Trump attacks DeSantis in Iowa over ethanol stance

Donald Trump criticized Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for opposing a federal program supporting the ethanol industry, but the tactic could open up the former president's mixed record on biofuels to scrutiny.

Trump in a campaign speech from Council Bluffs, Iowa, said Friday the state "needs to know" that DeSantis, his chief rival for the Republican presidential nomination, "totally despises" ethanol and has been fighting it "for years."

"Don't forget, he was a congressman, and he was voting against it and fighting for years to kill every single job supported by this very important industry,” Trump said. "Ending the Renewable Fuel Standard was one of his top priorities as a member of Congress. He wanted to end it. And if he had his way, the entire economy of Iowa would absolutely collapse."

The remarks seek to tie DeSantis to his previous support of efforts to eliminate the Renewable Fuel Standard, which requires oil refiners to blend a minimum volume of renewable fuel into the nation's transportation fuel each year.

It's a reoccurring political playbook in the influential corn state — one that resurfaced between Trump and President Joe Biden on the campaign trail in 2020 and emerged with Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who won the Iowa caucus in 2016.

“I fought for Iowa ethanol like no president in history and ethanol, period, like no president,” Trump said Friday.

The remarks put a microscope on Trump's own record during his time in the Oval Office. Trump earned praise from biofuels advocates over his move to extend the year-round sale of fuel blends with 15 percent ethanol, known as E15, which he highlighted in remarks Friday, although the effort was eventually struck down by a federal appeals court. 

Despite several meetings on the issue, Trump left the White House without crafting a deal on politically fraught decisions on biofuels policy.

"Now [DeSantis] is going to come on here and probably say, 'I'm actually quite in favor of ethanol. I think it's wonderful,'" Trump said. "One thing about a politician, ... when they have their initial thoughts, that's what they go back to."

DeSantis' press secretary Bryan Griffin said the former president's remarks Friday aren't the first and likely won't be the last "distorting" the governor's record, but said DeSantis is the candidate who shares Iowans' values.

"As president, Ron DeSantis will be a champion for farmers and use every tool available to open new markets," Griffin said in a statement.

Monte Shaw, executive director of the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association, said DeSantis’ previous attempts to undo the Renewable Fuel Standard are not an automatic disqualifier in the state, where ethanol policy is often seen as a “differentiator” during the GOP primary caucuses. Iowa voters have “open minds” — as evidenced by Cruz’s success in the campaign despite his opposition to the ethanol mandate, which was "nuanced," Shaw said.

“I don't find a lot of Iowans that care what a then-congressman did 10 years ago representing a district in another state,” he said, adding voters are more interested to hear about his national energy policy now.

He noted DeSantis has taken steps Iowa farmers could appreciate, pointing to his recent veto of a bill that would be “a de facto mandate” for electric vehicles.

The former president launched a “Farmers for Trump” coalition Friday in a statement that touted his support of access to new markets for ethanol and promised to reverse “the disastrous policies” of the Biden administration on Day 1. He told the crowd in long-running remarks that he would cancel every Biden policy "brutalizing" farmers — adding Biden is trying to "kill" Iowa ethanol and replace it with electric cars.

Trump also promised to allow export of ethanol across the globe.

“President Trump has proven himself to be the most pro-farmer president in our nation’s history,” said Iowa state Rep. Mike Sexton in a statement accompanying the launch of Farmers for Trump, which Sexton co-chairs.

But during his time in the Oval Office, Trump EPA’s actions on setting the blending requirements under the Renewable Fuel Standard were sometimes condemned by corn state lawmakers, farmers and biofuels producers, including issuing waivers that benefitted oil refineries, furthering the divide between the oil and biofuel industries.

Ahead of his remarks, Shaw called Trump’s record on ethanol a mixed bag, with the former president's support for the expansion of tax credits for carbon capture and sequestration a positive development that prompted new multibillion-dollar projects in Iowa, but noting that his approval of the refinery exemptions slashed demand for biofuels.

“There’s a lot of ethanol supporters and farmers I talk to that definitely have mixed emotions on his track record when it comes to biofuels,” Shaw said. “There were some very good things. There were some things that caused a lot of economic hardship for our industry. So if he's going to come out and focus on renewable fuels, we'd really like him to have a clear message on looking forward, not just talking about the past.”

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Top Dems break with Biden over sending cluster bombs to Ukraine

Key Democratic lawmakers are breaking with President Joe Biden over the controversial decision to send cluster bombs to Ukraine, arguing that providing the weapons, which are banned by more than 120 countries, cedes the moral high ground and will end up indiscriminately killing civilians.

Top Democrats on the House Rules Committee and the panels that fund the Pentagon and State Department lashed out in rare public statements broadcasting their break with their party’s president.

“The decision by the Biden administration to transfer cluster munitions to Ukraine is unnecessary and a terrible mistake,” said Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Mo.), the ranking member of the House’s defense appropriations subcommittee. “The legacy of cluster bombs is misery, death and expensive cleanup generations after their use.”

“These weapons should be eliminated from our stockpiles, not dumped in Ukraine,” she added.

Cluster bombs, officially called dual-purpose improved conventional munitions, are designed to take out multiple military targets by scattering large numbers of small “bomblets” over a wide area. They are banned by most NATO countries because the ordnance that fails to explode can end up killing civilians, even long after conflict has ended.

The Democratic lawmakers noted that Congress has barred the transfer of any cluster munition with a “dud rate” of greater than 1 percent, though Biden can waive the rule.

Pentagon spokesperson Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder said Thursday that officials will “carefully” select only the rounds with lower dud rates, for which there is recent testing, to send to Ukraine. The U.S. has large numbers of cluster bombs sitting in storage, which officials argue will help Ukraine break through dug-in Russian lines as Kyiv is rapidly running out of conventional ammunition.

Still, lawmakers joined with arms control advocates this week in saying the administration was making an unacceptable ethical trade-off that would kill civilians, alienate allies and damage the moral case to back Ukraine.

Progressive Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), the ranking member of the House panel that funds the State Department, tweeted she was “alarmed” at the move, while House Rules Committee ranking member Jim McGovern said that while he supports helping Ukraine, sending cluster bombs represents a break with NATO allies such as the U.K., France, Germany and Spain.

U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan on Friday defended the administration’s decision, saying, “Russia has been using cluster munitions since the start of this war to attack Ukraine.”

“Ukraine has committed to post-conflict demining efforts to mitigate any potential harm to civilians. And this will be necessary regardless of whether the United States provides these munitions or not,” he said. 

Still, even some more hawkish Democrats ripped the administration. Air Force veteran and House Armed Services member Chrissy Houlahan, in a statement Friday, challenged the assessment that cluster bombs would be the most effective means to back Kyiv.

“I challenge the notion that we should employ the same tactics Russia is using, blurring the lines of moral high ground,” said Houlahan, who co-chairs the bipartisan Unexploded Ordinance (UXO)/Demining Caucus. “And I challenge all of us to remember that this war will end, and the broken pieces of Ukraine will need to be rebuilt. History remembers not only who wins a war but also how a war is won.”

Humanitarian and civil rights groups also criticized the decision. Marc Garlasco, a former Pentagon official and military adviser at PAX Protection of Civilians, a Dutch NGO, noted that the actual dud rates in the field are much higher than those recorded during tests “conducted under perfect and unrealistic conditions.”

Comments from U.S. officials defending the decision do not allay the fears of many in the community, Garlasco said, expressing skepticism about the Pentagon’s latest test data showing lower dud rates.

Arms control advocates who were on a call with administration officials on Friday said that despite claims the cluster munitions being sent would have lower dud rates, there were no details about the types and sources of the cluster munitions the U.S. plans to send.

A Defense Department official, who was granted anonymity to speak ahead of an announcement, said the Pentagon had provided test results, which are classified, to members of Congress upon request. However, the official acknowledged that variables in the field can significantly affect the dud rate.

“Shoot this in the desert, dry, flat ground, you might get a totally different result than if you shot this in a mountain jungle,” the official said.

Still, there are also powerful members of Congress who support sending cluster munitions. House Foreign Affairs Chair Mike McCaul (R-Texas), House Armed Services Chair Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), and their Republican counterparts in the Senate have urged the move for months. The Democratic-led Senate Armed Services Committee last month advanced its version of the annual Pentagon policy bill with language backing it, too.

In a statement Friday, the Republicans hailed the administration move as relieving pressure on stockpiles of unitary missiles but slammed what they called its delay in sending a range of weapons over a “misguided fear of escalation” that they say risks the success of Kyiv’s counteroffensive.

The House Intelligence Committee’s top Democrat, Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, has said Washington should give Kyiv what it says it needs to win the fight, including cluster munitions, longer-range missiles and F-16 fighter jets. “From moment one, my view has been: Give the Ukrainians what they want and need. Frankly I wish that the United States and the administration had moved faster on providing more weaponry,” he said on CNN earlier this week.

Progressives, some of whom called in a letter last year for the administration to ban the use of cluster munitions by the U.S. military, have been lobbying the administration to refrain from this move for months.

A House Democratic aide said he pointed to that letter multiple times with State Department officials over recent months, to wave the administration off when it seemed to be mulling cluster bombs for Ukraine.

“There are a number of progressives who are really hacked off. We thought the communication was clear,” said the aide, who was granted anonymity to discuss tensions with the executive branch. “They can’t say we weren’t emoting clear signals this was a momentous step. A 6-year-old doesn’t step on an F-16 and lose their leg.”

House Foreign Affairs Committee member Colin Allred (D-Texas) defended Biden’s decision on MSNBC on Friday morning, saying there’s “no chance” of Ukraine and its allies losing the moral high ground to Russian troops he accused of war crimes and strikes on civilian targets.

”What we're trying to do, I think, is consistent with our values, to help the brave Ukrainian resistance kick the Russians out of their territory, and I'm sure President Biden thought about this deeply, and his team, and they decided this would help them do that — and I'm sure they'll also try to have a plan to deal with any of the fallout,” Allred said.

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U.S. approves cluster bombs in latest Ukraine weapons transfer

The Biden administration on Friday approved an $800 million weapons package for Ukraine which includes controversial cluster bombs, armored vehicles and air defense missiles.

National security adviser Jake Sullivan responded to humanitarian concerns about the cluster bombs by emphasizing the need to provide Kyiv with artillery and that Ukraine has already been targeted by Russia’s cluster bombs.

“We recognize that cluster munitions created risk of civilian harm from unexploded ordnance,” Sullivan said during a White House press briefing. “This is why we deferred the decision for as long as we could, but there is also a massive risk of civilian harm if Russian troops and tanks roll over Ukrainian positions and take more Ukrainian territory and subjugate more Ukrainian civilians because Ukraine does not have enough artillery.”

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Texas gunman in Walmart shooting gets 90 consecutive life sentences but may still face death penalty

EL PASO, Texas — A white gunman who killed 23 people in a racist attack on Hispanic shoppers at a Walmart in a Texas border city was sentenced Friday to 90 consecutive life sentences but could still face more punishment, including the death penalty.

Patrick Crusius, 24, pleaded guilty earlier this year to nearly 50 federal hate crime charges in the 2019 mass shooting in El Paso, making it one of the U.S. government’s largest hate crime cases.

Crusius, wearing a jumpsuit and shackles, did not speak during the hearing and showed no reaction as the verdict was read. The judge recommended that Crusius serve his sentence at a maximum security prison in Colorado.

Police say Crusius drove more than 700 miles from his home near Dallas to target Hispanics with an AK-style rifle inside and outside the store. Moments before the attack began, Crusius posted a racist screed online that warned of a Hispanic “invasion” of Texas.

In the years since the shooting, Republicans have described migrants crossing the southern U.S. border as an “invasion,” waving off critics who say the rhetoric fuels anti-immigrant views and violence.

Crusius pleaded guilty in February after federal prosecutors took the death penalty off the table. But Texas prosecutors have said they will try to put Crusius on death row when he stands trial in state court. That trial date has not yet been set.

As he was led from the courtroom, a family member of one of the victims shouted at Crusius from the gallery.

“We’ll be seeing you again, coward. No apologies, no nothing.”

Joe Spencer, Crusius’ attorney, told the judge before the sentencing that his client had a “broken brain.”

“Patrick’s thinking is at odds with reality … resulting in delusional thinking,” Spencer told the court.

Crusius became alarmed by his own violent thoughts, including once leaving a job at a movie theater because of those thoughts, Spencer said. He said Crusius once searched online to look for ways to address his mental health and dropped out of a community college near Dallas because of his struggles.

Spencer said that Crusius had arrived in El Paso without a specific target in mind before winding up at the Walmart.

“Patrick acted with his broken brain cemented in delusions,” Spencer said.

The sentencing by U.S. District Judge David Guaderrama in El Paso followed two days of impact statements from relatives of the victims, including citizens of Mexico. In addition to the dead, more than two dozen people were injured and numerous others were severely traumatized as they hid or fled.

One by one, family members used their first opportunity since the shooting to directly address Crusius, describing how their lives have been upended by grief and pain. Some forgave Crusius. One man displayed photographs of his slain father, insisting that the gunman look at them.

Bertha Benavides’ husband of 34 years, Arturo, was among those killed.

“You left children without their parents, you left spouses without their spouses, and we still need them,” she told Crusius.

During the initial statements from victims, Crusius occasionally swiveled in his seat or bobbed his head with little sign of emotion. On Thursday, his eyes appeared to well up as victims condemned the brutality of the shootings and demanded Crusius respond and account for his actions. At one point, Crusius consulted with a defense attorney at his side and gestured that he would not answer.

Crusius’ family did not appear in the courtroom during the sentencing phase.

The attack was the deadliest of a dozen mass shootings in the U.S. linked to hate crimes since 2006, according to a database compiled by The Associated Press, USA Today and Northeastern University.

Before the shooting, Crusius had appeared consumed by the nation’s immigration debate, tweeting #BuildtheWall and posts that praised then-President Donald Trump’s hardline border policies. He went further in his rant posted before the attack, sounding warnings that Hispanics were going to take over the government and economy.

As the sentencing phase got underway, some advocates for immigrant rights made new appeals for politicians to soften their rhetoric on immigration. Republicans, including Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, have pushed for more aggressive actions to harden the southern U.S. border.

Amaris Vega’s aunt was killed in the attack and her mother narrowly survived a softball-sized wound to the chest. In court, Vega railed at Crusius’ “pathetic, sorry manifesto” that promised to rid Texas of Hispanics.

“But guess what? You didn’t. You failed,” she told him. “We are still here and we are not going anywhere. And for four years you have been stuck in a city full of Hispanics. ... So let that sink in.”

Margaret Juarez, whose 90-year-old father was slain in the attack and whose mother was wounded but survived, said she found it ironic that Crusius was set to spend his life in prison among inmates from racial and ethnic minorities. Other relatives and survivors in the courtroom applauded as she celebrated their liberty.

“Swim in the waters of prison,” she told Crusius. “Now we’re going to enjoy the sunshine. … We still have our freedom, in our country.”

The people who were killed ranged in age from a 15-year-old high school athlete to several elderly grandparents. They included immigrants, a retired city bus driver, teachers, tradesmen including a former iron worker, and several Mexican nationals who had crossed the U.S. border on routine shopping trips.

Two teenage girls recounted their narrow escape from Crusius’ rampage as they participated in a fundraiser for their youth soccer team outside the store. Parents were wounded and the soccer coach, Guillermo Garcia, died months later from injuries in the attack.

Both youths said they still are haunted by their fear of another shooting when they are in public venues.

“He was shot at close range by a coward and there was his innocent blood, everywhere,” said Kathleen Johnson, whose husband David was among the victims. “I don’t know when I’ll be the same. … The pain you have caused is indescribable.”

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DeSantis campaign raised $20 million in first six weeks of campaign

The DeSantis campaign announced on Thursday that it had raised $20 million since Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis officially entered the Republican presidential primary six weeks ago, a show of fundraising prowess as DeSantis tries to position himself as the main GOP rival to former President Donald Trump.

The fundraising figures, reported earlier by Fox News, were celebrated by DeSantis campaign officials as the “largest first-quarter filing from any non-incumbent Republican candidate in more than a decade.”

DeSantis campaign officials celebrated the fundraising figures on Thursday, framing them as a sign of momentum for his candidacy.

“We are grateful for the investment so many Americans have made to get this country back on track,” campaign manager Generra Peck said in a news release. “The fight to save it will be long and challenging, but we have built an operation to share the governor’s message and mobilize the millions of people who support it. We are ready to win.”

Never Back Down, a super PAC affiliated with DeSantis, also announced on Thursday that it had raised $130 million since launching in early March, adding to the resources behind DeSantis’ candidacy.

The announcements follow reports on Wednesday from the Trump campaign and his leadership political action committee, Save America, that they together raised $35 million during the second quarter of 2023, despite state and federal indictments of the former president. The second-quarter figures were more than double what the Trump campaign and Save America raised in the first quarter of 2023.

DeSantis, who is currently in second place in national polls of GOP voters, has lagged in recent weeks amid concerns about his public demeanor and hiccups with local groups in key primary states. DeSantis allies and officials, however, have voiced confidence that the campaign is trending in the right direction ahead of primary debates and early contests and remains the clearest alternative in the GOP field to the former president.

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Literally off the charts: Canadas fire season sets records and is far from over

OTTAWA, Ont. — Canada’s 2023 wildfire season is unprecedented by many measures — but this is just the start.

“It's no understatement to say that the 2023 fire season is — and will continue to be — record-breaking,” Michael Norton, director of the Northern Forestry Centre with the Canadian Forest Service at NRCan, said Thursday during a technical briefing on the unfolding crisis.

There are 639 active fires across Canada, 351 of which are out of control, Norton said. “The total area burned now exceeds any year on record.”

An unparalleled number of people have also been displaced, with Indigenous communities particularly hit, in a national crisis that has spurred major international outreach and concern, in part due to smoke wafting across borders and the Atlantic.

Natural Resources Canada said it expects drought and above-normal temperatures to contribute to higher-than-normal fire activity through the summer. El Niño may exacerbate conditions, especially in northern Canada, Norton added.

Asked if wildfire smoke will continue to trigger air quality warnings in the U.S. and beyond, meteorologist Armel Castellan told reporters that modeling is tricky in a chaotic environment.

“The smoke goes both in the lower part of the atmosphere and higher up into the highway of the atmosphere where it can transport across oceans and right all the way down to, of course, the eastern seaboard, New England, parts of the United States,” he said. “We saw our same smoke make its way to England, Portugal, Spain.”

By many measures, it’s a record-setting year.

The most fires

There have been 3,412 so far in 2023, significantly above the 10-year average of 2,751.

“The occurrence of fire from coast to coast is unprecedented,” Norton said. “The actively burning part of the country is [typically] either eastern or western, not usually both. This year we see large problematic fires burning in both eastern, central and western Canada at the same time.”

The biggest burn

To date this season, 8.8 million hectares have burned. NRCan data pegged the 10-year average at 805,196 hectares. “This number is literally off the charts,” Norton said, “with at least three more months left in the active wildfire season.”

The previous record was set in 1989, when 7.6 million hectares burned.

Unprecedented displacement

More than 150,000 Canadians have been forced to leave their homes so far this fire season, “the highest number of evacuees from wildfire that we've ever seen over the past four decades,” Norton said.

He said Indigenous communities are disproportionately impacted by wildfire evacuations. “Sixty percent of First Nations reserves lie within or intersecting the wildland urban interface, areas where built infrastructure meets the forest.”

The largest international response

Norton called the response a “truly global effort,” listing Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, the U.S., Costa Rica and Portugal among the countries that have contributed forces. Spain, Chile, Mexico and France have also sent firefighters.

Canada is codifying firefighting cooperation agreements with many of the same countries.

Élise Racicot, Canada's ambassador to Portugal, most recently signed a memorandum of understanding with Tiago Oliveira, chair of the board for Portugal's Agency for Integrated Rural Fire Management.

The most expensive

Norton said that while it’s too early to estimate, he expects the direct cost of suppression will set a new record. “The total cost of wildfires to the economy and society is a much bigger question,” he added.

Emergency Preparedness Minister Bill Blair told reporters Thursday afternoon that his government would eventually offer financial support to cover the damages. "As we tally up the bill, … the federal government will be there to support provinces and territories and Canadians right across the country who've been impacted by the fires."

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Biden to crack down on junk health insurance

The Biden administration on Friday is expected to propose a new regulation cracking down on short-term health insurance plans, five Democrats with knowledge of the matter, who were granted anonymity to discuss the specifics of White House plans, told POLITICO.

The long-awaited rule will curtail a Trump-era expansion of the skimpy health coverage, which Democrats and patient advocacy groups have criticized for undermining Obamacare and its broad protections for patients with pre-existing conditions.

The move comes as the White House tries to focus the nation’s attention on the administration’s efforts to lower prescription drug prices for seniors, crack down on so-called junk fees, fight inflation and improve the overall economy.

President Joe Biden is also slated to give a speech Friday touting his health care agenda, during which a White House official said he plans to “announce major actions to lower health care costs and crack down on junk fees.”

The White House declined to comment, and the Democrats with knowledge of the matter cautioned that the timing of the rollout could still change.

But the White House’s budget office signed off on the proposed rule last week, according to a regulatory review notice posted to its website, a signal that the regulations had cleared the final internal hurdles. The new short-term health plan policy is designed to “ensure this type of coverage does not undermine the Affordable Care Act” and other health insurance markets, according to the rule's description.

The Obama administration in 2016 limited short-term plans to three months in an effort to get more people on year-round plans sold on the new federal and state-based exchanges created by Obamacare.

The Trump administration adopted regulations in 2018 that let people stay on short-term insurance plans for 12 months and renew those plans for three years. Critics at the time derided short-term plans as “junk” that would not protect people with pre-existing conditions.

Insurers must also post a warning alongside short-term plans alerting consumers that they don’t have robust coverage.

Unlike plans sold on Obamacare’s insurance exchange, a short-term plan doesn’t cover essential health benefits. For example, some plans limit doctor visits, others don’t cover prescription drugs.

CMS leaders in the Trump administration said the plans were meant to give consumers an alternative to higher-priced Obamacare plans.

Democrats and consumer advocacy groups counter that the short-term expansion was meant to sabotage Obamacare, which Trump unsuccessfully tried to repeal in 2017.

States can decide to prohibit short-term plans or limit their duration, and there are 12 states that do not offer short-term plans as of March 2023, according to data from healthinsurance.org.

Shortly after Biden took office, he signed an executive order directing agencies to reexamine any policies that “undermine protections for people with pre-existing conditions,” in a move seen as setting the stage for a major rollback of short-term health plans.

But the process has dragged on for more than two years, frustrating advocates and Democratic lawmakers who on multiple occasions publicly urged the health department to move faster.

“HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra should do everything he can to limit sale of such plans,” according to a February 2022 letter from 38 Senate Democrats and two independents. The letter called for immediately restoring the three-month duration cap and ban sales of such plans on all Obamacare insurance exchanges.

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