Trump’s mug shot is now a means of entertainment and fundraising

But it will go down in history as an important cultural artifact

Jonathan Finn, Wilfrid Laurier University

One of the most anticipated events in the summer of 2023 was former President Donald Trump’s mug shot.

The Fulton County Sheriff’s office released Trump’s mug shot on Aug. 24, 2023, a little more than one week after a grand jury in Georgia indicted the former president and 18 associates for alleged attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Trump’s photo instantly generated a significant amount of media coverage and attracted public attention. Trump’s election campaign is now marketing the photo as a way to raise money. It’s also been used to ridicule and criticize him.

In the mug shot, Trump wears one of his classic dark suits with a red tie and a familiar, petulant scowl, with his brow furrowed and mouth turned down.

Save for the gold seal of the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office, there is nothing particularly noteworthy or interesting about the image.

But Trump’s mug shot’s ultimate importance is yet to be realized.

I have been interested in and researching mug shots and other forms of identification for more than 20 years. I did my Ph.D. thesis on the uses of photography in criminal identification and in 2009 wrote my first book, “Capturing the Criminal Image: From Mug Shot to Surveillance Society,” on the same topic.

It will likely be at least a decade or two before Trump’s mug shot’s significance truly registers with people. For now, it is a form of entertainment – a salacious piece of visual culture that Trump’s supporters and opponents have been waiting for and are now putting to use.

But as a historical artifact, the Trump mug shot will be truly unique – it will represent the first time a former president had a public, photographic record of criminal charges.

Long after the various trials come to conclusion, the mug shot will serve as a reminder of a particularly troubling time in American history.

Windmills: The New Scapegoat

Attacking the solution, not the problem

By Robert C. Koehler for Common Dreams

By Nick Anderson

The cornerstone of every social structure is its belief system, and those who control and benefit the most from the system have one primary job: Keep its myths and scapegoats viable.

That explains the emergence, in recent weeks, among right-wing politicians and media hacks, of a truly bizarre and unexpected scapegoat: the evil windmill!

In the wake of the winter storm that shut down the Texas power grid and deprived much of its population of electricity, warmth and drinkable water, these hacks and pols have been desperate to divert public awareness from basic facts, such as the utter failure of the state’s deregulated power grid to winterize and remain functional in difficult weather, and— ultimately far worse—the looming ecological collapse caused in large part by ongoing fossil fuel extraction and consumption.

Hence, as a Reuters fact-check analysis pointed out: “On Feb. 14, (Tucker) Carlson began telling his viewers that ‘a reckless reliance on windmills is the cause of this disaster,’ claiming that ‘the windmills froze, so the power grid failed.’ The following day, (Texas Gov. Greg) Abbott said in an interview that the crisis in Texas ‘shows how the Green New Deal would be a deadly deal for the United States of America.’”

And Naomi Klein wrote: “Since the power went out in Texas, the state’s most prominent Republicans have tried to pin the blame for the crisis on, of all things, a sweeping progressive mobilization to fight poverty, inequality and climate change. . . . Pointing to snow-covered solar panels, Rick Perry, a former governor who was later an energy secretary for the Trump administration, declared in a tweet ‘that if we humans want to keep surviving frigid winters, we are going to have to keep burning natural gas—and lots of it—for decades to come.’”

EDITOR'S NOTE: Charlestown had its own experience with scare tactics being used by anti-wind energy forces. Using fake science, they portrayed wind turbines as causing everything short of cancer (it was Donald Trump who took that last big leap into pseudoscience). Charlestown taxpayers paid $2.1 million, plus tons of legal costs, to block commercial wind energy development. One lasting legacy is that Charlestown's land use ordinances virtually ban ANY device - regardless of size or technology - that converts wind into electricity, including small household devices. Those rules were enacted in Charlestown in November 2011. Read the details HERE. - Will Collette

This is how ancient Rome's republic died

Classicist sees troubling parallels at Trump's impeachment trial
Timothy Joseph, College of the Holy Cross

The U.S. Senate has made its judgment in the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump, acquitting the president. 

Fifty two of 53 senators in the Republican majority voted to acquit the president on the abuse of power charge and all 53 Republican senators voted to acquit on the obstruction of Congress charge.

All 47 Democratic senators voted to convict the president on both charges. Senator Mitt Romney of Utah was the only Republican voting to convict for abuse of power.

The Republican senators’ speedy exoneration of Trump marks perhaps the most dramatic step in their capitulation to the president over the past three years.

That process, as I wrote in The Conversation last fall, recalls the ancient Roman senate’s compliance with the autocratic rule of the emperors and its transformation into a body largely reliant on the emperors’ whims.

Along with the senatorial fealty that was again on display, there was another development that links the era of the Roman Republic’s transformation into an autocratic state with the ongoing political developments in the United States. It’s a development that may point to where the country is headed.

Ask anybody

"The Chosen One?"

Rick Perry's belief that Trump was chosen by God is shared by many in a fast-growing Christian movement
Brad Christerson, Biola University and Richard Flory, University of Southern California – Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

In a recent interview with Fox News, Secretary of Energy Rick Perry stated that Donald Trump was chosen by God to be president. 

He said throughout history God had picked “imperfect people” such as King David or Solomon to lead their people.

Perry is not alone. 

A large number of evangelical Christians in the U.S. believe that God has chosen Donald Trump to advance the kingdom of God on Earth. 

Several high-profile religious leaders have made similar claims, often comparing Trump to King Cyrus who was asked by God to rescue the nation of Israel from exile in Babylon.

Many of these Christians are part of a movement that we call “Independent Network Charismatic,” or “INC Christianity” in our 2017 book.

Leaders such Rick Perry are connected to this movement. Eight years ago – in August of 2011 – more than 30,000 people cheered wildly when Perry, who was then a U.S. presidential candidate and Texas governor, came center stage at “The Response: A Call to Prayer for a Nation in Crisis” at Reliant Stadium in Houston. 

Perry quoted from the Bible and preached about the need for salvation that comes from Jesus. Many of the leaders who organized this event are the same leaders who claim that Trump is God’s chosen to advance the Kingdom of God.

We argue that INC Christianity is significantly changing the religious landscape in America – and the nation’s politics.

What about you?

Bob Murray’s greatest hits

Murray Energy's bankruptcy filing is the latest setback for America's most perfect Coal Baron

Peter Dykstra for Environmental Health News

If Robert Eugene Murray wasn't born to be America's biggest, baddest coal baron, he'd be a Hollywood scriptwriter's over-the-top vision of one.

Burly, with an engaging smile or an equally expressive scowl, Murray looks less like a CEO and more like the guy driving the getaway car.

But as of last week, he's no longer a CEO. Murray Energy, the nation's largest privately held coal producer, entered bankruptcy. Bob Murray gave up the reins as a part of the bankruptcy plan.

Murray, who turns 80 in January, has been the fiercest and most visible leader of America's beleaguered coal industry for more than a decade. 

He grew up in the coal country of southeastern Ohio, where his father was crippled in a mining accident. Murray himself suffered several injuries in the mines.

He leveraged an engineering degree into an above-ground career, buying out other coal operators to found Murray Energy in 1988. Pending any bankruptcy-related layoffs, Murray has 7,000 employees in six states and in South America.

In August 2007, a collapse at Murray's Crandall Canyon, Utah, mine trapped six miners. Days of frantic rescue efforts not only failed, but cost more lives when three rescuers were trapped. The ex-miner CEO hit the national spotlight for the first time, blaming the disaster on an earthquake, then on the "evil" mountain that bore his coal.

Problem is, seismic information is available in real time, to virtually anyone. U.S. Geological Survey data showed no earthquake, nor are there any fault lines anywhere near Crandall Canyon.

Hey, let’s give the Saudis the Bomb

Bone saws are just too small

By Jessica Corbett, staff writer for Common Dreams

The revelation that the Trump administration secretly authorized several U.S. companies to sell nuclear technology and assistance to Saudi Arabia is generating alarm over ongoing negotiations about a broader deal that critics worry could eventually lead to a nuclear-armed Saudi Arabia.

The Daily Beast and Reuters reported Wednesday that Energy Secretary Rick Perry had approved at least six Part 810 authorizations, which "allow companies to do preliminary work on nuclear power ahead of any deal but not ship equipment that would go into a plant."

Those reports provoked concerns from lawmakers that the development of nuclear reactors in Saudi Arabia, with crucial assistance from the American government and companies, could potentially enable the key U.S. ally—and serial human rights abuser—to also pursue a nuclear weapon.

"This is incredibly dangerous," Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) tweeted Thursday with a link to the Daily Beast article. "We must do everything we can to make sure the Saudi regime cannot develop nuclear weapons."

Worries over a nuclear-armed Saudi Arabia have been mounting since Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MBS) said on CBS's "60 Minutes" last year that "Saudi Arabia does not want to acquire any nuclear bomb, but without a doubt if Iran developed a nuclear bomb, we will follow suit as soon as possible."

While Iranian leaders also insist they do not want a nuclear weapon, President Donald Trump has continued to ratchet up regional tensions since last year, when he ditched the international deal designed to prevent Iran from acquiring one, despite assurances from U.N. watchdogs that nation was complying with the agreement.

Year in review — Measuring the US government’s 2018 footprint ... on Mother Nature’s throat

Some of the worst outrages of the year

Peter Dykstra for the Environmental Health News

    

The year saw President Donald Trump's promised multi-front assault on environmental values, regulations and science bear some toxic fruit.

Climate denial may finally be in decline in much of the world, but in the U.S. government, it rises again and again, like the drowned-in-the-bathtub villain in a Stephen King movie.

From the Environmental Protection Agency to the Education, Energy and Commerce Departments, government websites were scrubbed clean of information on climate change. Trump also continued his pitch for "clean coal" and promised a big comeback for a domestic industry that began and ended the year on life support.

The U.S. embarrassed itself at a December United Nations climate meeting in Poland with an awkward and misplaced pitch for fossil fuels.

Energy Department Releases Ginned-Up Study Supporting Coal, Nuclear Power

Report Was Prepared at the Behest of Trump’s and Perry’s Big Coal Campaign Donor

By Sarah Okeson

Trump’s Department of Energy put together a bogus study to justify a proposal to prop up polluting coal-fired power plants and financially failing nuclear plants.

Keeping uneconomic power plants open for two more years could cost $34 billion to offset operating shortfalls. 

That price tag could double if the payments also included return on invested capital as Energy Secretary Rick Perry wanted to do last year.

Robert Powelson, a former member of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, called plans to prop up coal and nuclear power plants by invoking a 1950 law “the greatest federal mortal hazard we’ve seen in years.”

Perry, who claims that closing coal and nuclear power plants would threaten national security, met and literally embraced coal magnate Robert Murray, the CEO of Murray Energy Corp., in March 2017, just 28 days after he was confirmed by the Senate. 

Murray and Murray Energy employees donated more than $115,000 to Perry’s failed 2012 presidential campaign and more than $300,000  to the Trump presidential race.

Murray gave Perry a plan to “assist in the survival of our country’s coal industry” that stressed grid reliability. 

Perry tried and failed to get the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to approve payments for some coal-fired power plants and nuclear reactors to help them stay in business. FERC voted unanimously against it.

In March, DOE’s National Energy Technology Laboratory published a study looking at the bomb cyclone, the deep freeze that blanketed much of the eastern United States from Dec. 27 to Jan. 8. The study purported to find that the U.S. would have suffered severe electricity shortages, and perhaps widespread blackouts, without coal-fired power plants.

The study cherry-picked data to support coal and ignored our existing backups to provide power during extreme weather.

Corporate welfare abuse planned for coal and nuke industries

Trump wants to force utilities to buy more energy from coal and nuke plants

By Jessica Corbett, staff writer for Common Dreams

Environmental advocates on June 1 responded with outrage to confirmation from the White House that President Donald Trump has ordered Energy Secretary Rick Perry to plot what's being called an "unprecedented intervention" by the federal government to bail out financially strapped coal and nuclear power plants that can't compete with the renewable energy sector.

"This is an outrageous ploy to force American taxpayers to bail out coal and nuclear executives who have made bad decisions by investing in dirty and dangerous energy resources," declared Mary Anne Hitt, director of the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal campaign.

Ahead of a National Security Council meeting, Bloomberg News obtained an Energy Department memo detailing plans to use emergency authority under two federal laws to require grid operators to buy electricity from at-risk coal and nuclear facilities and establish a "Strategic Electric Generation Reserve."

The document argues such moves are necessary for homeland security and energy independence. 

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders responded to the report with a statement confirming Trump has instructed Perry "to prepare immediate steps to stop the loss of these resources," claiming the need to protect the grid "from intentional attacks and natural disasters."

Rejecting the administration's argument that preserving coal plants is essential to national security as "surreal" and "madness" contradicted by experts, Earthjustice staff attorney Kim Smaczniak pointed out that clean energy sources like wind and solar "make the grid safer from attack," and even "the U.S. military is increasingly turning to solar, not coal, to ensure resilience at military bases."

Big wind

After an Uncertain Start, U.S. Offshore Wind Is Powering Up

BY ROGER DROUIN • Yale University E360

This summer, the Norwegian energy company, Statoil, will send a vessel to survey a triangular slice of federal waters about 15 miles south of Long Island, where the company is planning to construct a wind farm that could generate up to 1.5 gigawatts of electricity for New York City and Long Island — enough to power roughly 1 million homes. 

Construction on the “Empire Wind” project, with scores of wind turbines generating electricity across 79,000 acres of leased federal waters, is scheduled to begin in 2023, with construction completed in 2025.

Farther south, 27 miles off the coast of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Avangrid Renewables, an Oregon-based company, has already begun planning for a major wind energy farm on 122,000 acres of federal waters, a project that could eventually generate 1.5 gigawatts of electricity.

And about 10 miles off the New Jersey coast, between Atlantic City and Cape May, Danish clean-energy giant Ørsted, which has a large portfolio of offshore wind farms across Europe, is talking with local officials, securing state permits, and doing seafloor surveys on a 160,000-acre site, where it plans to build its 1–gigawatt Ocean Wind project. Company officials say they are hopeful that the wind farm will come online between 2020 and 2025.

After years of false starts and delays, the offshore wind industry in the United States finally seems to be gaining some momentum. Although far behind the burgeoning offshore wind energy industry in Europe, companies such as Statoil, Avangrid, and Ørsted are joining other wind energy developers — both from the U.S. and Europe— to pursue a slate of projects along the U.S. coast.

Rick Perry hugs coal baron who was given special favors by Trump regime

Tries to fire whistle-blower who took the photo

BY GRANT STERN  

Rick Perry, President Trump’s Energy Secretary, got caught on camera hugging a coal baron before letting the businessman write federal regulations.  

Now he’s been hit with a complaint (link below) for retaliating against the Department of Energy employee whose crucial leak – of public records, mind you –has impacted public policy in a fantastic way.

Perry now faces an investigation by the Inspector General for the budding scandal he himself ignited when he embraced notorious coal mine mogul Robert Murray, president of Murray Energy, who’s perhaps most famous for frivolously suing Last Week Tonight’s John Oliver.

The bear hug was caught on camera and lawfully released by DOE employee turned whistleblower Simon Edelman, whose revelation of his own public record photos led to immediate workplace retaliation.

Even Trump’s appointees think corporate welfare for coal, nuclear industries is stupid

Regulators Reject Perry's "Ludicrous" Plan to Bail Out Coal and Nuclear Industries

By Jon Queally, staff writer for Common Dreams

Green groups and opponents of nuclear energy welcomed a decision by federal regulators late Monday to reject a "ludicrous" plan put forth by U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry that would have forced taxpayers and ratepayers to bail out the struggling coal and nuclear industries.

The decision by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) comes after Perry last year submitted a contentious plan called for subsidizing the nation's coal-fired and nuclear power plants that are no longer economically viable on their own. According to Bloomberg, "Consumers in more than a dozen states would have foot the bill, which could have totaled billions."

"It's no surprise it was resoundingly rejected by even the industry-friendly commission, just as it's no surprise that Secretary Perry continues to demonstrate he has no idea what he's doing overseeing our nation’s energy infrastructure." —Janet Redman, Oil Change International

We now live in an alternative universe

“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroy ourselves.“ - Abraham Lincoln

In Puerto Rico, no electricity until May – and Trump doesn’t care

Trump isn’t actually concerned with grid reliability — just ask Puerto Rico
NATASHA GEILING



During his first year as head of the Department of Energy, Secretary Rick Perry has been almost singularly focused on one thing: realizing President Donald Trump’s empty promise to revitalize coal as a power source in the United States.

Perry’s crusade for coal began in April, when he ordered the DOE to conduct a study on grid reliability — namely, whether renewable energy was accelerating the retirement of coal-fired power plants and threatening the reliability of the U.S. energy grid. 

The study, which was finally released in August, did not find that renewable energy was having that effect, instead pointing to low cost and abundant natural gas as the primary factor in coal’s decline.

Nonetheless, in September, Perry followed up the grid study with a proposed federal rule that would effectively subsidize power plants that keep at least a 90-day supply of fuel on site — namely, coal and nuclear plants. In defending the rule before Congress, Perry used the example of a series of blackouts that occurred in Texas while he was governor.

Rick Perry Wants To Keep the Coal Fires Burning … And Help a Big Donor

Energy Department Puts Together a Scheme to Subsidize Obsolete Coal and Nuclear Plants 

By Sarah Okeson

Energy Secretary Rick Perry is working to make our children’s lives worse and our planet hotter by financially bailing out polluting coal companies.

Perry wants to keep aging coal and nuclear power plants operating and financially reward some plants that can keep three months of fuel on-site. 

This could push up electricity rates by as much as $3.8 billion a year through 2030.

Washington’s Real Uranium Scandal

As Republicans Gin Up a Fake Case, They Open the Grand Canyon to Mining Companies

By Sarah Okeson

As Republicans have launched a trumped-up investigation into Hillary Clinton’s tenuous connection to the 2010 sale of a uranium company, those same Republicans are preparing to hand over protected public land to uranium mining companies.

A new U.S. Forest Service report suggests undoing an order under former President Barack Obama that banned new uranium mines near the Grand Canyon for two decades.

“The Forest Service should be advocating for a permanent mining ban, not for advancing private mining interests that threaten one of the natural wonders of the world,” said Amber Reimondo, energy program director for Grand Canyon Trust.

Energy Department Cooks Up A Case Against Wind And Solar

Rick Perry Orders a Staff Report Showing Renewable Energy Harms the Electric Grid

By Laura Vecsey

Energy Secretary Rick Perry is cooking up a case to stifle further federal support of renewable wind and solar energy. 

He’s ordered a dubiously sourced staff study that is aimed to paint renewables as an unreliable source for the nation’s electric grid.

The study, due June 23, seeks to determine whether federal tax and subsidy policies favoring renewable energy have burdened “baseload” coal-fired generation, putting power grid reliability at risk. 

It is being spearheaded by Energy Department political appointee Travis Fisher, who’s associated with a  Washington policy group that opposes almost any government aid for renewable energy.

Fisher wrote a 2015 report for the Institute for Energy Research that called clean energy policies “the single greatest emerging threat” to the nation’s electric power grid, and a greater threat to electric reliability than cyber-attacks, terrorism or extreme weather.

What Rick Perry does with the grid study will be the real test. With a campaign promise to “Bring Back Coal,’’ the Perry-ordered report could be used to help rewrite the Clean Power Plan.

The man shepherding this process forward is Travis Fisher, Senior Adviser, Department of Energy, Forrestal Building, 1000 Independence Avenue, SW, Washington, D.C. 20585.

You can also write Rick Perry at that address. His email: The.Secretary@hq.doe.gov. Or you can Tweet at him that advanced energy technology is already reliable.

But will the Trump regime allow this to go forward?

Biofuel pays for itself with goods made from waste

DOE/Sandia National Laboratories

EDITOR’S NOTE: Yet another example of scientific research that may never reach fruition under Trump. Unless this methodology is given to the oil industry, it is unlikely that the Energy Department led by oil-controlled Rick Perry will allow this research to continue.

A recent discovery by Sandia National Laboratories researchers may unlock the potential of biofuel waste -- and ultimately make biofuels competitive with petroleum.

Fuel made from plants is much more expensive than petroleum, but one way to decrease the cost would be to sell products made from lignin, the plant waste left over from biofuel production.

Lignin typically is either burned to produce electricity or left unused in piles because no one has yet determined how to convert it into useful products, such as renewable plastics, fabrics, nylon and adhesives.

The electricity isn't even available to the general public; it's only used by companies that create large amounts of lignin, like pulp and paper manufacturers.

Now Sandia scientists, working with researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory at the Joint BioEnergy Institute, have decoded the structure and behavior of LigM, an enzyme that breaks down molecules derived from lignin.