Dear Commons Community,

Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm joined researchers to announce a “major scientific breakthrough” yesterday in the decades-long quest to harness fusion, the energy that powers the sun and stars.

Researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California for the first time produced more energy in a fusion reaction than was used to ignite it, something called net energy gain, according to one government official and one scientist familiar with the research. Both spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the breakthrough ahead of the announcement.

Granholm appeared alongside Livermore researchers at a morning event in Washington. The news was first reported by the Financial Times.

Proponents of fusion hope that it could one day produce nearly limitless, carbon-free energy, displacing fossil fuels and other traditional energy sources. Producing energy that powers homes and businesses from fusion is still decades away. But researchers said it was a significant step nonetheless.

“It’s almost like it’s a starting gun going off,” said Professor Dennis Whyte, director of the Plasma Science and Fusion Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a leader in fusion research. “We should be pushing towards making fusion energy systems available to tackle climate change and energy security.”

Net energy gain has been an elusive goal because fusion happens at such high temperatures and pressures that it is incredibly difficult to control.

Fusion works by pressing hydrogen atoms into each other with such force that they combine into helium, releasing enormous amounts of energy and heat. Unlike other nuclear reactions, it doesn’t create radioactive waste.

Billions of dollars and decades of work have gone into fusion research that has produced exhilarating results — for fractions of a second. Previously, researchers at the National Ignition Facility, the division of Lawrence Livermore where the success took place, used 192 lasers and temperatures multiple times hotter than the center of the sun to create an extremely brief fusion reaction.

The lasers focus an enormous amount of heat on a small metal can. The result is a superheated plasma environment where fusion may occur.

Riccardo Betti, a professor at the University of Rochester and expert in laser fusion, said an announcement that net energy had been gained in a fusion reaction would be significant. But he said there’s a long road ahead before the result generates sustainable electricity.

He likened the breakthrough to when humans first learned that refining oil into gasoline and igniting it could produce an explosion.

“You still don’t have the engine and you still don’t have the tires,” Betti said. “You can’t say that you have a car.”

The net energy gain achievement applied to the fusion reaction itself, not the total amount of power it took to operate the lasers and run the project. For fusion to be viable, it will need to produce significantly more power and for longer.

It is incredibly difficult to control the physics of stars. Whyte said it has been challenging to reach this point because the fuel has to be hotter than the center of the sun. The fuel does not want to stay hot — it wants to leak out and get cold. Containing it is an incredible challenge, he said.

Net energy gain isn’t a huge surprise from the California lab because of progress it had already made, according to Jeremy Chittenden, a professor at Imperial College in London specializing in plasma physics.

“That doesn’t take away from the fact that this is a significant milestone,” he said.

It takes enormous resources and effort to advance fusion research. One approach turns hydrogen into plasma, an electrically charged gas, which is then controlled by humongous magnets. This method is being explored in France in a collaboration among 35 countries called the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor as well as by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a private company.

Last year the teams working on those projects in two continents announced significant advancements in the vital magnets needed for their work.

A step in the right direction!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The SUNY – University at Albany is inviting applications for a cluster hire of 27 faculty in artificial intelligence, with a focus on public health, engineering, education, mathematics, business, homeland security, health disparities, and political science, among other disciplines. The positions will span 20 departments across eight schools and colleges, including a director for the new UAlbany Institute for Artificial Intelligence.

This unprecedented academic expansion follows New York State’s landmark $75 million investment in the Albany Artificial Intelligence Supercomputing Initiative (Albany AI) at UAlbany, which will significantly expand the AI supercomputing resources in New York for teaching and research. With existing research strengths in atmospheric, climate and health sciences, cybersecurity and emergency preparedness, UAlbany will leverage this new funding and computing power to tackle some of society’s biggest challenges.

For more information about the UAlbany cluster hire in AI and to apply, please visit www.albany.edu/ai/faculty-openings.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

I just finished reading Anthony J. Badger’s  new book:  Why White Liberals Fail:  Race and Southern Politics from FDR to Trump.  Badger is a British historian and professor of American history at Northumbria University.  Formerly he was a professor at the University of Cambridge.  This book is based on a series of lectures he gave at Harvard University in 2018. Badger looks at major Democratic leaders such as FDR, Carter, and Clinton who put their faith in policies that would be engines of social change and mobility. He concludes that these Democrats failed because of their reluctance to confront directly the “explosive racial politics dividing their constituents”.  It is a quick read at 250 pages but has an important message that resonates about politics and race in our country.  Below is a brief review published in The New York Times.

Tony

————————————

The New York Times

WHY WHITE LIBERALS FAIL: Race and Southern Politics from FDR to Trump

By Anthony J. Badger

Reviewed by James Goodman, a professor of history and creative writing at Rutgers University, Newark

The Democratic Party coalition that put Roosevelt and his heirs in office included working-class Americans, Black and white. That coalition broke down during the upheavals of the 1950s and 1960s, beginning with the civil rights movement, as white working-class voters began to drift away. Progressives dream of rebuilding it, appealing to shared economic interests across racial lines. WHY WHITE LIBERALS FAIL: Race and Southern Politics from FDR to Trump (256 pp., Harvard University Press, $27.95), Anthony J. Badger’s analysis of liberal white Southerners since the 1930s, suggests how difficult it is going to be to bring the white working class back into the fold.

Badger, a British historian, writes about several dozen educators, journalists and elected officials who saw economic development as the way out of the hole the South was in. Men like Frank Graham, William Winter, Albert Gore Sr., Fritz Hollings and Terry Sanford embraced the New Deal, the Fair Deal, the War on Poverty and every iteration of the “New South.” Badger identifies promising moments in several decades, including (after the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965) successful biracial electoral coalitions. Yet today there are fewer white Democrats in the South than ever.

Why? The historical literature is rich, and the answer is usually race. White liberals failed because they championed, or were associated with, civil rights. But in this volume, based on the Huggins lectures he delivered at Harvard in 2018, Badger finds that explanation unsatisfying. His subjects downplayed race. They championed infrastructure, education and social services they believed would benefit all.

They failed nonetheless, for many different reasons. One is that before the 1960s any Southerner who was not a rabid segregationist was considered a racial radical. Another is that in the half-century since, significant numbers of white Southerners have opposed government programs that would have improved their lives — universal health care, for example — if they thought liberals designed those programs with Black people in mind.

Badger runs from race, and racism, as explanations, but as he himself concedes, he never gets far.

Bernie Sanders and Kyrsten Sinema

Dear Commons Community,

Senator Bernie Sanders said yesterday he believes that part of why Sen. Kyrsten Sinema decided to leave the Democratic Party is because her constituents have lost faith in her, adding that the Arizona lawmaker “helped sabotage” some significant legislation.

Sinema’s decision, announced Friday, to switch from Democrat to independent “probably has a lot to do with politics back in Arizona,” the Vermont independent told Dana Bash on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“I think the Democrats there are not all that enthusiastic about somebody who helped sabotage some of the most important legislation that protects the interests of working families and voting rights and so forth. So, I think it really has to do with her political aspirations for the future in Arizona,” Sanders said.

Democrats have criticized several moments in Sinema’s voting record, such as when she opposed ditching the filibuster ― even to pass voting rights legislation ― helped block a $15 minimum wage effort, and opposed closing a tax loophole that benefits the ultrarich. She and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) have become known as major obstacles to passing President Joe Biden’s legislative agenda.

“But for us, I think nothing much has changed in terms of the functioning of the U.S. Senate,” Sanders continued. “The good news is that we now have 51 votes. We will have the majority on committees. It means that we can go forward and start protecting the interests of working families and deal with the reality that we are increasingly living in an oligarchy, where the billionaire class and large corporations control almost every aspect of our country.”

Sanders is likely correct that Sinema’s party switch won’t change much in the Senate. While Sanders and Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) both caucus with Democrats, Sinema has not outright said she would do the same ― only that she will maintain her chairmanship of two subcommittees. This helps keep Senate Democrats in the majority.

“It probably won’t surprise you when I tell you I’m not trying to be like anyone else,” Sinema told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday when comparing herself to other independent senators. “What I’m trying to do is be true to my values and the values of my state. So I think everyone should make their own decisions about where they fit or where they don’t fit. I’m going to keep doing exactly what I do, which is just stay focused on the work and ignore all the noise.”

Sanders made sure to note, however, that he thinks Sinema’s values include prioritizing corporate interests over her working class constituents, and that she’s not capable of taking on powerful special interests in Congress.

“She is a corporate Democrat, who has, in fact, along with Sen. Manchin, sabotaged enormously important legislation,” he said.

While Sinema’s party switch does not significantly impact the Senate, it will greatly affect GOP odds in the 2024 elections. The senator was expected to face tough primary challenges from Democrats like Rep. Ruben Gallego (Ariz.). As an independent candidate, Sinema now likely won’t face a primary challenger at all.

This, however, means that Arizona voters might have to deal with a three-way race that could divide the non-Republican votes between Sinema and a Democratic candidate ― making it easier for the GOP to win the crucial Senate seat.

“You know, I don’t make decisions based on what the easy road or the tough road is,” Sinema said. “I have always tried to make decisions based on what I think is right. And for me, it’s very important that we have a discussion at home in Arizona and here in the nation’s capital about reducing the partisanship and just focus on solving the challenges that we face in America.”

It will be interesting to see how Sinema’s position plays out from now through 2024.

Tony

A police officer walks by the nose of Pan Am flight 103 in a field near the town of Lockerbie, Scotland where it lay after a bomb aboard exploded, killing a total of 270 people, Wednesday, Dec. 21, 1988. (AP Photo/Martin Cleaver)

Dear Commons Community,

 U.S. and Scottish authorities said yesterday that the Libyan man suspected of making the bomb that destroyed a passenger plane over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988 is in U.S. custody.  As reported by the Associated Press.

Scotland’s Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service said in a statement that “the families of those killed in the Lockerbie bombing have been told that the suspect Abu Agela Mas’ud Kheir Al-Marimi is in U.S. custody.”

The U.S. Justice Department confirmed the information, adding that “he is expected to make his initial appearance in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.” It gave no information on how Mas’ud came to be in U.S. custody.

Pan Am flight 103, traveling from London to New York, exploded over Lockerbie on Dec. 21, 1988, killing all 259 people aboard the plane and another 11 on the ground. It remains the deadliest terror attack on British soil.

The U.S. Justice Department announced new charges against Mas’ud in December 2020.

“At long last, this man responsible for killing Americans and many others will be subject to justice for his crimes,” William Barr, the attorney general at the time, said at a news conference.

In 2001, former Libyan intelligence officer Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was convicted of bombing the flight. He is to date the only person convicted over the attack. He lost one appeal and abandoned another before being freed in 2009 on compassionate grounds because he was terminally ill with cancer.

He died in Libya in 2012, still protesting his innocence.

A breakthrough in the investigation came when U.S. officials in 2017 received a copy of an interview that Mas’ud, a longtime explosives expert for Libya’s intelligence service, had given to Libyan law enforcement in 2012 after being taken into custody following the collapse of the regime of the country’s leader, Col. Moammar Gadhafi.

In that interview, U.S. officials said, Mas’ud admitted building the bomb in the Pan Am attack and working with two other conspirators to carry it out. He also said the operation was ordered by Libyan intelligence and that Gadhafi thanked him and other members of the team after the attack, according to an FBI affidavit filed in the case.

While Mas’ud is now the third Libyan intelligence official charged in the U.S. in connection with the Lockerbie bombing, he would be the first to stand trial in an American courtroom.

The Crown Office in its statement added that “Scottish prosecutors and police, working with U.K. government and U.S. colleagues, will continue to pursue this investigation, with the sole aim of bringing those who acted along with al-Megrahi to justice.”

It is incredible that the Lockerbie bombing occurred thirty-four years ago!.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

New York Times columnist, Michelle Goldberg, has an analysis of Senator Kyrsten Sinema leaving the Democratic Party entitled,  Kyrsten Sinema Is Right. This Is Who She’s Always Been.  Here is an excerpt. 

“In the self-congratulatory video that Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona made to announce that she was leaving the Democratic Party and becoming an independent, she didn’t mention any disagreements with her former caucus about issues. Instead, she framed the move as a step toward self-actualization. “Registering as an independent, and showing up to work with the title of independent, is a reflection of who I’ve always been,” she said.

It’s true: This is who she’s always been. The content of Sinema’s politics has changed over time, from Green Party progressivism to pro-corporate centrism. Her approach to elected office as a vehicle for the refinement of the self has not.

In Sinema’s 2009 book “Unite and Conquer: How to Build Coalitions That Win — and Last,” she described giving up shrill partisanship, which was making her unhappy, for a vaguely New Age ethos that prized inner tranquillity. One chapter was called “Letting Go of the Bear and Picking Up the Buddha,” with the bear representing fear and anger. “Picking up the Buddha (becoming a super centered political actor) makes you a stronger, more effective you,” she wrote. “To be your most fabulous political self, you’ll need to learn to recognize the bear and learn to let go of it in your work.”

Transcending fear and anger is an excellent spiritual goal. But becoming a more centered and fabulous person is a political project only when it’s directed toward aims beyond oneself. With Sinema, it’s not remotely clear what those aims might be, or if they exist. (Another chapter in her book is “Letting Go of Outcomes.”) Announcing her new independent status, Sinema wrote an essay in The Arizona Republic and gave interviews to outlets including Politico and CNN. Nowhere have I seen her articulate substantive differences with the Democrats, aside from her opposition to tax increases. Instead, she spoke about not fitting into a box, being true to herself, and wanting to work, as she told Politico, without the “pressures or the poles of a party structure.”

Until recently, Sinema has seemed to delight in the power an evenly split Senate gave her, which she used to benefit the financial and pharmaceutical industries. Negotiating the Inflation Reduction Act, she single-handedly stopped Democrats from closing the carried interest loophole, a provision that significantly cuts the tax bills of Wall Street investors. And Sinema insisted on narrowing the part of the law meant to bring down prescription drug prices, earning criticism even from Joe Manchin, the centrist West Virginia Democrat with whom she is frequently aligned.

“One of her deep flaws is that she doesn’t realize our actions have impacts every day on people who need our help,” said Ruben Gallego, a Democratic Arizona congressman who’d been considering a primary campaign against Sinema.”

It will be interesting how Sinema’s decision plays out in 2024 when she is up for reelection. If she runs as an independent that opens up the Arizona race for a three-way battle that will give an edge to Republicans.

Tony

Artemis I Mission

Dear Commons Community,

The Orion capsule  with no astronauts aboard  will splash down this (Sunday) afternoon after a 26-day journey that took it to the moon and back.

NASA launched the giant rocket toward the moon on November 26th. The rocket reached orbit and sent a small capsule  with no astronauts on board  to the moon. This was the beginning of Artemis I, a mission to test NASA’s ability to return astronauts to the moon 50 years after it last accomplished that feat.

Today, Artemis I will come to an end when that vehicle splashes back down in the Pacific Ocean.

The splashdown is expected 12:40 p.m. Eastern time. NASA Television will begin streaming coverage of the return at 11 a.m. Eastern time on Sunday.

NASA will hold a news conference at 3:30 p.m. Eastern time after the splashdown.

The primary goal of Artemis I was a crucial shakedown of NASA’s new space hardware, including Orion, a spacecraft for carrying astronauts to deep space, including lunar orbit. Orion is unoccupied this time, but it will take astronauts to the moon in the coming years.

During its nearly monthlong journey to and from the moon, Orion got within 80 miles of the lunar surface. It also extended its orbit tens of thousands of miles from the moon. If all goes well on Sunday, the mission will complete its most important objective: proving that the spacecraft can safely re-enter Earth’s atmosphere on the way back from the moon, and then splashing down under parachutes in the Pacific Ocean to the west of Mexico’s Baja Peninsula.

The Orion spacecraft will perform what NASA calls a skip re-entry. During the skip re-entry, the capsule will enter the upper atmosphere, oriented at an angle where the capsule generates enough aerodynamic lift to bounce back up out of the atmosphere. It will then re-enter a second time. It’s almost like throwing a rock that bounces off the surface of a pond before sinking. The maneuver allows more precise steering toward a landing site closer to the coast.

NASA officials argue that the moon missions are central to its human spaceflight program — not simply a do-over of the Apollo moon landings from 1969 to 1972.

“It’s a future where NASA will land the first woman and the first person of color on the moon,” Bill Nelson, the NASA administrator, said during a news conference earlier this year. “And on these increasingly complex missions, astronauts will live and work in deep space and will develop the science and technology to send the first humans to Mars.”

For scientists, the renewed focus on the moon promises a bonanza of new data in the coming years. There is a particular interest in the amount of water ice on the moon, which could be used for astronauts’ water and oxygen supplies in the future and could provide fuel for missions deeper into space.

For those  of us old enough to remember,  this is like the 1960s when the United States first made major advances in the space race!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Citing inflationary pressures and slumping enrollment, Cazenovia College announced it will close in 2023. The move comes after the college missed a bond payment earlier this year.

The small, private liberal arts college in upstate New York announced on Wednesday that it would cease operations after the spring semester, citing financial concerns exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic and inflation that irreparably harmed the nearly 200-year-old institution.

Cazenovia defaulted on a $25 million bond payment in October. Since then, questions have swirled about its fate. College officials remained tight-lipped, telling Inside Higher Ed earlier this fall only that “discussions continue to take place” on the outstanding bond payment. Now college leaders have made a clear decision about its future.  As reported by Inside Higher Education.

“We’re deeply disappointed that it has come to this,” Ken Gardiner, chair of Cazenovia’s Board of Trustees, said in a statement Wednesday announcing the forthcoming closure. “Considerable time and effort have been spent on improving the College’s financial position over the past several years. Unfortunately, the headwinds and market conditions were insurmountable, leading to a projected deficit of several million dollars for next year. As a result, the College won’t have the funds necessary to be open and continue operations for Fall 2023 and beyond.”

The college struck a similar tone in an email to graduates.

“This extremely difficult decision was the result of unchangeable business realities which were accelerated by the global pandemic. Leadership worked tirelessly over the past several years to come up with a solution, but ultimately the financial challenges were too great to ensure the long-term viability of the College,” President David Bergh wrote in a message to alumni Wednesday. “We remain committed to providing support and information to our students, faculty, staff and alumni. We will be providing updates on our website to assist with questions you may have as alumni going forward. We thank you for your support over the years.”

Despite the uncertainty at Cazenovia, outward signs until this week suggested that the college planned to remain open. Student recruiting sessions continued, and new faculty members were hired.

Pressed for more details on hiring, Cazenovia spokesperson Timothy Greene said the hires were made over the summer, when the college was still pursuing two possible paths forward.

“We’ve been working on two parallel paths, one regarding refinancing and the other regarding preparing teach out agreements as a worst-case scenario, as we are required to do. Discussions for refinancing continued up through yesterday when it was determined we did not have the resources needed to enroll students for fall 2023,” Greene said by email.

Officials did not answer questions about whether the university had considered a merger.

Cazenovia’s enrollment has trended downward in recent years, according to its Common Data Set. As of fall 2021, Cazenovia counted 746 total students, down from 1,042 just five years earlier. Enrollment declines appeared to strain the tuition-dependent college, though those woes did not show up in financial composite scores assigned by the Department of Education; Cazenovia’s most recent score was 2.2 on a 1.0-to-3.0 scale, with 1.5 indicative of financial responsibility. (Some critics have decried such scores as a flawed metric for financial health.)

Predictions on the viability of struggling institutions have varied in recent years.

In 2015, Moody’s Investors Service ominously predicted that college closures would triple in the coming years.

Cazenovia isn’t the only college to announce a closure this year—or even this week.

Quest College, a for-profit institution in San Antonio, abruptly shut down this week, giving students virtually no notice and leaving many without a clear backup plan. Quest College’s website has since been taken off-line. (Quest College officials did not respond to a request for comment.)

Other recent closures include Chatfield College, the San Francisco Art Institute, Marymount California University, Lincoln College and Judson College, to name a few. Some colleges, including Mills College and Bloomfield College, have been absorbed by other institutions via mergers.

Experts say that while closures are always difficult, there are good and bad ways to wind down a college. Doing things the right way means providing advance notice and offering students a path to transfer elsewhere, said Clare McCann, a higher education fellow at Arnold Ventures who has studied college closures. Precipitous closures, she said, are much more harmful to students.

In that sense, Cazenovia offers a contrast to Quest College. While Quest offered students no clear pathway, Cazenovia has entered into a teach-out agreement with nine New York institutions to absorb students beginning in the fall 2023 semester: Daemen University, Elmira College, Excelsior University, Hilbert College, Keuka College, LeMoyne College, the State University of New York College at Oneonta, Utica University and Wells College.

“We’ve seen a lot of institutions that closed without any warning to their students,” McCann said. “One thing we can say about this institution is that they’re not closing precipitously; they will help students transfer, so those students are going to be in a better academic situation than a lot of students who are affected by college closures. But that’s not what those students thought they were signing up for when they enrolled, and that is still going to be a big challenge for them.”

While closures can be a painful process, McCann noted that sometimes they are for the best. For example, she suggested it may be better for students if institutions running out of money shut down rather than provide low-quality academic offerings. If there aren’t adequate resources, she said, students may be better served elsewhere.

“I think small nonprofit colleges have been more resilient than a lot of people expected. They’ve found ways to get through hard times and survive, whether it’s on alumni donations or changes to their programs. But it’s also true that not every small institution is able to do that. And that may not always be the right choice. There are institutions that might not ever be able to recover from the enrollment declines that they’ve experienced, and rather than let the academics of an institution suffer, they may decide that the better option is a merger or closure,” McCann said.

As part of my dissertation in the mid-1980s, I studied the planning and decision making of small colleges that were in financial jeopardy.  I visited Cazenovia and met with then President Stephen M. Schneeweiss, who laid out his vision for solvency and even expanding his academic program from associate degrees to baccalaureate and graduate degrees. His plan worked for forty years and now has come to an end!

Tony

Kyrsten Sinema

Dear Commons Community,

Democratic Senator Kyrsten Sinema shook up the US Senate a bit yesterday by announcing  that she is no longer a Democrat and has registered as an independent, but she does not plan to caucus with Republicans, ensuring Democrats will retain their narrow majority in the Senate.

Sinema, who has modeled her political approach on the renegade style of the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and has frustrated Democratic colleagues at times with her overtures to Republicans and opposition to Democratic priorities, said she was “declaring my independence from the broken partisan system in Washington.”

The first-term senator wrote in the Arizona Republic that she came into office pledging “to be independent and work with anyone to achieve lasting results. I committed I would not demonize people I disagreed with, engage in name-calling, or get distracted by political drama. I promised I would never bend to party pressure.”

She wrote that her approach is “rare in Washington and has upset partisans in both parties” but “has delivered lasting results for Arizona.”

Democrats were set to hold a 51-49 edge in the Senate come January after the victory Tuesday by Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock in Georgia’s runoff election. The Senate is now split 50-50, with Vice President Kamala Harris the tiebreaking vote for Democrats.

Sinema told Politico in an interview that she will not caucus with Republicans and that she plans to keep voting as she has since winning election to the Senate in 2018 after three House terms. “Nothing will change about my values or my behavior,” she said.

She is facing reelection in 2024 and is likely to be matched up with a well-funded primary challenger after angering much of the Democratic base by blocking or watering down progressive priorities such as a minimum wage increase or President Biden’s big social spending initiatives. She has not said whether she plans to seek another term.

Sinema’s most prominent potential primary challenger is Rep. Ruben Gallego, who has a long history of feuding with Sinema.

“When politicians are more focused on denying the opposition party a victory than they are on improving Americans’ lives, the people who lose are everyday Americans,” Sinema wrote. “That’s why I have joined the growing numbers of Arizonans who reject party politics by declaring my independence from the broken partisan system in Washington. I registered as an Arizona independent.”

It appears that this will have a small modest effect on legislation and other matters that come before the Senate.  Politically, it is probably a good move for her.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

When Senator Mitt Romney (R-Utah) was asked yesterday if he would support Donald Trump in 2024, he responded: “Absolutely not.”

And that stands even if the former president wins the Republican nomination.  As reported by the Huffington Post.

“Look, I voted to remove him from office — twice,” Romney said to laughter at a Washington Post forum on climate change, referring to Trump’s two impeachments.

“It’s not just because he loses,” Romney emphasized, referring to the midterm election pratfalls of many high-profile candidates endorsed by Trump. “It’s also [that] he’s simply not a person who ought to have the reins of the government of the United States.”

Romney said it’s “not rocket science” why so many GOP candidates went down in defeat. It’s because they were picked or endorsed by Trump, whose backing was the “kiss of death” in the general election, he said.

The senator conceded, however, that Trump maintains a significant share of support from the Republican Party.

Romney has been hitting hard at Trump.

Earlier this week, he turned one of Trump’s favorite insults against fellow Republicans back on him. Romney called the former president a RINO — Republican In Name Only — for calling for the termination of the Constitution.

“Well, the Republican Party is the Constitution party,” Romney told reporters on Capitol Hill on Monday. “So when he calls to suspend the Constitution, he goes from being MAGA to being RINO.”

Late last month, he blasted Trump over his dinner at Mar-a-Lago with white supremacist Nick Fuentes and Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West who recently said he sees “good things” in Hitler.

Romney called the meeting between Trump, Fuentes and Ye “disgusting.”

“I think it has been clear that there’s no bottom to the degree to which President Trump will degrade himself and the nation,” Romney told reporters at the time.

More Republicans have to get on aboard with Romney!

Tony