsoever about Trump’s corruption, refusing to take even modest steps like compelling the release of his tax returns.

Increasingly, Republicans are dispensing with the fig leaf and flaunting their complicity. Putting money in Trump’s pocket by booking his properties has become a symbol of partisan solidarity. It is a signal of support both to the president and to fellow Republicans or business clients that you are on the ins with the boss. “President Trump has really been on the side of the Evangelicals and we want to do everything we can to make him successful,” one Evangelical leader tells the Times. “And if that means having dinner or staying in his hotel, we are going to do so.” Aggressive lack of curiosity has given way to open boasting of the quid pro quo arrangement.

None of these stories by itself has the singular drama of a Teapot Dome or a Watergate. Indeed, the mere fact that there is so much corruption prevents any single episode from capturing the imagination of the media and the public. But it is the totality of dynamic that matters. A corrupt miasma has slowly enveloped Washington. For generations, both parties generally upheld an assumption that the government would abide rules and norms dividing its proper functioning from the president’s personal and political interests.

The norm of bureaucratic professionalism and fairness is a pillar of the political legitimacy and economic strength of the American system, the thing that separates countries like the U.S. from countries like Russia. The decay of that culture is difficult to quantify, but the signs are everywhere. Trump’s stench is slowly seeping into every corner of government.