Kate Sheppard

Reporter

Kate Sheppard is a staff reporter in Mother Jones' Washington bureau. She was previously the political reporter for Grist and a writing fellow at The American Prospect. She can be reached by email at ksheppard (at) motherjones (dot) com.

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Her work has also been featured in the New York Times' Room for Debate blog, the Guardian's Comment Is Free, Foreign Policy, High Country News, The Center for Public Integrity, the Washington Independent, Washington Spectator, Who Runs Gov, In These Times, and Bitch. She was raised on a vegetable farm in southern New Jersey (yes, they do exist), but has adapted well to life in the nation's capital. She misses trees and having a congressional representative with voting power, but thinks DC is pretty great anyway.

Anti-Abortion Group Launches New Super-PAC

—By Kate Sheppard

| Wed Oct. 3, 2012 11:15 AM PDT

The anti-abortion PAC Susan B. Anthony List announced on Wednesday that it is launching a new super-PAC, Women Speak Out, to counter the electoral advocacy of pro-choice groups.

The Susan B. Anthony List is a 20-year-old PAC launched to support anti-abortion candidates, which has become strongly aligned with the Republican Party in recent years. While the group has always spent money to elect anti-abortion candidates, the new super-PAC will allow it to raise unlimited funds to deploy in key states and districts. Women Speak Out says it plans to spend $500,000 on ads in swing states.

"We cannot sit back and allow the deep-pocketed abortion lobby led by Planned Parenthood and EMILY's List claim to speak for all women," said Susan B. Anthony List president Marjorie Dannenfelser in an email soliciting donations for the new PAC. The email requests contributions so that the group can air ads criticizing Obama as an "abortion radical" during Wednesday night's presidential debate. The ads would counter new anti-Romney spots bankrolled by Planned Parenthood's 501(c)4 and PAC. A pro-choice Super PAC has also received some major new donations in recent weeks.

The Women Speak Out ads make a number of inflammatory claims about Obama—including that he supports aborting baby girls, that he supports killing babies who are "born alive" in the course of a "failed abortion," and that the healthcare reform bill is "the biggest ever expansion of tax-subsidized abortion."

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DOI's Polar Bear Scientist Investigation Ends in Confusion

—By Kate Sheppard

| Tue Oct. 2, 2012 3:00 AM PDT

The long, strange case of a government scientist under investigation for alleged malfeasance appears to be over, but the official report on his case, if anything, makes the whole thing even more bizarre.

In July 2011, we told you about Charles Monnett, a wildlife biologist with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) in Alaska who was placed on administrative leave and investigated by the Interior Department's inspector general. Monnett had coauthored a 2006 paper in the journal Polar Biology that documented four dead polar bears in the Beaufort Sea in 2004, projecting that declining sea ice might cause more bears to die in the future. The paper was later cited in efforts to get the polar bear protected as an endangered species. Needless to say, it was rather unexpected when the IG's investigators came after Monnett for vague "integrity issues" five years after the paper was published.

[Read more in the Blue Marble blog]

2 out of 3 Frackers Still Keeping Chemicals a Secret

—By Kate Sheppard

| Thu Sep. 27, 2012 11:06 AM PDT

Many states don't require companies that use fracking technology to disclose what exactly is in the fluids they inject into the ground. The fracking fluids, which combine chemicals, water, and sand, have been found to include toxic diesel-based chemicals, so there's a lot of interest in what companies are using.

Some states do require at least partial disclosure of those chemicals, as my colleague Tim McDonnell has highlighted. But as EnergyWire reported on Wednesday, even in places where companies are filing disclosures, two out of three companies are claiming exemptions for some of the ingredients as "trade secrets":

At least one chemical was kept secret in 65 percent of fracking disclosures by companies that said they needed to protect confidential business information, according to a review of PIVOT Upstream Group's D-Frac database done for EnergyWire.

Critics of drilling say the widespread use of such "trade secret" exemptions undermines the industry's assurances that drillers are being open with the communities where they are "fracking" wells and producing oil and gas.

Seeking to protect fracking fluid ingredients as proprietary information is certainly not new for the industry. Companies have previously claimed that, just like Coca-Cola, their products are safe and the special formula is top secret. Critics of the industry believe, however, that the "trade secrets" claim is used to avoid disclosing chemicals that are potentially harmful.

Todd Akin: The Highlights Reel

—By Kate Sheppard

| Thu Sep. 27, 2012 9:24 AM PDT

Tuesday was the final deadline for Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.) to drop out of the Missouri Senate race. Despite the desperate pleas of his Republican colleagues, who called on him to bow out following his August remarks claiming that women who are victims of "legitimate rape" can't get pregnant. Akin's refusal to exit the race prompted the Democratic group American Bridge to unleash all their opposition research, which documents other eyebrow-raising comments Akin has made over the years.

The "Akin Files" include quite a few doozies, on topics such as: how banning hate crimes actually increases them, how a defense spending bill authorized bestiality, and why health insurance for poor kids is like the Titanic. Here are some of the greatest hits, via Huffington Post.

On why passing anti-hate-crime legislation named for Matthew Shepard, the young gay man murdered in Wyoming in 1998, would actually increase hate crimes:

"The first major reason to vote no is because this bill increases hatred in America. I will say it again. This bill increases hatred in America," Akin argued. "It creates animosity by elevating one group over another group, and thus creates hatred. This is counter to everything American law has ever stood for, and it will increase hatred in America."

On the National Defense Authorization Act legalizing sexual relations with animals:

"The Senate version came across, a lot of Tea Party people take a good look at that bill and they’re going, 'we're worried that this may give Obama authority to bring troops in and arrest Americans and detain them for long periods of time.' Ok, so that was their concern," Akin said at a rally outside the Capitol. "They should have read it closer, because it also legalized bestiality. The Senate gets a little weird."

On the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), which provides healthcare for low-income kids:

"We're going to give that money to give free health insurance to children with families making more than $80,000, children of illegal immigrants," Akin said in 2007. "The Democrats are about to vote for something which will make the Titanic wreck look small."

American Bridge also released some other clips from the Akin highlight reel, including this complaint about how the Civil War took away state's rights (you know, because they could no longer enslave people):

The fact that over a period of time the federal government has taken over more and more and more authority is a major problem. I don't disagree with the premise of it. The question is how do you get the cat back in the bag. When was it that happened? Well it happened most predominately historically during wars, and the worst case was the Civil War where we lost states' rights more than any other particular situation.

And here's Akin on how President Obama is basically the Anti-Christ:

You don't have jobs if you declare war on employers. And that's essentially what's gone on. If you wanted to destroy jobs, what would you do? Just playing like you are the devil, and we have one pretty close to that. And so what would you do? The first thing is you would tax them a whole lot. That's what we've been doing, taxing them a whole lot.

Abortion Rights Group Buys Dr. Tiller's Clinic

—By Kate Sheppard

| Wed Sep. 26, 2012 3:03 PM PDT

The Wichita clinic where Dr. George Tiller provided abortions may soon be back. The Wichita Eagle reports that the Trust Women Foundation has purchased the building that housed Women’s Health Care Services and intends to begin providing services there once again.

The clinic has been closed since an anti-abortion extremist murdered Tilller while the doctor served as an usher in his church in May 2009. The Trust Women Foundation and Political Action Committee is led by Julie Burkhart, a former spokesperson for the clinic and longtime pro-choice activist in Kansas. The Eagle reports that the foundation filed paperwork with the Secretary of State on Tuesday to purchase the clinic from Dr. Tiller's widow.

This is big news for supporters of abortion rights in Wichita, which has had no abortion clinics since Tiller's murder. Anti-abortion activists within the Kansas legislature have been doing their best to make it really difficult to provide abortions in the state. Last year, legislators passed strict new building codes that threatened to close down all the clinics in the state. A judge blocked the law from taking effect, but the legal wrangling over it continues. Tiller's clinic would likely have to make significant changes if the courts let that law go forward.

Meanwhile, the Kansas medical board has continued to relentlessly pursue Tiller's former colleague, Kristin Neuhaus, taking away her license in June for her work at the clinic. Another doctor training to provide abortions in the city has been blocked by her landlord and had her life threatened by anti-abortion activists.