Finally Friday Reads: Trump’s latest Bugaboo

The proposed grant was later opened up to allow a broader set of invited groups to apply for $1 million of funding, though it is still intended for the same purpose, according to people with knowledge of the process. The State Department declined to say whether Lex Libertas will be among those invited to compete, citing ongoing deliberations, but said the Trump administration has serious concerns about the human rights situation in South Africa that need to be addressed. Lex Libertas did not respond to questions about the organization or the proposed grant.

Former diplomats who have worked extensively on human rights told us they were shocked that the victimization of white South Africans would be prioritized over the serious issues elsewhere in the region.

“It’s laughable to suggest that on the African continent, the prime issue of human rights concern is whites in South Africa,” one former agency official said when we asked him about the grant. South Africa is plagued by violence, but extensive research has found that white South African farmers are not victims of crime at higher rates than other groups.

As usual, Trump’s biggest bugbear is people of color. It amazes me that Congress just can’t (or won’t) figure out a way to stop this.  We’ve have breaking news today that Todd Blanche will be the next AG. Once again, Senator Bill Cassiday, Lousyana, has folded. Any chance of doing the right thing just is not possible for him. This is from the New York Times. “Cassidy Will Back Blanche, Salvaging His Confirmation. The Louisiana senator said that, despite reservations, he would back President Trump’s pick for attorney general, giving Republicans enough votes for a majority.”  He’s the Doctor Senator who also enabled RFK jr to climb on his wrecking ball and go after our Health System. The story is reported by Michael Gold and Carl Hulse.

Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana, said on Friday that he would support Todd Blanche’s nomination as attorney general, effectively saving the confirmation of President Trump’s pick after two other Republican senators said they would oppose him.

Mr. Cassidy, who lost his re-election bid to a Trump-backed challenger, said in a speech on the Senate floor that he had deep concerns about “apparent lawfare,” the phrase he has used to refer to the Justice Department’s targeting of the president’s political enemies.

But Mr. Cassidy said that after much consideration, he had come to believe that Mr. Blanche, who has served as the president’s personal lawyer, would be better positioned to push back against Mr. Trump’s norm-busting demands than an alternative.

“Mr. Blanche is not perfect, and he will tell you this,” Mr. Cassidy said. “But the choice is not between perfection and Mr. Blanche. It is between Mr. Blanche and another acting attorney general, who may not run the department effectively under President Trump.”

He announced his decision hours after Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska became the second Republican to oppose Mr. Blanche’s confirmation, joining Senator Susan Collins of Maine. That threw the nominee’s fate into doubt, given that he could not afford additional Republican defectors, and intensified attention on Mr. Cassidy.

Ms. Murkowski said in a statement that she, too, harbored concerns over the “politicization” of the Justice Department. But the conclusion she reached was the opposite of Mr. Cassidy’s: She said that she feared that Mr. Blanche would “fail to check the worst impulses of this administration.”

Ms. Murkowski cited the department’s handling of the release of the Epstein files, which Mr. Blanche oversaw, and the settlement agreement that Mr. Blanche negotiated in Mr. Trump’s lawsuit against the I.R.S., which included the creation of a $1.8 billion compensation fund that could have been used to pay people charged in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

“The country needs an attorney general who will check the worst impulses of this administration,” Ms. Murkowski said. “I hope Mr. Blanche is able to achieve that, if confirmed, but I simply do not have confidence that will be the case.”

Ms. Collins, who is running for re-election in a state that Mr. Trump lost in 2024, said on Tuesday that she would vote against Mr. Blanche over similar concerns. Given the continued absence of Senator Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican who has been gone for nearly eight weeks because of illness, Mr. Blanche could afford to lose no more than two Republican votes and still win a majority for confirmation over the opposition of Democrats.

We lose again, as Steve Benen explains the latest attack on renewable energy in the Maddow Blog. “Team Trump uses taxpayer money to scuttle yet another renewable energy project. As one key Democratic member of Congress summarized, “It is hard to imagine a more backwards use of taxpayer money.”

There’s no shortage of lessons to be learned from the U.S. war with Iran, but high on the list is that it’s in Americans’ interest to embrace renewable energy — not just because it’s cleaner and cheaper, but also because it helps shield consumers from international turmoil in an increasingly volatile sector.

It’s a basic idea the Trump administration doesn’t want to understand. The New York Times reported this week:

The Trump administration will pay the German energy firm RWE $1.22 billion to abandon plans to build wind farms off the coasts of New York, California and Louisiana, the company announced on Thursday. […]

Under the agreement, RWE will voluntarily surrender three leases it owned for wind farms in federal waters.

If this sounds at all familiar, it’s not your imagination. In March, the Republican administration announced that it had agreed to pay a foreign company almost $1 billion in American taxpayer money to abandon two wind farm projects that would have produced enough electricity to power more than 1.3 million homes and businesses across New York, New Jersey and North Carolina.

At the administration’s insistence, the company will instead proceed with different energy projects that will cost more and pollute more. Put another way, thanks to a model imposed by President Donald Trump, many American consumers will pay for the privilege of paying more to turn on the lights, all while polluting our own air.

Then in April, it happened again, when the Republican administration announced plans to pay energy companies almost $900 million to abandon plans for two offshore wind farms. Two months later, Team Trump spent $765 million to buy back another group of offshore wind leases.

In late June, a fourth example emerged, when the administration announced plans to pay Duke Energy $129 million to abandon an offshore wind project off the coast of North Carolina.

With a fifth instance this week, the combined price tag for the developments is approaching $4 billion.

I remain mindful that the president has been on a personal crusade against wind power since he lost a fight a decade ago to block a project visible from one of his golf courses in Scotland. This generated such fanatical hatred for wind power that Trump, in 2019, publicly suggested that the sound generated by wind turbines “causes cancer.” (It does not.)

As recently as last month, the Republican also started telling the public that wind energy harms the environment. (That’s bonkers, too.)

But that doesn’t make the latest developments any easier to defend. At a time when the U.S. would benefit from more renewable energy projects, the Trump administration keeps spending billions to scuttle renewable energy projects.

And it’s not like the business sector does us any favors either. Take a look at this article from CNBC.  “Trump teased an Iran deal that didn’t come, but markets soared. Here’s why it keeps happening.” I’d like to make a suggestion that there is no such thing as a rational market when all the leaders in your government are incompetent and self-dealing.  There’s only actors with money trying to get the most out of it. Kevin Breuninger has the analysis.