Newsom embraces dirty energy in bid to stave off blackouts

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California Gov. Gavin Newsom campaigned on shutting down Aliso Canyon, a gas storage facility that was the site of the largest methane leak in U.S. history.

Now, five years later, his administration is poised to inject even more gas into the sandstone chamber 8,500 feet beneath north Los Angeles in a bid to stave off energy price spikes and power shortages.

He's also blessed extensions of gas and nuclear power plants that were scheduled to be closed. Keeping the lights on takes precedence over California's clean energy goals, at least for now.

Newsom is grappling with the same nuts-and-bolts challenges of running the electric grid as other blue-state officials in New York as well as the Biden administration. The pivot reflects the awkward reality faced by Newsom and other climate-minded governors: Politics moves far faster than the building of solar fields, wind farms and transmission lines, while power blackouts and electric bill spikes hit home immediately.

“If there’s a blackout, it’s the governor’s fault," said former Gov. Gray Davis (D), who was recalled in 2003 partly due to rolling blackouts and electricity price spikes during his term. "Certainly they don’t send you congratulations when you keep the power on, but ultimately they’ll hold the governor responsible for maintaining the grid.”

Newsom is scarred from not only the state's bout with two nights of rolling blackouts in 2020, when energy demand spiked during a heat wave, but the memory of a political upset 20 years ago. He's keenly aware of the political risks and the real-world consequences of outages that affect not just comfort and convenience but health, safety and the economy.

“If that comes at the expense of the lights staying on, you know, you have to be practical,” Newsom spokesman Anthony York said earlier this month of Newsom’s position on delaying the nuclear and Aliso closures.

The Newsom-appointed Public Utilities Commission is scheduled to vote Thursday on whether to approve the Aliso Canyon expansion, which would boost storage by two-thirds to nearly 69 billion cubic feet.

His administration also extended the life of three aging natural gas plants in Southern California last month and is helping keep Diablo Canyon, the state's remaining nuclear plant, open despite his prior support as lieutenant governor for closing it.

Underpinning all of the extensions is a rapidly changing energy picture on multiple fronts. Extreme weather is becoming more common, producing dramatic swings in demand and extreme events such as wildfires and floods that can abruptly wipe out transmission.

At the same time, energy demand is climbing due to a push to electrify everything from cars to homes. And new sources of renewable energy are backed up for years in permitting bottlenecks.

“Climate change is making it harder to fight climate change,” said Patty Monahan, a California Energy Commission appointee, earlier this month during a meeting on extending the natural gas plants. “As we moved from a system that was really around how we just reduced demand for electricity to a system where we say ‘No, no, let's scale up as fast as possible because that's how we clean the air,’ it's stressing our system. We are finding it really hard.”

The CPUC has been studying closing Aliso Canyon since shortly after a 2015 leak from one of the 114 storage wells at the site, which sits at the foot of the Santa Susana Mountains near the neighborhood of Porter Ranch. The leaking well spewed methane along with benzene and other compounds, sickening residents. It went on for 111 days as attempts to plug it repeatedly failed and prompted 8,000 residents to relocate. Former Gov. Jerry Brown (D) directed the agency to close it by 2027, and Newsom backed closing it even earlier when he first took office in 2019.

Regulators are bucking heavy political pressure in favor of closing the site, including from Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and the three leading candidates to succeed her, California Democratic Reps. Barbara Lee, Katie Porter and Adam Schiff.

Others are backing the move, including consumer advocates worried about natural gas shortages and price spikes.

Customers of SoCalGas, the company that owns the storage facility, saw their bills skyrocket by 128 percent from December to January, a shock the company — and the federal Energy Information Administration — attributed to widespread cold, reduced gas flows and pipeline constraints that SoCalGas said could have been moderated by additional Aliso reserves.

Environmental advocates, community organizations and at least 11 legislators are skeptical of the claims, pointing to the profits that SoCalGas’ parent company, Sempra, recorded last winter.

“Prices spiked irrespective of inventories,” state Sen. Henry Stern (D-Sherman Oaks) and 10 other lawmakers said in a letter to PUC President Alice Reynolds last week. The letter noted other supply shortages over the last 10 years were not attended by such big price hikes. The CPUC is investigating the spikes, and Newsom asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in February to launch its own probe.

A PUC analysis published a year ago identified an “undeniable” link between Aliso storage and prices not just in Southern California but across the state. A staff report suggests the commission should expect to phase out the facility between 2027 and 2035, noting the challenges of replacing it with renewable electricity, building electrification and energy efficiency improvements.

SoCalGas spokesperson Brian Haas said in a statement that the company supports the state investigation and that Thursday's expected vote will "help advance our shared goal of maintaining energy reliability at just and reasonable rates.”

Stern said he wants to see Newsom take a more aggressive stance toward Sempra.

“He’s just got to fight,” Stern said in an interview. “We’re going to need him to put the gloves on and make things a little bit uncomfortable for people and push the envelope.”

Porter Ranch residents have been flooding a PUC web page with public comments opposing the expansion and calling on Newsom to keep his word to close the site.

“It is impossible for me to tell if anything has changed or what has changed in the governor’s perspective,” said Issam Najm, a neighborhood resident and environmental engineer who is involved in the closure proceedings. “I would expect him to chime in on this situation. We have not heard from him yet.”

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Trump fraudulently inflated his net worth by billions of dollars, New York AG says

NEW YORK — Donald Trump fraudulently inflated his net worth by as much as $2.2 billion per year, New York officials said in court filings unsealed Wednesday ahead of his upcoming civil fraud trial.

The new estimates came in filings from the New York state attorney general’s office, which is suing Trump, some of his adult children and his business empire for falsifying his net worth in an effort to obtain favorable terms from banks and insurance companies. The trial is set to begin Oct. 2.

As part of its motion for partial summary judgment in the case, the attorney general’s office provided an estimated range of how much Trump had fraudulently inflated his net worth, saying he falsely boosted it by between $812 million to $2.2 billion (or 17-39%) in each year from 2011 to 2021.

A lawyer for Trump didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.

The lawsuit accuses Trump and his children Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump of creating more than 200 misleading evaluations of the company’s finances, as well as other forms of misrepresentation. For example, the lawsuit alleges Trump falsely inflated the square footage of his apartment from 11,000 to 30,000, resulting in him declaring the apartment to be worth $327 million. That estimate would make the apartment worth significantly more than any apartment ever sold in New York City, according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit, filed by Attorney General Tish James last year, seeks $250 million in damages and a lifetime bar on the Trumps from serving as officers or directors in any New York companies.

Trump and his lawyers have contended that James is politically motivated, pointing to her vows during her 2018 campaign to pursue legal action against Trump.

The October trial over James’ lawsuit will be the first in a string of civil and criminal trials Trump is set to face in coming months, including two federal criminal trials, two state criminal trials and a handful of civil trials stemming from lawsuits.

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Super PAC mounts major effort to carry Burgum back to the debate stage

A super PAC backing GOP presidential candidate Doug Burgum is launching a huge national ad campaign in an effort to vault the North Dakota governor into the second debate next month.

Best of America PAC on Wednesday reserved over $4 million in advertising set to run nationally on Fox Business Network, Fox News Channel, the History Channel, Newsmax, TBS, TNT on the Fox broadcast network. The ads are set to run from Aug. 30 to Sept. 24, the day ahead of debate qualification.

The second Republican debate will be held Sept. 27 on Fox Business Network.

The national ad strategy is a departure from Burgum's campaign, which has concentrated its efforts in Iowa and New Hampshire in an effort to boost his standing in the first two states in the GOP nominating process.

But national ads have become a necessity for Burgum to keep him on the debate stage. In order to qualify for the Sept. 27 debate, candidates will need to hit at least 3 percent in two national polls, or 3 percent in one national poll and 3 percent in two polls conducted from separate early nominating states (Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada), in order to qualify by the Sept. 25 deadline. They will also need at least 50,000 donors, with 200 unique donors in 20 different states or territories

So far, Burgum has 50,000 donors and garnered at least 3 percent in two state polls. But not only does he not have a national poll, no national survey in RealClearPolitics' database has ever showed him over 1 percent.

Prior to the first GOP debate last week, Burgum injured his Achilles tendon while playing pickup basketball, springing him into the spotlight with questions of how he would participate in the debate. The North Dakota governor eventually made it to the debate stage and later fundraised off his injury with T-shirts.

The debate presented the best opportunity yet for Burgum to increase his national profile after he launched his long-shot campaign in June. Burgum spoke for nearly eight minutes while on stage last week.

Burgum has spent millions of his personal money to boost his campaign. He poured money into a tactic that offered donors $20 gift cards in exchange for donating as little as $1 to his campaign.

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Ryan Reynolds has transformed Wrexham. Who will save Britain’s other struggling towns?

Can the Hollywood takeover of a Welsh football club really be a model for regeneration?

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Dem Senate plots move amid spending clash with House GOP

The Senate is preparing its first big move in the fall spending fight.

Chuck Schumer is tentatively planning to bring up several spending bills for floor votes in mid-September, as the Senate majority leader works with Appropriations Chair Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and ranking member Susan Collins (R-Maine) to prepare the bills for prime time. Democrats hope it will set up a stark bipartisan contrast with the House, which has already struggled to pass GOP-backed funding bills ahead of the Sept. 30 shutdown deadline.

The votes could help the chamber advance its spending priorities in coming fiscal clashes with the House Republican majority, which hit some speed bumps before it passed a military construction bill in July and deferred action on an agriculture spending bill. The Senate will consider nominees when it returns from recess next week and likely move to the spending bills the following week.

Schumer and the two spending chiefs are leaning toward floor action on bills funding military construction, transportation and housing, as well as agriculture spending legislation, according to three people familiar with the matter. No final decision has been made, and it’s not clear whether the bills would be rolled together or considered separately; Senate rules mean individual bills take roughly a week to process.

“The Senate Appropriations Committee has passed all 12 bills to fund the government with strong — sometimes unanimous — bipartisan support. The Senate will work to get as much done as possible in September. To avoid a government shutdown, the House should follow the Senate’s lead and pass their appropriations bills in a bipartisan way,” Schumer said in a statement for this story.

Schumer's plans mark the latest move in a larger conflict with House Republicans, who are seeking to slow Ukraine funding and restrict government spending at large. Without regular funding bills, the federal government risks 1 percent spending cuts if Congress continues operating on a stopgap spending bill into January.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy and his House Republican majority do not want a catch-all spending bill, also known as an omnibus, and both chambers of Congress are urgently working to instead pass all 12 spending bills. Last year, McCarthy pilloried the sweeping spending bill devised by House Democrats and bipartisan Senate leaders, sitting out the talks and warning the episode wouldn't be repeated under his leadership.

Yet Congress is nowhere close to having all 12 departments funded under regular order. The House doesn't return from recess until the second week of September, and both chambers have a long way to go before they even pass their own versions of spending bills — let alone reconcile their different spending visions.

House Republican leaders are readying two of their own spending bills for September floor action, on Homeland Security and the Pentagon, though they are keeping their appropriations plans tentative, telling lawmakers that they “may” tee up floor action next month.

Both the House and Senate are working to pass short-term spending bills into December to give the two chambers more time to work out those issues.

Even that could be fraught with challenges. This summer, the Biden administration requested an additional $24 billion for Ukraine funding, $12 billion for disaster relief and about $4 billion for border security and shelter money. Some of that money could ride on the stopgap spending bill, also known as a continuing resolution.

The situation is further complicated by Hurricane Idalia, which hit Florida on Wednesday. Already, the state's Republicans are making noise about immediate disaster relief, with Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) saying he will try to approve new legislation when the Senate reconvenes next week.

“Floridians are doing their part and getting ready, and I will not allow Washington to continue playing games with disaster aid and the lives of those needing our help,” Scott said.

Still, Republicans will have to balance their request for more disaster money alongside the Biden administration’s Ukraine aid request. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell supports continuing to fund Ukraine’s defense against Russia, but many House conservatives and some Senate Republicans are more skeptical. At the same time, Schumer and spending leaders are working closely with Hawaii’s congressional delegation to help Maui recover from wildfires.

So it’s against that backdrop the Senate plans to begin the larger task of fully funding the government before the end of the calendar year while also juggling the more immediate Sept. 30 deadline, as well as tricky supplemental funding requests. Once each chamber has passed spending bills, like the military construction legislation, the House and Senate can enter into a conference to resolve their differences.

Jennifer Scholtes contributed to this report.

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China behind ‘largest ever’ digital influence operation

Groups linked with China’s law enforcement peppered more than 50 social media platforms with pro-Beijing messages, Meta says.

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Officials unveil “unprecedented” cybercrime takedown

Senior Justice Department officials on Tuesday revealed a major digital sting they carried out to quash malware cybercriminals have used for decades to launch ransomware attacks, break into corporate networks, and filch sensitive consumer data across the globe.

The operation, which they called “unprecedented,” involved FBI agents and law enforcement partners in six other countries — France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Netherlands, Romania and Latvia — slipping unnoticed onto the computer servers where criminals controlled the notorious QakBot malware. They issued commands to self-destruct it and then seized roughly $9 million worth of cryptocurrency from those behind the malware, United States Attorney Martin Estrada said Tuesday.

The campaign, which U.S. law enforcement planned over 18 months and then brought to a head over three furious days this weekend, amounts to “the most significant technological and financial operation ever led by the DOJ against a botnet,” Estrada said from a U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles.

Botnets — short for robot networks — refer to vast webs of computers that are infected with a common piece of malicious software. Cybercriminals control the botnets via a hub-and-spoke-like web of computer servers, which can then issue commands to the infected machines, harnessing their combined computing power to stage cyber attacks, breach corporate networks or illicitly harvest data.

The operators of botnets also tend to rent access to other cybercriminals via the dark-web, and QakBot’s enormous size made it “the botnet of choice for cyber gangs throughout the world,” Estrada said.

Over the course of the 18 month operation, U.S. and international law enforcement clandestinely gained access to the 52 servers controlling QakBot. That gave them a unique, behind-the-curtain look at how much damage the malware caused.

Cybercriminals infected 700,000 new victims with the malware over the past year alone, roughly 200,000 of which were in the U.S., according to U.S. law enforcement. They also used it to launch 40 different ransomware attacks, causing $58 million in damages.

“You can imagine that the losses have been many millions throughout the life of QakBot,” which has been active since 2008, said Estrada.

U.S. law enforcement did not announce any arrests on Tuesday. When asked who they believed to be responsible for the botnet, Estrada declined to say, citing the ongoing nature of the investigation.

U.S. officials have repeatedly warned that a large percentage of global cybercrime and ransomware activity comes from Russia. They accuse the Kremlin of turning a blind eye to digital crooks as long as they focus their activity abroad — a claim Russia denies. China also accounts for significant hacking activity within the United States, but authorities say a majority of it is state-sponsored. The Chinese government also denies sanctioning hacking efforts.

Given how long it has been operating and the financial nature of the crimes QakBot is associated with, it is likely that many cybercriminals from across the world have contributed to or rented services from the botnet.

The operation follows a string of recent digital takedown operations from the Justice Department, which has made a concerted push over the last three years to find new ways to stem a growing wave of cybercrime.

Because much computer crime occurs abroad, cybercriminals rarely face punishment, even if charged with a crime.

Donald Alway, the assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles field office, which spearheaded the case, said that the operation had dealt a major blow to cybercrime.

“We believe that this will effectively put the QakBot criminal groups out of business,” he said, and put an end to “one of the most devastating cyber criminal tools in history.”

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