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High drama in Senate for pivotal Kavanaugh-Ford showdown
WASHINGTON — The Senate Judiciary Committee braced for a history-making clash as Brett Kavanaugh and one of his accusers awaited their chance to testify Thursday about her claim that the Supreme Court nominee sexually attacked her when both were teenagers.
The embattled appeals court judge emphatically rejected that allegation from Christine Blasey Ford as well as accusations from other women as Republican leaders struggled to keep support for his elevation to the high court from eroding.
The committee of 11 Republicans, all men, and 10 Democrats was to hear from just two witnesses on Thursday: Kavanaugh, a federal appeals court judge who has long been eyed for the Supreme Court, and Christine Blasey Ford, a California psychology professor who accuses him of attempting to rape her when they were teens.
Early Thursday, all was eerily quiet outside the hearing room in the Dirksen Senate Office Building, across the street from the Capitol. Photographers and a contingent of Capitol Hill Police officers waited in the hallway, and access to corridors near the room was restricted. There were no signs of the modest number of public spectators who will be allowed inside.
Republicans have derided Ford’s allegation as part of a smear campaign and a Democratic plot to sink Kavanaugh’s nomination. But after more allegations have emerged, some GOP senators have allowed that much is riding on Kavanaugh’s performance. Even President Donald Trump, who nominated Kavanaugh and fiercely defends him, said he was “open to changing my mind.”
“I want to watch, I want to see,” he said at a news conference Wednesday in New York.
Kavanaugh has repeatedly denied all the allegations, saying he’d never heard of the latest accuser and calling her accusations “ridiculous and from the Twilight Zone.”
The conservative jurist’s teetering grasp on winning confirmation was evident when Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, expressed concern, in a private meeting with senators Wednesday, about the third accuser, according to a person with knowledge of the gathering. Republicans control the Senate 51-49 and can lose only one vote for Kavanaugh to prevail if all Democrats vote “no.” Collins is among the few senators who’ve not made clear how they’d vote.
Collins walked into that meeting carrying a copy of Julie Swetnick’s signed declaration, which included new accusations of sexual misconduct against Kavanaugh and his high school friend Mark Judge.
Collins said senators should hear from Judge. After being told Judge has said he doesn’t want to appear before the committee, Collins reminded her colleagues that the Senate has subpoena power, according to a person who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
The hearing was to be the first time the country sees and hears from the 51-year-old Ford beyond the grainy photo that has been flashed on television in the 10 days since she came forward with her contention. In testimony released beforehand, she said she was appearing only because she felt it was her duty, was frankly “terrified” and has been the target of vile harassment and even death threats.
“It is not my responsibility to determine whether Mr. Kavanaugh deserves to sit on the Supreme Court,” she was to tell the senators. “My responsibility is to tell the truth.”
Republicans are pushing to seat Kavanaugh before the November midterms, when Senate control could fall to the Democrats and a replacement Trump nominee could have even greater difficulty. Kavanaugh’s ascendance to the high court could help lock in a conservative majority for a generation, shaping dozens of rulings on abortion, regulation, the environment and more.
Republicans also risk rejection by female voters in November if they are seen as not fully respecting women and their allegations.
In a sworn statement, Swetnick said she witnessed Kavanaugh “consistently engage in excessive drinking and inappropriate contact of a sexual nature with women in the early 1980s.” Her attorney, Michael Avenatti, who also represents a porn actress who is suing Trump, provided her sworn declaration to the Judiciary panel.
Meanwhile, the lawyer for Deborah Ramirez, who says Kavanaugh exposed himself to her at a party when they attended Yale University, raised her profile in a round of television interviews.
Republicans largely expressed confidence in Kavanaugh, emerging from a closed-door lunch with
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has said all week that Republicans will turn to a committee vote on Kavanaugh after the hearing. They hope for a roll call by the full Senate early next week with the aim of getting him on the court as its new term begins.
Collins’ unease was not the only suggestions of creeping doubt among Republicans. Asked whether there were signs of Republicans wavering in their support of Kavanaugh in their lunch, Sen. John Thune, the third-ranking Republican, paused briefly before saying “no.”
In the hearing, Democrats planned to ask Kavanaugh if he’d be willing to undergo FBI questioning about the various claims — a request Republicans oppose — and press him about his drinking and
Questions for Ford were expected to be aimed at giving her a chance to explain herself.
Republicans have hired an outside attorney, Phoenix prosecutor Rachel Mitchell, to handle much of their questioning. Thus, they will avoid having their all-male contingent interrogating Ford about the details of what she describes as a harrowing assault.
Democratic questioners will include two senators widely seen as potential presidential candidates in 2020: Kamala Harris of California and Cory Booker of New Jersey, who aggressively challenged Kavanaugh during the judge’s earlier confirmation hearing.
Ford planned to tell the committee that, one night in the summer of 1982, a drunken Kavanaugh forced her down on a bed, “groped me and tried to take off my clothes,” then clamped his hand over her mouth when she tried to scream before she was able to escape.
“I believed he was going to rape me,” she will say, according to her prepared testimony.
Kavanaugh is being challenged on multiple fronts by his accusers, former classmates and college friends. They say the good-guy image he projects in public bears little relation to the hard-partying
In his prepared testimony, the 53-year-old appellate judge acknowledges drinking in high school with his friends, but says he’s never done anything “remotely resembling” what Ford describes. He said he has never had a “sexual or physical encounter of any kind” with her.
He also provided the committee with detailed calendar pages listing in green-and-white squares the activities that filled his summer of 1982 when he was 17 years old — exams, movies, sports and plenty of parties. That’s the year when Ford says she believes the assault occurred.
Nothing on the calendar appears to refer to her.
Ford released sworn statements from people who said she had told them about the assault in later years.
Late Wednesday, the committee released a flurry of other documents of unclear significance.
Transcripts of private interviews with committee investigators show they asked Kavanaugh about two previously undisclosed accusations received by Senate offices. One came in an anonymous letter sent to the office of Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., describing an incident in a bar in 1998, when Kavanaugh was working for the independent counsel investigating President Bill Clinton. The other accused Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct in college. Kavanaugh denied them both.
The committee also released a summary of its work that noted its staff had spoken to two different men who believe they “had the encounter” with Ford, rather than Kavanaugh. The committee notes do not detail what came of those conversations.
Activity on Capitol Hill is likely to grind to a halt during the proceedings, with lawmakers glued to their televisions during what is widely seen as a sequel to the politically explosive hearings of 1991 with Anita Hill, who accused now-Justice Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment. Thomas denied Hill’s accusation.
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Associated Press writers Kevin Freking, Mary Clare Jalonick, Padmananda Rama, Matthew Daly, Julie Pace and AP photographers J. Scott Applewhite and Carolyn Kaster contributed to this report.
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Kavanaugh testimony: http://apne.ws/xkhv2Yv
Ford testimony: http://apne.ws/Wpklfy3
Kavanaugh testimony from Sept. 17: http://apne.ws/fmGaR3x
Kavanaugh testimony from Sept. 25: http://apne.ws/PBbVJpg
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For more coverage of Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination, visit https://apnews.com/tag/Kavanaughnomination
Lisa Mascaro, Alan Fram And Laurie Kellman, The Associated Press
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Mortgaging Canada’s energy future — the hidden costs of the Carney-Smith pipeline deal
Much of the commentary on the Carney-Smith pipeline Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) has focused on the question of whether or not the proposed pipeline will ever get built.
That’s an important topic, and one that deserves to be examined — whether, as John Robson, of the indispensable Climate Discussion Nexus, predicted, “opposition from the government of British Columbia and aboriginal groups, and the skittishness of the oil industry about investing in a major project in Canada, will kill [the pipeline] dead.”
But I’m going to ask a different question: Would it even be worth building this pipeline on the terms Ottawa is forcing on Alberta? If you squint, the MOU might look like a victory on paper. Ottawa suspends the oil and gas emissions cap, proposes an exemption from the West Coast tanker ban, and lays the groundwork for the construction of one (though only one) million barrels per day pipeline to tidewater.
But in return, Alberta must agree to jack its industrial carbon tax up from $95 to $130 per tonne at a minimum, while committing to tens of billions in carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) spending, including the $16.5 billion Pathways Alliance megaproject.
Here’s the part none of the project’s boosters seem to want to mention: those concessions will make the production of Canadian hydrocarbon energy significantly more expensive.
As economist Jack Mintz has explained, the industrial carbon tax hike alone adds more than $5 USD per barrel of Canadian crude to marginal production costs — the costs that matter when companies decide whether to invest in new production. Layer on the CCUS requirements and you get another $1.20–$3 per barrel for mining projects and $3.60–$4.80 for steam-assisted operations.
While roughly 62% of the capital cost of carbon capture is to be covered by taxpayers — another problem with the agreement, I might add — the remainder is covered by the industry, and thus, eventually, consumers.
Total damage: somewhere between $6.40 and $10 US per barrel. Perhaps more.
“Ultimately,” the Fraser Institute explains, “this will widen the competitiveness gap between Alberta and many other jurisdictions, such as the United States,” that don’t hamstring their energy producers in this way. Producers in Texas and Oklahoma, not to mention Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, or Russia, aren’t paying a dime in equivalent carbon taxes or mandatory CCUS bills. They’re not so masochistic.
American refiners won’t pay a “low-carbon premium” for Canadian crude. They’ll just buy cheaper oil or ramp up their own production.
In short, a shiny new pipe is worthless if the extra cost makes barrels of our oil so expensive that no one will want them.
And that doesn’t even touch on the problem for the domestic market, where the higher production cost will be passed onto Canadian consumers in the form of higher gas and diesel prices, home heating costs, and an elevated cost of everyday goods, like groceries.
Either way, Canadians lose.
So, concludes Mintz, “The big problem for a new oil pipeline isn’t getting BC or First Nation acceptance. Rather, it’s smothering the industry’s competitiveness by layering on carbon pricing and decarbonization costs that most competing countries don’t charge.” Meanwhile, lurking underneath this whole discussion is the MOU’s ultimate Achilles’ heel: net-zero.
The MOU proudly declares that “Canada and Alberta remain committed to achieving Net-Zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.” As Vaclav Smil documented in a recent study of Net-Zero, global fossil-fuel use has risen 55% since the 1997 Kyoto agreement, despite trillions spent on subsidies and regulations. Fossil fuels still supply 82% of the world’s energy.
With these numbers in mind, the idea that Canada can unilaterally decarbonize its largest export industry in 25 years is delusional.
This deal doesn’t secure Canada’s energy future. It mortgages it. We are trading market access for self-inflicted costs that will shrink production, scare off capital, and cut into the profitability of any potential pipeline. Affordable energy, good jobs, and national prosperity shouldn’t require surrendering to net-zero fantasy.If Ottawa were serious about making Canada an energy superpower, it would scrap the anti-resource laws outright, kill the carbon taxes, and let our world-class oil and gas compete on merit. Instead, we’ve been handed a backroom MOU which, for the cost of one pipeline — if that! — guarantees higher costs today and smothers the industry that is the backbone of the Canadian economy.
This MOU isn’t salvation. It’s a prescription for Canadian decline.
The cost of the bureaucracy increased by $6 billion last year, according to newly released numbers in Public Accounts disclosures. The Canadian Taxpayers Federation is calling on Prime Minister Mark Carney to immediately shrink the bureaucracy.
“The Public Accounts show the cost of the federal bureaucracy is out of control,” said Franco Terrazzano, CTF Federal Director. “Tinkering around the edges won’t cut it, Carney needs to take urgent action to shrink the bloated federal bureaucracy.”
The federal bureaucracy cost taxpayers $71.4 billion in 2024-25, according to the Public Accounts. The cost of the federal bureaucracy increased by $6 billion, or more than nine per cent, over the last year.
The federal bureaucracy cost taxpayers $39.6 billion in 2015-16, according to the Public Accounts. That means the cost of the federal bureaucracy increased 80 per cent over the last 10 years. The government added 99,000 extra bureaucrats between 2015-16 and 2024-25.
Half of Canadians say federal services have gotten worse since 2016, despite the massive increase in the federal bureaucracy, according to a Leger poll.
Not only has the size of the bureaucracy increased, the cost of consultants, contractors and outsourcing has increased as well. The government spent $23.1 billion on “professional and special services” last year, according to the Public Accounts. That’s an 11 per cent increase over the previous year. The government’s spending on professional and special services more than doubled since 2015-16.
“Taxpayers should not be paying way more for in-house government bureaucrats and way more for outside help,” Terrazzano said. “Mere promises to find minor savings in the federal bureaucracy won’t fix Canada’s finances.
“Taxpayers need Carney to take urgent action and significantly cut the number of bureaucrats now.”
Table: Cost of bureaucracy and professional and special services, Public Accounts
| Year | Bureaucracy | Professional and special services |
|
$71,369,677,000 |
$23,145,218,000 |
|
|
$65,326,643,000 |
$20,771,477,000 |
|
|
$56,467,851,000 |
$18,591,373,000 |
|
|
$60,676,243,000 |
$17,511,078,000 |
|
|
$52,984,272,000 |
$14,720,455,000 |
|
|
$46,349,166,000 |
$13,334,341,000 |
|
|
$46,131,628,000 |
$12,940,395,000 |
|
|
$45,262,821,000 |
$12,950,619,000 |
|
|
$38,909,594,000 |
$11,910,257,000 |
|
|
$39,616,656,000 |
$11,082,974,000 |
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