The Daily Escape:
Japanese Garden, Portland, OR – April 2024 photo via The Oregonian
Here are two stories that we’re following that need updating. First, the Baltimore Key Bridge collapse. Many Republican House members have questioned why the US government (and the taxpayers) should have any financial responsibility for cleaning up the mess and rebuilding the bridge. From The Hill:
“…the idea has sparked an immediate backlash from conservative spending hawks, who are already up in arms over Congress’s recent approval of a massive 2024 spending package….Key Bridge, they argue, is a regional matter to be tackled by regional governments.”
Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) told The Hill:
“The very thought of having the Federal Government pay for the Baltimore bridge is TOTALLY ABSURD!!”. “This exemplifies the old slogan ‘ROBBING PETER TO PAY PAUL!!’”
From The Lever:
“The company that owns the ship that crashed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge…is trying to use a 173-year-old law to cap the damages it may have to pay, including potential compensation to families of the six workers killed in the disaster.”
This is because big oil and shipping interests successfully lobbied in 2010 to block reforms to the so-called “Titanic Law”, or the Limitation of Liability Act from 1851. The Singapore-based Grace Ocean, owner of the container ship Dali wants to argue that the damages it owes for the crash should be capped at $43 million — the remaining value of the ship and its cargo.
This is crazy, given the fact that it’s likely to cost hundreds of millions of dollars to rebuild the bridge. Still, on Monday, Grace Ocean filed an action in federal court using the Titanic Law.
More from The Lever:
“For decades, advocates have called for reform of the Limitation of Liability Act, arguing that the law is outdated and shields powerful companies from facing accountability for devastating accidents… Those calls were renewed after the company behind the deadly 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill tried to use the Limitation of Liability Act to severely limit the damages they were forced to pay.”
Congress introduced a bill that would have ended the use of the law to limit damages in the case of serious injury or death and strengthened laws used to hold oil companies accountable. But Big Oil and the shipping industry successfully lobbied to kill these reforms. The bill to reform the Titanic Law never made it out of committee.
It’s early days for the blizzard of claims that are coming in the aftermath of the Key Bridge collapse. In addition to the shipowner’s insurance, it’s certain that the bridge owner had insurance that would call for payment unless the owner intentionally caused the damage, which isn’t the case. There will be uninsured costs that the US taxpayer will have to foot. More to follow.
Second, let’s talk about Trump’s pending case in the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida, to decide his fate in the stolen documents case. There are some new developments. After Special Prosecutor Jack Smith’s filing on Tuesday, former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissman offered:
“DOJ calls out Judge Cannon and her improper rulings, and signals it is ready and willing to take her up to the 11th Circuit.”
That means Smith may try to have Judge Cannon removed from the classified documents case. Smith asked her to rule now to give government opportunity to appeal and seek mandamus. From the Cornell Law School:
“In federal courts, these orders most frequently appear when a party to a suit wants to appeal a judge’s decision but is blocked by rules…Instead of appealing directly, the party simply sues the judge, seeking a mandamus compelling the judge to correct their earlier mistake.”
Remember that this is the case that the DOJ accuses Trump of illegally removing classified documents from the White House to his Mar-a-Lago residence and obstructing the government’s attempts to reclaim them, citing violations of the Espionage Act. Back in 2022, Wrongo said that the stolen documents case would be the easiest of the Trump cases to win, and therefore should go forward first. It was originally scheduled to go to trial in May 2024. That looks impossible now.
Cannon is a representative of the legal system that chased Daniel Ellsberg for years, and threw Reality Winner in prison. She can’t seriously believe that the storage of classified government documents in a Florida bathroom in defiance of requests and demands from the proper authorities is a lesser offense because the bathroom’s owner used to be president.
It’s likely that Cannon will not respond kindly to Smith’s use of 20+ pages to call her out. It’s the kind of thing that has elicited miffed responses from her in the past. At this point, Aileen Cannon is the most effective member of Trump’s legal team.
It also seems Smith is laying a record for a challenge to the 11th Circuit Court. Cannon may yet postpone the start of the trial scheduled for May 20 to after the November election. We have to hope she won’t have control of this case for that long.
In the 1930s when Scotus ruled that agriculture was a local matter and so not subject to federal control, Henry Wallace is reported to have said that is this is so, then half of the people would starve. Well ports are even more a national matter. And bridges around ports are essential too (to move the cargo inland). Ports are critical to moving all manner of goods – and red states that are often reliant in commodities from oil and minerals to farm products should know that as well as anyone. But…. when folks like MTG are in Congress, let’s just take that as proof that the Know Nothings are back.