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The vehicle was parked behind a building on Park Street before it caught fire and flames spread.

Tuesday morning, our hearts are heavy across the region as we cope with a school shooting that leaves both the victims of violence and emotional trauma.

Owned by Nate and Christine Hereford, the rotisserie chicken concept gained a quick following at City Foundry STL.

Prosecution and defense clashed in federal court yesterday over whether or not a Beretta 9mm belonged to a popular St. Louis rapper when he was stopped by police in January of last year. According to federal prosecutors, Arthur Pressley, better known as rapper 30 Deep Grimeyy, had the firearm when St. Louis police pulled him and three other men over on January 5, 2021. Pressley is a convicted felon, making it illegal to have the gun in his possession.

St. Louis police and federal authorities are combing through evidence yielded from searches of the home and car of the gunman in Monday morning’s mass shooting at the Central Visual and Performing Arts High School in South St. Louis. 

Lowriders in St. Louis?

The St. Louis County Boundary Commission is expected to give final approval on Tuesday to the change.

Cough syrup. Dishwashing liquid. Salt. That’s what the Suprep bowel prep kit I drank tasted like – not that I really know what dishwashing liquid tastes like – as I prepared for my colonoscopy. When my doctor first suggested some years ago that I have a colonoscopy to screen for colorectal cancer, I told her about a […]

The post I delayed my colonoscopy during the pandemic. Don’t make the same mistake appeared first on Missouri Independent.

A thirsty megafarm is driving a libertarian enclave in Arizona to embrace a radical solution: government regulation.

Britain's new prime minister has a mixed record on environment, energy, and climate policy.

by Perla Trevizo and Marilyn W. Thompson

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

This article is co-published with The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan local newsroom that informs and engages with Texans. Sign up for The Brief Weekly to get up to speed on their essential coverage of Texas issues.

Days after being elected Texas governor in 2014, Greg Abbott called a staff meeting to discuss his vision for leading the state.

“Our number-one priority as public servants is to follow the law,” Abbott, who served as Texas attorney general before he was elected, told staffers, according to his autobiography. Adhering to the law was “a way to ignore the pressure of politics, polls, money and lobbying.”

The Republican governor-elect said he rejected the path of Democratic President Barack Obama, whom he had sued 34 times as attorney general. Abbott claimed that Obama had usurped Congress’ power by using executive orders, including one to protect from deportation young people born in other countries and brought to the United States as children.

Now, nearly eight years into his governorship, Abbott’s actions belie his words. He has consolidated power like no Texas governor in recent history, at times circumventing the GOP-controlled state Legislature and overriding local officials.

The governor used the pandemic to block judges from ordering the release of some prisoners who couldn’t post cash bail and unilaterally defunded the legislative branch because lawmakers had failed to approve some of his top priorities. He also used his disaster authority to push Texas further than any other state on immigration and was the first to send thousands of immigrants by bus to Democratic strongholds.

Abbott’s executive measures have solidified his conservative base and dramatically raised his national profile. He is leading Democrat Beto O’Rourke in polls ahead of the Nov. 8 election and is mentioned as a potential 2024 GOP presidential contender. But his moves have also brought fierce criticism from some civil liberties groups, legal experts and even members of his own party, who have said his actions overstep the clearly defined limits of his office.

“Abbott would make the argument that Obama had a power grab, that he was trying to create an imperial presidency by consolidating power. That’s exactly what Abbott is doing at the state level,” said Jon Taylor, chair of the political science and geography department at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

At least 34 lawsuits have been filed in the past two years challenging Abbott’s executive actions, which became bolder since the start of the pandemic. Abbott used his expanded power at first to require safety measures against COVID-19, similar to what other governors did. But after pushback from his conservative base, he later forbade local governments and businesses from imposing mask and vaccine mandates. He also forced through Republican priorities, including an order that indirectly took aim at abortions by postponing surgeries and procedures that were not medically necessary.

Lower courts have occasionally ruled against Abbott, but Texas’ all-Republican highest court has sided with the governor, dismissing many of the cases on procedural grounds. Other challenges to Abbott’s use of executive power are still pending. In no case have the governor’s actions been permanently halted.

Abbott’s office did not respond to multiple requests for an interview or to questions from ProPublica and The Texas Tribune. In responding to the lawsuits, his legal team has defended his actions as allowed under the Texas Disaster Act of 1975, which gives the governor expansive powers.

Several of Abbott’s allies also declined to comment or didn’t return phone calls. Carlos Cascos, a former secretary of state under Abbott, said that in the end, it is up to the courts to decide whether the governor’s actions are unconstitutional.

“Until there’s some final judgment, the governor can do it,” Cascos, also a Republican, said. “If people want to change the rules or laws, that’s fine, but you change them by going through a process.”

Legal experts concede that Abbott has been successful so far, but they insist his moves exceed his constitutional authority.

“I’m not sure any other governor in recent Texas history has so blatantly violated the law with full awareness by the Supreme Court, and he’s been successful at every turn when he had no power to exercise it. It’s amazing,” said Ron Beal, a former Baylor University law professor who has written widely on administrative law and filed legal briefs challenging Abbott’s power. Although Texas Supreme Court justices are elected, Abbott has appointed five of the nine members of the state’s highest court when there have been vacancies.

Some Republicans also fault the governor’s actions. Nowhere was that more pronounced than when Abbott vetoed the Legislature’s budget last year after Democrats fled the state Capitol to thwart passage of one of the strictest voting bills in the country. The governor contended that “funding should not be provided for those who quit their job early.”

The move, which spurred a lawsuit from Democratic lawmakers, would have halted pay for about 2,100 state employees who were caught in the crosshairs.

Former state lawmakers, including two previous House speakers — Joe Straus, a Republican, and Pete Laney, a Democrat — as well as former Republican Lt. Gov. Bill Ratliff, weighed in on the dispute, filing a brief with the state’s Supreme Court calling the governor’s action unconstitutional and “an attempt to intimidate members of the Legislature and circumvent democracy.”

In response to the lawsuit, state Attorney General Ken Paxton argued that Abbott used his constitutional authority to veto the Legislature’s budget and that the courts didn’t have a role to play in disputes between political branches.

The Supreme Court agreed, saying it was not a matter for the judicial branch to decide. In the end, lawmakers passed a bill that restored the funding that Abbott had vetoed. Staffers didn’t lose a paycheck.

“It was a terrible thing to do, to threaten those people who do all that work, and threaten not to pay them while the governor and the members of Legislature were still going to get paid. How cynical is that?” said Kel Seliger, an outgoing Republican state senator from Amarillo who has split with his party’s leadership on various issues as it has shifted further right.

Weak Governor?

Abbott has taken advantage of emergency orders and disaster declarations like no other Texas governor in recent history. (Miguel Gutierrez/Pool via The Texas Tribune)

Research groups consistently rank Texas as a “weak governor” state because its constitution limits what the governor can do without legislative authorization. Executive officers such as the lieutenant governor and the attorney general are also independently elected, not appointed by the governor, further diluting the power of the office.

“The way the constitution is designed, unless it’s specified in the constitution, you don’t have that power. Period. And that’s why I think you can look at a whole variety of his actions as violating the constitution. He just doesn’t have it. He asserts it, and he gets away with it,” said James Harrington, a former constitutional law professor at the University of Texas at Austin who founded the Texas Civil Rights Project. Harrington initially filed a brief defending Abbott’s early use of pandemic-related executive orders limiting crowd sizes and the types of businesses allowed to remain open, but he said the governor’s later orders fell outside of the bounds of the law.

The weak-governor structure was created by the framers in 1876 who believed that Edmund Jackson Davis, a former Union general who led Texas following the Civil War, abused his powers as governor. A Republican who supported the rights of freed people, Davis disbanded the Texas Rangers and created a state police force that he used, at times, to enforce martial law to protect the civil rights of African Americans. He also expanded the size of government, appointing more than 9,000 state, county and local officials, which left a very small number of elected positions.

Currently, the governor’s office accrues power largely through vetoes and appointments. While the Legislature can override a veto, governors often issue them after the legislative session ends. The governor is the only one who can call lawmakers back.

During a typical four-year term, a governor makes about 1,500 appointments to the courts and hundreds of agencies and boards covering everything from economic development to criminal justice. The longer governors serve, the more loyalty they can build through appointments.

Abbott’s predecessor, Republican former Gov. Rick Perry, set the stage for building power through appointments. Over 14 years, Perry, a former state representative who became Texas’ longest-serving governor, positioned former employees, donors and supporters in every state agency.

Perry could not be reached for comment through a representative.

In contrast to his predecessor, Abbott, a jurist with no legislative experience, found other avenues to interpret and stretch the law. Abbott has benefited from appointments and vetoes, but he has also taken advantage of emergency orders and disaster declarations like no other governor in recent state history.

Disaster declarations are generally used for natural calamities such as hurricanes and droughts and are useful legally for governors who could face legislative gridlock or state agency inaction if going through normal channels. Abbott’s use of such tools has grown even as his party holds a majority in the state Legislature.

In his eight years as governor, Abbott has issued at least 42 executive orders. Perry signed 80 orders during his 14-year tenure, though they rarely brought controversy. He once required human papillomavirus vaccines for girls but backtracked after pushback from the Legislature.

“Rick Perry experimented with and developed a number of tools that former governors had,” said Cal Jillson, professor of political science at Southern Methodist University. “That he sharpened appointments would be one of those, executive orders would be another of those, the use of the bully pulpit would be a third. And Abbott went to school on that.”

Aiding Abbott in his push to strengthen executive power have been what is essentially a Republican-controlled state with no term limits for officeholders, a Legislature that meets every two years and innate fundraising skills that have helped him draw about $282 million (adjusted for inflation) in campaign contributions in the decade since he first ran for governor. He has used some of that haul to oppose candidates for office, including those in his own party, who have crossed him.

“It’s surprising that even the legislative leadership in the Republican Party has acquiesced to the degree they have because the powers that Abbott has accrued have to come from somewhere else, and it’s coming from them,” said Glenn Smith, an Austin-based Democratic strategist.

Last year, state lawmakers filed 13 bills aiming to curb the governor’s powers under the state’s disaster act, including Republican proposals that would require the Legislature’s permission to extend executive orders, which the governor now does every 30 days.

For instance, in 2019 Abbott issued an executive order to extend the state’s plumbing board after it was on track to shut down because of legislative inaction. He was able to do so by using his power under a disaster declaration that he first issued when Hurricane Harvey pummeled the state in 2017. He continued to renew the disaster declaration for nearly four years.

Abbott similarly continues to renew his 2020 COVID-19 disaster declaration even as he downplays the severity of the pandemic.

During the last legislative session, the only measure that passed — and was signed by Abbott — is a bill that removed the governor’s authority to restrict the sale, dispensing or transportation of firearms during a declared disaster.

“He governs like a judge, and that’s where the autocratic side comes out,” said state Rep. Lyle Larson, a Republican lawmaker whom Abbott tried to oust in 2018 after he pushed a measure that would make the governor wait a year before appointing to boards anyone who donated more than $2,500 to his campaign. The San Antonio lawmaker, who defeated Abbott’s preferred candidate at the time, has decided not to seek reelection.

Methodically Creating a Powerhouse

Over the years, Abbott continued to insert himself in decision-making that had previously not been in the purview of the governor’s office. (Laura Skelding for The Texas Tribune)

Abbott’s tenacity at building the power of the office can be traced back to his recovery after an oak tree fell on him while he was jogging at age 26, paralyzing him from the waist down, said Austin-based Republican consultant and lobbyist Bill Miller.

“He’s had setbacks in life that he’s overcome with tremendous success, and you don’t achieve that unless you’re persevering and a tough individual, and he’s both in the extreme,” Miller said.

At 32, Abbott was elected as a Harris County district judge, then was plucked from the bench by former Gov. George W. Bush, who elevated him to fill a vacancy on the Texas Supreme Court, a recommendation of Bush’s political adviser Karl Rove. Abbott ran for state attorney general and served 12 years before his election as governor in 2014.

He began testing the limits of his executive power quickly after his election.

In June 2015, six months into his first term, Abbott analyzed the state budget and vetoed more than $200 million in legislative directives that provided specific instructions to agencies on how certain funds should be used.

The move eliminated funding for various projects, including water conservation education grants and a planned museum in Corpus Christi. Abbott called some of the projects “unnecessary state debt and spending.”

The head of the Legislative Budget Board at the time argued that the governor had overstepped his authority because while he could veto line-item appropriations, he could not override the Legislature’s instructions to state agencies.

“We were just kind of flabbergasted. In all of your 150-plus years of precedent in state government, this had never been seen before,” said a longtime capitol attorney who asked to not be identified for fear of retribution. “It was kind of shocking to me that he was an attorney, was the attorney general, was on the (Texas) Supreme Court and, in my opinion, has such little value for the Texas Constitution and disrespect for the separation of powers. Such disrespect for a coequal branch of government.”

Over the years, Abbott continued to insert himself in decision-making that had previously not been in the purview of the governor’s office. His actions drew little public scrutiny because they involved procedural matters.

For instance, state agencies must typically seek public comment before publishing final regulations in areas such as the environment and education. But Abbott wanted to review proposed regulations before their public release. In 2018, his office directed agencies to first run them past the governor.

Citing a 1981 executive order by Ronald Reagan, Abbott’s chief of staff wrote that presidential review of proposed regulations helped to “coordinate policy among agencies, eliminate redundancies and inefficiencies, and provide a dispassionate ‘second opinion’ on the costs and benefits of proposed agency actions.”

But insisting on a review of agency proposals could give his office influence over matters that should not be left to the executive branch, critics said. For example, Abbott’s office could suggest softening regulations for emissions, which could be favorable to the oil and gas industry. While agency leaders do not have to comply, the boards and commissions overseeing them are often appointed by the governor.

Byron Cook, a Republican former state lawmaker from Corsicana, criticized Abbott’s request at the time and continues to believe that the governor overstepped his authority. “I think it’s a dangerous precedent, and I don’t think it’s in the best interest of the people in the state because it circumvents the legislative process,” Cook said in a recent interview.

At the time, Abbott’s office defended his line-item veto and his request to review agency rules as measures that were within his constitutional authority.

It’s unclear how much influence Abbott has wielded over that process in the past six years because the governor’s office is fighting the release of records to ProPublica and the Tribune that would show its interactions with state agencies.

While some lawmakers like Cook openly resisted Abbott’s push to grow the powers of the executive branch, Perry and Abbott have faced limited pushback because few have wanted to cross them, several former and current lawmakers told ProPublica and the Tribune.

“Somebody’s got to push back, but pushing back very often brings retribution, and so people are very careful,” said Seliger, who filed a bill in one of last year’s special legislative sessions aimed at removing the governor’s line-item veto power.

The measure was mostly symbolic because only Abbott has the power to decide what topics will be addressed in a special session — and Seliger’s bill was not among them.

Pushing an Agenda

Abbott declared a public emergency in March 2020 and issued executive orders to deal with pandemic safety. Legal challenges continued to mount as he asserted his disaster authority to control local government responses to the crisis and to impose his policy priorities. (Miguel Gutierrez Jr. for The Texas Tribune)

As the pandemic hit Texas, Abbott reacted like most other governors struggling with an unprecedented public health crisis. He declared a public emergency on March 13, 2020, and issued a string of executive orders to deal with pandemic safety.

Abbott initially faced at least 10 lawsuits from business owners and conservative activists insisting his restrictions on businesses and crowd control violated the constitution. Charles “Rocky” Rhodes, a professor of state and federal constitutional law at South Texas College of Law Houston, said many of Abbott’s early actions were allowed under the disaster act’s sweeping provisions.

Legal challenges mounted as Abbott, in response to criticism from conservative groups and lawmakers, shifted course and asserted his disaster authority to control local government responses to the crisis and to impose his policy priorities. Rhodes pointed to an order forbidding employers from imposing vaccine mandates on employees. He said Abbott pushed “beyond the scope of his authority” and against federal vaccine mandates.

A string of legal actions filed by local governments and school districts in state and federal courts alleged that Abbott has tried to usurp the power of local entities, including the courts, by issuing orders that prohibited them from taking their own measures to deal with rising infection rates. Abbott’s legal team has defended the orders as within the scope of his expansive powers under the disaster act.

Two Texas parents who signed on as intervenors in a lawsuit against Abbott brought by La Joya and other independent school districts — Shanetra Miles-Fowler, a mother of three in Manor, and Elias Ponvert, a father of four in Pflugerville — told ProPublica and the Tribune that they saw Abbott’s order as political.

A lower-court order delayed implementation of Abbott’s prohibition against local governments imposing mask and vaccination mandates. The timing allowed parents to get through “the most dangerous months of the COVID pandemic,” said attorney Mike Siegel, who represented parents in the La Joya lawsuit. “Our fight likely saved the lives of students and staff who were facing a terrible choice of missing school or risking infection.” The masking cases are still pending at the Texas Supreme Court.

Abbott also used his disaster emergency powers to block judges from releasing prisoners who had not posted pretrial bail, prompting a lawsuit from 16 county judges and legal groups who argued that he had exceeded his constitutional powers. Abbott’s order also restricted the release of some charged with misdemeanors on time served with good behavior. His order said the disaster act gave him broad authority to control entrance and exit into facilities and the “occupancy of premises.”

In a court filing, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers argued that Abbott’s executive order “violates the separation of powers, interferes with judicial independence, violates equal protection and due process of law, and constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.”

Abbott had been trying unsuccessfully since 2017 to make it harder for those accused of violent crimes, or any prior offenses involving threats of violence, to get out of jail without posting cash bonds. When COVID-19 struck, some counties began releasing prisoners to try to reduce jail populations. In Harris County, where Abbott had once served as a judge, the jail was overflowing, and a federal judge in Houston had ordered the county to begin releasing about 250 prisoners per day.

Elizabeth Rossi, an attorney with the Civil Rights Corps, a nonprofit group that has represented plaintiffs in a lawsuit against Harris County challenging its felony bail practices, said Abbott’s “heartless and cruel” order impacted tens of thousands of prisoners held in Texas jails. “The human effects were really visceral,” she said.

One inmate, Preston Chaney, 64, died of COVID-19 while awaiting trial in the Harris County jail for three months, unable to post a small bond on charges that he stole lawn equipment and frozen meat.

Maurice Wilson, a 38-year-old with diabetes who served time in Harris County on drug possession charges, said he was terrified by the spread of COVID-19 as he sat in jail on a $10,000 bond. He was one of the many prohibited from release under Abbott’s order because of a prior misdemeanor assault conviction.

The Texas Supreme Court ultimately ruled that the Harris County judges and other plaintiffs lacked standing because they had not suffered injury and overturned a temporary restraining order that had halted enforcement of Abbott’s order. Abbott finally got a bail-reform package through the Legislature and signed it into law in September 2021. It formalized some aspects of his executive order.

What Abbott has tried to do is “make himself the chief prosecutor, the chief lawmaker and, with bail, the chief judge,” said Jessica Brand, a lawyer who represented a law enforcement group in the case. “We do not live in a kingdom, however, and such behavior is totally inconsistent with the framework of government this state has adopted.”

Power Concentration

Abbott, flanked by top Republicans at a press conference in June 2021, detailed a plan for Texas to build its own border wall. (Sophie Park for The Texas Tribune)

Abbott’s power consolidation came to a head last year as his administration embarked on the state’s most ambitious and costly border initiative to date.

On May 31, 2021, about four months into President Joe Biden’s term, Abbott became the first governor in recent history to issue a border disaster declaration, which he said was needed because the federal government’s inaction was causing a “dramatic increase” in the number of people crossing into the state. The disaster declaration gave the governor more flexibility to shift funds, increase penalties for some state trespassing charges against immigrants and suspend rules, including those governing state contracts.

Abbott had already succeeded in securing more than $1 billion for border security during the Legislative session for the deployment of Department of Public Safety troopers and National Guard members under Operation Lone Star.

The governor launched the initiative in March of that year, contending it was necessary to stem the smuggling of drugs and people into the country through Texas. Under the disaster declaration that Abbott used to bolster his authority over the operation, immigrants charged with criminal trespassing for crossing the border through private property could be punished by up to a year in jail. He could also use state funds to build barriers.

In August, Abbott used his power to reconvene lawmakers for a special session where they again increased funding for border security by an additional $2 billion. Over the next few months, the governor continued to deploy National Guard members to the border with no end date for their mission.

As costs ballooned, Abbott chose not to bring lawmakers back for another special session. Instead, with help from a handful of Republican lawmakers and some state agency leaders, Abbott dipped at least twice into other agencies’ coffers to shift another nearly $1 billion to support an operation that has been plagued with problems since it began.

An investigation by ProPublica, the Tribune and The Marshall Project found that the state’s reported success included arrests unrelated to the border or immigration and counted drug seizures from across Texas, including those made by troopers who were not directly assigned to Operation Lone Star. Reporting by the Tribune and Army Times also exposed poor working conditions, pay delays and suicides among National Guard members deployed as part of the operation. And the Department of Justice is investigating potential civil rights violations related to Abbott’s directive to prosecute immigrants for trespassing. A spokesperson for the DOJ said she didn’t have any information to provide on the investigation.

Abbott’s office has previously said the arrests and prosecutions “are fully constitutional.”

Still, Abbott continues to expand the scope of the operation with no end in sight.

In April, the governor used the powers he had tested and amassed to announce his latest step under the umbrella of Operation Lone Star: Texas would transport migrants arriving at the border to Washington, D.C., later expanding the initiative to New York and Chicago. Once again, he used the powers of the disaster declaration and tasked the state’s emergency agency with carrying out the measure.

Since then, more than 12,500 people have been bused at a cost of about $14 million, according to state records. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, also Republicans, followed Abbott’s lead with their own initiatives. A Texas county sheriff is conducting a criminal investigation into the treatment of immigrants, and the D.C. attorney general is examining immigrant busing into Washington by Texas and Arizona. All of the governors have defended their actions as legal.

“I can’t remember that the governor has ever used state powers for this type of militarized border enforcement,” said Barbara Hines, founder and former director of the University of Texas Law School Immigration Clinic.

“What he’s doing under the guise of emergencies, disasters, invasions, whatever misnomer Abbott wants to give it to enforce federal immigration law,” she added, “I think that’s illegal.”

Lexi Churchill contributed research.

Todd Rundgren is among the well-known music artists taking part in the 2022 edition of the Celebrating David Bowie tribute tour, which kicked off earlier this month and is plotted…

Source

Students, parents and community leaders mourned and demanded change Monday night at a candlelight vigil in Tower Grove Park.

Nonsensical austerity talking points are creeping back into the political discourse.

Maybe, just barely. The long view is not encouraging.

Republicans have wanted to end Social Security as we know it since its inception. They may finally get their chance.

by Kathleen McGrory and Neil Bedi

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

Theresa Opalinski was warming up her border collies for their agility training one day in 2011 when she couldn’t catch her breath. Her husband, Michael, suggested they go to urgent care, and a few days later, a specialist drained more than a liter of fluid from her left lung. After ping-ponging between local hospitals, she underwent an exploratory surgery, which confirmed she had mesothelioma.

The diagnosis puzzled them. Asbestos exposure is the only known cause of the vicious cancer, which kills most people who get it within a few years. Because cases often involve occupational exposure in industries like shipbuilding and construction — and because it can take decades for the cancer to develop — mesothelioma is sometimes thought of as an old man’s disease. Theresa was just 53 and held a master’s in public administration. She had been a congressional aide, she’d managed a nonprofit, she’d worked in marketing. Never with asbestos.

Far from her mind was the fact that she and Michael had grown up a mile away from a plant in North Tonawanda, New York, that used a type of asbestos that is blue in color to make industrial plastics. The plant’s owner, OxyChem, closed and demolished the facility in the 1990s. But the company has since faced at least 10 lawsuits alleging that the plant released so much asbestos into the environment that residents of the surrounding neighborhood developed mesothelioma and other ailments associated with the toxic substance.

The blue dust settled onto windowsills and on a Little League field and atop fresh snow, lawsuits allege and residents recall. It got stuck in workers’ hair and on their clothes and wound up on the seats of their cars and inside their homes. One woman, married to a plant employee, died after years of washing her husband’s asbestos-soiled uniform, her family said.

OxyChem declined to comment on the lawsuits involving its plastics plant. Most of the cases have been settled out of court, records show. Two are pending. In some of the cases, OxyChem said it was not responsible for the plaintiff’s injuries. In at least one, the company said the lawsuit had not been filed by the legally required deadline.

The latest suits, filed earlier this year, come as the company is forced to reckon with its other uses of asbestos — and contemplate a future without it. Unlike some 60 other countries, the United States hasn’t banned asbestos. OxyChem is one of two chemical companies that import and use the potent carcinogen to make chlorine. For decades, it has maintained that the workers in its chlorine plants face no threat of exposure; in recent months, it has used that argument to fight a proposed federal ban on the substance.

But last week, ProPublica reported that asbestos accumulated in a number of areas inside and around OxyChem’s chlorine plant in Niagara Falls, New York, and that employees worked amid the dust until the plant closed late last year. They often went without protective suits or masks in the building where asbestos was removed from equipment, they said. “We were constantly swimming in this stuff,” one former employee said.

Though the two OxyChem plants that have come under scrutiny used different types of asbestos for different industrial processes, there are striking similarities between the facilities, which are 10 miles apart. Experts say both situations speak to OxyChem’s poor track record of containing asbestos in its plants, and they both illustrate the carcinogen’s long tail and broad impact.

Asbestos is a naturally occurring mineral known for its strength, durability and ability to resist heat. It was once used widely in industrial operations and construction. But its tiny fibers can also do serious damage. Once inhaled, they can settle into the lungs, abdomen and other parts of the body, where they can cause cancer and other deadly conditions.

The North Tonawanda plant was built in the 1920s, state Department of Environmental Conservation records show. It was acquired by Hooker Chemical in the 1950s, then by Occidental Petroleum, OxyChem’s parent company, in the 1960s.

The asbestos used at the plant sickened workers, some of whom went on to sue the asbestos companies that sold the material, court records and news clips show. The asbestos use also had a profound effect on the surrounding community, the lawsuits against OxyChem allege. When the plant got too dusty, the workers used air hoses to remove fibers from the facility, according to the lawsuits.

One of the plaintiffs, James Urban, played baseball on a Little League field that was regularly contaminated by dust from the plant in the late 1960s, according to his lawsuit. Nearly 30 years later, doctors found fluid between the layers of tissue lining his lungs, a condition known as a pleural effusion that can be caused by asbestos exposure. Urban declined to comment when reached at home by ProPublica.

Michael Opalinski used to clean a fine blue dust off the windowsills of his home when he was growing up in North Tonawanda in the 1960s and ’70s, he told ProPublica. He sometimes saw tiny blue feathers atop a fresh snowfall. He recalled at least two explosions at the plant that expelled clouds of dust into the air.

Paul Richards worked at the plant from 1962 to 1980, he said. One of his jobs was to empty 100-pound bags of asbestos and stomp the material through a grate in the floor. After a shift, asbestos would cover his face, he said. It would slip underneath his collar and inside his pockets.

Jean Richards (Courtesy of Amy Shuler)

At home, Paul’s wife, Jean, would take his dirty uniforms into the basement, shake them out and launder them. Then one day, more than a decade after Paul had left the plant, Jean was diagnosed with lung cancer. “That’s how she got sick,” he said recently. “Just from washing my clothes.” Jean battled the cancer for years, her daughter, Amy Shuler, said, undergoing chemotherapy and other treatments, often feeling too sick to eat or drink.

When Jean died in 2005 at age 62, Paul lost his high school sweetheart and longtime hunting and fishing partner. Amy lost the mother who doted on her and took her shopping and then out to lunch each Saturday. “I lost my best friend, all because my dad had worked with asbestos and mom would breathe in the dust when she would shake his clothing out before putting it in the wash,” Amy said. “No one told us of the dangers.”

For Theresa Opalinski, treatment was grueling: a surgery to remove part of the lining of her lungs, four rounds of chemotherapy. She lost weight, grew weak. The disease, Michael said, was like “putting on a cement overcoat.” “It forms a hard shell [around the lungs], to the point where you can’t breathe.” Later, Theresa participated in phase 1 trials of experimental therapies at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. She pushed through them not because she expected to beat the cancer herself, but so that one day, someone else might, her husband said. She died in 2016 at age 58.

Michael Opalinksi (Rich-Joseph Facun, special to ProPublica)

Michael, who had seen a local law firm’s billboard seeking North Tonawanda residents diagnosed with mesothelioma, didn’t call until after Theresa died, he said. He told ProPublica he couldn’t say much about the lawsuit he filed against OxyChem in 2017. Records show it was settled out of court.

The Opalinskis had plans to retire early, travel the world, take the dogs to national agility competitions. Everything is different now. In 2020, he left the city where he and Theresa grew up and moved to the countryside. His new house has a big yard for the dogs. He wishes Theresa had lived to see it. He thinks about her when he’s on the back porch, listening to the wind blow through the leaves. She loved being outside, especially in the summer. “It’s tough that you can’t share it with her,” he said.

He still struggles to make sense of it: the diagnosis, her loss, how it could have happened in the first place. Even in the 1960s when Theresa was likely exposed, asbestos was a known carcinogen. “If what you are producing is very harmful and you’ve known it since the 1950s,” he asked, “why would you do it?”

Do You Work With These Hazardous Chemicals? Tell Us About It.

STLduJour(nal) ⏳ – MMXXII:298-AM JW Tue, 10/25/2022 - 08:39 STL: Tuesday, October 25, 2022 Events 📆

• Leaf-Peeping Season Is Officially Upon Us, St. Louis – RFT
• "Tom Hück: The Devil is in The Details" captures 25 years of printmaker Tom Hück’s signature style – St. Louis Magazine

BuySTL 👜

• Schnucks Launches Schnucks Now 30-Minute Delivery In All Markets – RiverBender
• St. Louis-based aerospace manufacturer acquires Connecticut firm – St. Louis Business Journal

Restaurants 🍲

• Fourth City Barbecue serves up grab-and go wood-smoked meats and sides in Benton Park – feastmagazine.com
• ‘Farewell Tour’: McDonald’s puts McRib back on the menu again, suggests it’s the last time. – r/StLouis

STLfood ⚜️

• Food Recommendations – r/StLouis
• Some Bob Evans’ Italian Sausage Has Been Recalled – RiverBender

Neighborhoods 🏡

• FYI, I have created an /r/Olivette subreddit… – r/StLouis
• UPDATE: Boil Order Lifted for Edwardsville – RiverBender
• South Roxana Halloween Parade Cancelled Because Of Weather Forecast, But Trunk Or Treat Will Be Sunday – RiverBender
• 2022 LASM Trivia Night – Lindenwood Park
• Meetup At LoRusso’s – Lindenwood Park
• Wildwood’s first mayor dies after cycling accident – FOX 2

STL100 💯

• Aerie’s Resort’s new Alpine coaster offers four minutes of family-friendly thrills just outside of St. Louis – St. Louis Magazine

STL99 😱

• Corps starts testing Jana Elementary for radioactive contamination; neighbors call for more – stltoday.com
• St. Louis among cities with highest homicide rate increases – FOX 2
• Students transition to virtual learning after radioactive lead found at Jana Elementary – KSDK

CPVA Shooting

• ‘All of y’all are going to die’: Students describe coming face-to-face with school shooter – KSDK
• ‘It’s a nightmare’: Father in disbelief after daughter killed in shooting at St. Louis high school – KSDK
• ‘My God, what were you shot with?’ | Teacher recalls surviving school shooting with his son – KSDK
• ‘She was a great teacher:’ Missouri lawmaker pays tribute to former teacher killed in school shooting – KSDK
• 3 Dead After Shooting at South St. Louis High School – RFT
• All SLPS schools on ‘hard lockdown’, Central VPA students can be picked up at Gateway STEM – KSDK
• All St. Louis Public Schools on lockdown after CVPA shooting – FOX 2
• At least two dead in shooting at Central Visual Performing Arts high school in south St. Louis – stlamerican.com
• Barricaded students record sound of encroaching gunfire – FOX 2
• Central Visual and Performing Arts High School evacuated following shooting Monday morning – St. Louis Magazine
• Central Visual and Performing Arts High School In St. Louis Has Morning Shooting – RiverBender
• Classes canceled at Central VPA, Collegiate as shooting investigation continues – KSDK
• CVPA Shooter Yelled, ‘All of You Are Gonna Die,’ Student Says – RFT
• Elected officials react to St. Louis school shooting – stltoday.com
• FBI asking for photos, videos from CVPA shooting – FOX 2
• FBI looking for photos, video of south St. Louis school shooting – KSDK
• Free Mental Health Counseling on Offer After St. Louis School Shooting – RFT
• Health teacher killed in south St. Louis school shooting ‘loved her students’ – stltoday.com
• Illinois Federation of Teachers Statement on the St. Louis School Shooting – RiverBender
• Leaders react to shooting at south St. Louis high school – KSDK
• Lockdown at STLCC Forest Park campus – stlamerican.com
• Missouri senator says laws should have already been in place to prevent shooting at CVPA – FOX 2
• Pictures: Students run from a St. Louis school shooting – FOX 2
• Police: Former Student Orlando Harris Is Suspect in St. Louis School Shooting – RFT
• Police: Shooter at CVPA identified as former student; no motive discussed – FOX 2
• Politicians react to Central VPA High School shooting – FOX 2
• Shooting at Central Visual and Performing Arts High School Sends Students Fleeing – RFT
• Six people, including suspect, injured in shooting at St. Louis school – stlamerican.com
• St. Louis high school student: ‘Mom, hurry up. They’re shooting.’ – stltoday.com
• STLCC Forest Park campus on lockdown – FOX 2
• Student describes being in St. Louis school during shooting – FOX 2
• Student killed in St. Louis school shooting loved art and was ‘always smiling’ – stltoday.com
• Student texts family farewell during St. Louis school shooting – FOX 2
• Students are posting these messages on there stories about their encounters w/ 2 more active shooters. So sorry you all had to experience this type of pain 😓 – r/StLouis
• Suspect killed, 2 others dead after south St. Louis high school shooting – FOX 2
• Teacher and teen killed in shooting at south St. Louis high school. Suspect is dead. – stltoday.com
• Teacher Jean Kuczka Identified as Central VPA Shooting Victim – RFT
• Teacher Jean Kuczka killed in Central Visual and Performing Arts High School shooting – FOX 2
• Teacher, teenage girl killed, 4 other teens shot at south St. Louis high school – KSDK
• Teacher, teenage girl killed, 4 other teens shot at south St. Louis high school – St. Louis Business Journal
• Three dead, including gunman, after Central Visual and Performing Arts shootings – stlamerican.com
• Timeline: 3 dead, including suspect, after shooting at south St. Louis high school – KSDK
• Vigil held at Tower Grove Park for school shooting victims – FOX 2

99MO 😱

• ‘It was gut-wrenching’ Wooldridge starts cleanup after fire burned down half the village – FOX 2
• Election deniers ramp up public records requests in Missouri, across the country – Missouri Independent

WW99 😱

• Vladimir Putin says the world’s energy infrastructure is at risk – Hacker News
• U.S. Claims Chinese Intelligence Seeking Confidential Huawei Information Were Duped by FBI Double Agent – Gizmodo

Pox Populi™ 🦠

• Millions of workers are dealing with long COVID. Advocates call for expanding social safety net – Missouri Independent
• From E. Coli to Flesh-Eating Bacteria, Floodwaters Are a Health Nightmare – Gizmodo

DotGov 🏛

• Armed folks intimidate voters near drop boxes in Arizona (and nobody has been arrested) – Boing Boing

CityGov 🏛

• Fight to save Rosati-Kain gets boost from St. Louis Preservation Board – stltoday.com

LocalGov 🏛

• St. Louis County Animal Control Shredding Followed $2,200 Orkin Bill – RFT

MoGov 🏛

• Missouri Lottery hires former highway patrol captain as new director – stltoday.com
• Marijuana legalization promises jobs in Missouri. But how many? – stltoday.com
• Missouri voters to decide if the state can dictate increased Kansas City police funding – Missouri Independent

FedGov 🏛

• White House asks for assault weapons ban after St. Louis school shooting – FOX 2
• White House calls for assault weapon ban after St. Louis school shooting – KSDK
• Justice Department alleges Chinese spies tried to disrupt a criminal investigation into Huawei – Engadget
• Pete Buttigieg on Elon Musk’s Hyperloop: ‘Not on Our Dime’ – Gizmodo

Jobs 📄

• Program Manager I (Family Community School Health) – Jobs
• Chemist II – Jobs

History 🦕

• Behind the Veil: The Secret Society of St. Louis Elites – History Happens Here
• Black Civil War veterans honored in ceremony at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery – KSDK

Sustainability ♻️

• Spire Missouri’s proposed rate hike draws ire of Kansas City officials, residents – Missouri Independent
• 380 million tons of plastic are made every year. None of it is truly recyclable. – Grist
• Plastic Recycling Is a Disaster and a ‘Myth,’ Report Says – VICE US
• Plastic recycling remains a ‘myth’: Greenpeace study – Hacker News
• Plastic recycling labeled "a myth" as US rates sink to 5% – New Atlas

Infrastructure 🚽

• States are vying for money to start ‘hydrogen hubs.’ What are they? – Missouri Independent

Ecology 🦤

• Forest ReLeaf Plants 1,000 Trees Across Missouri – Terrain Magazine
• Exposure to environmental toxins may be root of rise in neurological disorders – Hacker News

WWW99 🕸

• Critical Flaws in Abode Home Security Kit Allow Hackers to Hijack, Disable Cameras – SecurityWeek
• Adobe Illustrator Vulnerabilities Rated Critical, But Exploitation Not Easy – SecurityWeek
• Most Metaverse business projects will be dead by 2025 – The Register
• Ring Cameras Are Going to Get More People Killed – VICE US

Twitter 🐦

• As Elon Gets Ready To Take Over Twitter, Bluesky Takes A Big Step Forward – Techdirt
• Jack Dorsey Unveils Bluesky Social, the Decentralized Twitter-Killer – Hacker News
• Jack Dorsey-endorsed “decentralized Twitter” protocol specified – Hacker News
• You don’t want Twitter to be a free speech zone – Hacker News

Space 🚀

• Starlink decoded for use as GPS alternative – without Elon Musk’s help – The Register
• After Fallout With Russia, SpaceX Rival Launches 36 Satellites Aboard India’s Big Rocket – Gizmodo

DIY 🪓

• Batch transcode a folder of videos with Handbrake’s CLI – Jeff Geerling’s Blog
• A guide for getting started with self hosting – Hacker News
• Get Clear Insights Into Cloudy Water With the Open Colorimeter – Hackaday
• DIY Bike Wheels Welded With Rebar – Hackaday
• How The Art-Generating AI of Stable Diffusion Works – Hackaday
• My thoughts on the Framework laptop – Hacker News
• Show HN: IHP v1.0 – Batteries-included web framework built on Haskell and Nix – Hacker News
• Show HN: Bolt.css – Another classless CSS library – Hacker News
• Every Door – OpenStreetMap editor for POIs and entrances – Hacker News
• The Docker+WASM Technical Preview – Hacker News

Captain’s Blog 🏴‍☠️

• Tomorrow the Unix timestamp will get to 1,666,666,666 – Hacker News
• Guy turned his eye into a flashlight – Hacker News
• My next Mac might be the last – Hacker News
• Good news for Europe – Kevin Drum
• Ask HN: What Is the Hype with Docker? – Hacker News
• EU Gives Final Approval to Law That Will Force iPhone to Switch to USB-C – MacRumors
• Is There Too Much CSS Now? – CSS-Tricks
• I’m Not Sure That (If?) GitHub Copilot Is a Problem – Hacker News
• RISC-V Celebrates Upstreaming of Android Open Source Project RISC-V Port – Hacker News

Tags STLduJournal ⏳

Written by TMH Apprentices Gavin O’Neal, Ne’Vaeh Dudley, and Danielle Haynes If you live in St. Louis, you’ve probably heard of the city’s Fourth of July celebration, Fair St. Louis. Some of you may have attended it to see the parade or catch the fireworks display. But did you know that Fair St. Louis once went …

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