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Sunday, October 17, 2021

RSN: Jonathan Chait | Is Kyrsten Sinema Just the Glenn Greenwald of Senators?

 


 

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17 October 21

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Kyrsten Sinema participates in a coin toss at an Arizona State football game on November 3, 2018. (photo: Christian Petersen/Getty Images)
Jonathan Chait | Is Kyrsten Sinema Just the Glenn Greenwald of Senators?
Jonathan Chait, New York Magazine
Chait writes: "The Senate's most peculiar and inscrutable member has inspired numerous theories, not all mutually exclusive. Here are the five most popular."

ALSO SEE: Kyrsten Sinema's Poll Numbers Should Terrify Her

The fate of Joe Biden’s presidency is increasingly subject to the whims of Senator Kyrsten Sinema. Yet as a decision deadline gets closer, the question of just what Sinema wants, and why she wants it, is becoming less and less clear. What kind of deal does she want? Does she want a deal at all? Does she even want a political career?

The Senate’s most peculiar and inscrutable member has inspired numerous theories, not all mutually exclusive. Here are the five most popular.

1. She’s the Glenn Greenwald of senators.

The evidence: Sinema used to hate Democrats and liberals from the left, self-identifying as a socialist and running as a Green Party member. Now she hates them from the right. The consistent theme in her career is a contempt for the hard, unglamorous work of programmatic liberalism.

The counterargument: Unlike Greenwald, between her career as a left-wing liberal-hater from the left and a liberal-hater from the right, she did have a brief stop as a relatively standard-issue Democrat.

2. She’s just a narcissist.

The evidence: Has worn a “Fuck Off” ring. Enjoys displays of flamboyant trolling, like doing a curtesy while performing an exaggerated thumbs-down to oppose a minimum-wage increase. Voted against the Trump tax cuts but now reportedly opposes rolling them back even in part.

The counterargument: Sinema doesn’t seem to merely want chaos. Her positions line up closely with what wealthy lobbyists desire. She wants low taxes for the wealthy, and doesn’t want to let the federal government negotiate down the cost of prescription drugs.

3. She wants to be an independent.

The evidence: Sinema has reportedly tried to fashion herself after John McCain, seeking out high-profile confrontations with her party, even aping McCain’s thumbs-down moment. Michelle Cottle makes the case for why Sinema can and should leave her party and run as an independent in 2024.

The counterargument: It’s not impossible to win as an independent, but it’s extremely hard. Senators Bernie Sanders and Angus King are both independents, but they caucus with the Democrats and rely on overwhelming Democratic Party support to hold their seats. If Sinema leaves the party, she’ll be running against an actual Democratic nominee who will win most of the nonconservative votes.

4. She wants to be a lobbyist.

The evidence: She is putting her career at risk for no apparent political benefit. The independent path is extremely dicey, and polling shows she would lose a one-on-one race to any one of several potential Democratic primary challengers by margins ranging from 30 to 40 points.

If she is sabotaging her chances of winning reelection while taking positions that line up perfectly with wealthy interests, maybe she just wants to work for them instead of the public?

The counterargument: You don’t actually need to work for wealthy interests as an elected official in order to get a job as a lobbyist. They’re happy to hire Democrats with liberal views and pay them to change their mind.

5. She’s drawn to flattery and repelled by criticism.

The evidence: Some people are highly sensitive to praise and criticism, and allow their worldview to be shaped by it. They meet new friends who seem impressed by them, and suddenly find the arguments made by these new friends compelling. Meanwhile, they have a new group of enemies who berate them, and they react by growing more skeptical about everything their critics think, even things they once believed themselves.

We’ve all seen this irrational process happen to people we know, including people who write about politics for a living. Why not Sinema?

The counterargument: It’s an insult to suggest Sinema would be so mentally weak as to engineer a moral and political catastrophe out of a petty weakness for flattery. She is indisputably a brilliant, moral, thoughtful, courageous, principled leader, as well as a world-class athlete and quite possible the greatest human being who has ever lived.



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Kyrsten Sinema Received the Legal Maximum of Donations From Several Known GOP Donors, New FEC Filings ShowSen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., is opposed to the current prescription drug pricing proposals in both the House and Senate bills, two sources familiar with her thinking said. (photo: Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP)

Kyrsten Sinema Received the Legal Maximum of Donations From Several Known GOP Donors, New FEC Filings Show
Connor Perrett, Insider
Perrett writes: "Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, a Democrat, received the maximum donation allowed by law by several longtime GOP donors, according to a campaign fundraising report filed Friday with the Federal Election Commission."

Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, a Democrat, received the maximum donation allowed by law by several longtime GOP donors, according to a campaign fundraising report filed Friday with the Federal Election Commission.

According to the FEC data, first reported by Mother Jones, Sinema raised $1.1 million between July and September this year, about the same amount she raised in previous fundraising cycles, according to the report, despite growing frustration among Arizona Democrats.

Included in the FEC disclosure are several GOP donors who have previously supported efforts to elect former President Donald Trump and to help Republicans get the majority in the Senate. The maximum individual contribution limit is $2,900 per election, with a maximum of $5,800 in a two-year period, according to FEC guidelines.

Among those who made the maximum donation was Minnesota billionaire Stan Hubbard, who regularly donates to the RNC and supported Scott Walker and eventually Trump's campaign for president through donations to a super PAC, Mother Jones reported.

Jimmy Haslam, the owner of the Cleveland Brown's and Pilot truck stops, and his wife, Susan, individually donated the maximum legal amount to Sinema on September 30, Mother Jones reported, citing the FEC data. According to the report, Haslam has given at least $425,000 to the Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC associated with Sen. Mitch McConnell that works to elect Republicans in the Senate.

Other GOP donors who backed Sinema include Marc Rowan, the CEO of the private equity firm Apollo who backed Trump's failed bid for reelection, and his wife, Carolyn, who individually donated the maximum legal limit. Private equity executive Anthony De Nicola, who also has backed the Senate Leadership Fund, also donated the maximum legal limit to Sinema, according to Mother Jones.

Progressives and other Democrats have grown frustrated with Sinema, who has made headlines in recent months for her reluctance to support key pieces of President Joe Biden's agenda. Sinema is currently fundraising in Europe, per The New York Times.

Both Sinema and West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin have been opposed to parts of a Democratic spending plan to invest in climate, education, and healthcare spending. While Manchin has been clear about wanting to cut the price tag of the proposal, it's largely unclear what Sinema would support, as Insider previously reported.

Sinema, however, has reportedly been opposed to raising tax rates for individuals and large corporations, said two Senate Democratic aides familiar with the matter. Her position threatens to deprive the package of over $700 billion in revenue to pay for Biden's "Build Back Better" agenda.

Sinema, a first-term lawmaker, is not up for re-election until 2024.


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A Dead Black Woman's Body Was Found in an Alabama Police Van, There Is No ExplanationThe grieving family of Christina Nance, 29 (above), who was found dead one week ago in an old unused police van outside the Huntsville Police Department, is demanding answers. (photo: GoFundMe.com)

A Dead Black Woman's Body Was Found in an Alabama Police Van, There Is No Explanation
Biba Adams, The Grio
Adams writes: "Nance's grieving relatives want Huntsville Police to release surveillance footage from their parking lot cameras."

Nance’s grieving relatives want Huntsville Police to release surveillance footage from their parking lot cameras.

The family of a young woman in Alabama, who was found dead one week ago in an old unused police van outside the Huntsville Police Department, is demanding answers.

Christina Nance’s grieving kin is asking the police department to release surveillance footage from the cameras mounted in the parking lot. Her sister, Latausha Nance, told WHNT that police officials told the family they weren’t sure how far back the camera’s captured footage went. Additionally, the news outlet said its reporters had not heard back from the department regarding the footage.

The Nance family also says they have not been told how long the 29-year-old woman’s body languished in the police department parking lot. On Monday, Latausha Nance said she last saw her sister two weeks before her body was discovered on Oct. 7. The sisters were in Latausha’s car.

“I just looked back at her,” the mourning sibling said, “and she was just smiling, and I said, ‘Christina, why are you smiling like that?’ and she just said, ‘Oh nothing, it’s nothing.’ That’s the last memory I have of my sister,”

A community protest is set for Friday in Huntsville, at the Madison County Jail.

In a GoFundMe.com post, Whitney Nance, another sister of Christina, wrote that her dead sibling “was very loved, a very good person, a funny and fun person to be around! If you knew her you would’ve love her spirit, she was very smart and loving.”

According to Newsweek, Whitney told a local outlet that Christina’s relatives “do not believe that our sister would just randomly walk to a van and climb in it. First of all, why wasn’t the van locked on police property?”

She also added that Christina had often visited the police department for help and had previously called family members to pick her up there. Police noted that she had been arrested for multiple nonviolent offenses over the past eight years.

Huntsville Police have said there is no sign of foul play in Christina Nance’s death; however, her family said they don’t know how she got into the van in the first place.

At a news conference Sunday, they made clear they won’t stop searching for the truth. The family successfully raised just over the $1,700 their online fundraiser sought.

“We really don’t know how our relative’s body was found inside a police van on police property, and we need some justice,” Frank Matthews, a cousin of the Nances, said Sunday. “We need some clarity, and Christina cannot speak for herself.”

An autopsy will be performed to determine the cause of Christina’s death. Her family contends that, depending on the results, they may consider conducting an autopsy of their own.



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Democrats Step Up Pressure on Biden on Student Loan ForgivenessRep. Pramila Jayapal. (photo: Getty Images)

Democrats Step Up Pressure on Biden on Student Loan Forgiveness
Alex Gangitano and Sylvan Lane, The Hill
Excerpt: "Democrats are once again pressing President Biden to act on student loan forgiveness, stepping up the pressure on the White House to deal with the issue even as it struggles to bring a divided party together around the president’s agenda."

Democrats are once again pressing President Biden to act on student loan forgiveness, stepping up the pressure on the White House to deal with the issue even as it struggles to bring a divided party together around the president’s agenda.

“Today would be a great day for President Biden and Vice President Harris to #CancelStudentDebt,” Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) tweeted on Thursday. Schumer regularly hits the White House on the issue on Twitter.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, similar tweeted on Thursday: “Student debt relief is good for people and good for the economy. @POTUS can and must lift the burden of student debt for 43 million Americans.”

Progressives want Biden to forgive up to $50,000 in federally held student debt per borrower. Doing so would wipe out all federal student debt for about 80 percent of the roughly 44 million Americans who collectively owe the federal government more than $1.5 trillion.

While Biden has ruled out canceling that much debt through executive action, he has opened the door to a smaller debt forgiveness plan with income requirements. He’s previously expressed a willingness to forgive as much as $10,000 per borrower, which would cover roughly 40 percent of federal student borrowers.

Broad-based student loan forgiveness has rapidly gained support among Democratic lawmakers amid the coronavirus pandemic. While progressives have long supported an ambitious level of forgiveness as a way to close the racial wealth gap, party leaders such as Schumer have come around to the idea since Biden’s election.

Debt relief advocates argue the issue could also help Democrats in next year’s midterms.

“I think moderates who are running in tough races, this is going to be the difference for them, whether or not student debt gets cancelled,” said Thomas Gokey, organizer and co-founder of the Debt Collective.

Polling, however, suggests most voters do not support forgiving loans for all student borrowers.

Just 27 percent of respondents to a March poll conducted by Grinnell College supported forgiving student loans “for all borrowers,” including just 41 percent of those who voted for Biden in 2020. Thirty-nine percent of respondents said they’d support forgiveness “only for those in need,” including 48 percent of Biden voters.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has expressed doubts about both Biden’s power to wipe out student loans on his own and the political wisdom of doing so.

“Suppose your ... child just decided they at this time did not want to go to college, but you're paying taxes to forgive somebody else's obligations. You may not be happy about that,” Pelosi told reporters in July.

The Biden administration has already wiped out roughly $9 billion in student loans held either by borrowers who were defrauded by for-profit colleges or those who qualified for pre-existing but dysfunctional forgiveness programs.

The Department of Education this week announced it would temporarily allow student borrowers to claim credit on all federal loan and repayment programs toward forgiveness, saying the action would “restore the promise” of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program.

The program cancels student loans for individuals who have worked in qualifying public service for 10 years and made 10 years worth of payments on federal loans, but left out hundreds of thousands of borrowers who qualified for the program under previous administrations.

Gokey dismissed the program, saying it would only benefit 20,000 people.

“So far, the only thing the White House has done has been the teeniest, tiniest little, they’ve wiggled their pinky, in this incredibly complicated public service loan waiver,” he said.

The Education Department also tapped Richard Cordray, former director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), to lead the Office of Federal Student Aid (FSA), which oversees companies contracted to collect student loan payments. Cordray recently announced the creation of a special enforcement office within FSA modeled after the aggressive approach the CFPB has taken to student loan servicers who allegedly harmed borrowers.

The dual threat of Cordray and new CFPB Director Rohit Chopra likely prompted Navient to exit the student loan market after years of federal and state lawsuits, said Brandon Barford, partner at research firm Beacon Policy Advisors. Even so, investigations into other firms could take months or years to show results to borrowers.

An administration official told The Hill that more action is coming.

“In the coming months we will unveil similar regulatory improvements to, income-driven repayment, borrower defense to repayment, and closed school discharges among others. We’re also reshaping the loan servicing environment to better emphasize borrower outcomes and protections. These steps take time but we are working to deliver a better and fairer student loan system for borrowers,” the official said.

But Barford expressed doubts that a broad-based wipeout is still in Biden’s plans.

“If they were going to do the loan forgiveness at any level unilaterally, I would think they would have done it already,” he said.

The administration also announced in August that it would no longer make those classified as totally and permanently disabled by the Social Security Administration apply for their federal student loans to be discharged.

“There’s been a big push from the White House to show all the debt they’re cancelling,” said Natalia Abrams, president and founder of the Student Debt Crisis Center. “We’ve seen small buckets of debt getting cancelled. It’s really important, it should happen, but a lot of this should have happened in previous administrations.”

Advocates were energized by a letter Rep. Ilhan Omar (Minn.) led with 19 other Democrats last week urging the administration to publicly release a memo that Biden requested from the Department of Education in April to determine his authority to cancel student debt.

Advocates argue that Biden has authority to cancel student loan debt under the Higher Education Act of 1965, which gave the Education secretary authority to back student loans.

“The reason you’re in student debt today is because Joe Biden woke up and made an active decision to keep you in debt,” Gokey responded. “We have to force him, he’s not going to do it on his own.”

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'Brutal Aggression': Venezuela Halts Talks With Opposition After Envoy Extradited to USColombian businessman and Venezuelan special envoy Alex Saab, has been put on a plane to the US to face money laundering charges. (photo: Ariana Cubillos/AP)

'Brutal Aggression': Venezuela Halts Talks With Opposition After Envoy Extradited to US
Guardian UK
Excerpt: "Venezuela's government is halting negotiations with its opponents in retaliation for the extradition to the US of a close ally of president Nicolás Maduro, who prosecutors believe could be the most significant witness ever about corruption in the South American country."

Alex Saab, an ally of president Nicolás Maduro, was extradited to face money laundering charges after a 16-month legal battle

Venezuela’s government is halting negotiations with its opponents in retaliation for the extradition to the US of a close ally of president Nicolás Maduro, who prosecutors believe could be the most significant witness ever about corruption in the South American country.

Jorge Rodríguez, who has been heading the government’s delegation, said his team wouldn’t travel to Mexico City for the next scheduled round of negotiations.

The announcement capped a tumultuous day that saw Colombian-born businessman Alex Saab placed on a US-bound plane in Cape Verde after a 16-month fight by Maduro and his allies, including Russia, who consider Saab a Venezuelan diplomat.

The Venezuelan government in September named Saab – who was arrested in June 2020 when his plane stopped in Cape Verde to refuel – as a member of its negotiating team in talks with the opposition in Mexico, where the two sides are looking to solve their political crisis.

Rodriguez, reading from a statement, called the decision to suspend negotiations “an expression of our deepest protest against the brutal aggression against the person and the investiture of our delegate Alex Saab Moran”.

The leadership of Venezuela’s opposition did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Venezuela, in a Twitter post by the ministry of communications, denounced the extradition as a “kidnapping”.

Hours after Saab’s extradition, Venezuela revoked the house arrest of six former executives of refiner Citgo, a US subsidiary of state oil company PDVSA, two sources with knowledge of the situation and a family member told Reuters.

The US Justice Department had charged Saab, who also has Venezuelan citizenship, in 2019 in connection with a bribery scheme to take advantage of Venezuela’s state-controlled exchange rate. The US also sanctioned him for allegedly orchestrating a corruption network that allowed Saab and Maduro to profit from a state-run food subsidy program.

Saab faces up to 20 years in prison. His lawyers called the US charges “politically motivated”.

Saab is expected to make his initial appearance in court on Monday in Miami, according to Justice Department spokesperson Nicole Navas Oxman, who expressed gratitude and admiration to the government of Cape Verde for its professionalism and “perseverance with this complex case”.

Cape Verde national radio reported the extradition on Saturday. The government of Cape Verde was not immediately available to comment.

In a Twitter post, Colombian president Ivan Duque called Saab’s extradition “a triumph in the fight against drug trafficking, money laundering and corruption by the dictatorship of Nicolas Maduro”.

The previous Trump administration had made Saab’s extradition a top priority, at one point even sending a Navy warship to the African archipelago to keep an eye on the captive.

The former Citgo executives, who were arrested in November 2017 after being summoned to a meeting at PDVSA headquarters in Caracas, were taken from their homes to one of the headquarters of the intelligence police, two sources said.

The six former executives had been released from jail and put on house arrest in April.
The group is made up of five naturalised US citizens and one permanent resident. The US government has repeatedly demanded their release.

“My father cannot be used as a bargaining chip,” said Cristina Vadell, daughter of former executive Tomeu Vadell. “I’m worried for his health, even more given the country’s coronavirus cases.”

The ministry of communications and the attorney general’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.


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Sunday Song: Tracy Chapman | Fast Car
Tracy Chapman, YouTube
Excerpt: "You got a fast car. I want a ticket to anywhere."

Lyrics Tracy Chapman, Fast Car.
Written by Tracy Chapman.
From the 1988 album, Tracy Chapman.

You got a fast car
I want a ticket to anywhere
Maybe we make a deal
Maybe together we can get somewhere
Anyplace is better
Starting from zero got nothing to lose
Maybe we'll make something
Me, myself I got nothing to prove

You got a fast car
I got a plan to get us out of here
I been working at the convenience store
Managed to save just a little bit of money
Won't have to drive too far
Just 'cross the border and into the city
You and I can both get jobs
And finally see what it means to be living

You see my old man's got a problem
He live with the bottle that's the way it is
He says his body's too old for working
His body's too young to look like his
My mama went off and left him
She wanted more from life than he could give
I said somebody's got to take care of him
So I quit school and that's what I did

You got a fast car
Is it fast enough so we can fly away
We gotta make a decision
Leave tonight or live and die this way

So remember we were driving, driving in your car
Speed so fast I felt like I was drunk
City lights lay out before us
And your arm felt nice wrapped 'round my shoulder
I had a feeling that I belonged
I had a feeling I could be someone, be someone, be someone

You got a fast car
We go cruising to entertain ourselves
You still ain't got a job
I work in a market as a checkout girl
I know things will get better
You'll find work and I'll get promoted
We'll move out of the shelter
Buy a bigger house and live in the suburbs

I remember we were driving, driving in your car
Speed so fast I felt like I was drunk
City lights lay out before us
And your arm felt nice wrapped 'round my shoulder
I had a feeling that I belonged
I had a feeling I could be someone, be someone, be someone

You got a fast car
I got a job that pays all our bills
You stay out drinking late at the bar
See more of your friends than you do of your kids
I'd always hoped for better
Thought maybe together you and me would find it
I got no plans I ain't going nowhere
So take your fast car and keep on driving

I remember we were driving, driving in your car
Speed so fast I felt like I was drunk
City lights lay out before us
And your arm felt nice wrapped 'round my shoulder
I had a feeling that I belonged
I had a feeling I could be someone, be someone, be someone

You got a fast car
But is it fast enough so you can fly away
You gotta make a decision
Leave tonight or live and die this way

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A US Small-Town Mayor Sued the Oil Industry. Then Exxon Went After HimSerge Dedina: 'The only conspiracy is [that] a bunch of suits and fossil-fuel companies decided to pollute the earth and make climate change worse, and then lie about it.' (photo: John Francis Peters/Guardian UK)

A US Small-Town Mayor Sued the Oil Industry. Then Exxon Went After Him
Chris McGreal, Guardian UK
McGreal writes: "The mayor of Imperial Beach, California, says big oil wants him to drop the lawsuit demanding the industry pay for the climate crisis."

The mayor of Imperial Beach, California, says big oil wants him to drop the lawsuit demanding the industry pay for the climate crisis

Serge Dedina is a surfer, environmentalist and mayor of Imperial Beach, a small working-class city on the California coast.

He is also, if the fossil fuel industry is to be believed, at the heart of a conspiracy to shake down big oil for hundreds of millions of dollars.

ExxonMobil and its allies have accused Dedina of colluding with other public officials across California to extort money from the fossil-fuel industry. Lawyers even searched his phone and computer for evidence he plotted with officials from Santa Cruz, a city located nearly 500 miles north of Imperial Beach.

The problem is, Dedina had never heard of a Santa Cruz conspiracy. Few people had.

“The only thing from Santa Cruz on my phone was videos of my kids surfing there,” Dedina said. “I love the fact that some lawyer in a really expensive suit, sitting in some horrible office trying to find evidence that we were in some kind of conspiracy with Santa Cruz, had to look at videos of my kids surfing.”

That’s where the laughter stopped.

The lawyers found no evidence to back up their claim. But that did not stop the industry from continuing to use its legal muscle to try to intimidate Dedina, who leads one of the poorest small cities in the region.

The mayor became a target after Imperial Beach filed a lawsuit against ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP and more than 30 other fossil-fuel companies demanding they pay the huge costs of defending the city from rising seas caused by the climate crisis.

Imperial Beach’s lawsuit alleges the oil giants committed fraud by covering up research showing that burning fossil fuels destroys the environment. The industry then lied about the evidence for climate change for decades, deliberately delaying efforts to curb carbon emissions.

The city’s lawsuit was among the first of a wave of litigation filed by two dozen municipalities and states across the US that could cost the fossil-fuel industry billions of dollars in compensation for the environmental devastation and the deception.

Dedina says his minority majority community of about 27,000 cannot begin to afford the tens of millions of dollars it will cost to keep at bay the waters bordering three sides of his financially strapped city. The worst of recent storms have turned Imperial Beach into an island.

One assessment calculated that, without expensive mitigation measures, rising sea levels will eventually swamp some of the city’s neighbourhoods, routinely flood its two schools and overwhelm its drainage system.

Imperial Beach’s annual budget is $20m. Exxon’s chief executive, Darren Woods, was paid more than $15m last year.

“We don’t have a pot to piss in in this city. So why not go after the oil companies?” he said. “The lawsuit is a pragmatic approach to making the people that caused sea level rise pay for the impacts it has on our city.”

That’s not how Exxon, the US’s largest oil company, saw it. Its lawyers noted that Imperial Beach filed its case in July 2017, at the same time as two California counties, Marin and San Mateo. The county and city of Santa Cruz followed six months later with similar suits seeking compensation to cope with increasing wildfires and drought caused by global heating.

Exxon alleged that the sudden burst of litigation, and the fact that the municipalities shared a law firm specialising in environmental cases, Sher Edling, was evidence of collusion.

Exxon filed lawsuits claiming the municipalities conspired to extort money from the company by following a strategy developed during an environmental conference at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, 25 miles north of Imperial Beach, nine years ago.

The meeting, organised by the Climate Accountability Institute and the Union of Concerned Scientists, produced a report outlining how legal strategies used by US states against the tobacco industry in the 1990s could be applied to cases against fossil fuel companies.

Dedina was also targeted by one of the US’s biggest business groups at the forefront of industry resistance to increased regulation to reduce greenhouse gases, the National Association of Manufacturers, and a rightwing thinktank, the Energy & Environment Legal Institute.

The manufacturing trade group was behind the efforts to obtain data from Dedina’s phone and documents in 2018. In its public disclosure request to the mayor’s office, NAM called Imperial Beach’s lawsuit “litigation based on political or ideological objections more appropriately addressed through the political process”.

Exxon is attempting to use a Texas law that allows corporations to go on a fishing expedition for incriminating evidence by questioning individuals under oath even before any legal action is filed against them. The company is trying to force Dedina, two other members of Imperial Beach’s government, and officials from other jurisdictions, to submit to questioning on the grounds they were joined in a conspiracy against the oil industry.

“A collection of special interests and opportunistic politicians are abusing law enforcement authority and legal process to impose their viewpoint on climate change,” the oil firm claimed. “ExxonMobil finds itself directly in that conspiracy’s crosshairs.”

A Texas district judge approved the request to depose Dedina, but then a court of appeals overturned the decision last year. The state supreme court is considering whether to take up the case.

The target on Dedina is part of a wider pattern of retaliation against those suing Exxon and other oil companies.

In an unusual move in 2016, Exxon persuaded a Texas judge to order the attorney general of Massachusetts, Maura Healey, to travel to Dallas to be deposed about her motives for investigating the company for alleged fraud for suppressing evidence on climate change. The judge also ordered that New York’s attorney general, Eric Schneiderman, be “available” in Dallas on the same day in case Exxon wanted to question him about a similar investigation.

Healey accused Exxon of trying to “squash the prerogative of state attorneys general to do their jobs”. The judge reversed the deposition order a month later and Healey filed a lawsuit against the company in 2019, which is still awaiting trial.

But similar tactics persuaded the US Virgin Islands attorney general to shut down his investigation of the oil giant.

Patrick Parenteau, a law professor and former director of the Environmental Law Center at Vermont law school, said the attempt to question Dedina and other officials is part of a broader strategy by the oil industry to counter lawsuits with its own litigation.

“These cases are frivolous and vexatious. Intimidation is the goal. Just making it cost a lot and be painful to take on Exxon. They think that if they make the case painful enough, Imperial Beach will quit,” he said.

If the intent is to kill off the litigation against the oil industry, it’s not working. Officials from other municipalities have called Exxon’s move “repugnant”, “a sham” and “outrageous”, and have vowed to press on with their lawsuits.

Dedina described the action as a “bullying tactic” by the oil industry to avoid accountability.

“The only conspiracy is [that] a bunch of suits and fossil-fuel companies decided to pollute the earth and make climate change worse, and then lie about it,” he said. “They make more money than our entire city has in a year.”

The city’s lawsuit claims it faces a “significant and dangerous sea-level rise” through the rest of this century that threatens its existence. Imperial Beach commissioned an analysis of its vulnerability to rising sea levels which concluded that nearly 700 homes and businesses were threatened at a cost of more than $100m. It said that flooding will hit about 40% of the city’s roads, including some that will be under water for long periods. Two elementary schools will have to be moved. The city’s beach, regarded as one of the best sites for surfing on the California coast, is being eroded by about a foot a year.

Imperial Beach sits at the southern end of San Diego bay. Under one worst-case scenario, the bay could merge with the Tijuana River estuary to the south and permanently submerge much of the city’s housing and roads.

The city has received some help with creating natural climate barriers. The Fish and Wildlife Service restored 400 acres of wetland next to the city as a national wildlife refuge which also acts as a barrier to flooding, and is expected to restore other wetlands together with the Port of San Diego. A grant is paying for improved equipment to warn of floods.

But that still leaves the huge costs of building new schools and drainage systems, and adapting other infrastructure. Dedina said that without the oil companies stumping up, it won’t happen.

“People ask, how did you go against the world’s largest fossil fuel companies? Isn’t that scary? No. What’s scary is coastal flooding and the idea that whole cities would be under water,” said the mayor.

“Honestly, bring it on. I can’t wait to make our case. I can’t wait to take the fight to them because we have nothing to lose.”


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