Chris Hedges's Blog, page 461

Crack in Beam Shuts San Francisco’s New $2.2 Billion Terminal

SAN FRANCISCO — San Francisco officials shut down the city’s celebrated new $2.2 billion transit terminal Tuesday after discovering a crack in a support beam under the center’s public roof garden.

Coined the “Grand Central of the West,” the Salesforce Transit Center opened in August near the heart of downtown after nearly a decade of construction. It was expected to accommodate 100,000 passengers each weekday, and up to 45 million people a year.

The center is operated by the Transbay Joint Powers Authority and its executive director Mark Zabaneh said workers discovered the crack around 10 a.m. while replacing roofing tiles. Zabaneh said engineers spent the day inspecting the damage and decided to shut the station around 5 p.m., just as the afternoon rush hour started.

“The beam is cracked,” Zabaneh said. “The behavior of the beam is unpredictable.”

Zabaneh said the crack was found near a weld on a stress-bearing horizontal beam. He said he did not know how long the crack was, but he told reporters that American steel was used in the center’s construction.

Zabaneh said the cause and the extent of the damage were unknown and the decision to close the terminal was made out of an “abundance of caution.”

He said structural engineers would be working at the building Tuesday night to assess whether it is safe for people to return.

Buses were rerouted to a temporary transit center about two blocks away that was used during the center’s construction. A downtown street that runs under the beam was also ordered closed indefinitely, causing traffic chaos at the same time some streets were closed for a conference sponsored by Salesforce that was expected to draw 170,000 attendees.

Enveloped in wavy white sheets of metal veil, the five-level center includes a bus deck, a towering sky-lit central entrance hall and a rooftop park with an outdoor amphitheater.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported that the complex faced delays in putting out contracts to bid, and the winning bids were ultimately higher than expected. The terminal’s cost rose from $1.6 billion at its 2010 groundbreaking to more than $2 billion in 2016 because of what one analyst called “optimistic assumptions,” according to the Chronicle.

The project, a commanding presence in the city’s South of Market neighborhood, is financed by land sales, federal stimulus grants, district fees and taxes, bridge tolls, and federal and state funds.

It sits adjacent to another dubious landmark, the so-called sinking condominium, Millennium Tower, which has settled about 18 inches (45 centimeters) since it opened over a former landfill in 2009. Homeowners have filed multiple lawsuits against the developer and the city, some alleging that construction of the transit center caused the Millennium Tower’s sinking.

Zabaneh said he did not believe that the cracked beam was related to ongoing problems at Millennium Tower.

The online business software company Salesforce, which opened its adjacent 61-story Salesforce Tower three months ago, bought naming rights to the center in 2017 as part of a 25-year, $110 million sponsorship agreement.

With Kavanaugh Nomination, Trump Faces #MeToo

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s victory helped give rise to the #MeToo era. Now, as it threatens his latest pick to the Supreme Court and his party’s electoral majorities in Congress, Trump is taking aim at the movement that has spurred a national reckoning around gender equity and sexual consent.

Arguing that “false accusations of all types are made against a lot of people,” Trump defended Judge Brett Kavanaugh on Tuesday against allegations of decades-old sexual abuse.

Eyeing the Kavanaugh nomination fight through the prism of his own experiences with sexual assault allegations, Trump asked: “Who is going to want to go before the system to be a Supreme Court judge or to be a judge, or to be even a politician?”

The backdrop for the president’s fervent defense of Kavanaugh is his belief that men can be ruined by false accusations. He told one associate in recent days that he believed the media was always inclined to give credence to an accuser’s lies — as happened with his own accusers during the 2016 campaign, according to a Republican close to the White House who was not authorized to publicly discuss private conversations.

While Trump has repeatedly weathered allegations from women, the Kavanaugh controversy presents the biggest challenge yet for Trump in the #MeToo moment. And it reveals a Republican Party — and a president — struggling with issues of gender equity and sexual consent just weeks before midterm elections in which women already were leaning toward Democrats by lopsided margins.

Kavanaugh, who is defending himself against allegations from two women who accuse him of sexual misconduct in the 1980s, sat for an interview on Fox News on Monday, an unusual move for a nominee to the high court. His cautious performance reassured some White House officials, but also left lingering concerns about how he would stand up under questioning from Democrats at a Judiciary Committee hearing Thursday, where one of his accusers, Christine Blasey Ford, is expected to appear.

After initially showing caution with the accusations against Kavanaugh, Trump has grown increasingly frustrated, viewing the process as a political plot against his efforts to advance a long-sought conservative makeover of the high court.

For a time, Trump told confidents that he did not need to wade into the specific allegations since they did not involve him, although they did evoke sexual misconduct allegations against him. But late last week Trump became convinced the allegations were a Democratic scheme to undermine his pick. On Friday, he fired off a tweet challenging Ford directly. That tweet — he questioned why Ford did not report the alleged assault at the time — drew a fiery response from women online, with many posting first-person stories about their experiences with the Twitter hashtag #WhyIDidntReport.

Trump’s skepticism was only bolstered by a piece published in The New Yorker on Sunday recounting a second allegation against Kavanaugh, this time about college-era sexual misconduct. Trump spoke to advisers inside and outside the White House on Sunday about the report and it did not shake his support for Kavanaugh, said a person with knowledge of the conversations who was not authorized to speak publicly.

Trump’s dismissal of the claims against Kavanaugh echo his past defenses of his own behavior.

More than a dozen women have accused him of sexual misconduct, which he denies. In the 2005 “Access Hollywood” tape that repelled many Republicans when it became public during the 2016 election, Trump can be heard boasting of grabbing women by their genitals and kissing them without permission. Trump apologized but also defended himself, dismissing his comments as “locker-room talk.”

In Bob Woodward’s recent book about the Trump administration, he writes that Trump once told a friend who had acknowledged treating women badly: “You’ve got to deny, deny, deny and push back on these women. If you admit to anything and any culpability, then you’re dead.”

Trump has demonstrated he’s not averse to deploying the potent politics around the issue to his own advantage.

During the 2016 campaign, after threatening to use Bill Clinton’s sexual history against his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton, Trump did just that. Before an October debate, he met publicly in a hotel conference room with three women — Paula Jones, Juanita Broaddrick and Kathleen Willey — who had accused Bill Clinton of unwanted sexual advances — even rape in Broaddrick’s case. Kathy Shelton, a fourth woman who appeared with Trump, was a 12-year-old Arkansas sexual assault victim whose alleged assailant was defended by Hillary Clinton.

White House counselor Kellyanne Conway acknowledged the perilous moment, saying on CBS this week that “there’s pent-up demand for women to get their day, women who have been sexually harassed and sexually assaulted.”

She added: “I personally am very aggrieved for all of them, but we cannot put decades of pent-up demand for women to feel whole on one man’s shoulders.”

___

Lemire and Miller reported from New York.

CBS Taps Media Industry Veteran as Interim Chairman

NEW YORK — CBS says it has named media industry veteran Richard Parsons as interim chairman of the board as the company moves to reshape itself following the ouster of longtime chief Les Moonves.

Parsons is the former chairman of Time Warner and Citicorp. He was added to the board of CBS earlier this month along with five others as the company pursues an independent investigation into Moonves.

Moonves resigned just after six women joined others who had previously accused the long-time television executive with sexual misconduct.

CBS also said Tuesday that two other board members were stepping down. Bruce Gordon and William Cohen had been on the company’s board since it became a standalone public company in 2006.

Seattle Mariners’ Felix Hernandez Becomes U.S. Citizen

SEATTLE — Mariners teammates stood and applauded and “God Bless America” played on speakers when Felix Hernandez entered Seattle’s clubhouse after becoming a U.S. citizen.

A native of Venezuela, the 32-year-old pitcher passed his citizenship interview Monday and was among 74 people from 36 countries who became naturalized U.S. citizens during a ceremony in downtown Seattle.

“This country has given me everything,” Hernandez said. “It’s a dream come true. It means a lot. We’ve been here a long time. I wanted to do it.”

Strife in Venezuela is among the reasons Hernandez desired U.S. citizenship. He wants to bring his parents to the U.S. more easily.

“The situation in Venezuela is real bad now,” Hernandez said. “It’s tough. There are people who can’t get any food. It’s crazy.”

His wife, Sandra, became a U.S. citizen a month ago, but Hernandez didn’t pass his test that day. Hernandez said she gave him a hard time about it.

“I didn’t study,” he said. “I think I only got one question right.”

Hernandez said he had no problems in his second attempt.

“It’s 100 questions, but they ask you 10 and you have to pass six,” Hernandez said. “I was prepared for this one.”

The 2010 AL Cy Young Award winner, nicknamed King Felix, is in his 14th season with the Mariners. A group of fans known as The King’s Court have sat in the left-field corner for years counting and yelling during each of his strikeouts. Hernandez is a six-time All-Star who became the team’s career strikeouts leader in 2016.

He is 168-127, including 8-13 this year.

___

More AP MLB: https://apnews.com/tag/MLB and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

Is the Space Force a Step Toward War in Space?

On June 18th, President Trump announced that he was directing the Pentagon to develop a new branch of the U.S. military, a “Space Force” that would give the U.S. “dominance” in that realm. It would be, he said — and here he used a classic phrase from the Jim Crow era of racial segregation — “separate but equal” to the U.S. Air Force. Much of the rest of his announcement sounded like it came directly out of a Star Trek episode. (“My administration is reclaiming America’s heritage as the world’s greatest space-faring nation. The essence of the American character is to explore new horizons and to tame new frontiers…”) And like Jean-Luc Picard captaining the USS Enterprise, he promptly (if redundantly) ordered the “Department of Defense and Pentagon” to make it so.

The president’s sudden enthusiasm seemed to come out of the blue. Even advocates of the Space Force concept were surprised. His Space Council, chaired by Vice President Mike Pence and advised by a flock of space and defense industry executives, was only informed of Trump’s decision to proceed with what he called “the sixth armed service” shortly before the announcement was made.

Nor was it greeted with universal enthusiasm in either Washington or the U.S. military, to put it mildly. Secretary of Defense James Mattis, who had written a letter to Congress in July 2017 opposing an earlier, less ambitious version of the plan, had little choice but to go along with the new scheme (though his reluctance was obvious). However, its reception among key Republicans was, at best, decidedly mixed. A number of them were skeptical, like Texas Senator John Cornyn who said, “I have not yet heard a compelling case why we need a separate force.”

On the cultural front, the Space Force was roundly ridiculed on late night TV. And even Fox News gave air time to critics like former astronaut Scott Kelly, who called the move “political” and indicated that “adding another layer of government bureaucracy [to the military]… is probably not a good use of our taxpayer dollars.” David Cloud and Noah Bierman of the Los Angeles Times summed up the president’s decision-making process as a prime example of “the chaotic way Trump sometimes makes key decisions, often by bypassing the traditional bureaucracy to tout ideas that work well as applause lines but aren’t fully thought out.”

If, however, the skeptics have their doubts, one thing is clear: Donald Trump loves the idea of boldly going where no president has gone before in the same way a child might cherish his favorite toy. And his interest in such a force was evidently piqued in part by his fascination with model spacecraft he was shown by Pence during a March 2018 White House briefing.

Practical or not, the Space Force concept meets Trump’s two biggest needs: stroking his own ego and pumping up his political base. Calling for “space dominance” via a nifty new force makes for another great get-tough slogan for the president, not to mention a good distraction from his earthly troubles. He first used the term publicly in an address at Miramar Air Base in San Diego last March and it is now a standard part of his stump speech, as are cries of “Space Force! Space Force!” from adoring crowds at his rallies.

“Space Force!” may eventually become the futuristic rhetorical equivalent of “the wall” — a big idea that appeals to Trump’s base but would be wildly impractical and hugely expensive to implement. And just as that “big, fat, beautiful” wall remains a symbol of a larger immigration policy whose impact continues to be devastating, the call for a Space Force could open the door to genuinely dangerous ideas — like placing weapons in outer space, which one Pentagon official recently suggested would be “relatively easy.”

“This Is About Money”

Trump’s sudden childlike attachment to the concept of a Space Force isn’t the only factor pushing it. As Alabama Republican Congressman Mike Rogers, a Space Force advocate whose state includes Huntsville (aka “Rocket City”), the military space capital of the world, put it in an interview with the Los Angeles Times: “I mean, this is about money. As long as space is in the [Air Force] portfolio, they can move money from space to support fighter jets, bombers, or whatever. The Air Force is run by fighter pilots. Space will always lose.”

Rogers, who has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions from defense contractors, has relentlessly pressed Trump to make space a separate armed service. His allies in the administration include Pence, a long-time space enthusiast, and Undersecretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan, a former Boeing executive who presided over that company’s missile defense division. Among the projects Shanahan oversaw was the disastrous Airborne Laser system, a laser mounted on a Boeing 747 aircraft that was supposed to be able to zap missiles in flight but failed miserably, while chewing up $5 billion worth of taxpayer funds.

A future Space Force could waste money on a scale that would make the billions squandered on that Airborne Laser look like chump change. Initial set-up costs over the next few years have been estimated to be at least $8 billion. But once space is fully established as a separate service the price tag could go far higher over time. In “Space Force: Spending At Warp Speed,” the watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense suggests that — worst case scenario — it could, in the long term, cost as much as $190 billion annually “to establish a new military service and the enormous bureaucracy of a new department.” Even by Pentagon standards, that’s a massive sum. Among the questions that remain are: Will there be enough spoils to go around? In other words, will Space Force funding come at the expense of the Air Force and the other services or will it be a staggering add-on to the Pentagon budget, pushing it even further into the stratosphere?

A Complex Divided

While Rogers, Shanahan, and other figures with ties to military space contractors have been pressing for the Space Force, the Air Force lobby has been pushing back. No surprise there, since that service has always wanted to control the military’s space funding and fears that a rival service would compete for, and perhaps capture, some of “its” funds.

Bryan Bender and Jacqueline Klimas of Politico note, for example, that congressional defense hawks Mike Coffman (R-CO) and Steve Knight (R-CA) have paired up to lead a “rebellion” against the president’s Space Force, “one that some observers believe bears the fingerprints of the Air Force and its contractors.” Knight, whose district adjoins Edwards Air Force Base, is quoted this way: “This is something where, boy, I gotta disagree with the president… I’m standing up for the U.S. Air Force here. There’s nobody on the planet that does this better than they do.”

Coffman and Knight are hardly alone. Last year, Ohio Congressman Mike Turner, a proponent of all things nuclear (whose Dayton-area district includes Wright Patterson, the Air Force’s largest domestic air base), led an effort to block legislation sponsored by Rogers to create a Space Corps, a more modest version of the Space Force idea that would have been embedded in the Air Force, much as the Marines are still officially embedded in the Navy.

Turner, who votes with the Trump administration 94% of the time, has now derided the Space Force idea and claims support from Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson as well as Secretary of Defense Mattis. Whether opposition within the military will continue in a sub rosa fashion now that the president has put his stamp of approval on the force — or even if Mattis will be around much longer — remains to be seen. Turner’s claim is, however, consistent with that 2017 Mattis letter to Congress and Wilson’s initial position, which she expressed in July 2017 this way:

“The Pentagon is complicated enough. This will make it more complex, add more boxes to the organization chart, and cost more money… I don’t need another chief of staff and another six deputy chiefs of staff.”

Key industry figures have similarly weighed in against the force, including Eric Fanning, president and CEO of the Aerospace Industries Association, the major U.S. defense and aerospace trade group. He typically complained:

“Is this going to get us something faster or is it going to slow us down more? And secondly, who’s going to pay for this?… The aerospace and defense industry builds things. It’s not going to benefit by money going into creating new headquarters, new organizations.”

Now that Trump has upped the ante, the political battle between the Air Force, its boosters, and Space Force advocates will undoubtedly intensify, even if largely behind the scenes. This month, Air Force Secretary Wilson switched gears, publicly endorsing the administration’s move, though leaving room for bureaucratic maneuvering and delay when she noted that “it has to be done the right way.” According to an internal Air Force memo leaked to the publication Defense One, Wilson’s vision of “the right way” involves keeping as many military space functions in the Air Force as possible in order to reduce the size and clout of the proposed force.

Meanwhile, Wilson has just released a plan calling for an increase by 2030 in the number of squadrons — composed of planes of all types, including surveillance and refueling aircraft, fighters and bombers — of nearly 25%. Center for Strategic and International Studies budget expert Todd Harrison estimates that the additional operating costs for such an expanded fleet, including added personnel, would total roughly $18 billion annually. Absent another huge hike in the Pentagon budget, such spending would certainly compete for resources with the new Space Force.

The fight over that force poses a dilemma for some major contractors as well. Take Lockheed Martin. Its fighter jet, the F-35, slated to be the most expensive weapons system in history, will absorb more than $400 billion in research, development, and procurement funds through the mid-2030s. It’s Lockheed’s biggest program and a core element in the Air Force budget. Nonetheless, the company is also heavily involved in developing military satellites and missile defense programs, two areas that might get far more money in the Space Force era if a determined new bureaucracy is embedded in the military and advocating for them.

Lockheed Martin’s executives are, of course, all for more spending on military space programs — unless that funding were to come at the expense of the F-35. The solution to such a conundrum would assumedly be radically higher Pentagon spending. And count on one thing: the company and its cohorts will be lobbying in earnest for just that in the run-up to the 2020 presidential elections. As it happens, the Trump administration and Congress have already increased Pentagon and related spending to a near-record $716 billion. More increases to fund the Space Force and other new initiatives could prove a tough sell in a country whose basic infrastructure is rotting out.

The Real Danger: Weapons in Space

Donald Trump’s enthusiasm for the Space Force and the militarization of space has already given new life to spectacularly bad ideas shelved years ago. A case in point: the claim of Pentagon Undersecretary for Research and Engineering Michael Griffin that it would be “relatively easy” and affordable (at least by Pentagon standards) to construct space-based interceptors that could shoot down nuclear-armed ballistic missiles in their “boost phase”; that is, shortly after launching. But a 2012 study by the American Physical Society estimated that it could cost $300 billion to build the system of hundreds of space-based interceptors needed to counter even a handful of North Korean missiles in boost phase. And yet Congress did indeed pass an amendment to the 2019 defense bill calling for the Pentagon “to develop a space-based intercept layer.”

Putting such weaponry in space could, of course, lead other powers (think Russia and China) to assume that their satellite systems were at risk and so spark a new Cold War-style arms race in space that would not only cost a fortune, but increase the odds of hair-trigger systems prone to mistakes launching a war there. Military and communications satellites, like those crucial to U.S. military operations across the planet and those the global economy couldn’t do without, would be uniquely vulnerable in such a situation.

John Tierney and Philip Coyle of the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation have summed up the potential consequences of putting missile interceptors in space this way: “Space-based missile defenses would motivate U.S. adversaries to increase their nuclear arsenals and expand their anti-satellite capabilities to neutralize the new space infrastructure.”

In other words, the president is now urging Congress and the military to embark on a project that could cost countless hundreds of billions of dollars and, in return, make America — and the world — less safe. And if that isn’t a Trumpian bargain of the first order, what is?

Space Force: Tragedy or Farce?

Pushing the idea of a Space Force to please his own ego and his supporters, as President Trump seems intent on doing while currying favor with one slice of the military-industrial complex, is likely to prove an extremely costly error. Worse yet, the further militarization of space risks the future of the planet itself. Whether done within or outside the Air Force, as a Space Corps or a Space Force, putting missile interceptors or satellite weapons in space will undermine what remains of Cold War era arms control programs and so make both conventional and nuclear war more likely.

To go boldly into such a project is potentially folly of the ultimate sort. Of course, it’s possible that, as with his wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, Donald Trump will continue to brag about “his” Space Force, while Congress simply refuses to fund it. Yes, the Trump 2020 campaign will go right on carrying out its brazen yet comical contest for picking the best logo for the force — to be displayed MAGA-style on mugs, T-shirts, hats, and other campaign trinkets. The Space Force would then exist in the same sense that Star Trek exists, as a harmless cultural phenomenon that resonates with a certain segment of the populace.

As for those spaced-based weapons systems, perhaps they will go the way of such past efforts. Those have ranged from a Reagan-era proposal by the “father” of the hydrogen bomb, Edward Teller, for a space-based, nuclear-weapons-driven x-ray laser — a version of which made the cover of Time magazine in 1983 but thankfully was never built — to “brilliant pebbles,” an ill-fated initiative of George H.W. Bush’s administration to put thousands of tiny rockets — those “pebbles” — into space in hopes that they could take out enemy ballistic missiles in flight. It also never materialized.

Instead of wasting money on research and development, perhaps the newest round of ideas for weaponizing space will simply be rejected from the outset. It’s possible that a new Congress, taking office in January 2019 and far less in thrall to Donald Trump, might end up holding the line on the development of space-based weaponry, leaving the president’s Space Force on hats, pins, and T-shirts but not in a future Pentagon budget. With the military-industrial complex divided against itself on the issue, it’s just possible that the voices of sanity might for once prevail and we could go boldly into the future on this planet without having to keep an eye constantly on the skies.

Climate Change Is Suffocating the World’s Richest Fishing Grounds

Oceanographers have identified an act of slow suffocation, as oxygen loss grows near one of the world’s richest fishing grounds, and are linking the change to human-triggered global warming.

They have measured a dramatic drop in levels of dissolved oxygen deep in the Gulf of St Lawrence, in eastern Canada, and they link this increasing strangulation to shifts – connected to climate change driven by ever higher ratios of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, as a consequence of the profligate burning of coal, oil and natural gas – in the Gulf Stream and the Labrador Current.

As carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas levels have risen in the past 100 years, the Gulf Stream has shifted northward, and the Labrador Current has weakened. As a consequence, according to new research in Nature Climate Change, more warm, salty and oxygen-depleted water from the Gulf Stream is getting into one of the world’s great waterways.

Lower oxygen levels have already affected the Atlantic wolffish, the researchers say. And the change is a threat to the Atlantic cod, and the Greenland halibut: two of the world’s most prized commercial catches.

“The oxygen decline in this region was already reported, but what was not explored before was the underlying cause”

“Observations in the very inner Gulf of St Lawrence show a dramatic oxygen decline, which is reaching hypoxic conditions, meaning it can’t fully support marine life,” said Mariona Claret, of the University of Washington, who led the study.

“The oxygen decline in this region was already reported, but what was not explored before was the underlying cause.”

Researchers have warned for years that warmer waters mean lower levels of dissolved oxygen, and therefore ever greater risk of “dead zones” in the world’s oceans. There has been evidence that rates of oxygen depletion are higher than expected and direct evidence that fish may be voting with their fins, by migrating northwards as the oceans heat up.

Canadian fishery authorities have been measuring the salinity and temperature in the St Lawrence seaway since 1920, and oxygen levels since 1960. The latest study finds that the changes there have been more than twice the average change of 2% measured for the Atlantic and the oceans as a whole.

Current falters

An intricate, detailed computer simulation of the gulf and the seaway shows that the Labrador Current, which brings cold, oxygen-rich water southwards, has faltered, and the Gulf Stream – already warm and less oxygenated – has gained in ground.

The study also links shifts off coastal Canada to the bigger picture of an alarming decline in a marine monster called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, which plays a powerful role in the climate of the North Atlantic.

The scientists speculate – their word – on the possibility that the lower oxygen levels in one watery corner of Canada “may ultimately influence the oxygen variability of the open North Atlantic.”

More alarmingly, they warn that their computer simulation may be delivering a very conservative picture, and that future oxygen declines in the Gulf may be “significantly larger.”

Shaming the People Bankrolling Climate Change Denial

Shame is that queasy feeling you get when you realize you’ve done something improper, ridiculous, or just flat-out contemptible. But it’s socially invaluable, for feeling ashamed is a built-in jerk alarm, keeping most of us from doing the same embarrassing thing again.

But what if you’re not embarrassed by being a jerk?

Sure enough, some individuals who rise to high places are so consumed by self-importance, self-righteousness, self-aggrandizement, and all things selfish that they feel no shame — even when their narcissism does gross harm to others.

One example is the clique of prominent polluters, politicos, and propagandists who are climate-change deniers. They shamefully use their prominence to enhance their own fame and fortune — while glaciers melt, oceans rise, extreme weather expands, species perish, and Earth itself spins toward being unlivable.

Unable to acknowledge shame, they need help. Luckily, a feisty group called Cowboys for Liberty has stepped forward to acknowledge it for them by establishing a “Climate Denier Hall of Shame.”

Among the first class of infamous deniers are Charles and David Koch, who’ve dumped more than $100 million into front groups opposing efforts to halt climate change; Sen. Jim Inhofe, the dotty old dean of deniers, who has called global warming a conspiracy spawned by the Weather Channel; and the former CEO of Exxon Mobil, who secretly funded hoked-up “academic” reports to discredit the science of climate change.

The Hall of Shame is fun, but it’s not a prank. It points out that climate change is not only caused by human action, but also by human inaction.

By putting names and faces to the small group of humans selfishly preventing progress, it can help the majority of us see that we can (and must) rise up to stop them.

Trump Calls Push to Block Kavanaugh a ‘Con Job’

WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump denounced Democratic efforts to block Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation as a cynical “con job” on Tuesday and launched a dismissive attack on a second woman accusing the nominee of sexual misconduct in the 1980s, asserting she “has nothing.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell predicted that Kavanaugh would win approval, despite the new allegations and uncertainty about how pivotal Republicans would vote in a roll call now expected early next week. Like much of America, lawmakers awaited a momentous Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in which Kavanaugh and chief accuser Christine Blasey Ford are to testify Thursday, though not together.

Hanging in the balance is Trump’s chance to swing the high court more firmly to the right for a generation. Despite McConnell’s forecast that Republicans will “win,” Kavanaugh’s fate remains uncertain in a chamber where Republicans have a scant 51-49 majority.

“I will be glued to the television,” said Sen. Susan Collins, a moderate Republican from Maine, who has yet to declare her position on confirmation.

Hoping the hearing will yield no new surprises, the Senate Judiciary Committee scheduled its own vote on Kavanaugh for Friday, and Republican leaders laid plans that could keep the full Senate in session over the weekend and produce a final showdown roll call soon after — close to the Oct. 1 start of the high court’s new term.

With the Judiciary Committee’s GOP members all male, McConnell said the panel was hiring a “female assistant” to handle the questioning for Republicans “in a respectful and professional way.” Neither he nor committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, identified the attorney.

“My gut is they’re trying to avoid a panel of all white guys asking tone-deaf questions,” said Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware.

Meanwhile, the Republicans were still assessing what Kavanaugh’s Monday interview on the Fox News Channel — an unusual appearance for a Supreme Court nominee — indicates about how he would do in Thursday’s hearing.

During the interview, Kavanaugh denied sexually assaulting anyone. He also denied the account of a second woman, Deborah Ramirez, who told The New Yorker magazine that Kavanaugh caused her to touch his penis at a party when both were Yale freshmen.

Some in the White House expressed relief that Kavanaugh, 53, presented a positive image to counter the allegations. Yet he appeared shaky at times. And there remained concern among aides and Trump himself about how Kavanaugh would hold up facing far fiercer questioning from Senate Democrats, according to a White House official not authorized to speak publicly.

The No. 2 Senate Republican, John Cornyn of Texas, acknowledged that for the nominee “it’s extremely awkward to be talking about such private matters on TV.” But Cornyn said he thought Kavanaugh “did well and did what he needed to do” in the interview.

Yet Kavanaugh’s accounts of his behavior in high school and college have faced intense scrutiny, with some of his former classmates coming forward to challenge his claims. James Roche, a Yale graduate who says he was Kavanaugh’s roommate in 1983, issued a public statement saying he was “close friends” with Ramirez and “cannot imagine her making up” the story about Kavanaugh exposing himself.

While a few Republicans have strongly challenged the credibility of Kavanaugh’s accusers, Trump’s words have been more biting. Last week, he lampooned Ford’s allegation that an inebriated Kavanaugh trapped her beneath him on a bed at a high school house party and tried to take her clothes off before she escaped. Surely she would have reported it to police if the encounter was “as bad as she says,” the president said.

“It’s a con game they’re playing,” he said Tuesday. “They’re really con artists. They don’t believe it themselves, OK?”

Defense Secretary: Jury Is Out on Women’s Success in Combat

WASHINGTON—The jury is still out on whether women can be successful in infantry jobs, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said Tuesday, while offering students at the Virginia Military Institute a dim view of female troops serving on the front line.

Mattis, a retired Marine, said there are too few women in the infantry ranks to provide enough data to determine how they’re doing. And he said he has asked Army and Marine leaders for information to determine if having women in a “close-quarters fight” is a strength or a weakness.

“There are a few stalwart young ladies who are charging into this, but they are too few,” Mattis said during a visit to VMI, which is in Lexington, Virginia. “Clearly the jury is out on it, but what we’re trying to do is give it every opportunity to succeed if it can.”

He said he hopes to get data from the Army and Marine Corps soon.

In early 2013, then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta opened the door to women serving in combat jobs. The military services studied the issue, and in their final recommendations only the Marine Corp leaders argued for an exception so they could keep certain infantry and ground combat jobs open only to men. In December 2015, then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter rejected the Corps’ request and ordered all combat posts be opened to women.

Responding to a question from a male student, who described some of his female classmates as fierce, Mattis said the issue must be resolved by military officers who are objective and understand that the natural inclination is to have service open to all. But, he added, “we cannot do something that militarily doesn’t make sense.”

Mattis likened the issue to having someone break into your house and having to decide “who grabs the baseball bat” to protect the children and “who reaches for the phone to call 911.” He didn’t offer suggestions on what the answer would be.

The Army and Marine Corps have acknowledged that the number of women seeking infantry jobs will probably be small. And women have struggled to pass the demanding training courses.

As of late August, there were just 26 female enlisted Marines in the infantry and one female officer, according to the Marine Corps. More broadly, however, the number of women in Marine combat units that were previously open only to men has grown steadily, from 254 last year to 382 this year — a 50 percent increase.

This year, for the first time, female Marines were allowed to attend the previously male-only entry-level course at the Marine Combat Training Battalion at Camp Pendleton, California. Before that, women only attended combat training at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina.

The Army has also seen an increase in the number of women in combat units, including in infantry jobs. So far, there are 51 female infantry officers and 253 women in the enlisted ranks of the infantry, according to the Army. Another 51 women are serving in the officer and enlisted ranks in the Army Reserve. In addition, 17 women have passed the Army’s grueling two-month Ranger course.

Because of the growth, Army leaders earlier this year decided to integrate female officers into infantry and armor brigades at three additional military bases: Fort Carson in Colorado, Fort Campbell in Kentucky, and Fort Bliss in Texas. The increase — from two bases now to five — means there will be women in infantry and armor units at 45 percent of the Army installations that have combat brigades. Until now, the integrated units were only at Fort Hood in Texas and Fort Bragg in North Carolina.

Doctors With Convictions Hired to Examine Immigrants

WASHINGTON—One physician appointed to examine immigrants was convicted of solicitation of capital murder because he tried to hire a hit man to kill a dissatisfied patient in Houston. Another had a history of sexual misconduct and exploitation of female patients. And a third was disciplined for allowing her staff to dilute vaccines, according to a report made public Tuesday by the Department of Homeland Security’s internal watchdog.

The report found the doctors appointed by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services were not properly vetted — putting immigrants at risk of abuse, and potentially exposing U.S. citizens to contagious disease.

There were no specific cases highlighted where an immigrant was abused, or indication that someone with an illness was allowed into the country.

The physicians, known as civil surgeons, review medical records and examine immigrants seeking lawful permanent resident status.

The watchdog, the Office of the Inspector General, made eight recommendations, including stricter eligibility requirements and better training for surgeons. USCIS officials concurred and said they will work on adopting the suggestions.

The report found 132 of the 5,569 active civil surgeons could pose a health or safety risk to immigrants. Eleven of them were prevented from participating in federal health care programs for health care fraud, patient abuse or other reasons.

The report found that state medical boards disciplined 121 of more than 5,000 civil surgeons for offenses ranging from felony convictions to negligent conduct in patient care and treatment.

“Although some disciplinary conduct may have occurred years ago, the nature of the offense may continue to render these physicians a risk to those applying for immigration benefits,” the report found.

Part of the issue is that USCIS doesn’t require medical board disciplinary history before designating physicians as civil surgeons, the report found.

In addition, civil surgeons are not properly reviewing medical files of those who are seeking lawful permanent resident status, the report found. It could mean that citizens are exposed to contagions, the report found.

USCIS officials said in a response to the report that they would evaluate eligibility requirements, establish better training and create better quality-control reviews. Officials were also going back through thousands of active civil surgeons to double-check their records.

“USCIS remains committed to the integrity of our lawful immigration system, and the adjustment of status of an individual to a permanent resident is a core component of the immigration system,” the agency said in a letter to the inspector general. “USCIS agrees with the OIG that further actions are needed to enhance the medical admissibility screening process and is already taking these actions.”