Chris Hedges's Blog, page 481

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel Says He Won’t Seek Third Term

CHICAGO—In a surprise announcement, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel said Tuesday that he would abandon his effort to seek a third term next year and gave no reason for his sudden change of heart.

The 58-year-old former White House chief of staff said only that he and his wife “look forward to writing that next chapter in our journey together.”

“This has been the job of a lifetime, but it is not a job for a lifetime,” Emanuel said in remarks released by his office.

The Chicago Tribune said Emanuel he had already raised more than $10 million for another run for a four-year term.

Emanuel was a Democratic congressman and chief of staff to President Barack Obama before becoming mayor in 2011. He followed Richard M. Daley, who was mayor for more than 20 years. His won a second term in a 2015 runoff.

His announcement comes the day before the start of one of the biggest police-shooting trials in Chicago history — the murder trial of police officer Jason Van Dyke. The release of a dashcam video almost three years ago of the white officer shooting black teenager Laquan McDonald 16 times in 2014 drew the sharpest criticism of Emanuel in his two terms as mayor.

Many questioned whether his office delayed releasing the video to lessen political damage on Emanuel. The trial is expected to bring added scrutiny of how the city, and Emanuel, dealt with the case.

Emanuel grew up in the ritzy Chicago suburb of Wilmette, the son of an Israeli physician who moved to the United States. His start in politics came after college, when he worked for Paul Simon’s 1984 Senate campaign and Richard Daley’s run for Chicago mayor in 1989.

Then he went to work for a little-known Arkansas governor who wanted to be president.

Emanuel’s fundraising skills helped keep Bill Clinton’s campaign afloat during some rocky times, particularly the scandal over whether he’d slept with Gennifer Flowers.

Clinton made him his political director in the new administration but internal tensions led to his comeuppance a year later at the hands of Hillary Rodham Clinton, when he was demoted to a policy adviser.

Midway through Clinton’s second term, Emanuel left for Chicago to work in investment banking. The firm he joined was soon sold and Emanuel made millions, giving him the financial security to get back into politics.

Former Arizona U.S. Sen. Jon Kyl Named to Succeed John McCain

PHOENIX—The governor of Arizona announced Tuesday that he will appoint former Sen. Jon Kyl to fill the late Sen. John McCain’s seat in the U.S. Senate.

Gov. Doug Ducey made the announcement on Twitter minutes before a scheduled news conference.

Kyl, a Republican, is currently shepherding Trump’s nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court. Kyl’s appointment may make it possible for him to vote for the nomination.

Ducey, also a Republican, added the hashtag #KavanaughConfirmation to his announcement.

Ducey says Kyl has committed to serve through the end of this year and the governor hopes he will serve longer.

Either way, Kyle is expected to be a placeholder, not running in 2020, when voters will get to decide who fills the remainder of McCain’s seat through 2022. Then the seat will be up again for a full six-year term.

Kyl, an experienced foreign policy hand, will be entering a narrowly divided Senate where Republicans could gain or lose seats in November.

The GOP is hoping he’ll be a more reliable partisan vote than McCain, whose opposition to a partial repeal of President Obama’s health care law pitched the party into turmoil last year.

Kyl is well-respected in Arizona and has been able to avoid many of the battles with activists that complicated McCain’s career and that of the state’s other senator, Jeff Flake, who is retiring because his feud with Trump made his re-election impossible.

McCain’s widow, Cindy, tweeted: “Jon Kyl is a dear friend of mine and John’s. It’s a great tribute to John that he is prepared to go back into public service to help the state of Arizona.”

Doug Cole, a veteran Republican consultant and former McCain aide, said Kyl was a good, safe pick.

“I think McCain would be very happy with the pick. Honors his legacy while putting some major horsepower for Arizona in the seat, at least for now,” he said.

Filling McCain’s seat marks a turning point in Arizona political history. That seat in particular has been held by two men who were heralded as giants of the Senate: McCain took the seat once held by Sen. Barry Goldwater after he had served in the House of Representatives.

The choice will also have political consequences for Ducey. He’s up for re-election this November against Democratic challenger David Garcia.

For Republican voters who are on the fence about Ducey, a choice they dislike could cause them to withdraw their support for the incumbent or stay home on Election Day.

Arizona law requires the governor to appoint a member of the same political party to fill a seat opened by the departure of a senator.

McCain’s office said an estimated 15,000 people came to see the late senator as he lay in state in the Arizona state Capitol for a public viewing several days after his death.

Nearly 3,500 people gathered at the North Phoenix Baptist Church the following day for a memorial service where former Vice President Joe Biden spoke.

Protests Erupt as Hearings for Trump’s Supreme Court Pick Kavanaugh Begin

Cries of “Cancel Kavanaugh” echoed in the Senate as confirmation hearings began for Brett Kavanaugh, President Trump’s pick for the next Supreme Court justice. The demonstrators, mostly women, urged the senators to vote no on Kavanaugh, with multiple protesters referencing his anti-abortion views.

VIDEO: Protesters arrested in the hearing room for Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing asking the hearing to end. pic.twitter.com/ZCTcuwq7qZ

— Frank Thorp V (@frankthorp) September 4, 2018

Even before the hearings officially began, women wearing red robes and white bonnets as depicted in the TV series and book “The Handmaid’s Tale” roamed the Hart Senate Office Building, again, in protest of Kavanaugh’s anti-choice stance.

“This lifetime appointment will be devastating to women’s rights, voting rights, gay rights,” one of the protesters shouted, according to The Washington Post. Another protester shouted, “An illegitimate president cannot make a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court.”

The protesters were quickly escorted out of the hearing room by the Capitol Police. According to the Post, 22 people were arrested on suspicion of disorderly conduct.

The Democratic senators on the Judiciary Committee appeared to side with the protesters. They attempted to adjourn the hearing before its official start, citing the lack of document production for Kavanaugh, among other factors.

Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, D-Va., asked, “What are we trying to hide? Why are we rushing?”

Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., said, “We have not been given an opportunity to have a meaningful hearing on this nominee.”

Leahy, Harris and others referenced the failure to release multiple documents from Kavanaugh’s career, particularly, the Post reports, those from his time as a staffer for President George W. Bush. When 42,000 pages of those documents were released on the eve of the hearings, Democrats emphasized that a few hours was far from sufficient time to read them.

Democrats also raised the issues of the lack of hearings for Merrick Garland, President Barack Obama’s choice to fill the late Antonin Scalia’s Supreme Court seat, and the special counsel investigation into possible Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

Watch additional video of the protests and hearings here:

Brett Kavanaugh thanks his family in opening remarks after hearing begins with protests and calls for a delay https://t.co/PiEe7WVkrH pic.twitter.com/gKi6xuWcWf

— CBS News (@CBSNews) September 4, 2018

Woodward Book Reveals Trump Aide Privately Called Him an ‘Idiot’

An upcoming book by journalist Bob Woodward says President Donald Trump’s chief of staff privately called him an “idiot” and presidential aides plucked sensitive documents off Trump’s desk and thought he was often unaware of foreign policy basics.

Those are some of the explosive anecdotes in Woodward’s book on Trump’s first 18 months in office. The Washington Post on Tuesday published details from “Fear: Trump in the White House.”

Woodward quotes an exasperated Chief of Staff John Kelly doubting Trump’s mental faculties, declaring during one meeting, “We’re in Crazytown.”

Trump’s former lawyer in the Russia probe, John Dowd, is also said to have doubted Trump’s ability to avoid perjuring himself should he be interviewed by special counsel Robert Mueller.

The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

New Yorker Editor Disinvites Steve Bannon, Issues Defensive Statement

David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, revealed on Twitter on Monday he will no longer be interviewing Steve Bannon at the magazine’s annual ideas festival. After the withdrawal of several festival speakers—including director Judd Apatow, television host Jimmy Fallon, comedian John Mulaney, comedian and actor Patton Oswalt and actor Jim Carrey—Remnick announced Bannon had been disinvited and will no longer receive a speaker’s fee, free lodging or travel. He added he would still be interested in interviewing Bannon “in a more traditionally journalistic setting.”

Maybe they should have had an interview with Harvey Weinstein, or OJ, or Stephen Miller. Not all ideas deserve to be presented. Cosby isn’t in jail yet— maybe he can do a quick ten minutes. They did the right thing dumping him. Regardless, I love your podcast. https://t.co/ZLIA6zQJdE

— Judd Apatow (@JuddApatow) September 4, 2018

The New Yorker has been my holy grail for the whole of my writing life. There is no publishing credit I want more. I was writing an essay for them (online) about one of my favorite TV shows, but I just pulled it because I just… I cannot wrap my mind around this Bannon thing.

— roxane gay (@rgay) September 3, 2018

I bet that once David Remnick interviews him everyone will realize that Steve Bannon is wrong

— Julia Carrie Wong (@juliacarriew) September 3, 2018

“I have every intention of asking him difficult questions and engaging in a serious and even combative conversation,” Remnick told The New York Times earlier. The New Yorker editor notes in his statement that “the point of an interview … is to put pressure on the views of the person being questioned.”

The episode calls to mind NPR’s ill-fated decision to interview white supremacist Jason Kessler ahead of the second annual Unite the Right rally in Washington, D.C., last month. During that exchange, Noel King asked her subject if he thought “white people are smarter than black people” and offered such keen rebuttals as, “You sound like somebody who wants to tick people off.”

Despite acknowledging the concerns of readers and contributors alike, Remnick’s statement strikes a decidedly defiant tone, defending talks with the former White House aide as a means of better understanding why Donald Trump was elected and how he thinks. But unlike political adviser Stephen Miller or White House chief of staff John Kelly, Bannon is no longer a member of the Trump administration and has largely been irrelevant since his dismissal. (His effort to help elect Roy Moore as senator in Alabama last year was a spectacular failure.)

“[He] has not retired,” Remnick writes. And while this is technically true—Bannon has been giving interviews to every media outlet who will have him and working on a documentary called “Trump @ War,” all while stumping for far-right candidates across Europe—there’s nothing to be gained from giving a platform to an avowed white nationalist. That Remnick cites Bannon’s readership of The New Yorker is all the more confounding.

Read the statement in its entirety below:

A statement from David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, explaining his decision to no longer include Steve Bannon in the 2018 New Yorker Festival. pic.twitter.com/opayiw5GQ2

— The New Yorker (@NewYorker) September 3, 2018

Kaepernick Has New Deal With Nike Though He’s Not in NFL

Colin Kaepernick has a new deal with Nike, even without having a job in the NFL.

Kaepernick’s attorney, Mark Geragos, made the announcement on Twitter, calling the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback an “All American Icon” and crediting attorney Ben Meiselas for getting the deal done. Kaepernick also posted a Nike ad featuring his face and wrote: “Believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything. (Hashtag) JustDoIt”

Kaepernick already had a deal with Nike that was set to expire, but it was renegotiated into a multi-year deal to make him one of the faces of Nike’s 30th anniversary “Just Do It” campaign, according to a person familiar with the contract. The person spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because Nike hasn’t officially announced the contract.

The source says Nike will feature Kaepernick on several platforms, including billboards, television commercials and online ads. Nike also will create an apparel line for Kaepernick and contribute to his Know Your Rights charity. The deal puts Kaepernick in the top bracket of NFL players with Nike.

The NFL and Nike extended their partnership in March to run through 2028. Nike provides all NFL teams with game-day uniforms and sideline apparel that bears the swoosh logo.

Last week, Kaepernick scored a legal victory in his grievance against the NFL and its 32 teams when an arbitrator denied the league’s request to throw out the quarterback’s claims that owners conspired to keep him out of the league because of his protests of social injustice.

Kaepernick contends the owners violated their collective bargaining agreement with players by conspiring to keep him off teams. His case hinges on whether owners worked together rather than decided individually to not sign Kaepernick.

A similar grievance is still pending by former 49ers teammate Eric Reid, a Pro Bowl safety who joined in the protests.

On Friday night, Kaepernick and Reid, also now out of the league, were each given huge ovations when they were introduced and shown on the big screen during a match between Serena and Venus Williams at the U.S. Open.

Kaepernick began a wave of protests by NFL players two seasons ago, kneeling during the national anthem to protest police brutality and racial inequality. The protests have grown into one of the most polarizing issues in sports, with President Donald Trump loudly urging the league to suspend or fire players who demonstrate during the anthem.

Meanwhile, the league and players union still haven’t resolved whether players will be punished this season if they choose to kneel or demonstrate during the national anthem. Owners approved a policy requiring players to stand if they are on the sideline during “The Star-Spangled Banner,” allowing them to stay off the field if they wish.

But the league and union put that on hold after the Miami Dolphins faced backlash for classifying the protests as conduct potentially detrimental to the team — putting players at risk of fines or suspensions.

___

More AP NFL: http://apnews.com/tag/NFL and http://twitter.com/AP_NFL

President Ramps Up Attack on Jeff Sessions

WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump escalated his attacks on Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Monday, suggesting the Department of Justice put Republicans in midterm jeopardy with recent indictments of two GOP congressmen.

In his latest broadside against the Justice Department’s traditional independence, Trump tweeted that “Obama era investigations, of two very popular Republican Congressmen were brought to a well publicized charge, just ahead of the Mid-Terms, by the Jeff Sessions Justice Department.”

He added: “Two easy wins now in doubt because there is not enough time. Good job Jeff……”

Another blow in Trump’s long-running feud with Sessions, the president’s complaint fits with his pattern of viewing the Department of Justice less as a law enforcement agency and more as one that should do his political bidding. Typically the agency prides itself on independence from political influence, and investigators are never supposed to take into account the political affiliations of the people they investigate.

Trump, who did not address the specifics of the charges, did not name the Republicans. But he was apparently referring to the first two Republicans to endorse him in the GOP presidential primaries. Both were indicted on separate charges last month: Rep. Duncan Hunter of California on charges that included spending campaign funds for personal expenses and Rep. Chris Collins of New York on insider trading. Both have proclaimed their innocence.

The Hunter investigation began in June 2016, according to the indictment. It was not clear when the investigation into Collins began. The conspiracy alleged in his indictment supposedly began in 2017, though he was also under investigation by congressional ethics officials.

Hunter has not exited his race, while Collins ended his re-election bid days after his indictment. Both seats appear likely to remain in GOP hands, but the charges have raised Democratic hopes.

A spokeswoman for Sessions declined comment, and the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump did not have any public events Monday. He briefly exited the White House to a waiting motorcade, but then went back inside without going anywhere.

He has previously pressed Sessions to investigate his perceived enemies and has accused Sessions of failing to take control of the Justice Department. Trump has also repeatedly complained publicly and privately over Sessions’ decision to recuse himself from the federal investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia because he’d worked on Trump’s campaign.

Some of the issues Trump has raised have either already been examined or are being investigated.

The tension between Trump and Sessions boiled over recently with Sessions punching back, saying that he and his department “will not be improperly influenced by political considerations.” Still, Sessions has made clear to associates that he has no intention of leaving his job voluntarily despite Trump’s constant criticism.

Allies, including Republican members of Congress, have long advised Trump that firing Sessions — especially before the November midterm elections — would be deeply damaging to the party. But some have indicated that Trump may make a change after the elections.

“I think there will come a time, sooner rather than later, where it will be time to have a new face and a fresh voice at the Department of Justice,” Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina told reporters recently.

—

Eric Tucker contributed from Washington and Mike Balsamo contributed from New York City.

Lying With a Straight Face

DEATH ROW, SAN QUENTIN, Calif.— “There are no innocent people on death row in California.” Those were the words of San Bernardino County District Attorney Michael Ramos when he appeared in TV commercials to urge voters to pass Proposition 66 on the November 2016 ballot to speed up executions in California.

The measure passed, but his words were not true.

Many conservative, right-wing, death-penalty-supporting politicians, law enforcement personnel and just citizens want so badly to believe this untruth. I remember when conservative right-wing columnist Debra J. Saunders (who seemed to be the lone Republican on the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper editorial pages before she left the newspaper in 2016) used to quote California Gov. Jerry Brown in many of her pro-death-penalty speeches or columns by saying, “Jerry Brown told me that there are no innocent people on death row.”

Saunders, now a columnist for a Las Vegas newspaper, was not the only one to whom Brown expressed that opinion. When he was attorney general, in a letter June 30, 2008, to then-chair John Van de Kamp of the Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, Brown wrote, “I know of no defendant facing execution who is innocent of the crime for which he was convicted and sentenced.”

He may not have known of any, but that does not mean they don’t exist. From 1981 to 2018, four men sentenced to death in California were exonerated, the latest being on Brown’s watch this year. They were all innocent. A 2014 study for the National Academy of Sciences reported that, nationally, 4.1 percent of death row inmates are innocent. For California, that would mean that about 30 people of the 747 currently on death row are not guilty of the crimes for which they were sentenced to die.

Most recently, the California Supreme Court ruled in the case of Vicente Figueroa Benavides, a man who had been living on death row in the state of California for 24 years, that he was convicted with false evidence. The Kern County district attorney refused to retry this case, and in April of 2018, Benavides was walked off San Quentin prison grounds and into the arms of his family and attorneys a free man.

The California Supreme Court filed its opinion on this case in March of this year, and I have not heard a peep out of the mouth of Ramos, Saunders or any of the other death penalty supporters, or to use the words of University of San Francisco Law School professor Lara Bazelon, “innocence deniers.” Neither did Brown correct his past statements.

Any person with common sense would know that there have to be innocent people on death row and in prison, if only because this modern-day plantation and death camp is run and controlled by mere human beings who, by their very nature, make great mistakes, and some of them are also corrupt. We know for certain Ramos, Saunders, Brown and others who ever said there are no innocent people on death row in this state have been proved wrong.

Truth be told, and this is the case in any circumstance, “if there’s one, there’s more”—and that is a fact. Kern County is a conservative Republican county, just like San Bernardino, Riverside, San Diego and other counties with high death penalty convictions in this state. What happened to Benavides is not an isolated incident; it can’t be. Every inmate on death row in this state went through the same legal process that Benavides went through, and if false evidence was used against him, then false evidence may have been used in other death row inmates’ cases.

Look at my case. I was convicted with false evidence by the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department and district attorney’s office. Who is the district attorney of San Bernardino County presently? Michael Ramos, the same man who stuck his face in front of a TV camera and lied with a straight face when he said that there are no innocent people on death row. (He will only be in office through Dec. 31, as he was ousted by voters in June.)

Most Americans say they don’t trust politicians, nor do they trust the government. They say there is too much government, and they do not want the government to tell them what to say, think or believe. This is the Republican way of thinking when it comes to politicians and the government, whether it be state or federal.

Yet at the same time they refuse to acknowledge that certain politicians like Ramos, for example, are telling them who should live and who should die. They also claim the criminal justice system is so perfect there are no innocent people on death row, so you do not have to worry about an innocent person being tortured and murdered in your name by the government.

This is an American political narrative, to lie with a straight face to achieve an objective, which, for the most part and historically speaking, is to oppress the people deemed as “the other” in this divided country—especially the poor people who fill up these modern-day plantations and its death rows. In doing so, they drown out the voices of the people who they want to either keep in prison or murder. So, when people like me in places like this scream out at the top of our lungs that we are innocent, people like Ramos, Saunders, Brown and others can put their hand on a Bible and swear in the name of God that there are no innocent people on death row, and that any death row inmates who say they are innocent are lying.

And who are you, Mr. and Mrs. Society, going to believe: an elected district attorney or a convicted murderer? You need not even look at the “false evidence” or the prosecutorial misconduct or any of the other constitutional violations that may have happened, because you believe the government and its keepers do not lie.

The injustices that are happening all over this country, mostly to people of color and the poor, can no longer be ignored. Police misconduct is being reported across the country, in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Orange County, Calif.—everywhere. There are many people who are standing up, speaking out and fighting back against these injustices, while people like Ramos and others don’t want to admit these injustices exist. But they do.

To continue to lie about them with a straight face does great harm not just to individuals wrongly accused and prosecuted but at a cost to the integrity of a criminal justice system that has to work for all. Those same types of political liars back in the day said with a straight face there were “happy slaves” and “slavery was the best thing that could ever have happened to black people.” While I am a modern-day slave, I damn sure am not happy, nor were my ancestors. Like them, I am innocent, and I just want to be free, and that is no lie.

Rollback of Pollution Rules Will Hurt Coal Country

GRANT TOWN, W.Va.—It’s coal people like miner Steve Knotts, 62, who make West Virginia Trump Country.

So it was no surprise that President Donald Trump picked the state to announce his plan rolling back Obama-era pollution controls on coal-fired power plants.

Trump left one thing out of his remarks, though: northern West Virginia coal country will be ground zero for increased deaths and illnesses from the rollback on regulation of harmful emission from the nation’s coal power plants.

An analysis done by his own Environmental Protection Agency concludes that the plan would lead to a greater number of people here dying prematurely, and suffering health problems that they otherwise would not have, than elsewhere in the country, when compared to health impacts of the Obama plan.

Knotts, a coal miner for 35 years, isn’t fazed when he hears that warning, a couple of days after Trump’s West Virginia rally. He says the last thing people in coal country want is the government slapping down more controls on coal — and the air here in the remote West Virginia mountains seems fine to him.

“People here have had it with other people telling us what we need. We know what we need. We need a job,” Knotts said at lunch hour at a Circle K in a tiny town between two coal mines, and 9 miles down the road from a coal power plant, the Grant Town plant.

The sky around Grant Town is bright blue. The mountains are a dazzling green. Paw Paw Creek gurgles past the town.

Clean-air controls since the 1980s largely turned off the columns of black soot that used to rise from coal smokestacks. The regulations slashed the national death rates from coal-fired power plants substantially.

These days pollutants rise from smoke stacks as gases, before solidifying into fine particles — still invisible — small enough to pass through lungs and into bloodstreams.

An EPA analysis says those pollutants would increase under Trump’s plan, when compared to what would happen under the Obama plan. And that, it says, would lead to thousands more heart attacks, asthma problems and other illnesses that would not have occurred.

Nationally, the EPA says, 350 to 1,500 more people would die each year under Trump’s plan. But it’s the northern two-thirds of West Virginia and the neighboring part of Pennsylvania that would be hit hardest, by far, according to Trump’s EPA.

Trump’s rollback would kill an extra 1.4 to 2.4 people a year for every 100,000 people in those hardest-hit areas, compared to under the Obama plan, according to the EPA analysis. For West Virginia’s 1.8 million people, that would be equal to at least a couple dozen additional deaths a year.

Trump’s acting EPA administrator, Andrew Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist whose grandfather worked in the coal camps of West Virginia, headed to coal states this week and last to promote Trump’s rollback. The federal government’s retreat on regulating pollution from coal power plants was “good news,” Wheeler told crowds there.

In Washington, EPA spokesman Michael Abboud said Trump’s plan still would result in “dramatic reductions” in emissions, deaths and illness compared to the status quo, instead of to the Obama plan. Obama’s Clean Power Plan targeted climate-changing carbon dioxide, but since coal is the largest source of carbon dioxide from fossil fuels, the Obama plan would have curbed other harmful emissions from the coal-fired power plants as well.

About 160 miles to the south of Grant Town, near the state capital of Charleston, shop owner Doris Keller figures that if Trump thinks something’s for the best, that’s good enough for her.

“I just know this. I like Donald Trump and I think that he’s doing the right thing,” said Keller, who turned out to support Trump Aug. 21 when he promoted his rollback proposal. She lives five miles from the 2,900-megawatt John Amos coal-fired power plant.

“I think he has the best interests of the regular common people at the forefront,” Keller says.

Trump’s Affordable Clean Energy program would dismantle President Barack Obama’s 2015 Clean Power Plan, which has been caught up in court battles without yet being implemented.

The Obama plan targeted climate-changing emissions from power plants, especially coal. It would have increased federal regulation of emissions from the nation’s electrical grid and broadly promoted natural gas, solar power and other cleaner energy.

Trump’s plan would cede much of the federal oversight of existing coal-fired power plants and drop official promotion of cleaner energy. Individual states largely would decide how much to regulate coal power plants in their borders. The plan is open for public review, ahead of any final White House decision.

“I’m getting rid of some of these ridiculous rules and regulations, which are killing our companies … and our jobs,” Trump said at the rally.

There was no mention of the “small increases” in harmful emissions that would result, compared to the Obama plan, or the health risks.

EPA charts put numbers on just how many more people would die each year because of those increased coal emissions.

Abboud and spokeswoman Ashley Bourke of the National Mining Association, which supports Trump’s proposed regulatory rollback on coal emissions, said other federal programs already regulate harmful emissions from coal power plants. Bourke also argued that the health studies the EPA used in its death projections date as far back as the 1970s, when coal plants burned dirtier.

In response, Conrad Schneider of the environmental nonprofit Clean Air Task Force said the EPA’s mortality estimates had taken into account existing regulation of plant emissions.

Additionally, health studies used by the EPA looked at specific levels of exposure to pollutants and their impact on human health, so remain constant over time, said Schneider, whose group analyzes the EPA projections.

With competition from natural gas and other cleaner energy helping to kill off more than a third of coal jobs over the last decade, political leaders in coal states are in no position to be the ones charged with enforcing public-health protections on surviving coal-fired power plants, said Vivian Stockman of the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition.

“Our state is beholden to coal. Our politicians are beholden to coal,” Stockman said outside Trump’s West Virginia rally, where she was protesting. “Meanwhile, our people are being poisoned.”

And when it comes to coal power plants and harm, Schneider said, “when you’re at Grant Town, you’re at Ground Zero.”

Retired coal miner Jim Haley, living 4 miles from the town’s coal-fired power plant, has trouble telling from the smokestack when the plant is even operating.

“They’ve got steam coming out of the chimneys. That’s all they have coming out of it,” Haley said.

Parked near the Grant Town post office, where another resident was rolling down the quiet main street on a tractor, James Perkins listened to word of the EPA’s health warnings. He cast a look into the rear-view mirror into the backseat of his pickup truck, at his 3-year-old grandson, sitting in the back.

“They need to make that safe,” said Perkins, a health-care worker who had opted not to follow his father into the coal mines. “People got little kids.”

___

Raby reported from Charleston, West Virginia. AP Science Writer Seth Borenstein contributed from Washington.

Myanmar Court Gives Reuters Reporters 7 Years in Jail

YANGON, Myanmar—A Myanmar court sentenced two Reuters journalists to seven years in prison Monday on charges of illegal possession of official documents, a ruling met with international condemnation that will add to outrage over the military’s human rights abuses against Rohingya Muslims.

Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo had been reporting on the brutal crackdown on the Rohingya when they were arrested and charged with violating the colonial-era Official Secrets Act, punishable by up to 14 years in prison. They had pleaded not guilty, contending that they were framed by police.

“Today is a sad day for Myanmar, Reuters journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, and the press everywhere,” Stephen J. Adler, Reuters editor-in-chief, said in a statement. He said the charges were “designed to silence their reporting and intimidate the press.”

The case has drawn worldwide attention as an example of how democratic reforms in long-isolated Myanmar have stalled under the civilian government of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, which took power in 2016. Though the military, which ruled the country for a half-century, maintains control of several key ministries, Suu Kyi’s rise to government had raised hopes for an accelerated transition to full democracy and her stance on the Rohingya crisis has disappointed many former admirers.

As the verdict was announced in the hot Yangon courtroom, Kyaw Soe Oo’s wife started crying, leaning into the lap of the person next to her. Outside the court, police and journalists shouted as the two Reuters reporters were led to a truck to be taken away.

“This is unfair,” Wa Lone told the crowd. “I want to say they are obviously threatening our democracy and destroying freedom of the press in our country.”

Kevin Krolicki, Reuters regional editor for Asia, said outside the court that it was “heartbreaking for friends and colleagues and family of Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, who in addition to the outrage many will feel, are deprived of their friends and colleagues, husband and father.”

Wa Lone, 32, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 28, both testified they suffered from harsh treatment during their initial interrogations after their arrests last December. Their several appeals for release on bail were rejected. Wa Lone’s wife, Pan Ei Mon, gave birth to the couple’s first child in Yangon on Aug. 10, but Wa Lone has not yet seen his daughter.

The two journalists had been reporting last year on the brutal crackdown by security forces on the Rohingya in Myanmar’s Rakhine state. Some 700,000 Rohingya fled to neighboring Bangladesh to escape the violence targeting them after attacks by Rohingya militants killed a dozen members of the security forces.

Investigators working for the U.N.’s top human rights body said last week that genocide charges should be brought against senior Myanmar military officers over the crackdown.

The accusation of genocide was rejected by Myanmar’s government, but is the most serious official recommendation for prosecution so far. Also last week, Facebook banned Myanmar’s powerful military chief and 19 other individuals and organizations from its site to prevent the spread of hate and misinformation in connection with the Rohingya crisis.

“Today’s verdict cannot conceal the truth of what happened in Rakhine state,” Tirana Hassan, Amnesty International’s director of crisis response, said in a statement Monday. “It’s thanks to the bravery of journalists like Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, that the military’s atrocities have been exposed. Instead of targeting these two journalists, the Myanmar authorities should have been going after those responsible for killings, rape, torture and the torching of hundreds of Rohingya villages.”

The new U.N. human rights chief, former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, called the trial a “travesty of justice” and said she would urge the Myanmar government to release the journalists immediately.

Dozens of journalists and pro-democracy activists marched Saturday in Yangon, Myanmar’s biggest city, in support of the reporters. But in the country at large, with an overwhelming Buddhist majority, there is widespread prejudice against the Rohingya, and in the government and military, there is near-xenophobic sensitivity to foreign criticism.

Myanmar’s courts are one of the country’s most conservative and nationalistic institutions, and the darkened political atmosphere had seemed unlikely to help the reporters’ cause.

The court earlier this year declined to stop the trial after an initial phase of presentation of evidence, even though a policeman called as a prosecution witness testified that his commander had ordered that documents be planted on the journalists. After his testimony, the officer was jailed for a year for violating police regulations and his family was kicked out of police housing.

Other testimony by prosecution witnesses was contradictory, and the documents presented as evidence against the reporters appeared to be neither secret nor sensitive. The journalists testified they did not solicit or knowingly possess any secret documents.