A14 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.FRIDAY, AUGUST 23 , 2019
PowerPost
INTELLIGENCE FOR LEADERS WASHINGTONPOST.COM/POWERPOSTBernie Sanders
released a
comprehensive
plan to address a
“climate crisis” on
par with the
threat America
faced during the Second World
War, vowing to declare the
global buildup of planet-
warming gases a national
emergency and to spend more
than any other Democratic
candidate has proposed to
address the issue.
The independent senator from
Vermont, who is seeking the
Democratic nomination for
president, published a nearly
14,000-word “Green New
Deal” on Thursday that aims to
eliminate the use of fossil fuels
from power plants and cars by
the end of the next decade and to
completely decarbonize the rest
of the U.S. economy by the
middle of the century.
It is also distinguished from
the plans of his 2020 rivals
because it would attempt to
empower Sanders, if he won the
2020 race, to impose many of its
components through executive
action, a popular tool during the
Trump and Obama
administrations to enact
environmental change.
But the self-proclaimed
democratic socialist’s proposal
comes with a steep price tag of
$16.3 trillion, far eclipsing that
of former vice president Joe
Biden’s $1.7 trillion climate plan.
Sanders is the last among the
2020 race’s top-tier candidates to
release a comprehensive climate
plan. Spurred in part by dire
warnings from climate scientists
and regulatory rollbacks by the
Trump administration, the issue
of climate change is being
transformed from an electoral
afterthought into a top issue in
the Democratic primary.
Many of the 2020 contenders
have embraced some form of a
Green New Deal — a pitch to
dramatically and quickly roll
back carbon emissions and
guarantee jobs for all — but the
version backed by Rep.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-
N.Y.), who supported Sanders in
his 2016 run, was defeated in the
Senate.
As oil field workers, coal
miners and other laborers would
lose their jobs under such a plan,
Sanders is promising a “fair
transition” by providing them
with job training, health-care
coverage, five years of
unemployment insurance and,
for those who want them, early
retirement packages.
Typical of the senator’s sharp-
elbowed style, Sanders leaves
little room for compromise with
fossil-fuel interests. Like his
stances on health care and
college education, Sanders’s
purist approach to addressing
climate change may endear him
to the Democratic Party’s left
flank while turning off more
moderate members.
“We need a president who has
the courage, the vision, and the
record to face down the greed of
fossil fuel executives and the
billionaire class who stand in the
way of climate action,” his Green
New Deal reads. “We need a
president who welcomes their
hatred.”
At the same time, Sanders is
keen to court unions, many of
which have expressed skepticism
of the Green New Deal over fears
that aggressive environmental
regulations could eliminate jobs.
Sanders hopes to allay those
fears with a comprehensive set
of benefits for laid-off industrial
workers.
“He just has a lot of credibility
to say, ‘This is what I’ll be
fighting for,’ ” said Erich Pica,president of Friends of the
Earth, which reviewed parts of
the plan for the Sanders
campaign.
The high cost of Sanders’s
plan is due in part to eschewing
partnership with private
businesses to erect the wind
turbines and solar panels needed
to hit his goal of 100 percent
renewable energy in the power
sector by 2030. Instead, Sanders
wants to establish a new federal
electric utility to provide power
to Northeast and Midwestern
states while expanding the four
existing federal power
administrations that cover most
of the rest of the Lower 48.
The Sanders campaign says it
will pay for the plan through a
combination of cutting militaryspending, increasing corporate
taxes and suing fossil-fuel
companies.
Echoing legislation he
introduces perennially in
Congress, Sanders wants to
eliminate government subsidies
for fossil-fuel companies. And
going a step further than his two
main Democratic rivals, Biden
and Massachusetts Sen.
Elizabeth Warren, he promises
to pursue a nationwide ban on
hydraulic fracturing, or
“fracking,” a controversial
technique for extracting gas that
can sometimes contaminate
groundwater.
Sanders’s plan, like most
Democratic climate proposals,
has virtually no shot of being
passed by a Republican-controlled Senate. But it is
Sanders’s willingness to marshal
the emergency powers of the
executive branch that set him
apart from most of the rest of
the Democratic field.
“If the Senate and Congress
are going to be bogged down, he
will have the authority to
enforce many of the pieces he
needs to enact to address the
climate crisis,” Pica said. “This
proposal recognizes the
presidential power he would
have.”
Many of Sanders’s ideas would
also face stiff resistance from
Democrats over what Paul
Bledsoe, an energy fellow at the
Progressive Policy Institute and
former Clinton White House
climate adviser, calls his “radicalclimate purity.”
“I’m afraid it’s going to be
written off by moderates,”
Bledsoe added.
Citing the Fukushima
meltdown and the Chernobyl
explosion, Sanders’s plan calls
for a moratorium on not just
new nuclear power plants but
also on the license renewals of
existing ones — despite the fact
that one-fifth of U.S. power
comes from nuclear reactors,
making the sector by far the
nation’s largest source of low-
carbon energy. Sanders also
rejects the use of technologies
that do not yet exist at scale —
such as the capturing of carbon
dioxide before it exits coal
plants’ smokestacks — calling
them “false solutions.”
Sanders wants to provide
$2.09 trillion in grants for
consumers to buy electric
passenger vehicles and
$407 billion for school districts
and other local governments to
buy electric buses. He also wants
to resurrect an Obama
administration plan to invest
$607 billion in building a high-
speed rail system.
But the goal of taking every
gasoline-guzzling car, pickup
truck and SUV off the roads by
2030 is simply unrealistic, said
Josh Freed, head of the clean
energy program at the center-
left think tank Third Way.
“It undermines the
seriousness of the plan and
shows that it’s just a political
document,” he said.
While he promises to rejoin
the Paris climate accords,
Sanders calls the agreement
brokered by the Obama
administration “not perfect” for
falling short of emissions
reductions needed to keep
warming below 1.5 degrees
Celsius.
[email protected]That’s a lot of green: Sanders announces his $16.3 trillion ‘climate crisis’ plan
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DINO
GRANDONI
BY ANN E. MARIMOW
AND LYNH BUIRick Gates, the right-hand man
to President Trump’s former cam-
paign chairman, returned to the
witness stand Thursday, testifying
in the trial of prominent Washing-
ton lawyer Gregory B. Craig.
Gates — who previously served
as the government’s star witness
against his former business part-
ner Paul Manafort — testified
about his interactions with Craig
in their work on behalf of the
Ukrainian government.
Federal prosecutors accuse
Craig of lying to Justice Depart-
ment officials who were investi-
gating whether Craig should have
registered as a foreign agent for
work he did in coordination with
Gates and Manafort, a former po-
litical adviser to Ukraine’s presi-
dent at the time.
Craig, 74, a former Obama
White House counsel, has pleaded
not guilty to one count of making
false statements, and his attorneys
say he is being unfairly prosecuted
for actions that at the time did not
appear to fall under the require-
ments of the Foreign Agents Reg-
istration Act.
The law requires Americans to
publicly register when they are
paid to influence U.S. policy for
foreign governments. The key
question for jurors is not whether
Craig was required to register, but
whether he lied to federal investi-
gators about alleged public rela-
tions work on behalf of Ukraine
that would have triggered the reg-
istration requirement.
In federal court in Washington
on Thursday, Gates testified that
Craig was an integral part of his
team’s public relations strategy for
enhancing Ukraine’s reputation,
and that Craig initiated a briefing
with a handpicked New York
Times reporter at the direction of
Ukraine.
But Craig’s attorneys painted
Gates as untrustworthy, as he ac-
knowledged in court that he lied
on his tax returns and to federal
investigators, deceived his former
business partner and circumvent-
ed Craig’s orders. The admissions
echoed Gates’s testimony in feder-
al court in Alexandria in
Manafort’s trial that ended withManafort’s conviction for bank
and tax fraud.
Gates’s credibility is a test of the
government’s case against Craig —
and critical to Gates’s future. He is
awaiting sentencing after plead-
ing guilty in February 2018 to con-
spiracy and lying to the FBI as part
of former special counsel Robert
S. Mueller III’s probe of Russian
interference in the 2016 election.
He faces a sentence of 57 to
71 months, according to federal
guidelines, and has been a cooper-
ating witness in hopes of receiving
a lesser term.
Gates, 47, said he has been
largely unemployed since his in-
dictment, and he mostly appeared
relaxed during more than four
hours on the witness stand as he
told jurors that he has met with
federal investigators more than 40
times in the past two years. He will
be sentenced by U.S. District
Judge Amy Berman Jackson, the
same judge presiding over Craig’s
trial.
Craig was the first prominent
Democratic figure to be charged in
Mueller’s investigation, and the
case against him centers on workhe did at his former law firm —
Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher
and Flom. He was hired to pro-
duce an independent report in
2012 for Manafort client Viktor
Yanukovych, the Ukrainian presi-
dent at the time.
The report was to determine
whether the trial and incarcera-
tion of Yanukovych’s political ri-
val, Yulia Tymoshenko, was a fair
proceeding, with the report part of
a broader campaign by the Ukrai-
nian government to win favor in
the West. The report largely con-
cluded that Tymoshenko’s trial
was fair but was critical in some
measures.
The nature and extent of Craig’s
involvement in promoting the re-
port with journalists is central to
the government’s case.
Prosecutors argue that Craig
didn’t want to register as a foreign
agent because it would under-
mine the perceived independence
of the report that Skadden was
paid more than $4 million to pro-
duce and might tarnish Craig’s
reputation and future prospects
for political roles. The govern-
ment says Craig intentionally con-cealed from Justice Department
officials that he had a hand in
trying to influence journalists and
to publicize the report’s findings
on behalf of leadership in Ukraine.
Craig’s attorneys have insisted
his interactions with journalists
did not represent advocacy for
Ukraine coordinated with the gov-
ernment, but rather efforts to cor-
rect the record about the report.
Gates testified Thursday that
Craig twice suggested sharing an
advanced copy of the report with
New York Times reporter David
Sanger — initially at a meeting
with Gates and Manafort at
Craig’s D.C. law office and then in
September 2012 at a meeting at
the Harvard Club in New York
attended by Gates and Manafort.
Craig said they could count on
Sanger for a tough but credible
article “that would help with our
PR strategy,” Gates testified.
“Did you expect the on-record
interview to be a glowing endorse-
ment?” asked prosecutor Fernan-
do Campoamor-Sanchez.
“No, we did not,” Gates said.
The prosecutor noted that
Craig is quoted in the Times arti-cle published on Dec. 12, 2012,
before the report was officially
released, with the headline: “Fail-
ings Found in Trial of Ukrainian
Ex-Premier.”
“Had he been asked to do so on
Ukraine’s behalf ?” the prosecutor
asked.
“Yes,” Gates answered.
Craig’s attorney Paula M. Jung-
hans presented Gates with copies
of his media rollout plans that
included a line about Skadden
Arps’s concerns about participat-
ing in public relations. She por-
trayed the strategy involving Craig
as speculative rather than based in
reality.
Although Craig mentioned
Sanger as a go-to, she noted — and
Gates confirmed — that the memo
says, the law firm “cannot pro-
actively lead in communications
given their restrictions by FARA
registration and disclosure,” a ref-
erence to the act.
Gates acknowledged under
questioning that “there was reluc-
tance on Mr. Craig’s part to take on
a lot of the actions we outlined.”
[email protected]
[email protected]Gates testifies in prominent lawyer’s trial about work on behalf of Ukraine
SALWAN GEORGES/THE WASHINGTON POST
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has introduced a far more ambitious (and more expensive) Green New Deal
than those of his rivals. Its goal is 100 percent renewable energy in the power sector by 2030.Researchers worry
that a new feature
giving Instagram
users the power to
flag false news on
the platform won’t
do much to head
off efforts to use
disinformation to sow political
discord in 2020.
The role of Instagram in
spreading political
disinformation took center stage
in a pair of Senate reports in
December, which highlighted
how Russian state operatives
used fake accounts on the
platform, masquerading as
members of groups such as Black
Lives Matter during and after the
2016 election. Researchers found
that some Instagram posts by
Russian trolls generated more
than twice the engagement
among users as they did on either
Facebook or Twitter.
While Instagram and its parent
company, Facebook, have cracked
down on coordinated campaigns
launched by Russia, Instagram
still serves as a potent source of
memes and images laden with
misinformation, especially for
younger voters.
“Even though we don’t talk
about it as much as Twitter and
YouTube, it could potentially
sway elections, on the local level
especially,” said Joan Donovan,
director of the Technology and
Social Change Research Project at
Harvard University’s Shorenstein
Center. “Instagram is where a lot
of younger audiences are, so the
threat isn’t necessarily about
influencing someone from one
candidate or another but what
kind of wedge issues are going to
be impacted by posts on
Instagram.”
Donovan pointed to gay rights
and immigration as political
topics that gain traction on the
platform.
“There’s definitely a concern
that there’s many more young
people on Instagram using it as a
news source, and that those
groups could be targeted by
disinformation.”
Yet it wasn’t until April that
Instagram began a pilot to
proactively send content to U.S.
fact-checking partners. Facebook
launched its fact-checking
initiative in 2016, and CEO Mark
Zuckerberg has praised the
program as a powerful tool
against false news.
While Instagram’s use of fact-
checkers is in a testing phase in
the United States, the platform is
hoping to fast-track results with a
new tool it released last week toallow U.S. users to flag a post as
“false information.”
The flag does not guarantee a
post will be seen by a fact-checker,
but it is calculated alongside
other factors in determining if the
company’s algorithms will select
the content for review — and
hopefully making the artificial
intelligence smarter at finding
content like it next time.
Content that is determined
“false” by a fact-checking partner
will be removed from a hashtag
search and Explore features, a
page that surfaces new content to
Instagram users.
It’s hard to say how much even
that modest change will help in
removing false information from
the image-sharing platform.
Instagram declined to share
how much content is reviewed by
fact-checkers because of the
process. Researchers have long
opined against flagging tools as a
one-size-fits-all solution to
content moderation, arguing
they not only put the burden on
users but ignore an unsavory
truth many platforms turn a
blind eye to: Extremist content
thrives because there’s an
audience for it.
“When it comes to political
disinformation or extremist
content, there are enormouscommunities [on Instagram] that
are existing in plain sight,” said
Cristina López G., an extremism
researcher and former deputy
director for extremism at Media
Matters for America. López said
these communities exist through
hashtags and networks of
individual accounts.
A search by The Washington
Post two days after the platform
announced its new feature found
the hashtag #voterfraud surfaced
memes that have independently
been debunked as false by
organizations that Facebook uses
in its fact-checker program. One
post that turns up on the first
page of results, a meme from
November 2018, repeats the false
claim that Democratic billionaire
donor George Soros owns the
voting machine company
Smartmatic. Another post claims
that 90,000 undocumented
immigrants voted in the
midterms, which is also false.
If fact-checking partners rated
the posts as “false” to Instagram,
they would be removed from the
#voterfraud results. But because
these posts still show up on a
hashtag page, it means
Instagram’s fact-checkers haven’t
found them yet. Instagram
spokeswoman Stephanie Otway
said that’s where the flagging toolcan help.
“The more reports there
are, the more signals we have to
determine the pervasiveness of
fake news on Instagram,” Otway
said.
When asked if Instagram
would institute proactive bans for
election misinformation, Otway
said it would block hashtags
“designed to prevent or deter
people from voting in line with
our voter suppression policies”
(policies it shares with Facebook).
Furthermore, any tag associated
with “a certain amount of
violating content” is
automatically restricted from
search until that number “drops
back down.”
Otway said Instagram largely
shares its policies with Facebook
and works to adapt programs
such as the fact-checking pilot to
the specific needs of its platform.
It also shares Facebook’s concerns
about misinformation.
“In general, our
misinformation efforts are
focused on keeping our elections
safe,” Otway said.
Instagram isn’t alone in trying
to better understand how
political misinformation spreads
on its platform.
There isn’t much concrete
research on how misinformationand disinformation spreads on
Instagram besides the 2018
Senate reports. Some high-
follower accounts, such as
@the_typical_liberal, a meme
account described by the
Atlantic’s Taylor Lorenz as a
popular source of conservative
information for teens, are set to
private. So even if researchers like
López wanted to monitor its
content, there’s no guarantee
they’d have access to it.
Compared with Twitter or even
Facebook, Instagram provides
researchers with extremely
limited access to its internal data.
The company is exploring
other things such as computer
vision technology — which would
help detect text overlay on images
— but there are still other tricks
for those seeking to spread fake
news or political propaganda
without getting caught.
Accounts seeking to spread
misinformation could easily omit
hashtags or certain text from
their post captions, López said.
Donovan pointed out there have
been cases of sites paying popular
meme accounts to share their
content without disclosing their
partnership, something that
could also prove dangerous in
2020.
[email protected]Instagram’s new fact-checking tool may have limited impact on disinformation
The
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TONYA RILEY