Blumenthal R Sen

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ANTI TRUMP FACISM

merri ok

lcv 80/93%

http://scorecard.lcv.org/moc/richard-blumenthal

CLIMATEHawk // corp person?

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Senator asks chief justice to force Thomas’ recusal from Trump case - Alternet.org

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uspo lat

Postmaster General David Steiner speaks during an interview with the Associated Press at the United States Postal Service headquarters, Thursday, Sept. 17, 2026, in Washington. (Mark Schiefelbein / Ap Photo/mark Schiefelbein)

By Steven Sloan

Sept. 28, 2026

Postmaster General David Steiner says he is “not political,” but his quick move to implement President Trump’s mail-voting restrictions has drawn criticism from Democrats and Republicans.

After the Supreme Court rejected the effort, Steiner said work stopped on a controversial voter-roll portal, while questions persist about the Postal Service’s independence.

The agency faces a $9-billion loss, a looming cash crunch and election-year worries over late mail ballots; Steiner urged voters to send ballots a week early.

WASHINGTON — Long before he was the top official at the U.S. Postal Service, David Steiner was a corporate executive surfing mid-oughts television when he came across Donald Trump on “The Apprentice.”

He was unimpressed.

“If that is leadership, if that’s what we’re telling people that our culture and our media portrays as leadership, we’re screwed,” Steiner, then the CEO of Waste Management, said during a 2007 speech at the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service. “If that’s leadership, count me out.”

“And for God’s sake,” he added to laughter, “if I have to get my hair to look like that, if I have to do that to be a leader, you can definitely count me out.”

Nearly two decades later, Trump has migrated from reality television to the presidency. And onetime detractors — Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, for example — now loyally execute his agenda.

Trump’s effort to use the Postal Service as a tool to reshape American elections is testing whether Steiner will follow a similar path.

Independent or a Trump ‘pawn’?

When Trump signed an executive order restricting mail ballots this year, Steiner moved quickly to finalize a rule implementing the measure, arguing he had little choice. But after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the effort, Steiner told The Associated Press that work had stopped on one of the plan’s most controversial elements, a government portal for voter rolls.

He refused to endorse the Republican president’s order as sound policy, saying he was focused on implementation and letting the courts ultimately decide the matter.

“I don’t get to decide what rules that are put on us that I decide to accept or not accept,” he said. “We are an independent agency of the executive branch.”

The episode prompted fierce criticism of Steiner for allowing Trump to deploy an agency designed to be shielded from politics.

Jena Griswold, Colorado’s Democratic secretary of state, called him a “Trump lackey.” Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, a Democrat, recently asked Congress to deploy observers to ensure postal workers can scan envelopes holding mail ballots without disruption, saying the Trump administration “has attempted to weaponize federal agencies to interfere in our elections, and the leadership at USPS is going along with it.”

Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., accused Steiner of being a Trump “pawn” during a congressional hearing this summer. Dozens of congressional Democrats have pressed Steiner to reveal his interactions with the White House during the development of the mail ballot rule.

Some Republicans have joined in the criticism. Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, incensed by abandoned mail, called for Steiner’s resignation and introduced legislation to block him from receiving a bonus.

During a lengthy interview, Steiner seemed surprised at points by his reception in Washington. He insisted he wasn’t a “political person” and said he had no intention of stepping down despite the criticism. He dismissed heated congressional appearances as “theater” at odds with more substantive private interactions on Capitol Hill.

Steiner was chagrined, however, at the mention of his 2007 remarks on Trump, delivered well before he launched a political career. Steiner recalled speaking at the university but said he didn’t remember his comments, acknowledging a tendency to be “flippant.”

“That’s funny,” he said. “I don’t recall it.”

The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment on Steiner’s remarks or his stewardship of the Postal Service.

Steiner didn’t follow the traditional path to power in Trump’s Washington

The Postal Service dates to Benjamin Franklin, the first postmaster general, whose portrait and bust are displayed in Steiner’s office overlooking the Washington Wharf. The agency has more than 630,000 employees, dwarfing many Cabinet departments.

While the quickest way to top jobs in Trump’s Washington is often by writing big checks, the 66-year-old Steiner doesn’t appear to have followed that course. He has largely donated to Republicans but also gave to John Kerry’s Democratic presidential campaign in 2004. Unlike his predecessor as postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, Steiner was not a major GOP donor or Trump backer.

Born in Oakland, California, as one of eight children to a father who spent his career at Chevron, Steiner worked in corporate and securities law before moving to Waste Management in 2000. He became CEO in 2004 and ran the company for 12 years. He was also a longtime director at FedEx, where board chairman Brad Martin recalled him as “outcome oriented” and rarely political.

“He’s going to follow the rules. He’s going to follow the law,” Martin said. “I don’t recall us ever talking politics.”

By the time a headhunter contacted Steiner about the postmaster general job, he was largely removed from daily corporate life and initially demurred.

“I talked to my wife, and we both agreed I was happily retired,” he said.

He changed his mind, he said, during a visit to the beaches of Normandy, feeling a sense of civic duty.

Now at the Postal Service, he earns about $346,000 in annual salary along with a relocation bonus that amounts to half his salary, far less than the $17 million in compensation he earned during his final year at Waste Management. His current role is designed to exist one layer removed from the political process, reporting to a board of governors that is selected by the president and confirmed by the Senate.

He was hired in 2025 by a board that was made up of five members, three of whom were Democrats. All but one were appointed by President Joe Biden. That makeup could change as four Trump nominees — all Republicans — await Senate confirmation. Steiner can be fired only by the board.

Steiner said he first met Trump along with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick at the board’s urging after he was already selected as postmaster general. Since then, he described a minimal relationship with the White House.

“We don’t fly on the radar,” he said.

That is, until Trump revived his effort in March to crack down on mail voting. Steiner said he “wasn’t in on the development piece” of the order and first saw it about a month before it was signed.

“They gave it to us to say, ‘Have your lawyers look at it, and how do you operationalize it?’” Steiner said.

The portal spurred a massive development effort inside the Postal Service while some states criticized it as federal overreach. A whistleblower report released by Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., argued the system was hastily built and riddled with errors, though Steiner said he was confident it could have been unveiled around Sept. 15.

“The heavy lifting was clearly, clearly the IT work,” Steiner said.

Challenges ahead for the Postal Service

Though the Supreme Court dispensed with the rule, the dynamics for the Postal Service don’t get easier.

The agency posted a $9 billion net loss last year, and Steiner has warned it could soon run out of cash unless Congress lifts a $15 billion borrowing cap. Political hurdles have prevented potential cost savings from cutting service or closing some post offices.

And while Trump’s executive order won’t take effect, the Postal Service will still play a critical role in this year’s elections. There are mounting concerns that mail ballots could be rejected for late postmarks. Steiner encouraged voters to get their ballots in a week before the election to avoid problems.

The Postal Service is a rare corner of government still viewed favorably with more than half of Americans, 56%, saying it was doing an “excellent” or “good” job in a Gallup poll conducted last year. That could change if the agency is seen as increasingly political.

Steiner, however, said Americans will judge the Postal Service by their experience of it.

“What they care about is when they get that wedding invitation after the wedding or when they send a package and it disappears,” he said. “If we want to have the trust of the American public, let’s be the best service provider. Everything else is noise.”

Sloan writes for the Associated Press.

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AN 10 26

On Wednesday morning during Senate Judiciary confirmation hearings, a judge nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals by President Donald Trump had her disqualification explained on no uncertain terms: her clear “lack of independence.” This is according to HuffPost Senior Politics Reporter Jennifer Bendery, who posted from within the hearing, “Right on time, another Trump court pick – Anna St. John, nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit – will only say Biden was ‘certified’ president in 2020.”

This is in reference to a common tactic that has been used by a wide range of Trump nominees hoping to avoid the president’s ire when asked about the 2020 election during confirmation. A number of Democratic senators have taken to regularly asking nominees questions regarding who won the 2020 presidential election and the January 6 insurrection as a test of their unswerving loyalty to Trump, and routinely, nominees refuse to admit that former President Joe Biden won the election, saying only that he was “certified” the winner.

According to Bendery, St. John was also asked by Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) whether the Capitol was attacked on January 6, 2021. The nominee struggled to respond, saying, “I want to be very careful with my language.”

“‘You are... continuing to adopt the president's distorted and inaccurate illusion’ about J6 and the 2020 election, Blumenthal scolded St. John, who sat silently,” posted Bendery. “‘It indicates a lack of independence,’ he says. ‘That lack of independence is disqualifying for you to be a judge.’”

Bendery notes that St. John is currently a U.S. District Judge, which entered into the hearing when Blumenthal asserted, "You have a lifetime appointment. Trump can't do anything to you. You have no reason to fear his vaunted vindictiveness against anyone who would defy his illusion about January 6." According to Bendery, he proceeded to rip into her "rehearsed and regurgitated" responses.

This comes shortly after a group of former federal prosecutors who were involved with cases against J6 rioters held a press event in which they begged Senators to stop accepting Trump’s J6-sympathetic nominees.

“Please stop poisoning our courts by confirming appointees who refuse to admit basic historical truths,” pleaded former assistant U.S. attorney Sean Murphy. “This is not a problem of perspective or political persuasion. It is a fundamental question of competence.” He’s part of a group of 12 former prosecutors who sent a letter to senators raising red flags about putting election deniers on the court, writing that the nominees’ “refusal to contradict the President’s lies… raises significant questions about whether, once confirmed, a nominee could act independently and free from political interference from the president that nominated them.”

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AN 3 26

Over the course of President Donald Trump’s second term, says New York Times legal columnist Jeffrey Toobin, one pattern has stood out in regard to the federal judges he nominates. During their confirmation hearings, when asked who won the 2020 presidential election, they consistently word their responses to leave the door open for election denial.

At each hearing, Senate Judiciary member Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) typically asks the same question: “Who won the popular vote in 2020?”

And every time, he receives some variation of the same response: “President Biden was certified and served four years as president.”

The key word there is “certified.” While it acknowledges that Biden was indeed named president, it doesn’t explicitly state that he outright “won” the election. This, says Toobin, is a blatant attempt to curry favor with Trump, who six years later still denies his loss on a regular basis.

Responses like this are common among Trump nominees to any government position, but according to Toobin, “There is a special peril when federal judges, who serve for life if confirmed, agree to demean themselves in this fashion.”

Blumenthal told Toobin that he always asks judicial nominees about the 2020 election as a “test of whether they are willing to stand up and be independent arbiters of fact, which they are required to be as district court judges, who often have to show some courage and backbone with cases with unpopular causes. The fact that they are so meek and easily cowed speaks volumes about their qualifications for the job.”

These days, such cowed behavior from nominees speaks to a new requirement for Trump approval: absolute loyalty. While during his first term he was content to select judges from a list provided by the conservative Federalist Society — judges who were more dedicated to conservative ideology than any one president — during his second term, he has made it clear that he expects personal loyalty above all else.

As an example for this, Toobin pointed to Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, two Supreme Court justices appointed by Trump who drew his ire after ruling against his tariffs. For Gorsuch and Coney Barrett, the decision was likely motivated by little more than their interpretation of the law. But for Trump, this was an act of betrayal. He didn’t merely express disapproval of their decision, but declared them “an embarrassment to their families.”

To Toobin, this kind of reaction portends that Trump will from now on select only judges he thinks are directly loyal to him above all else.

For his part, Senator Blumenthal says that with each nomination, he will continue to press the question of the 2020 election.

“I keep waiting for one or two of them to stand up and say, ‘I’m not going to say this nonsense. I’ve got plenty of other ways to make a living,’” he said. During one recent hearing, he was blunt with his words to a stonewalling nominee: “Don’t you feel kind of like monkeys or puppets here?”

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an 10 25

weekend news dump this was no kings

Continuing his pattern of pardoning allies and prosecuting adversaries, President Donald Trump on Friday commuted the prison term of former Republican Congressman George Santos, who was less than three months into a seven year sentence for wire fraud and aggravated identity theft.

“George Santos was somewhat of a ‘rogue,’ but there are many rogues throughout our Country that aren’t forced to serve seven years in prison,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social network.

Once again, Trump randomly attacked Sen. Richard Blumenthal’s (D-Conn.) admitted lie about taking part in the US invasion and occupation of Vietnam. Blumenthal was a Marine stationed stateside during the war, in which Trump—who has been derided as “Capt. Bone Spurs”—avoided serving.

“This is what a wannabe king does.”

“He never went to Vietnam, he never saw Vietnam, he never experienced the Battles there, or anywhere else,” Trump said of Blumenthal. “His War Hero status, and even minimal service in our Military, was totally and completely MADE UP.”

IFrame Content

“This is far worse than what George Santos did, and at least Santos had the Courage, Conviction, and Intelligence to ALWAYS VOTE REPUBLICAN!” the president added. “George has been in solitary confinement for long stretches of time and, by all accounts, has been horribly mistreated. Therefore, I just signed a Commutation, releasing George Santos from prison, IMMEDIATELY. Good luck George, have a great life!”

Santos was subsequently released from the Federal Correctional Institution in Fairton, New Jersey after 10:00 pm Friday.

According to a copy of the commutation posted on social media, Santos will also no longer have to pay $370,000 in court-ordered restitution to victims of his fraud. Trump’s action does not erase Santos’ conviction.

Santos, 37, resisted pressure to resign from Congress over lies about his education, employment, family, religion, residence, net worth, and more.

As The New York Times reported Friday:

Mr. Santos claimed that he was descended from Holocaust refugees. His mother, he said, had been in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. He claimed to be a college volleyball star. And Mr. Santos boasted of extensive Wall Street experience that allowed him to report loaning his campaign hundreds of thousands of dollars. None of that was true.

Between May and October 2023, Santos was indicted on 23 criminal counts including wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, and conspiracy to commit offenses against the United States.

In December 2023, House lawmakers voted 311-114 to remove the freshman lawmaker from office. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) was among the 112 Republicans and two Democrats who voted against expulsion. Santos became just the sixth lawmaker to ever be booted from the House.

In August 2024, Santos pleaded guilty to two felony counts of wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. The following April, he was sentenced to 87 months behind bars and ordered to pay restitution and forfeiture totaling nearly $600,000.

Trump’s commutation of Santos’ sentence follows a series of high-profile acts of clemency. Most notorious among these was his blanket pardon earlier this year of more than 1,500 people charged in connection with the January 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection, for which the president—himself a 34-count convicted fraudster—was impeached for a historic second time. He was not convicted by the Senate either time.

Friday’s commutation also stands in stark contrast with the Trump administration’s recent indictments of political foes including former FBI Director James Comey, New York Attorney General Letitia James, and former National Security Adviser John Bolton.

Critics were quick to note this pattern, which Congressman Don Beyer (D-Va.) called “naked corruption.”

“George Santos pleaded guilty to identity theft and wire fraud, a small part of his lying and stealing that really hurt people,” Beyer wrote on social media. “Trump says it plainly: Crimes don’t count if you ‘vote Republican.’ Just like his pardons of those who violently attacked police.”

West Coast Trial Lawyers president Neama Rahmani said on X following Trump’s announcement: “It’s weeks away, but Trump is handing out pardons like Halloween candy. Disgraced former Rep. George Santos is the latest beneficiary, showing once again that flattering the president gets you everywhere.”

“Sneaking it in on a Friday night means it will get less press too,” Rahmani added. “I can’t wait for Santos’ first cameo appearance post-federal prison. Is Diddy the next recipient of Trump’s clemency?”

Congressman Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) also reacted to Trump’s commutation on X, writing, “This is what a wannabe king does.”

“Join us tomorrow at a No Kings rally near you,” Pocan added, referring to the more than 2,700 pro-democracy demonstrations set to take place Saturday from coast to coast and around the world.

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/the-warning-lights-are-flashing-red-how-trumps-toadies-are-helping-him-collude-with-russia/

After reviewing classified intelligence reports about Vladimir Putin’s attempts to interfere in the 2020 election over three weeks ago, Senator Richard Blumenthal tried to sound the alarm.

The warning lights are flashing red. America’s elections are under attack.

This week, I reviewed classified materials in the Senate’s Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility and received a similarly classified briefing on malign foreign threats to U.S. elections. I was shocked by what I learned — and appalled that, by swearing Congress to secrecy, the Trump administration is keeping the truth about a grave, looming threat to democracy hidden from the American people. On Friday, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued astatement that only hints at the threats.

The facts are chilling. I believe the American public needs and deserves to know them. The information should be declassified immediately.

Blumenthal went on to say that what he learned makes “Moscow’s past interference and nefarious actions look like child’s play.” We still, however, have no idea of what shocked him enough to write that op-ed in the Washington Post.

What we do know is how the Trump administration reacted. Last Friday, the Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe, told Congress that his office would no longer brief them in person about foreign election interference, but would submit written reports. Clearly they don’t want to face probing questions from Congress. In defending his actions, however, Ratcliffe admitted that it goes beyond that.

[no twt]

ratcliffe’s initial argument doesn’t make any sense. He said that he is going to stop in-person briefings because members of Congress leaked classified information to the press. What he didn’t explain is how that would stop leaks. Classified information provided in writing is even easier to share with reporters.

In a scathing rebuke of Ratcliffe’s announcement, the Washington Post editorial board pointed out that the only so-called “leaks” came from the kind issued by Senator Blumenthal.

After the intelligence community briefed members of Congress in late July about threats to the upcoming election, Democrats expressed alarm about what they had learned — and about the fact that the information had not been shared with the American public. “The warning lights are flashing red. America’s elections are under attack,” wrote Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) in a Post op-ed, without disclosing any specifics…

[T]he only “leak” was the simple fact that the administration was withholding critical information about Russia’s interference — which, of course, is intended to help President Trump win reelection.

In that clip of Ratcliffe’s Fox News appearance, he eventually got to the point by saying that Democrats leaked information that “simply wasn’t true, that somehow Russia is a greater security threat than China.” In a case of obvious projection, Ratcliffe is telling us that the Trump administration doesn’t want Congress or the public to know what Moscow is doing to interfere in the election, but instead wants to change the narrative to focus on the distraction they’re offering about the threat posed by China. In other words, Ratcliffe is suggesting that he will now cherry-pick what intelligence is shared with Congress to provide cover for what Moscow is up to.

Added to that is a troubling story about yet another purge in the Justice Department by Attorney General Barr.

Current and former national security officials are raising concerns over Attorney General William Barr’s recent decision to remove the head of a Justice Department office that helps ensure federal counterterrorism and counterintelligence activities are legal – and replace him with a political appointee with relatively limited experience.

Barr has reassigned 23-year career professional Brad Wiegmann, who had been serving as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Office of Law and Policy. As ABC News reports, “The office shapes government efforts by ensuring that new policies and executive actions don’t violate federal law.”

We’ve heard stories from former Trump administration officials who have said that they often found themselves having to tell the president that the actions he wanted to take were not legal. As former DHS Chief of Staff Miles Taylor said, Trump would claim to have “magical authorities” to break the law.

Now Barr has removed the person whose job it is to tell the administration when they are breaking the law and replaced him with a partisan loyalist. While it might not be unprecedented to do that, the fact that it comes a couple of months before an election makes this one troubling. Here is the most telling part about Wiegmann’s replacement, Kellen Dwyer:

From 2018 to 2019, he served as a fellow at the conservative-leaning Leonine Forum, a non-profit organization that says its alumni are “committed to the cause of reintroducing the tenets of [the Catholic church] into the political, policy, legal, business, and cultural activities of society.”

The Leonine Forum was created by the Catholic Information Center (CIC), an extremist group founded by Father John McCloskey, who eventually left the organization over allegations of sexual assault. Several members of the Trump administration have close ties to the CIC, including Attorney General Barr, White House counsel Pat Cipollone, and economic adviser Larry Kudlow.

What appears to be happening is that both Ratcliffe and Barr are paving the way for Putin and Trump, who speak regularly by phone, to illegally collude in their efforts to influence the election—this time from the Oval Office with the entire federal bureaucracy at their disposal.

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an 1 24

in a Sunday article from NBC News, Peter Nicholas, Katherine Doyle, Megan Lebowitz and Courtney Kube report, "a loose-knit network of public interest groups and lawmakers is quietly devising plans to try to foil any efforts to expand presidential power, which could include pressuring the military to cater" to Donald Trump's politics.

Per NBC, "Trump has raised fresh questions about his intentions if he regains power by putting forward a legal theory that a president would be free to do nearly anything with impunity — including assassinate political rivals — so long as Congress can’t muster the votes to impeach him" and remove him from office.

"We're already starting to put together a team to think through the most damaging types of things that he [Trump] might do so that we’re ready to bring lawsuits if we have to," Mary McCord, former US attorney and executive director of the Institution for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown Law, told the news outlet.

Other experts "taking part in the effort told NBC News they are studying Trump’s past actions and 2024 policy positions so that they will be ready if he wins in November," which "involves preparing to take legal action and send letters to Trump appointees spelling out consequences they’d face if they undermine constitutional norms."

NBC notes:

*Among the least-understood tools available to a president is the Insurrection Act. Vaguely worded, it gives a president considerable discretion in deciding what constitutes an uprising and when it is OK to deploy active-duty military in response, experts say.

*Some lawmakers on Capitol Hill worry that Trump might invoke the act to involve the armed forces in the face of domestic protests or if the midterm elections don’t go his way.

"There are an array of horrors that could result from Donald Trump's unrestricted use of the Insurrection Act," US Senator Richard Blumenthal (R-CT) said in an interview, according to NBC. "A malignantly motivated president could use it in a vast variety of dictatorial ways unless at some point the military itself resisted what they deemed to be an unlawful order. But that places a very heavy burden on the military."

Blumenthal, NBC reports, is currently working on legislation "that would clarify the act and give Congress and the courts some say in its use."

Democracy Forward President Skye Perryman told NBC, "We are preparing for litigation and preparing to use every tool in the toolbox that our democracy provides to provide the American people an ability to fight back. We believe this is an existential moment for American democracy and it’s incumbent on everybody to do their part."

*NBC News' full report is here.

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https://www.motherjones.com/coronavirus-updates/2020/04/jared-kushner-surveillance/

as Jared Kushner has set himself a prominent role in the administration’s coronavirus response, there’s been a growing chorus of questions about what, exactly, he’s up to and how much the public will ever find out about it. Today, a trio of lawmakers are demanding answers from Jared Kushner about work his public-private taskforce has reportedly been doing with a “range of technology firms” to “establish a far-reaching public health surveillance system” in response to the pandemic.

Democratic senators Mark Warner of Virginia and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, along with Rep. Anna Eshoo of California, wrote a letter to Kushner on Friday asking about the issue three days after Politico*reported that Kushner’s shadow task force had “reached out to a range of health technology companies about creating a national coronavirus surveillance system” that would give government “a near real-time view” of patients seeking treatment. Even though *Politicocited interviews with “seven tech executives, government officials and other people familiar with its contours,” a White House spokesperson denied to the news outlet that Kushner had any knowledge of such plans.

“Your office’s denial of the existence of this effort, despite ample corroborating reporting, only compounds concerns we have with lack of transparency,” the lawmakers wrote in the April 10 letter, which expressed fears that such a system “could undermine the confidentiality and security of our health information and become the new status quo.”

The lawmakers’ concerns about transparency echo previous worries that Kushner’s taskforce is operating outside of normal government procedure, perhaps to the point of breaking the law. (Kushner has said that President Trump instructed him to “knock down every barrier needed” and “make sure that the government is doing things that the government doesn’t normally do, where we’re stretching, where [we] are acting very quickly.”)

On March 27, Noah Bookbinder, the executive director of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, wrote a letter to White House Counsel Pat Cipollone asking him to ensure that Kushner’s working group “fully comply with all laws,” specifically citing provisions of the Presidential Records Act and and Federal Advisory Committee Act that bar or limit the use of private email accounts for government business.

On Friday, Anne Weismann, CREW’s chief FOIA counsel, told Mother Jones that the organization was still working to get its arms around the full scope of Kushner’s activities and had yet to receive a response to its letter. But with the federal government spending trillions in response to the coronavirus , she says Kushner’s secret work with a range of often unnamed private officials was especially troubling, especially if they are conducting business in a way that evades oversight.

“Given the amount of money at stake, there is significant possibility that these people are also trying to leverage their position for their own personal profit, or profit for their companies,” she said. “We should have assurances that people who are given such enormous power and responsibility are acting in the interest of the nation.”

https://www.publicintegrity.org/2016/03/31/19498/senators-seek-better-conflict-disclosures-scientific-articles

Citing the Center for Public Integrity’s recent “Science for Sale” series, a group of U.S. senators has asked the National Institutes of Health to make it easier to tell who funds research published in scientific journals.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Connecticut, on Wednesday released a letter sent to NIH Director Francis Collins asking that the National Library of Medicine make changes to its public database of 25 million journal articles, called PubMed, to reveal conflicts of interest in research.

“With industry now employing more scientists than nonprofits, universities and the government combined, and industry funding the research of many independent researchers, there are growing concerns about objectivity in numerous scientific disciplines — including nutrition science and research on health risk from chemicals,” the letter said.

The letter also cited a New York Times story about Coca-Cola Co. quietly funding academic researchers who blamed lack of exercise, rather than soft drinks and fast food, for the epidemic of obesity and diabetics.

The Center’s series revealed how scientific consultants working for the chemical industry publish journal articles that almost always claim their clients’ products are safe. Examples included two consulting firms, Gradient Corp. and Exponent, which published articles to help clients win asbestos lawsuits.

The NIH maintains a public database of medical and life sciences articles in more than 5,600 peer-reviewed journals. While the database often includes an abstract detailing the purpose of a study and its findings, the search results don’t reveal who paid for the research.

Corporations are steering millions of dollars to scientific consulting firms to cast doubt on health concerns surrounding toxic chemicals.

Stories in this series

The NIH requires researchers with government grants to disclose conflicts of interest in journal articles. Many journals have their own disclosure policies.

“While scientists regularly use PubMed to conduct and inform research, millions of nonscientists — consumers, journalists, policymakers and others — also make use of this public resource,” the senators’ letter said.

The Center analyzed the funding of 149 articles published by principal scientists at Gradient and found that 98 percent of the time the articles found that chemicals did not pose risks that would require stricter regulations. In order to obtain the funding information, a reporter had to go to National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, Maryland, to get the complete copy of each article.

Senators who signed the NIH letter Wednesday in addition to Blumenthal were Democrats Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Edward Markey of Massachusetts, Brian Schatz of Hawaii and Richard Durbin of Illinois.

http://insideclimatenews.org/news/29102015/senators-press-Exxon-answers-funding-climate-denial-donors-trust-sheldon-whitehouse-elizabeth-warren

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Blumenthal

Richard Blumenthal (born February 13, 1946) is the senior United States Senator from Connecticut, in office since 2011. Previously, he served as Attorney General of Connecticut from 1991 to 2011. He is a member of the Democratic Party.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, Blumenthal is a graduate of Harvard College, where he was editorial chairman of The Harvard Crimson. He studied for a year at Trinity College, Cambridge in England before attending Yale Law School, where he was editor-in-chief of the Yale Law Journal. While at Yale, he was a classmate of future President Bill Clinton and future Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. From 1970 to 1976 Blumenthal served in the United States Marine Corps Reserve, where he earned the rank of sergeant.

After college Blumenthal served as administrative assistant and law clerk for several Washington figures. From 1977 to 1981 he was United States Attorney for the District of Connecticut. In the early 1980s he worked in private law practice, including serving as volunteer counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. He served in the Connecticut House of Representatives from 1984 to 1987, when he was elected to the Connecticut Senate. He was elected state Attorney General in 1990, and served for twenty years. During this period he was frequently speculated as a contender forGovernor of Connecticut, but he never pursued the office.

Blumenthal announced his 2010 run for U.S. Senate after Democratic incumbent Chris Dodd announced his retirement. He faced professional wrestling magnate Linda McMahon in the general election, winning by a 12-point margin with 55 percent of the vote. On January 5, 2011 he was sworn in and took seats on the Senate Armed Services; Judiciary; Aging; and Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committees. He became the senior senator after the retirement of Joe Lieberman.

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Early life and education

Blumenthal was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Jane (née Rosenstock) and Martin Blumenthal, who was the president of a commodities trading firm.^[1][2][3] His mother was born in Omaha, Nebraska, to a Jewish family that originated in Prussia and Baden, and his father was a Jewish immigrant from Frankfurt.^[4] Blumenthal graduated fromHarvard College with a A.B. magna cum laude and was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. As an undergraduate, he was editorial chairman of The Harvard Crimson.^[5] Blumenthal was a summer intern reporter for The Washington Post in the London Bureau.^[6] Blumenthal was also selected for a Fiske Fellowship that allowed him to study at the University of Cambridge in England for one year after graduation from Harvard College.

He received his J.D. from Yale Law School, where he was editor-in-chief of the Yale Law Journal.^[7] While at Yale, he was classmates with future President Bill Clintonand future Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.^[8] One of his co-editors on the Yale Law Journal was future United States Secretary of Labor Robert Reich. His brother, David Blumenthal, is the President of the Commonwealth Fund.^[9]^

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Early life and education