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Isuzu taps new market with Class 6 FTR Rick Weber, Trailer-Body Builders / December 7, 2017 Coverage from the recent NTEA Truck Product Conference, a look at the critical details of new and coming-soon equipment from the chassis manufacturers, and what the changes mean for upfitters and truck body builders. Isuzu’s all-new entry in the Class 6 medium-duty truck segment—the 2018 Isuzu FTR—is almost here. Isuzu began production on the truck on May 8 at a new 80,000-square-foot Spartan Motors facility in Charlotte, Michigan, which represents a $6.5 million investment. Much of the engineering for the truck was done at the Isuzu Technical Center of America in Plymouth, Michigan, and many of the parts for it are US-sourced. “This is still pretty new, so we’re going to continue to see this grow,” said Tim Ellsworth, product planning manager. “It has a wide variety of applications. The big picture we want to share is that this is going to be a great Class 6 truck that will accommodate a lot of the needs of different types of applications and equipment.” The FTR is powered by Isuzu’s 4HK1-TC 5.2-liter turbocharged four-cylinder diesel engine—a first in the segment. It generates 520 lb-ft of torque and 215 horsepower and carries a B10 durability rating of 375,000 miles—meaning that 90% of engines should reach that mileage before requiring an overhaul. The truck has a gross vehicle weight rating of 25,950 lbs. Eight wheelbase lengths, ranging from 152 to 248 inches, accommodate bodies from 14 feet to 30 feet, allowing for a wide variety of body applications. The truck’s Dana-supplied axles will have capacities of 12,000 lbs up front with a 19,000-lb rear suspension. Bridgestone or Continental 11R22.5 tires will be the standard offering on the 2018 FTR, fitted onto 22.5-inch x 8.25-inch steel wheels. Isuzu says there are a number of trends that are creating a market favorable for the new truck: the population of working-age adults will increase dramatically between now and 2050, the end of the century and beyond; unlike post-World War II population growth, these adults won’t be fleeing for the suburbs, and cities—especially those with more than one million residents—will see much of the growth; there will be steady, sustained market growth in the medium-duty commercial truck market at least through 2021; and there’s been a big decrease in truck drivers, and within five years, an estimated 100,000 more drivers will be needed than we have today. Ellsworth said the maximum vertical center of gravity of the total vehicle at maximum GVWR is not to exceed 70 inches above the ground. He gave some upfitter considerations for Isuzu trucks: • VIN label. Contains important information about the vehicle and must not be covered. • Component clearance. Design and installation of bodies and/or special equipment should allow for appropriate chassis clearances. Examples are engine, transmission, prop shaft, axles, wheel/tires, exhaust system, brake lines, and fuel lines. • Serviceability. Access to items that require routine service should not be obstructed. Examples are engine oil, coolant, transmission fluid, fan belts, batteries, brake system and fluid, fuel filter, and DEF fill. • Diesel coolant lines. All Isuzu diesel trucks with MY2011 and later emissions use engine coolant heat to meet DEF thaw guidelines. Auxiliary heaters may not draw heat from engine coolant. Energy used for auxiliary heating may increase DEF thaw times beyond acceptable guidelines. Auxiliary heaters must include a self-contained heat source. • Diesel emissions devices. No-modification zones: DEF tank, DEF lines, coolant lines, exhaust aftertreatment. Modification may cause calibration issues and void emissions compliance. • Special bolt placement (N-Series). Body-mounting bracket on right-hand chassis rail. Reinforcement block with U-bolt on left-hand chassis rail. Tradition U-bolt with wood reinforcement other locations. • J-hook body mounts (N-Series). Isuzu frames are not designed for J-hook mounting. This style of mounting may cause frame deformation and will void frame warranty. • Frame modifications. Frame modification is allowed. Follow Body Builder Guide for proper procedure. Incorrect modification procedures may lead to frame failure. • Wiring. Harness splicing is not recommended. Disconnect negative battery cable before chassis welding or electrical modification. Use proper torque for battery cable terminal when reconnecting battery. Provide harness protection near sharp edges. Star washers may create insufficient ground connections. • Batteries. Low voltage common causes: low ambient temperatures; vehicle storage; relocated batteries; battery cable length/size; corrosion; engine start and stop; auxiliary electrical equipment; and lighting systems left on. Isuzu electrical systems have become more sensitive to electrical integrity and require healthy circuits. • Body builder connecter. Located at the end of the frame. Packard four-pin Weather Pack connecter: A, marker lamps; B, hot wire; C, rear dome; and D, ground. Reference Body Builder Guide for part numbers. • Tail lamp connecters. Tail lamp harness connecters can be ordered through Isuzu dealers. Connecters match OE end of frame. • Backup alarm connecter. Located near the last crossmember at left-hand frame rail. Two-pin connecter: A, ground: B, BU alarm supply voltage. Reference Body Builder Guide for parts numbers. • WB modification harnesses. Harness splicing should be avoided if possible. Extension harnesses are available: • Application approval. For NPR-HD, NPR-XD, NQR, NRR, and NPR/NPR-HD gas. Bodies up to 91 inches inside height do not require engineering approval if: vertical CG is less than 63 inches above ground; more than 30% of weight is located on front axle; and a successful weight distribution was completed without exceeding axle GAWR when level loaded to GVWR. Bodies with a 97-inch inside height maximum should follow the Isuzu engineering approval process, which should be initiated by the selling truck dealer. • NPR upfit requirements. Frontal area: no change from 17MY; completed vehicle frontal area must be calculated for all applications; approves for bodies up to 96 inches wide. Curb weight: restriction increased 15MY to 16MY from 9660 lbs to 12,051 lbs; no change from 17MY. .

Dodge highlights technical changes Rick Weber, Trailer-Body Builders / December 7, 2017 Coverage from the recent NTEA Truck Product Conference, a look at the critical details of new and coming-soon equipment from the chassis manufacturers, and what the changes mean for upfitters and truck body builders. Brock Wienczewski, manager of the Dodge Commercial Truck Team, provided the latest technical updates: • Cybersecurity. Ram has added a security gateway module on 2018MY vehicles. It affects Ram truck and ProMaster City vans, isolating any outside unauthenticated communication with the vehicle. Anybody trying to hack into the vehicle through the radio or the diagnostic connecter will be blocked. It doesn’t affect the Vehicle System Interface Module (VSIM), and it allows DTC identification. • MVSS 111 rear visibility. CMVSS and FMVSS 111 require rear cameras on all vehicles under 10,000 lbs GVW, which includes these Ram models: all light-duty trucks and ProMaster vans; heavy-duty (DJ) 2500; and chassis cab (DF) 3500. All light-duty and heavy-duty 2500 box-on pickups and carbo vans are shipped compliant from the factory. Incomplete vehicles (IVDs) will require an upfitter to install the camera on the vehicle: heavy-duty (DJ) 2500 box-off and chassis cab (DF) 3500, and ProMaster chassis cabs and cutaways. Mounting instructions are on the Ram Body Builder Guide website and testing instructions are available via the NTEA. • ProMaster City upfit connector. It allows ease of upfit by providing access to common electrical circuits. There are two connectors in the package: 15-way (CAN, keyed power, vehicle speed); and two-way power (50-amp circuit). It became available in the fourth quarter. • ProMaster headlamp bulb. Addressing concerns that there was premature wear in the bulbs, Ram has added super-long-life bulbs available via Mopar. From a production standpoint, Ram has introduced both hardware and software changes to the body controller for mid-2017MY. • Diesel VECI label new for 2018. The location made it difficult for DMVs to read emissions information and some refused to register the vehicle, so this change moves the label to the top of the CCV cover. For the 2017MY and prior, the Ram team provides a certification letter for affected customers. Contact the Ram team for more information. • Heavy-duty field box removal camera adapter. This Mopar camera adapter for field removal of pickup boxes/tailgates will allow the Mopar loose ship cable/camera to be connected to the pickup truck wiring. It allows for convenient jumper to hook up the rear camera and the door-lock circuits, with short (10 feet) and long (30 feet) cables available. It can be installed on any HD truck with camera option 2013MY or later and allows a solution for MVSS 111 if the box/tailgate is removed. It is available now through Mopar (PN 82215671). Adrian Ratza, Ram commercial brand manager of chassis cabs, talked about the 2018 ProMaster and ProMaster City vans, which were officially introduced into the market a few weeks before the Truck Product Conference. The ProMaster, Ram’s entry into the Class 2 full-size van segment, offers a front-wheel-drive system, reducing weight and complexity by locating all components beneath the cab. This keeps the cargo load floor height and step-in height very low and helps in low-traction surfaces, like snow, since there is always weight on the front wheels to provide traction. New features for 2018 include: • Uconnect 5.0 is now standard equipment with optional navigation. • Integrated Voice Command with Bluetooth is now standard along with steering wheel mounted audio controls. • Rear backup camera is now standard on all models and backup camera kit with Chassis Cab and Cutaway models. • The right and left sliding doors now feature a window grate with fixed glass option. • The 2018 Ram ProMaster features the 3.6-liter Pentastar V-6 engine and a torque-laden, 3.0-liter EcoDiesel I-4 engine. The engines are paired, respectively, with a six-speed automatic transmission and an electronically controlled Dual Active Drive six-speed automated manual. “It’s the fastest-growing Ram vehicle,” Ratza said. “It’s a very versatile vehicle, with all the different configurations available. It offers advantages in areas where customers really need it. We’re putting customers in the best chance to succeed.” The ProMaster City is Ram Commercial’s Class 1 compact van, with a cargo volume of 131.7 cubic feet and payload capacity of 1883 lbs. Similar to the full-size van offering, the ProMaster City features Uconnect 5.0 and a standard backup camera. The van also features sliding and back door window grates available in vans without partitions. Highlights for the 2018 ProMaster City include: • Available in two-seat Tradesman cargo van and five-seat passenger wagon configurations in two different trims (Tradesman and SLT). • Fuel economy of 28 mpg. • 178 horsepower and 174 lb-ft of torque mated to an exclusive nine-speed automatic transmission. • Cargo width and length: 60.4 inches and 87.2 inches. • Distance between wheel wells: 48.4 inches. • Wheelbase: 122.4 inches. • Cargo area width of 60.4 inches, a cargo area height of 51.8 inches, and a step-in height of 21.5 inches. “It happens to be America’s most efficient work van,” Ratza said. “That’s due in part to highway fuel economy of 28 mpg. So it has the efficiency. What really excites me about the ProMaster city is not just the efficiency, but its capability. If you match up the efficiency with the payload capability that it has to its cargo capacity, it really is truly the best of both worlds with regards to the small-van segment.” He said that starting next month, bailment pools and select fleets will be able to order the ProMaster Window van as an incomplete vehicle. “We’re working on a plan looking toward Q1 for dealer availability,” he said. “There’s been a lot of demand out there.” He said the Ram Augmented Reality Upfit Configurator is a computer-generated visual program allowing upfitters and dealers to virtually showcase a number of solutions to customers. Prospective buyers have the opportunity to virtually walk around the vehicle and even view inside to assess the various options via computer simulation. Originally offered on the Ram ProMaster full-size van, the configurator has now expanded to the Ram ProMaster City and the entire Ram Chassis Cab line (3500, 4500 and 5500). Mark Patel, program manager of Q-Pro, gave an update of the program started earlier this year. It’s a new qualification process for upfitters to certify their product with Ram Engineering. Q-Pro allocates Ram Engineering resources to survey, make recommendations and certify upfitter products. Once certified, the upfitter can use Ram’s Q-Pro co-brand to help market their product, and customers can be assured their new truck and upfit meet the highest standards.

Senators back provision for one-year ELD mandate waiver for livestock haulers James Jaillet, Commercial Carrier Journal (CCJ) / December 7, 2017 A bi-partisan group of 20 U.S. Senators has filed a letter with Senate leaders Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) and Chuck Schumer (D-New York) expressing their support for a Congressional measure to give livestock haulers and insect haulers at least an extra 10 months to comply with the federal government’s electronic logging device mandate. The Senators say the move would give the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration “time to make necessary adjustments to hours of service rules to address animal welfare concerns” that livestock haulers say are presented by current hours regulations. The December 5 letter comes two and a half weeks after the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration announced it is giving livestock haulers and other drivers haul agriculture loads an extra 90 days to adopt an ELD, which extends the compliance deadline for such drivers into mid-March. The agency also said it plans to tweak hours of service regulations for livestock haulers to better fit their operations. Detailed plans for both measures are expected to be published any day in the Federal Register. The U.S. House earlier this year passed a measure as part of a larger spending bill that would provide livestock haulers a relief from ELD mandate compliance at least through the 2018 fiscal year, which ends September 30, 2018. However, the bill and the livestock haulers provision has not been passed by the Senate. Both chambers continue to work on a appropriations packages for the 2018 fiscal year, and both chambers are expected to pass a short-term spending bill this week to prevent a government shutdown. The Senators argue their chamber should include the same provision in its 2018 spending bill. Livestock haulers already have a reprieve from the 30-minute break required by the current hours of service rule. But the trade groups representing livestockers contend there’s more work to be done to adapt the regulations to fit their specialized operations. The group of Senators expressing support for the ELD reprieve agree. “While some commercial operators without live cargo may have the ability to more easily transition from paper logbooks to ELDs, the pending mandate will have negative consequences on livestock haulers and hinder the ability of this unique subset of the industry to humanely deliver healthy livestock,” the Senators wrote. See the full letter and its signatories at this link.

ELD compliance among smaller fleets sees uptick as mandate looms James Jaillet, Commercial Carrier Journal (CCJ) / December 7, 2017 The number of small carriers, including owner-operators running fewer than five trucks, who report being in compliance with the U.S. DOT’s electronic logging device mandate spiked in recent weeks, according to polling figures from CarrierLists. The numbers published by CarrierLists this week show a sharp rise in adoption of ELDs from a similar survey conducted a month prior, somewhat expected with the mandate’s compliance date less than two weeks out. In a report issued December 4, CarrierLists says 72 percent of the 959 fleets surveyed report they’ve adopted ELDs. Of the 19 carriers surveyed operating between one and five trucks 79 percent report being in compliance with the mandate’s coming December 18 deadline. While that’s a small sample size of the tens of thousands of carriers operating between one and five trucks, it’s still a sharp uptick from the 40 percent adoption rate reported in early November. Of carriers operating between five and 100 trucks, 75 percent reported use of ELDs. That’s also up from the 40 percent reported for carriers running between 1 and 100 trucks from November’s report. The bulk of the survey’s respondents operate between six and 35 trucks, with their adoption rates ranging from 63 percent (for carriers operating between 11 and 15 trucks) to 75 percent (those operating between 26 and 30 units). See the chart above for the adoption rates among the carriers surveyed. .

Heavy Duty Trucking (HDT) / December 7, 2017 Sweden-based OEM Scania AB has introduced its new regional truck in two versions for the European market, both designed for fuel efficient, low carbon operation in urban use. "With today's release, Scania comprehensively sets the stage for the necessary shift towards sustainable transport, offering tailored low-carbon trucks for all transport applications," said Christian Levin, executive vice president, sales and marketing. The new truck is powered by a 7-liter engine that Scania says will offer fuel savings of up to 10% and the company also touted its more compact exterior with more spacious interior. The P-series cab features a lower engine tunnel, which opens up the cab’s interior and, with more compact dimensions, the truck is designed to excel in handling, steering, and driveability, said Scania. The L-series cab is designed for urban transport applications, such as distribution and refuse collection. The cab was designed to improve outward visibility with a driving position that is the same height as other road users, said Scania. It also offers other features to improve the working environment for drivers. Scania also showed versions of the P- and L-series with a CrewCab that will primarily be used by firefighters. The CrewCab can accommodate up to eight passengers and features a separate climate system and heating for the crew area. "With the new generation trucks, Scania is taking major steps in improved safety, driver comfort and fuel economy," said Levin. “The released models have been universally praised and awarded for their innovative features and overall performance and we are certain that the new urban range will be equally successful.” .

Anheuser-Busch Orders 40 Tesla Semi Tractors Jack Roberts, Heavy Duty Trucking (HDT) / December 7, 2017 Tesla’s new Semi electric truck got a big boost this week when Anheuser-Busch announced it has placed an order for 40 of the new regional haul tractors, which are slated to go into production next year. The brewing giant said the move is part of a company-wide strategy to employ cutting-edge technology to reduce the environmental impact and increase the efficiency of its operations. The 40 tractors, which represent one of Tesla’s largest reported pre-orders, will be fully electric-powered and equipped with autonomous driving capabilities, as part of the company’s commitment to improving road safety and reducing carbon emissions. Integrating the Tesla trucks into the brewer’s distribution network will help Anheuser-Busch achieve its commitment to reduce its operational carbon footprint by 30% by 2025 – the equivalent of removing nearly 500,000 cars from the road globally each year. “At Anheuser-Busch, we are constantly seeking new ways to make our supply chain more sustainable, efficient, and innovative,” said James Sembrot, senior director of Logistics Strategy. “This investment in Tesla semi-trucks helps us achieve these goals while improving road safety and lowering our environmental impact.” Anheuser-Busch also said the Tesla technology will also improve safety and efficiency, particularly for truck drivers while they are operating these vehicles, and will help ensure drivers continue to play a central role in beer distribution far into the future. Anheuser-Busch said it has long been a pioneer and industry leader in supporting innovative technology in its transportation operations to build a more sustainable and efficient beer distribution network. In addition to its partnership with Tesla, and a range of other recent investments in its transportation operations, Anheuser-Busch is also working with a number of innovative companies. These include Nikola, to develop and implement hydrogen-powered engines within its network; Otto and Uber Freight, to test autonomous driving technology, and Convoy, to access on-demand trucking capacity. In 2016, an Otto truck carrying 51,744 cans of Budweiser completed an autonomous truckload shipment from Anheuser-Busch’s Fort Collins, Colorado brewery to a wholly owned distributorship in Colorado Springs, a distance of 132 miles, marking the first-ever commercial beer delivery using autonomous driving technology. “We can’t wait to get these trucks on the road, and keep leading our industry forward to a greener, smarter future in partnership with some of the world’s most innovative companies,” said Sembrot. “The transportation industry is evolving fast, and we’re really excited to play a leadership role in driving this evolution by integrating these new technologies across our network.”

Ford moving electric vehicle production to Mexico Michael Martinez, Automotive News / December 6, 2017 DETROIT -- Ford Motor Co. is moving planned production of an electric crossover with a 300-mile range to Mexico from Michigan to make way for additional investment on autonomous vehicles in its home state. Ford still plans to begin to build the battery-electric crossover in summer 2020, but it will be assembled at its plant in Cuautitlan instead of Flat Rock, Mich., according to an internal memo obtained by Automotive News. “This allows us to bring this exciting new vehicle to global customers in a more effective way to support our overreaching business goals,” Ford said in the memo. The move comes as Ford and other automakers place increasingly large bets on electrification and self-driving technology. New CEO Jim Hackett is attempting to balance Ford’s competitiveness with other automakers and Silicon Valley tech companies while controlling costs and improving what he calls the company’s “fitness.” Ford believes this move allows it to do both, by transforming Flat Rock into an “AV center of excellence” while moving an expected low-margin electric vehicle to a country with lower labor costs. Ford originally said the battery electric crossover would be built in Flat Rock alongside an unnamed autonomous vehicle due out in 2021. The vehicles were announced earlier this year as part of a $700 million investment that would bring the plant 700 jobs. 'Bigger opportunity' Ford now plans to devote more volume to its autonomous vehicle development. With the move, confirmed Wednesday by Ford, Ford said it will invest an additional $200 million and add another 150 jobs. “We see a bigger opportunity now than we originally saw,” spokesman Alan Hall told Automotive News. Ford also said Wednesday the autonomous vehicle will be a commercial-grade hybrid with an all-new nameplate. It had previously been mum on details about the vehicle, only saying it would not be a Fusion sedan, which Ford has been testing the technology on. Autonomous, at-scale Ford believes it can launch its autonomous vehicle at-scale in 2021, Hall said. It plans to use the self-driving vehicle for commercial purposes like ride-hailing and package delivery, and is designing the vehicle for those specific purposes. Hackett previously said the automaker would begin testing out the technology and business case in a yet-to-be-named city next year. The automaker is battling the perception that it’s lagging behind crosstown rival General Motors, which recently announced plans to deploy autonomous vehicles in 2019, two years ahead of Ford. Focusing on autonomous vehicles in Flat Rock also allows Ford to build its long-range electric crossover in a low-cost country. Despite government mandates, the public has largely shunned EVs and automakers have yet to turn a profit building them. Said Hall: "It’s a business decision that allows us to be more fit as a company."

GM to use carbon fiber in redesigned pickup beds Michael Wayland, Automotive News / December 7, 2017 DETROIT -- General Motors plans to use carbon fiber for the beds of its redesigned full-size pickups to improve performance and reduce weight, Automotive News has learned. Two sources familiar with the company's plans confirmed the use of the high-strength material, which has primarily been reserved for luxury vehicles and sports cars because it costs significantly more than steel and aluminum. Carbon fiber, according to one source, is expected to be used as part of a mix of materials for the box of the pickups, including aluminum. The truck beds could mark GM's first use of carbon fiber reinforced thermoplastic, a product the automaker announced it was co-developing with Japan-based Teijin Limited in 2011. Carbon fiber is considerably stronger and lighter than steel and aluminum, but it's more expensive, mostly because of a long, labor-intensive production process. As a result, the composite is used only for select parts in low-volume vehicles. The carbon fiber bed is expected to be among a significant number of changes in materials for the Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra pickups to meet progressively stricter fuel economy regulations and better position them against crosstown rival and truck leader, Ford Motor Co. Ford shifted its F-series pickups, including the full-size F-150, to lightweight aluminum alloy bodies starting in 2014. GM, as first reported by The Wall Street Journal, is anticipated to begin offering the carbon fiber beds within the next two years. The Journal reported that the carbon fiber beds would go in premium versions of the pickups, but more efficient production processes could help the automaker eventually offer carbon fiber beds in lower trims. A GM spokesman declined to comment on the next-generation pickups. He reiterated the company's strategy on new and redesigned products using "the right materials in the right place" to reduce weight "without any sacrifice of safety, ride dynamics or utility." The redesigned Silverado and Sierra pickups are expected to be unveiled soon and go on sale next year without the carbon fiber beds. It was unclear how much the carbon fiber would add to the price of the trucks. Lightweighting GM's vehicle lineup has been on a massive diet since the current-generation pickups were unveiled in 2012. GM has significantly cut weight of its redesigned vehicles -- from more than 200 pounds off sedans such as the Chevrolet Volt and Cruze to a 700-pound decline for the downsized GMC Acadia. The workout regimen started when GM CEO Mary Barra was head of the company's product development in 2013. Then-GM CEO Dan Akerson vowed to cut the weight of new vehicle models 15 percent by the 2016 model year. Many analysts were surprised GM did little to actually lower the weight of the pickups, which hadn't been redesigned in six years.

The information on that Wikipedia link is interesting. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ "During World War 1, most Jews supported the Germans because they were fighting the Russians who were regarded as the Jews' main enemy. In Britain, the government sought Jewish support for the war effort for a variety of reasons including an erroneous antisemitic perception of "Jewish power" over the Ottoman Empire's Young Turks movement, and a desire to secure American Jewish support for US intervention on Britain's behalf. There was already sympathy for the aims of Zionism in the British government, including the Prime Minister Lloyd George. In late 1917, the British Army drove the Turks out of Southern Syria, and the British foreign minister, Lord Balfour, sent a public letter to Lord Rothschild, a leading member of his party and leader of the Jewish community. The letter subsequently became known as the Balfour Declaration of 1917. It stated that the British Government "view[ed] with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people". The declaration provided the British government with a pretext for claiming and governing the country. New Middle Eastern boundaries were decided by an agreement between British and French bureaucrats. The agreement gave Britain control over what parties would begin to call Palestine." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Classic colonialism, Great Britain and France meddling in other lands "as if" they had a right.

The first time the media has used the term “illegal immigrant” in quite a while. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Illegal immigrant indicted on federal charges after San Francisco murder acquittal Reuters / December 6, 2017 WASHINGTON - A grand jury on Tuesday indicted on federal charges an illegal immigrant from Mexico who was acquitted last week of murder by a San Francisco jury, the U.S. Justice Department said in a statement. Jose Ines Garcia Zarate was indicted on charges of being a felon in possession of a firearm, and for being an illegal immigrant in possession of a firearm. Garcia Zarate has been deported to Mexico five times since first entering the United States as a juvenile.

Georgia girl, 13, disfigured, bathed in peroxide, forced to eat cat food by stepfather Associated Press / December 6, 2017 A Gwinnett County stepfather and mother are charged with dozens of counts of child cruelty and aggravated battery for what the Gwinnett County District Attorney’s office is calling “astounding.” Investigators said Rimmon Lewis, 32, and Angela Strothers, 33, brutally beat and severely disfigured parts of a 13-year-old’s body while forcing her to live in disgraceful conditions Lewis beat his 13-year-old stepdaughter, forced her to eat cat food, made her bathe in peroxide and required her to complete cruel tasks as punishment during years of torture during which she was often made to attend school in urine-soaked clothes, authorities said. Rimmon Lewis, 33, was charged with “15 counts of first-degree cruelty to children, four counts of aggravated battery and one count of aggravated stalking" for abusing the girl, who has been placed in state custody. Lewis’ wife and the teen's mom, Angela Strothers, 33, was indicted on “four counts of cruelty to children and one count of aggravated stalking. “ Counselors at the victim's school called police in March due to concerns about the teenager’s well-being. The couple was initially arrested in April, charged and released on bond. But prosecutors added additional charges in late November after further investigation. As a form of punishment, Lewis forced the teenager to stand on top of cans barefoot while writing sentences 1,000 times. "There were times she was only allowed to eat cat food, and there were times she wasn't allowed to eat at all until the defendant decided she could eat," prosecutor Tracie Cason said. The victim was starved, beaten and locked in a laundry room for long periods of time. The teenager was locked in the room for so long she would sometimes urinate and defecate on herself -- and was then forced to go to school in the urine-soaked clothes. Lewis seriously disfigured the girl’s back and feet by striking her “repeatedly with the leg of a child’s table and a black leather belt.” The beatings caused “prolonged numbness” and immobility in some cases. The abuse took place over an unknown timeline that could span years. Lewis would “tell the child to stop stuttering” and “push his thumbs into victim’s mouth with such force that he split the corners of her mouth, and with such severity to leave scarring to both corners of her mouth,” the indictment stated. Lewis also forced the child to take baths in either extremely hot or cold water that contained peroxide or lemon juice. "It's amazing to me how this child survived as long as she did," Cason said. Strothers posted the required bond and was released from jail. Prosecutors said Strothers was not directly aware of all the abuse but was aware of the victim being starved and beaten. She also went to her husband and informed him when her daughter was not following his rules. “Once we started talking to her it became very clear that it was a much more significant case,” Assistant District Attorney Tracie Cason said. “The severity of what happened to this child over a number of years is just astounding.” Carson said there were four younger boys in the house during the abuse. “She was not allowed to eat with the family. She was not allowed to eat until her step father determined that she could eat, and when she was allowed to eat, often she was only given leftovers while the family ate a full, hot meal; Or she was given PB&J or at times she was made to eat cat food.” In 2014, Lewis was arrested for abusing the same teenager. He pleaded guilty to the charge and was put on probation. Lewis was sentenced to five years in prison during the summer for violating his probation. Authorities said Lewis violated his probation by having contact with his stepdaughter despite a judge ordering him not to have any communication with the teen. .

Please, someone correct me if my loose understanding of the history is incorrect. The Kingdom of Israel was conquered/destroyed by the Assyrians in 750 BC. The area went on to be ruled by Babylonia, Persia, Macedonia and Hasmoneans. Then Palestine was created as a colony of the Roman Empire about 2,000 years ago. After the Roman era, the region was controlled by the Byzantine Empire, Islamic Jihad, Crusaders, Egyptians and finally the Ottoman/Turkish Empire until World War One. Under a 1922 League of Nations (UN predecessor) mandate, Great Britain drove the Turks out and took control. In 1948, the Arabs were forced out and Israel was formed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Israel

I'm thinking that since the many other guilty individuals hid in Germany, out of US reach, the DOJ wanted to send a loud message using the one rat they were able to catch.

Now's a great time to avoid flying, if at all possible.

He claims he wants peace but Trump has just enraged a billion Muslims and poured oil on the flames of a war that could consume us all Piers Morgan / December 6, 2017 What's the first thing you're told by your parents as a kid when you're anywhere near fire? That's right: don't pour oil on it. Why? Well, ignore the advice and see for yourself – the fire will instantly erupt into a far larger and more furious ball of violent flame, endangering the lives of everyone in the immediate vicinity. Today, President Donald Trump has taken a million-ton barrel of oil and tipped it all over the Middle East. His decision to officially recognize Jerusalem as the new capital city of Israel, and to move the US embassy there from Tel Aviv, is a staggeringly reckless act of wilful provocation even by his tweet-enraging standards. And it could very quickly turn out to be a far more worrying threat to world peace than even the North Korea crisis. I don't say this lightly. To understand the enormity of this decision, it's important to understand the history behind it. Jerusalem is at the very heart of the Israel/Palestine conflict. West Jerusalem is the home of Israel's government; East Jerusalem is the home to 300,000 Palestinians. Both sides insist it must be the capital of their states. This is why America has trodden very carefully when it comes to Jerusalem, locating its embassy in Tel Aviv since Israel's creation in 1948. They are not alone in this. No other country in the world has their Israeli embassy in Jerusalem, acknowledging that to do so would be incredibly inflammatory. Now President Trump is re-igniting this smouldering tinderbox in spectacular fashion. He apparently considers it a roll of the dice worth throwing to force through a peace settlement. Almost everyone else sees it as a desperately dangerous gamble that could have disastrous consequences for the whole already war-ravaged region. Saudi Arabia's King Salman told Trump personally in a phone call it 'would constitute a flagrant provocation of Muslims all over the world'. King Abdullah of Jordan said it would have 'serious implications for security and stability in the Middle East'. Turkish President Erdogan described it as a violation of international law and a 'red line' for Muslims that would force Turkey to sever all diplomatic ties with Israel. China warned it could 'sharpen regional conflict, initiating new hostility'. Russia, a key Middle East player, agreed, expressing concern over 'possible deterioration'. French President Emmanuel Macron, speaking in similar terms to Germany and the UK, told Trump to urgently reconsider the plan, stressing that the status of Jerusalem 'must be resolved through negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians'. Pope Francis spoke of his 'deep worry' about the situation and pleaded for 'wisdom and prudence' to prevail. He said: 'I make a heartfelt appeal so that all commit themselves to respecting the status quo of the city.' Palestinians, obviously, are livid. Their leader Mahmoud Abbas warned of 'dangerous consequences' and an end to the peace process. Hamas, the extremist arm of the Palestinians, said it would constitute a 'dangerous escalation' that 'crosses every red line' and called for 'days of rage' to protest. Despite this extraordinary global opposition, Trump has gone ahead and done it anyway. As things stand, the only people who will be happy about this are Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his right wing government and their supporters. And the Christian Right in America. But this decision is not even something most Americans support. A new poll by the University of Maryland found that 66% of Americans, including 44% of Republicans, oppose moving the embassy. The majority of Americans, and American Jews, believe that international recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital city can and should only come in an agreement with the Palestinians on a two-state solution. And in that eventuality, parts of the city would be ring-fenced as Israel's capital, other parts as Palestinian's capital – with each side having sovereignty over the areas in which its citizens reside. Jerusalem is one of the most sacred cities on the planet, home to Muslims, Jews and Christians and some of the most important holy sites of all those religions. Trump's decision tells the entire Arab and Christian world that it now belongs to the Jews of Israel and not them. This incendiary move comes as a time when many were hoping real progress could be made in reaching some kind of two-state solution. Indeed, Trump's own son-in-law Jared Kushner has been working for months on behalf of the administration to forge new impetus for a peace deal in an attempt to finally end the conflict. But all his efforts, and those of the myriad others who devote their lives to this, are now likely to go up, quite literally, in smoke. I'm all for fresh new thinking when it comes to the Israel/Palestine crisis, as Trump put it today, because let's be perfectly frank: none of the old thinking has worked. This, though, is a terrible idea that will make things worse not better. In the short term, Trump's decision will inevitably spark a new wave of violence and instability across the region. In the longer term, it will surely embolden Islamist terror groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS right and act as their greatest possible recruitment drive. This, self-evidently, will make Israel less safe. As for America, by moving from peace-broker to blatant side-taker, it is deliberately waving an Israeli red rag in the face of the Arab bull. That can only make any resolution to this interminable issue even more unlikely. And I fear it will also make America a less safe country, too. Donald Trump has already enraged the world's Muslims on a regular basis. During his election campaign, he called for a ban on all Muslims entering the US following a terror attack in California. This week, his controversial watered down travel ban, that targets seven predominantly Muslim countries, was given the green light by the Supreme Court. Last week, Trump retweeted three anti-Muslim videos posted by a racist, Islamophobe, criminal group named Britain First. So Muslims already feel this President is their enemy. Today's announcement won't just confirm that suspicion, it will heavily cement it. The Palestinian ambassador to London said the move amounts to 'declaring war on 1.5 billion Muslims.' Hyperbole or not, there is no question that Donald Trump has just poured oil on the fire. Or worse, as President Erdogan's spokesman put it, he's 'plunging the region and the world into a fire with no end.' God help us.

Like I said last year, Gary Jones who heads Yakima, Washington-based Rainier is a great guy. But he's a chassis engineer, mostly for motor-homes. He's not a truck guy, and his chance for success was painted on the wall from day one. Most people aren't going to buy a no-name truck from a very small no-name truckmaker with a Chinese cab (nothing wrong with the CNHTC cab). Originally, Rainier was promising Cummins and PSI-sourced CNG/LNG/gasoline engines. However now he's talking of offering Cummins a Chrysler (FCA) HEMI. Odd to walk away from the CNG/LNG engine option.

Ex-VW exec Schmidt gets max 7 years, $400,000 fine for U.S. emissions violations Larry P. Vellequette / December 6, 2017 DETROIT -- Oliver Schmidt, the former high-ranking executive who spearheaded Volkswagen's multiyear efforts keep its conspiracy to cheat on diesel emissions a secret from U.S. regulators and failed to cooperate with investigators, received the maximum sentence possible Wednesday from a federal judge in Detroit. Schmidt, 48, was sentenced to seven years in prison and a $400,000 fine on Wednesday by U.S. District Judge Sean Cox. In August, he pleaded guilty to two felony charges of conspiracy to defraud the United States and violating the Clean Air Act. A third charge of aiding and abetting wire fraud was rolled into the conspiracy charge in a plea agreement. Cox agreed to allow Schmidt to continue to serve his sentence at the federal penitentiary in Milan, Michigan, where he has been behind bars since March. As part of the sentence, Schmidt will get credit for the nearly 11 months that he has so far been incarcerated. Schmidt, the former general manager of Volkswagen's U.S. Environment and Engineering Office in suburban Detroit, has been in custody since his arrest in January while attempting to return to Germany from a family vacation in Florida. His efforts to secure release on bail prior to his plea were rebuffed by Cox, who called him a "flight risk," a decision that was later upheld on appeal. Schmidt is one of eight current or former Volkswagen engineers or executives charged in Volkswagen's global conspiracy to cheat on diesel emissions. However, only one other Volkswagen employee, engineer James Liang, has thus far faced justice. Liang, who, unlike Schmidt, cooperated early on with investigators, was sentenced by Cox in late August to 40 months in prison -- longer than was sought by prosecutors -- in part, Cox said, because he was aware that he had to sentence Schmidt this month. 'Key conspirator' Wednesday, Cox said Schmidt was a central figure to the conspiracy. "In my opinion ... you are a key conspirator responsible for the cover-up in the United States of this massive fraud perpetrated on the people of the United States," the judge said. "I'm sure, based on common sense, that you viewed this cover-up as your opportunity to shine. That your goal was to impress senior management to fix this problem. .. to make yourself look better, to increase your opportunities to climb the corporate ladder at VW." Cox said Schmidt was "a significant player" in VW's actions, which undermined the trust between buyer and seller in the U.S. economy. "You knowingly misled and lied to government officials. You actively participated in the destruction of evidence. You saw this massive cover-up as an opportunity ... to advance your career at VW. This conspiracy, which you were a key part of, in particular the cover-up, is a very troubling crime against our economic system. It attacks and destroys the very foundation of our economic system, the trust by the buyer of our economic system," Cox said. 'I ... blame myself' Before his sentence, a nervous, tearful Schmidt choked up several times while reading a letter to the court accepting responsibility for his actions. He thanked his family and friends for supporting him, and said he has not been able to sleep at all while awaiting his sentencing. He also admitted that he had tried to use his personal relationships in the U.S. to keep regulators in the dark. "For the disruption of my life, I only have to blame myself," Schmidt said. "I justified my decisions by telling myself that I was obliged to speak for my superiors. The man that stands before you today no longer believes that." Schmidt admitted that his remorse was of little use now: "I'm deeply sorry for the wrongs I've committed, and I'm as ready as I'll ever be to accept my punishment now." In a letter to Cox last week, Schmidt said he first learned about the company's emissions-testing evasion scheme in summer 2015. Schmidt said he was given "a script, or talking points" approved by VW management and "high-ranking lawyers" to follow when he met with California environmental official Alberto Ayala on Aug. 5, 2015, Bloomberg reported. "Regrettably, I agreed to follow it," Schmidt wrote. "In hindsight, I should have never agreed to meet with Dr. Ayala on that day. Or, better yet, I should have gone to that meeting, ignored the instructions given to me" and admitted "there was a defeat device in VW diesel engine vehicles and that VW had been cheating for almost a decade." A mounting conspiracy But Schmidt's own emails -- recovered prior to his surprise arrest in January -- point to his sounding alarm bells within the company up to a year earlier. In April 2014, Schmidt was notified that independent testing at West Virginia University had discovered that VW diesel vehicle emissions vastly exceeded federal standards. Investigators say he sounded the alarm bells within the automaker the same day, writing to a colleague: "It should first be decided whether we are honest. If we are not honest, everything stays as it is." More than six weeks later in 2014, Schmidt took his growing problem up the company ladder, writing an email to the head of Volkswagen of America noting the economic risks to the company, and the possibility of an indictment. Defense: Following orders In a pre-sentence filing, Schmidt had sought a sentence of 40 months of supervised release and a $100,000 fine. Before the sentencing, Schmidt's attorney, David DuMouchel, argued that his client's sentence should be less than that of Liang, saying that Liang had been involved in the conspiracy from the beginning in 2006 and through the whole conspiracy, while Schmidt was only involved for two months "at the very end." DuMouchel argued that his client was following orders from Volkswagen to continue to conceal the presence of "defeat device" software from regulators, but said his client admits he did wrong. "Mr. Schmidt was asked, at the very end, to conceal from regulators the existence of the defeat device. And he did it," DuMouchel said, adding that his client now wishes that he had not lied to California regulators in August 2015, which he implied was Schmidt's worst day. "I wouldn't want anybody to judge me on my worst day." But prosecutor Ben Singer argued that Schmidt was key to keeping the conspiracy under wraps, that he deleted evidence, and that he had directly briefed VW CEO Martin Winterkorn in July 2015 about the cover-up and was ordered to lie to keep the defeat device secret, and carried out that order. "He was in the room, and every time he was in the room, he chose to lie. And that's how this crime happened," Singer said. Scandal fallout Volkswagen earlier this year pleaded guilty before Cox to a felony for its diesel emissions scandal, which has now cost the automaker as much as $30 billion. Volkswagen has attempted to put its diesel scandal behind it as much as possible. It has largely abandoned its diesel strategy globally in favor of electric vehicles, and has says it continues to cooperate with U.S. investigators to seek those responsible for the decisions to cheat on diesel emissions. Asked to comment on Schmidt's sentencing, a Volkswagen spokeswoman emailed the following statement: "Volkswagen continues to cooperate with investigations by the Department of Justice into the conduct of individuals. It would not be appropriate to comment on any individual cases." However, in August, global Volkswagen brand head Herbert Diess told Automotive News that the diesel scandal is now part of the brand's checkered history. "It was a very big scandal," Diess said. "It's something we have to live with." .

Rainier Truck Targets 2018 Launch Heavy Duty Trucking (HDT) / December 5, 2017 Rainier Truck & Chassis, LLC, announced that it is set to reboot sales and products with a target production launch of summer 2018 for its Class 4-5 and Class 6-7 truck models. SINOTRUK has signed on to supply its cabins to Rainier's new low-cost, low-tech lineup of cabover trucks. With a starting MSRP of $37,185, the truck will be powered by a Cummins 6.7L diesel, rated at 300 hp and 600 lb.-ft. of torque or a 6.4L HEMI that achieves 370 jp and 429 lb.-ft of torque are standard on the Class 4-5 models. A 6.7L Cummins diesel engine that achieves 325 hp and 750 lb.-ft. of torque will be standard on the Class 6-7 models. Load leveling air suspension will be standard on all models. Ordering is open at www.rainiertruckandchassis.com. Rainier first launched its start-up in 2014 but ran into issues with its cabin suppliers and announced that with its partnership with SINOTRUK production is back on schedule. .

God’s Plan for Mike Pence McKay Coppins, The Atlantic / January-February 2018 Will the vice president—and the religious right—be rewarded for their embrace of Donald Trump? No man can serve two masters, the Bible teaches, but Mike Pence is giving it his all. It’s a sweltering September afternoon in Anderson, Indiana, and the vice president has returned to his home state to deliver the Good News of the Republicans’ recently unveiled tax plan. The visit is a big deal for Anderson, a fading manufacturing hub about 20 miles outside Muncie that hasn’t hosted a sitting president or vice president in 65 years—a fact noted by several warm-up speakers. To mark this historic civic occasion, the cavernous factory where the event is being held has been transformed. Idle machinery has been shoved to the perimeter to make room for risers and cameras and a gargantuan American flag, which—along with bleachers full of constituents carefully selected for their ethnic diversity and ability to stay awake during speeches about tax policy—will serve as the TV-ready backdrop for Pence’s remarks. When the time comes, Pence takes the stage and greets the crowd with a booming “Hellooooo, Indiana!” He says he has “just hung up the phone” with Donald Trump and that the president asked him to “say hello.” He delivers this message with a slight chuckle that has a certain, almost subversive quality to it. Watch Pence give enough speeches, and you’ll notice that this often happens when he’s in front of a friendly crowd. He’ll be witnessing to evangelicals at a mega-church, or addressing conservative supporters at a rally, and when the moment comes for him to pass along the president’s well-wishes, the words are invariably accompanied by an amused little chuckle that prompts knowing laughter from the attendees. It’s almost as if, in that brief, barely perceptible moment, Pence is sending a message to those with ears to hear—that he recognizes the absurdity of his situation; that he knows just what sort of man he’s working for; that while things may look bad now, there is a grand purpose at work here, a plan that will manifest itself in due time. Let not your hearts be troubled, he seems to be saying. I’ve got this. And then, all at once, Pence is back on message. In his folksy Midwestern drawl, he recites Republican aphorisms about “job creators” and regulatory “red tape,” and heralds the many supposed triumphs of Trump’s young presidency. As he nears the end of his remarks, his happy-warrior buoyancy gives way to a more sober cadence. “We’ve come to a pivotal moment in the life of this country,” Pence soulfully intones. “It’s a good time to pray for America.” His voice rising in righteous fervor, the vice president promises an opening of the heavens. “If His people who are called by His name will humble themselves and pray,” he proclaims, “He’ll hear from heaven, and He’ll heal this land!” It’s easy to see how Pence could put so much faith in the possibilities of divine intervention. The very fact that he is standing behind a lectern bearing the vice-presidential seal is, one could argue, a loaves-and-fishes-level miracle. Just a year earlier, he was an embattled small-state governor with underwater approval ratings, dismal reelection prospects, and a national reputation in tatters. In many ways, Pence was on the same doomed trajectory as the conservative-Christian movement he’d long championed—once a political force to be reckoned with, now a battered relic of the culture wars. Because God works in mysterious ways (or, at the very least, has a postmodern sense of humor), it was Donald J. Trump—gracer of Playboy covers, delighter of shock jocks, collector of mistresses—who descended from the mountaintop in the summer of 2016, GOP presidential nomination in hand, offering salvation to both Pence and the religious right. The question of whether they should wed themselves to such a man was not without its theological considerations. But after eight years of Barack Obama and a string of disorienting political defeats, conservative Christians were in retreat and out of options. So they placed their faith in Trump—and then, incredibly, he won. In Pence, Trump has found an obedient deputy whose willingness to suffer indignity and humiliation at the pleasure of the president appears boundless. When Trump comes under fire for describing white nationalists as “very fine people,” Pence is there to assure the world that he is actually a man of great decency. When Trump needs someone to fly across the country to an NFL game so he can walk out in protest of national-anthem kneelers, Pence heads for Air Force Two. Meanwhile, Pence’s presence in the White House has been a boon for the religious right. Evangelical leaders across the country point to his record on abortion and religious freedom and liken him to a prophet restoring conservative Christianity to its rightful place at the center of American life. “Mike Pence is the 24-karat-gold model of what we want in an evangelical politician,” Richard Land, the president of the Southern Evangelical Seminary and one of Trump’s faith advisers, told me. “I don’t know anyone who’s more consistent in bringing his evangelical-Christian worldview to public policy.” But what does Pence make of his own improbable rise to the vice presidency, and how does he reconcile his faith with serving a man like Trump? Over the past several months, I’ve spoken with dozens of people who have known the vice president throughout his life—from college fraternity brothers and longtime friends to trusted advisers and political foes. (Pence himself declined my requests for an interview.) While many of them expressed surprise and even bewilderment at the heights of power Pence had attained, those who know him best said he sees no mystery in why he’s in the White House. “If you’re Mike Pence, and you believe what he believes, you know God had a plan,” says Ralph Reed, an evangelical power broker and a friend of the vice president’s. Pence has so far showed absolute deference to the president—and as a result he has become one of the most influential figures in the White House, with a broad portfolio of responsibilities and an unprecedented level of autonomy. But for all his aw-shucks modesty, Pence is a man who believes heaven and Earth have conspired to place him a heartbeat—or an impeachment vote—away from the presidency. At some crucial juncture in the not-too-distant future, that could make him a threat to Trump. Pence’s public persona can seem straight out of the Columbus, Indiana, of his youth, a quiet suburb of Indianapolis where conformity was a virtue and old-fashioned values reigned. His dad ran a chain of convenience stores; his mom was a homemaker who took care of him and his five siblings. The Pences were devout Irish-Catholic Democrats, and Mike and his brothers served as altar boys at St. Columba Catholic Church. Young Mike did not initially thrive in this setting. He was useless at football (he later sized up his own abilities as “one grade above the blocking sled”), and he lacked the natural athleticism of his brothers, who were “lean and hard and thin.” Pence was “a fat little kid,” he told a local newspaper in 1988, “the real pumpkin in the pickle patch.” But by the time Pence arrived at Hanover College—a small liberal-arts school in southern Indiana—he had slimmed down, discovered a talent for public speaking, and developed something akin to swagger. The yearbooks from his undergraduate days are filled with photos that portray Pence as a kind of campus cliché: the dark-haired, square-jawed stud strumming an acoustic guitar on the quad as he leads a gaggle of coeds in a sing-along. In one picture, Pence mugs for the camera in a fortune-teller costume with a girl draped over his lap; in another, he poses goofily in an unbuttoned shirt that shows off his torso. Pence wasn’t a bad student, but he wasn’t especially bookish either, managing a B-plus average amid a busy campus social life. As a freshman, he joined Phi Gamma Delta and became an enthusiastic participant in the Greek experience. Dan Murphy, a former fraternity brother of Pence’s who now teaches history at Hanover, told me that the “Phi Gams” were an eclectic bunch. “You had in that fraternity house everything from the sort of evangelical-Christian crowd to some fairly hard-core drug users.” Pence was friendly with all of them, and in his sophomore year was elected president of the fraternity. Murphy and Pence lived in neighboring rooms, and made a habit of attending Catholic Mass together on Sunday nights. On their walks back home, they often talked about their futures, and it became clear to Murphy that his friend had a much stronger sense of his “mission in the world” than the average undergrad. Pence agonized over his “calling.” He talked about entering the priesthood, but ultimately felt drawn instead to politics, a realm where he believed he could harness God’s power to do good. It was obvious to his fraternity brothers, Murphy told me, that Pence wanted to be president one day. Pence underwent two conversions in college that would shape the rest of his life. The first came in the spring of 1978, when he road-tripped to Kentucky with some evangelical friends for a music festival billed as the Christian Woodstock. After a day of rocking out to Jesus-loving prog-rock bands and born-again Bob Dylan imitators, Pence found himself sitting in a light rain, yearning for a more personal relationship with Christ than was afforded by the ritualized Catholicism of his youth. “My heart really, finally broke with a deep realization that what had happened on the cross in some infinitesimal way had happened for me,” Pence recounted in March 2017. It was there, he said, that he gave his life to Jesus. The other conversion was a partisan one. Pence had entered college a staunch supporter of Jimmy Carter, and he viewed the 1980 presidential election as a contest between a “good Christian” and a “vacuous movie star.” But President Ronald Reagan won Pence over—instilling in him an appreciation for both movement conservatism and the leadership potential of vacuous entertainers that would serve him well later in life. Murphy told me another story about Pence that has stayed with him. During their sophomore year, the Phi Gamma Delta house found itself perpetually on probation. The movie Animal House had recently come out, and the fraternity brothers were constantly re-creating their favorite scenes, with toga parties, outlandish pranks, and other miscellaneous mischief. Most vexing to the school’s administration was their violation of Hanover’s strict alcohol prohibition. The Phi Gams devised elaborate schemes to smuggle booze into the house, complete with a network of campus lookouts. Pence was not a particularly hard partyer, but he gamely presided over these efforts, and when things went sideways he was often called upon to smooth things over with the adults. One night, during a rowdy party, Pence and his fraternity brothers got word that an associate dean was on his way to the house. They scrambled to hide the kegs and plastic cups, and then Pence met the administrator at the door. “We know you’ve got a keg,” the dean told Pence, according to Murphy. Typically when scenes like this played out, one of the brothers would take the fall, claiming that all the alcohol was his and thus sparing the house from formal discipline. Instead, Pence led the dean straight to the kegs and admitted that they belonged to the fraternity. The resulting punishment was severe. “They really raked us over the coals,” Murphy said. “The whole house was locked down.” Some of Pence’s fraternity brothers were furious with him—but he managed to stay on good terms with the administration. Such good terms, in fact, that after he graduated, in 1981, the school offered him a job in the admissions office. Decades later, when Murphy read about Pence vying for a spot on the presidential ticket with Donald Trump, he recognized a familiar quality in his old friend. “Somewhere in the midst of all that genuine humility and good feeling, this is a guy who’s got that ambition,” Murphy told me. And he wondered, “Is Mike’s religiosity a way of justifying that ambition to himself?” For all Pence’s outward piousness, he’s kept the details of his spiritual journey opaque. Despite his conversion to evangelical Christianity in college, he married his wife, Karen, in a Catholic ceremony and until the mid‑’90s periodically referred to himself as an “evangelical Catholic.” That formulation might befuddle theologians, but it reveals the extraordinary degree to which Pence’s personal religious evolution paralleled the rise of the religious right. Indeed, it was just a year after Pence’s born-again experience in Kentucky that Jerry Falwell founded the Moral Majority, a national movement that aimed to turn Christian voters into a pavement-pounding political force. In the decades that followed, white evangelicals forged an alliance with conservative Catholics to fight abortion, gay marriage, and an encroaching secularism that they saw as a threat to their religious freedom. With conservative believers feeling under siege, denominational differences began to melt away. In 1988, at age 29, Pence launched his first bid for Congress. He garnered attention by riding a single-speed bicycle around his district in sneakers and short shorts, dodging aggravated motorists and drumming up conversations with prospective voters on the sidewalk. It was a perfectly Pencian gimmick—earnest, almost unbearably cheesy—and it helped him win the Republican nomination. But he was unable to defeat the Democratic incumbent, Phil Sharp. Pence tried again two years later, this time ditching the bike in favor of vicious attack ads. The race is remembered as one of the nastiest in Indiana history. In one notorious Pence campaign spot, an actor dressed as a cartoonish Arab sheikh thanked Sharp for advancing the interests of foreign oil. The tone of the campaign was jarring coming from a candidate who had nurtured such a wholesome image, a contrast memorably captured in an Indianapolis Star headline: “Pence Urges Clean Campaign, Calls Opponent a Liar.” He ended up losing by 19 points after it was revealed that he was using campaign funds to pay his mortgage and grocery bills (a practice that was then legal but has since been outlawed). Afterward, a humbled Pence attempted public repentance by personal essay. His article, “Confessions of a Negative Campaigner,” ran in newspapers across the state. “Christ Jesus came to save sinners,” the essay began, quoting 1 Timothy, “among whom I am foremost of all.” With two failed congressional bids behind him, Pence decided to change tack. In 1992, he debuted a conservative talk-radio show that he described as “Rush Limbaugh on decaf.” The quaint joke belied the meticulousness with which Pence went about building his local media empire. “He knew exactly what he wanted his brand to be and who his audience was,” says Ed Feigenbaum, the publisher of a state-politics tip sheet, whom Pence often consulted. Most of his listeners were “retirees and conservative housewives,” Feigenbaum says, and Pence carefully catered to them. Over the next eight years, he expanded his radio show to 18 markets, started hosting a talk show on a local TV station, launched a proto-blog, and published a newsletter, “The Pence Report,” which locals remember primarily for its frequent typos and Pence’s lovingly drawn political cartoons. “His Mikeness,” as he became known on the air, began each radio show with a signature opening line—“Greetings across the amber waves of grain”—and filled the hours with a mix of interviews, listener calls, and medium-hot takes. Pence’s commentary from this period is a near-perfect time capsule of ’90s culture-war trivia. He railed against assisted suicide (“Kevorkian is a monster”) and fretted about the insufficient punishment given to a female Air Force pilot who had engaged in an extramarital affair (“Is adultery no longer a big deal in Indiana and in America?”). He mounted a rousing defense of Big Tobacco (“Despite the hysteria from the political class and the media, smoking doesn’t kill”) and lamented parents’ growing reliance on day care (pop culture “has sold the big lie that ‘Mom doesn’t matter’ ”). Pence also demonstrated a knack for seizing on more-creative wedge issues. For instance, a 1995 initiative to reintroduce otters into Indiana’s wildlife population became, in Pence’s able hands, a frightening example of Big Government run amok. “State-sanctioned, sanitized otters today,” he warned, ominously. “Buffaloes tomorrow?” Despite Pence’s on-air culture-warring, he rarely came off as disagreeable. He liked to describe himself as “a Christian, a conservative, and a Republican, in that order,” and he was careful to show respect for opposing viewpoints. “Nobody ever left an interview not liking Mike,” says Scott Uecker, the radio executive who oversaw Pence’s show. By the time a congressional seat opened up ahead of the 2000 election, Pence was a minor Indiana celebrity and state Republicans were urging him to run. In the summer of 1999, as he was mulling the decision, he took his family on a trip to Colorado. One day while horseback riding in the mountains, he and Karen looked heavenward and saw two red-tailed hawks soaring over them. They took it as a sign, Karen recalled years later: Pence would run again, but this time there would be “no flapping.” He would glide to victory. To his colleagues on Capitol Hill—an overwhelmingly secular place where even many Republicans privately sneer at people of faith—everything about the Indiana congressman screamed “Bible thumper.” He was known to pray with his staffers, and often cited scripture to explain his votes. In a 2002 interview with Congressional Quarterly, for example, he explained, “My support for Israel stems largely from my personal faith. In the Bible, God promises Abraham, ‘Those who bless you I will bless, and those who curse you I will curse.’ ” He became a champion of the fight to restrict abortion and defund Planned Parenthood. Pence didn’t have a reputation for legislative acumen (“I would not call Mike a policy wonk,” one former staffer told the Indianapolis Monthly), and some of his colleagues called him a nickname behind his back: “Mike Dense.” But he did have sharp political instincts. Before long, he was climbing the leadership ranks and making connections with key figures in the conservative-Christian establishment. The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer has documented Pence’s close ties to the Koch brothers and other GOP mega-donors, but his roots in the religious right are even deeper. In 2011, as he began plotting a presidential run in the upcoming election cycle, Pence met with Ralph Reed, the evangelical power broker, to seek his advice. Reed told Pence he should return home and get elected governor of Indiana first, then use the statehouse as a launching pad for a presidential bid. He said a few years in the governor’s mansion—combined with his deep support on the Christian right—would make him a top-tier candidate in the 2016 primaries. Pence took Reed’s advice, and in 2012 launched a gubernatorial bid. Casting himself as the heir to the popular outgoing governor, Mitch Daniels, he avoided social issues and ran on a pragmatic, business-friendly platform. He used Ronald Reagan as a political style guru and told his ad makers that he wanted his campaign commercials to have “that ‘Morning in America’ feel.” He meticulously fine-tuned early cuts of the ads, asking his consultants to edit this or reframe that or zoom in here instead of there. But he wasn’t willing to win at all costs. When the race tightened in the homestretch, Pence faced immense pressure from consultants to go negative. A former adviser recalls heated conference calls in which campaign brass urged him to green-light an attack ad on his Democratic opponent, John Gregg. Pence refused. “He didn’t want to be a hypocrite,” the former adviser says. Pence won the race anyway, and set about cutting taxes and taking on local unions—burnishing a résumé that would impress Republican donors and Iowa caucus-goers. The governor’s stock began to rise in Washington, where he was widely viewed as a contender for the 2016 presidential nomination. Then, in early 2015, Pence stumbled into a culture-war debacle that would come to define his governorship. At the urging of conservative-Christian leaders in Indiana, the GOP-controlled state legislature passed a bill that would have allowed religious business owners to deny services to gay customers in certain circumstances. Pence signed it into law in a closed-press ceremony at the statehouse, surrounded by nuns, monks, and right-wing lobbyists. A photo of the signing was released, and all hell broke loose. Corporate leaders threatened to stop adding jobs in Indiana, and national organizations began pulling scheduled conventions from the state. The NCAA, which is headquartered in Indianapolis, put out a statement suggesting that the law might imperil “future events.” The Indianapolis Star ran a rare front-page editorial under an all-caps headline: “FIX THIS NOW.” Caught off guard by the controversy, Pence accepted an invitation to appear on This Week With George Stephanopoulos, where he intended to make the case that the law wasn’t anti-gay but rather pro–religious liberty. What took place instead was an excruciating 12-minute interview in which Pence awkwardly danced around the same straightforward question: Does this law allow a Christian florist to refuse service for a same-sex wedding? “George, look,” Pence said at one point, sounding frustrated, “the issue here is, you know, is tolerance a two-way street or not?” For Pence—and the conservative-Christian movement he represented—this was more than just a talking point. In recent years, the religious right had been abruptly forced to pivot from offense to defense in the culture wars—abandoning the “family values” crusades and talk of “remoralizing America,” and focusing its energies on self-preservation. Conservative Christians had lost the battles over school prayer, sex education, and pornography censorship, and the Supreme Court was poised to legalize same-sex marriage. Meanwhile, a widespread decline in churchgoing and religious affiliation had contributed to a growing anxiety among conservative believers. By 2017, white evangelicals would tell pollsters that Christians faced more discrimination in America than Muslims did. To many Christians, the backlash against Indiana’s “religious freedom” bill was a frightening sign of the secular left’s triumphalism. Liberals were no longer working toward tolerance, it seemed—they were out for conquest. “Many evangelicals were experiencing the sense of an almost existential threat,” Russell Moore, a leader of the Southern Baptist Convention, told me. It was only a matter of time, he said, before cultural elites’ scornful attitudes would help drive Christians into the arms of a strongman like Trump. “I think there needs to be a deep reflection on the left about how they helped make this happen.” After seven chaotic days, Pence caved and signed a revised version of the religious-freedom bill—but by then it was too late. His approval ratings were in free fall, Democrats were raising money to defeat him in the next gubernatorial election, and the political obituaries were being written. Things looked grimmer for Pence, and the religious right, than they ever had before. Deliverance manifested itself to Mike Pence on the back nine of Donald Trump’s golf course in New Jersey. It was the Fourth of July weekend, and the two men were sizing each other up as potential running mates. Each had his own hesitations. Coming into the game, Trump had formed an opinion of the Indiana governor as prudish, stiff, and embarrassingly poor, according to one longtime associate. Pence, meanwhile, had spent the primaries privately shaking his head at Trump’s campaign-trail antics, and had endorsed Senator Ted Cruz for the nomination. But as the two men played golf, Pence asked what his job description would be if they wound up in the White House together. Trump gave him the same answer he’d been dangling in front of other prospective running mates for weeks: He wanted “the most consequential vice president ever.” Pence was sold. Before flying out to New Jersey, Pence had called Kellyanne Conway, a top Trump adviser, whom he’d known for years, and asked for her advice on how to handle the meeting. Conway had told him to talk about “stuff outside of politics,” and suggested he show his eagerness to learn from the billionaire. “I knew they would enjoy each other’s company,” Conway told me, adding, “Mike Pence is someone whose faith allows him to subvert his ego to the greater good.” True to form, Pence spent much of their time on the course kissing Trump’s ring. You’re going to be the next president of the United States, he said. It would be the honor of a lifetime to serve you. Afterward, he made a point of gushing to the press about Trump’s golf game. “He beat me like a drum,” Pence confessed, to Trump’s delight. The consensus among the campaign’s top political strategists was that a Trump–Pence ticket was their best shot at winning in November. After a bitter primary season, Trump’s campaign had moved swiftly to shore up support from conservative Christians, who advisers worried would stay home on Election Day. Trump released a list of potential Supreme Court nominees with unimpeachably pro-life records and assembled an evangelical advisory board composed of high-profile faith leaders. One of the men asked to join the board was Richard Land, of the Southern Evangelical Seminary. When the campaign approached him with the offer, Land says, he was perplexed. “You do know that Trump was my last choice, right?” he said. But he ultimately accepted, and when a campaign aide asked what his first piece of advice was, he didn’t hesitate: “Pick Mike Pence.” Nonetheless, as decision time approached, Trump was leaning toward New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a fellow bridge-and-tunnel loudmouth with whom he had more natural chemistry. The candidate’s advisers repeatedly warned that the “Bridgegate” fiasco would make Christie a liability in the general election. But they were unable to get through to Trump. Then, on July 12, a miracle: During a short campaign swing through Indiana, Trump got word that his plane had broken down on the runway, and that he would need to spend the night in Indianapolis. With nowhere else to go, Trump accepted an invitation to dine with the Pences. In fact, according to two former Trump aides, there was no problem with the plane. Paul Manafort, who was then serving as the campaign’s chairman, had made up the story to keep the candidate in town an extra day and allow him to be wooed by Pence. The gambit worked: Three days later, Trump announced Pence as his running mate. On the stump and in interviews, Pence spoke of Trump in a tone that bordered on worshipful. One of his rhetorical tics was to praise the breadth of his running mate’s shoulders. Trump was, Pence proclaimed, a “broad-shouldered leader,” in possession of “broad shoulders and a big heart,” who had “the kind of broad shoulders” that enabled him to endure criticism while he worked to return “broad-shouldered American strength to the world stage.” Campaign operatives discovered that anytime Trump did something outrageous or embarrassing, they could count on Pence to clean it up. “He was our top surrogate by far,” said one former senior adviser to Trump. “He was this mild-mannered, uber-Christian guy with a Midwestern accent telling voters, ‘Trump is a good man; I know what’s in his heart.’ It was very convincing—you wanted to trust him. You’d be sitting there listening to him and thinking, Yeah, maybe Trump is a good man!” Even some of Trump’s most devoted loyalists marveled at what Pence was willing to say. There was no talking point too preposterous, no fixed reality too plain to deny—if they needed Pence to defend the boss, he was in. When, during the vice-presidential debate, in early October, he was confronted with a barrage of damning quotes and questionable positions held by his running mate, Pence responded with unnerving message discipline, dismissing documented facts as “nonsense” and smears. It was the kind of performance—a blur of half-truths and “whatabout”s and lies—that could make a good Christian queasy. But people close to Pence say he felt no conflict between his campaign duties and his religious beliefs. Marc Short, a longtime adviser to Pence and a fellow Christian, told me that the vice president believes strongly in a scriptural concept evangelicals call “servant leadership.” The idea is rooted in the Gospels, where Jesus models humility by washing his disciples’ feet and teaches, “Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave.” When Pence was in Congress, he instructed his aides to have a “servant’s attitude” when dealing with constituents. Later, as the chairman of the House Republican Conference, he saw his job as being a servant to his fellow GOP lawmakers. And when he accepted the vice-presidential nomination, he believed he was committing to humbly submit to the will of Donald Trump. “Servant leadership is biblical,” Short told me. “That’s at the heart of it for Mike, and it comes across in his relationship with the president.” Another close friend of Pence’s explained it to me this way: “His faith teaches that you’re under authority at all times. Christ is under God’s authority, man is under Christ’s authority, children are under the parents’ authority, employees are under the employer’s authority.” “Mike,” he added, “always knows who’s in charge.” On Friday, October 7, 2016, The Washington Post published the Access Hollywood tape that showed Trump gloating about his penchant for grabbing women “by the pussy,” and instantly upended the campaign. Republicans across the country withdrew their endorsements, and conservative editorial boards called on Trump to drop out of the race. Most alarming to the aides and operatives inside Trump Tower, Mike Pence suddenly seemed at risk of going rogue. Trump’s phone calls to his running mate reportedly went unreturned, and anonymous quotes began appearing in news stories describing Pence as “beside himself” over the revelation. One campaign staffer told me that when she was asked on TV the day after the tape came out whether Pence would remain on the ticket, she ad-libbed that, yes, he was 100 percent committed to Trump. She remembers walking away from the set and thinking, “I have no idea if what I just said is true.” It’s been reported that Pence sent Trump a letter saying he needed time to decide whether he could stay with the campaign. But in fact, according to several Republicans familiar with the situation, Pence wasn’t just thinking about dropping out—he was contemplating a coup. Within hours of The Post’s bombshell, Pence made it clear to the Republican National Committee that he was ready to take Trump’s place as the party’s nominee. Such a move just four weeks before Election Day would have been unprecedented—but the situation seemed dire enough to call for radical action. Already, Reince Priebus’s office was being flooded with panicked calls from GOP officials and donors urging the RNC chairman to get rid of Trump by whatever means necessary. One Republican senator called on the party to engage emergency protocols to nominate a new candidate. RNC lawyers huddled to explore an obscure legal mechanism by which they might force Trump off the ticket. Meanwhile, a small group of billionaires was trying to put together money for a “buyout”—even going so far as to ask a Trump associate how much money the candidate would require to walk away from the race. According to someone with knowledge of the talks, they were given an answer of $800 million. (It’s unclear whether Trump was aware of this discussion or whether the offer was actually made.) Republican donors and party leaders began buzzing about making Pence the nominee and drafting Condoleezza Rice as his running mate. Amid the chaos, Trump convened a meeting of his top advisers in his Manhattan penthouse. He went around the room and asked each person for his damage assessment. Priebus bluntly told Trump he could either drop out immediately or lose in a historic landslide. According to someone who was present, Priebus added that Pence and Rice were “ready to step in.” (An aide to the vice president denied that Pence sent Trump a letter and that he ever talked with the RNC about becoming the nominee. Priebus did not respond to requests for comment.) The furtive plotting, several sources told me, was not just an act of political opportunism for Pence. He was genuinely shocked by the Access Hollywood tape. In the short time they’d known each other, Trump had made an effort to convince Pence that—beneath all the made-for-TV bluster and bravado—he was a good-hearted man with faith in God. On the night of the vice-presidential debate, for example, Trump had left a voicemail letting Pence know that he’d just said a prayer for him. The couple was appalled by the video, however. Karen Pence in particular was “disgusted,” says a former campaign aide. “She finds him reprehensible—just totally vile.” Yet Pence might also have thought he glimpsed something divine in that moment of political upheaval—a parting of the seas, God’s hand reaching down to make his will known. Marc Short told me that in moments of need, Pence turns to a favorite passage in Jeremiah: “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Short said, “Mike believes strongly in the sovereignty of God, and knowing that the Lord has a plan for him.” Whatever God had planned for Mike Pence, however, it was not to make him the Republican nominee that weekend. Trump proved defiant in the face of pressure from party leaders. “They thought they were going to be able to get him to drop out before the second debate,” said a former campaign aide. “Little did they know, he has no shame.” Indeed, two days after the tape was released, Trump showed up in St. Louis for the debate with a group of Bill Clinton accusers in tow, ranting about how Hillary’s husband had done things to women that were far worse than his own “locker-room talk.” The whole thing was a circus—and it worked. By the time Trump left St. Louis, he had, in pundit-speak, “stopped the bleeding,” and by the next day, Pence was back on the stump. The campaign stabilized. The race tightened. And on the night of November 8, 2016, Pence found himself standing on a ballroom stage in Midtown Manhattan—silently, obediently, servant-leaderly—while Trump delivered the unlikeliest of victory speeches. Back in Indiana, Pence’s Trump apologia on the campaign trail surprised those who knew him. In political circles, there had been a widespread, bipartisan recognition that Pence was a decent man with a genuine devotion to his faith. But after watching him in 2016, many told me, they believed Pence had sold out. Scott Pelath, the Democratic minority leader in the Indiana House of Representatives, said that watching Pence vouch for Trump made him sad. “Ah, Mike,” he sighed. “Ambition got the best of him.” It’s an impression that even some of Pence’s oldest friends and allies privately share. As one former adviser marveled, “The number of compromises he made to get this job, when you think about it, is pretty staggering.” Of course, Pence is far from the only conservative Christian to be accused of having sold his soul. Trump’s early evangelical supporters were a motley crew of televangelists and prosperity preachers, and they have been rewarded with outsize influence in the White House. Pastor Ralph Drollinger, for example, caught Trump’s attention in December 2015, when he said in a radio interview, “America’s in such desperate straits—especially economically—that if we don’t have almost a benevolent dictator to turn things around, I just don’t think it’s gonna happen through our governance system.” Now Drollinger runs a weekly Bible study in the West Wing. But the president has also enjoyed overwhelming support from rank-and-file conservative Christians. He won an astonishing 81 percent of white evangelicals’ votes, more than any Republican presidential candidate on record. And while his national approval rating hovers below 40 percent, poll after poll finds his approval rating among white evangelicals in the high 60s. The fact that such an ungodly president could retain a firm grip on the religious right has been the source of much soul-searching—and theological debate—within the movement. On one side, there are those who argue that good Christians are obligated to support any leader, no matter how personally wicked he may be, who stands up for religious freedom and fights sinful practices such as abortion. Richard Land told me that those who withhold their support from Trump because they’re uncomfortable with his moral failings will “become morally accountable for letting the greater evil prevail.” On the other side of the debate is a smaller group that believes the Christians allying themselves with Trump are putting the entire evangelical movement at risk. Russell Moore, of the Southern Baptist Convention, has made this case forcefully. In a New York Times op-ed in September 2015, Moore wrote that for evangelicals to embrace Trump “would mean that we’ve decided to join the other side of the culture war, that image and celebrity and money and power and social Darwinist ‘winning’ trump the conservation of moral principles and a just society.” Moore and others worry that conservative Christians’ support for Trump has already begun to warp their ideals. Consider just one data point: In 2011, a poll by the Public Religion Research Institute found that only 30 percent of white evangelicals believed “an elected official who commits an immoral act in their personal life can still behave ethically and fulfill their duties in their public and professional life.” By 2016, that number had risen to 72 percent. “This is really a sea change in evangelical ethics,” Robert P. Jones, the head of the institute and the author of The End of White Christian America, told me. “They have moved to an ends-justifies-the means style of politics that would have been unimaginable before this last campaign.” But even as the debate rages on, there is one thing virtually all conservative Christians seem to agree on: Mike Pence. “He’s an incredibly popular figure,” Moore told me. “Evangelicals who disagree about all sorts of things still respect Mike Pence. Regardless of how they voted or what they think about Trump, they feel a sense of identification with him, and trust in him.” Some prominent evangelicals have gone even further to describe Pence’s role—reverently invoking biblical heroes who aligned themselves with flawed worldly leaders to do God’s will. One pastor compared Pence to Mordechai, who ascended to the right hand of a Persian king known for throwing lavish parties and discarding his wife after she refused to appear naked in front of his friends. Pence has also drawn comparisons to Daniel—who served a procession of godless rulers—and to Joseph of Egypt, the valiant servant of God who won the favor of an impetuous pharaoh known for throwing servants in prison when they offended him. Pastor Mark Burns—a South Carolina televangelist who was among the first to sign on as a faith adviser to Trump—told me Pence’s role in the administration is like that of Jesus, who once miraculously calmed a storm that was threatening to sink the boat on which he was traveling with his disciples. (Burns, who stressed that he was not equating Pence with the Savior, said Trump is represented in this analogy by one of Jesus’s more “foulmouthed” apostles.) “Mike Pence is there praying over the White House every day,” Burns said. And in this tempestuous political climate, the success of Trump’s presidency may depend on those intercessions. “It takes somebody who knows when you’re headed toward a storm to be there praying for you.” The religious right began reaping the rewards of Trump’s victory almost immediately, when the president-elect put Pence in charge of the transition. Given wide latitude on staffing decisions, Pence promptly set about filling the federal government with like-minded allies. Of the 15 Cabinet secretaries Trump picked at the start of his presidency, eight were evangelicals. It was, gushed Ted Cruz, “the most conservative Cabinet in decades.” Pence also reportedly played a key role in getting Neil Gorsuch nominated to the Supreme Court. Pence understood the price of his influence. To keep Trump’s ear required frequent public performances of loyalty and submission—and Pence made certain his inner circle knew that enduring such indignities was part of the job. Once, while interviewing a prospective adviser during the transition, Pence cleared the room so they could speak privately. “Look, I’m in a difficult position here,” Pence said, according to someone familiar with the meeting. “I’m going to have to 100 percent defend everything the president says. Is that something you’re going to be able to do if you’re on my staff?” (An aide to Pence denied this account.) Trump does not always reciprocate this respect. Around the White House, he has been known to make fun of Pence for his religiosity. As Mayer reported in The New Yorker, he has greeted guests who recently met with Pence by asking, “Did Mike make you pray?” During a conversation with a legal scholar about gay rights, Trump gestured toward his vice president and joked, “Don’t ask that guy—he wants to hang them all!” When I asked Marc Short, who now serves as the White House director of legislative affairs, about these exchanges, he dismissed them as good-natured razzing between friends. “I think it’s fun for him to tease Mike,” Short told me, “but at the same time, the president respects him.” Not everyone is so sure. When it was reported last January that the Pences would be moving some of their family pets—which include two cats, a rabbit, and a snake—into the Naval Observatory, Trump ridiculed the menagerie to his secretary, according to a longtime adviser. “He was embarrassed by it; he thought it was so low class,” says the adviser. “He thinks the Pences are yokels.” Pence’s forbearance hasn’t always yielded concrete policy victories for the Christian right, a fact that was highlighted during a skirmish over religious freedom early in the Trump administration. Social conservatives had been lobbying the president to issue a sweeping executive order aimed at carving out protections for religious organizations and individuals opposed to same-sex marriage, premarital sex, abortion, and transgender rights. The proposed order was fairly radical, but proponents argued that it would strike a crucial blow against the militant secularists trying to drive the faithful out of the public square. At first, Pence’s office reportedly worked to build support for the executive order inside the White House—but the effort was torpedoed when a draft was leaked to The Nation magazine, which warned that signing it would “legalize discrimination.” There proceeded a noisy backlash from the left, and hasty backpedaling by the White House. By the time Trump got around to signing the order, several months later, it was dramatically watered down. Conservatives blamed Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner for gutting the order. But according to one Trump associate with knowledge of the debate, Pence barely put up a fight. The surrender infuriated Steve Bannon, who was then serving as the chief White House strategist. “Bannon wanted to fight for it,” says the Trump associate, “and he was really unimpressed that Pence wouldn’t do anything.” But perhaps Pence was playing the long game—weighing the risks of taking on Trump’s kids, and deciding to stand down in the interest of preserving his relationship with the president. Pence, after all, had his future to think about. In an embattled White House, the question of the vice president’s ambition for higher office is radioactive. When The New York Times reported last summer that Pence appeared to be laying the groundwork for a 2020 presidential bid, he denied the “disgraceful and offensive” story with theatrical force. But Pence has shown that his next move is never far from his mind—and he’s hardly the only one weighing the possibilities. One senior GOP Senate aide told me that pundits miss the point when they speculate about what kind of scandal it would take for the president to face a serious defection from lawmakers of his own party. “It’s not a matter of when Republicans are ready to turn on Trump,” the aide said. “It’s about when they decide they’re ready for President Pence.” What would a Pence presidency look like? To a conservative evangelical, it could mean a glorious return to the Christian values upon which America was founded. To a secular liberal, it might look more like a descent into the dystopia of The Handmaid’s Tale. Already, in some quarters on the left, it has become fashionable to fret that Pence’s fundamentalist faith and comparative political savvy would make him an even more “dangerous” president than Trump. He has been branded a “theocrat” and a “Christian supremacist.” There is, of course, nothing inherently scary or disqualifying about an elected leader who seeks wisdom in scripture and solace in prayer. What critics should worry about is not that Pence believes in God, but that he seems so certain God believes in him. What happens when manifest destiny replaces humility, and the line between faith and hubris blurs? What unseemly compromises get made? What means become tolerable in pursuit of an end? On the night of May 3, 2017, members of the president’s evangelical advisory board arrived for a private dinner at the White House. They were scheduled to appear the next day in the Rose Garden to cheer Trump on as he signed an executive order most of them considered a disappointment. Instead of creating the far-reaching protections for believers that they had been hoping for, Trump’s order merely made it easier for pastors to voice political opinions from the pulpit—a conspicuously self-serving take on religious freedom. Some social conservatives were already voicing their discontent. Ryan Anderson, a scholar at the Heritage Foundation, called the order “woefully inadequate”; David French, a writer for National Review, dismissed it as a “sop to the gullible.” But inside the West Wing, the president’s faith advisers were getting the full Trump experience. After dining on shrimp scampi and braised short ribs in the Blue Room, they were treated to a tour of the private residence. Trump led them onto the Truman Balcony, and waved off Secret Service agents who tried to stop them from taking pictures. The faith leaders pulled out their smartphones and snapped selfies, intoxicated by the VIP treatment. “Mr. President,” Robert Jeffress, the pastor of the First Baptist Church in Dallas, said at one point, “we’re going to be your most loyal friends. We’re going to be your enthusiastic supporters. And we thank God every day that you’re the president of the United States.” For many of the attendees, though, the most memorable moment came when Pence stood to speak. “I’ve been with [Trump] alone in the room when the decisions are made. He and I have prayed together,” Pence said. “This is somebody who shares our views, shares our values, shares our beliefs.” Pence didn’t waste time touting his own credentials. With this crowd, he didn’t need to. Instead, as always, he lavished praise on the president.

Big Rigs / December 6, 2017 Sixty odd years ago Harry Robinson saw an opportunity and that was to collect trucks that had had a shunt, put them all in one place, strip them down and flog off the parts to those who didn't want, or couldn't afford to pay top dollar for replacement parts. The business is Universal Truck Wreckers, more commonly known as UTW, based in Shepparton, Victoria. Under its present owners for the past 25 years, UTW is part of the Shepparton Motor Panel Group, which also owns Coburg Truck Parts in Melbourne (new parts only), Gleeman's in Sydney (new and used) And Universal Komatsu Wreckers. Set on two hectares, UTW handles Kenworth, Freightliner, Ford, Western Star, International, Iveco, a bit of Mack and a little bit of Volvo. The business employs two dismantlers, two mechanics and three sales guys. Salesman Brad Payne has been with the business for 18 years. "We sell anything to do with American truck parts, basically anything retrievable off the trucks,” he said. "We would say we are the largest in Australia. There is competition but that's in Brisbane, Sydney and Wagga. "That's pretty much it along the eastern seaboard. There may be others but they are relatively small. There wouldn't be anything that anyone couldn't buy. "The motors are pulled out of the trucks and gone over by our qualified mechanics. We pull the sump off, check the mains and big ends and run them on our test bed. We also offer other motors which are fully refurbished.” At its peak, the business was bringing in 300 trucks a year for dismantling. "It's dropped off a little on that, possibly due to blokes taking more care out on the road.” Most of the product comes in via tender through insurance companies. There are also auctions - mainly Pickles and Fowles - and the business has a contract with an insurance company that they get a few through. Most business is done over the internet these days. The business runs lean and mean with a total of seven people. "There are days when you could use another few blokes,” Brad said. "And then there are other times we could have one bloke less but that's not often. "The clientele is anyone with a truck. We don't do a lot with major fleets, it's mainly the smaller operators and owner- drivers. "A lot of our gear is freighted out intra-and interstate - a lot more than we sell directly out of the yard. We sent motors and gear boxes right around the country.” Darren McIntosh runs the yard and also does sales. He started as a diesel mechanic in the shed after nine years in the same role with Roccisano Transport and has been with the business for 23 years. From where I was standing and talking with Darren, the trucks we viewed looked in reasonable nick. There was a Freightliner Argosy that had probably shunted another truck up the backside resulting in the bull bar being shoved back into the body - although not by much. On closer inspection, Darren pointed out where the floor pan crumpled, the main cab support was also shot, putting the truck beyond repair. To UTW though, the truck is money in the bank. There's the motor, gearbox, fold-out steps, headlights, wiring, interior fit-out - even the bull bar could be resurrected. "Putting the good ones at the front makes the yard look flash,” Darren said. As we moved further into the yard there were some mangled sites to behold. One could only wonder if the drivers survived the accidents that bought the truck to this place. "There are brands that tend to fold up pretty good in an accident. They look tough on the road but, when you get them in here, there's not much holding them together. "Have a look at the way this is put together (showing me a mangled cab). There are only six studs and glue holding the bunk together with the rest of the truck. "Kenworth cabs are made of fibreglass and aluminium but seem to hold up pretty well. With any truck it depends how they go over, of course. Onto the sides and there's not a lot of damage. Onto the roof and, if you can, forget it. The powers that be are obsessed by star ratings on cars but, for some reason, no-one gives a rat's arse about the truck side of things. "In my opinion the European trucks are way ahead in safety terms. Volvo and Scania are well ahead compared to American trucks going by what we see here. Mind you it all depends what you hit.” Darren shows me a truck that had run into a gum tree. "When you hit something like that it really doesn't matter what you're driving. Mother nature is usually going to win,” he said. "Some trucks we sell complete, others we sell for bits. We make use of everything. Unsaleable parts go into the steel or aluminium bins. We pull all the wiring out of the cabs and sell it separately after running it through a wire stripper to get the coating off. It adds up to quite a lot of copper.” .

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Jason Cannon, Commercial Carrier Journal (CCJ) / December 5, 2017 David Carson, currently president of Freightliner Custom Chassis Corporation (FCCC), has been appointed president of Western Star Trucks and chief diversity officer of Daimler Trucks North America (DTNA), the company announced Tuesday. Carson succeeds Kelley Platt who has been promoted within the Daimler AG global organization to president and chief executive officer of Daimler’s truck joint venture Beijing Foton Daimler Automotive Co., Ltd. (BFDA) in China. In his role leading the Western Star team, Carson will become a member of the company’s Operating Committee. He was appointed to his current role as president of FCCC in 2015, where he oversaw engineering, operations and sales & marketing for DTNA’s chassis business. Under his leadership, FCCC continued its development of product offerings and enhancements in the school bus, RV and walk-in van segments, leading to record performance in 2016. He also led efforts to significantly invest in and expand on the brand’s operations, including construction of a new logistics center and chassis loading facility. Previously, Carson served in a variety of leadership roles, most recently as the company’s general manager of human resources responsible for all human resource matters, including negotiations with labor unions. Prior to joining DTNA in 2001, Carson built extensive experience leading operations for an industry-leading automotive supplier and a global technology company. Carson earned a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and a Master’s degree in Industrial Relations from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Under the leadership of Kelley Platt, Western Star has set sales and market share records. Previously, from 2010 to 2015, Platt served as the president and CEO of Thomas Built Buses (TBB) in High Point, N.C., where she contributed to TBB attaining leadership of the North American school bus market. While at TBB, Platt was the recipient of the Manufacturing Institute’s prestigious STEP Award, recognizing outstanding women in the manufacturing industry who exemplify leadership within their companies. Platt started her Daimler career in 1989 as a manager in the treasury department. She founded the Business Excellence Group in 2006, which first introduced the company to the idea that continuous improvement and LEAN principles could be applied in the office environment in the same manner as was already proving successful in the manufacturing arena. She has been a strong advocate of diversity and inclusion both for DTNA and on the larger global Daimler landscape. Platt holds a Bachelor’s of Science degree in Economics from Colby College and a Master’s of Business degree in Operations and Finance from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. .

Ford unveils new 2018 Super Duty Trailer-Body Builders / December 5, 2017 Ford on Tuesday introduced the 2018 Super Duty, which it says is America’s most powerful, most capable heavy-duty pickup truck ever, with five best-in-class claims, and a new F-450 4x2 model. Ford says it has best-in-class horsepower and torque from a newly upgraded 6.7-liter Power Stroke diesel engine. “Super Duty customers expect the best, and for 2018 we’re giving our customers even more power and torque from our 6.7-liter Power Stroke diesel – delivering the most horsepower and torque available among all heavy-duty pickups,” said Todd Eckert, Ford truck group marketing manager. “Plus, our new F-450 pickup now includes a 4X2 model, enabling our customers to get more done with the segment’s best payload and towing.” The 2018 Super Duty makes five key best-in-class heavy-duty truck segment claims: • Best-in-class 450 horsepower (a 10 horsepower improvement over 2017) • Best-in-class 935 lb.-ft. of torque (a 10 lb.-ft. improvement over 2017) •Best-in-class 34,000 pounds of gooseneck towing, when properly equipped (a 1,500-pound improvement for the new F-450 4x2 model) •Best-in-class 21,000-pound conventional hitch towing •Best-in-class 7,360-pound payload capacity Upgrades to the 2018 Ford 6.7-liter Power Stroke engine include redesigned cylinder heads for added strength under higher loads, plus optimized fuel and turbo boost calibrations to take advantage of the increased cylinder head capacity for increased horsepower and torque. Ford is the only heavy-duty truck manufacturer that designs and builds its own diesel engine and transmission combination – ensuring the powertrain works seamlessly with all chassis components and vehicle calibrations. This approach enables Ford engineers to optimize vehicle performance across the entire lineup and to further refine the powertrain to the specific needs of the customer. For those who rely on their pickups to haul big trailers to get the job done, the new F-450 Super Duty 4x2 dual-rear-wheel truck is now available for both retail and fleet customers – offering greater strength, efficiency and durability. Leveraging the benefits of a high-strength steel box frame, integrated gooseneck hitch mounts, and added load capacity thanks to Ford’s proprietary high-strength, military-grade, aluminum-alloy body, the 2018 F-450 4x2 tows even more with its lighter, more efficient driveline. The result is the most capable, robust and efficient Super Duty tow machine ever, delivering a best-in-class 34,000 pounds of gooseneck towing capacity. The 2018 Super Duty F-450 4x2 dual-rear-wheel pickup will be available this winter in XL, XLT, Lariat and Platinum series offerings. Base MSRP is $52,830, which includes $1,295 destination and delivery charges.

Opponents decry EPA’s glider kit proposal during public hearing Cristina Commendatore, Fleet Owner / December 5, 2017 ATA and others throughout industry say a proposal to exempt heavy-duty gliders from GHG rules would undermine industry investments made and harm public health. Opponents of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) proposal to exempt heavy-duty gliders from the Phase 2 greenhouse gas (GHG) rule argued the move would undercut significant investments manufacturers have already made in order to comply with the GHG emissions standards. During the earlier part of a daylong public hearing on Dec. 4, Pat Quinn, executive director of the Heavy-duty Leadership Group, whose members include Cummins, PepsiCo, FedEx, Eaton, Wabash National and Waste Management, said “making modifications to the glider kit provision would undermine investments made in the industry, encourage the use of older, less efficient technologies, and increase smog-forming pollution that harms public health.” The group worked closely with EPA in the development of the Phase 2 rule, which was finalized during the Obama administration. However, earlier this year, EPA said that gliders should not be regulated as “new motor vehicles” or “new motor vehicle engines” under the Clean Air Act. In November, EPA administrator Scott Pruitt signed legislation to repeal emissions standards for glider kits. He said they provide a more affordable option for smaller owners and operators. During the hearing, Glen Kedzie, vice president of American Trucking Assns.’ (ATA) energy and environmental affairs council, stated ATA members strongly oppose EPA changing the course of the agency’s glider provisions. “U.S. member fleets have worked tirelessly to be both sustainable and environmentally sensitive in their operations,” Kedzie explained. According to ATA, the proposed repeal would circumvent today’s emissions standards for diesel particulate matter (PM), NOx and greenhouse gases. “It’s well-known that gliders are purchased to save money, avoid maintenance costs and late penalties, and skirt federal excise tax payments,” Kedzie said, adding that ATA member fleets have paid $31,000 more on average per new truck since 2004 to comply with new emissions rules. “While the best-run trucking companies in the nation are heavily investing and cleaning up the environment and improving the overall profile of the industry, the glider vehicle industry openly promotes their sale of ‘pre-emission’ engines and uses the cost savings differential between clean diesel technologies and high-emitting old trucks as a promotional sales pitch,” he stressed. Steven Cliff, deputy executive officer of the California Air Resources Board (CARB), called the proposal illegal, adding it would have a “profoundly harmful impact on public health.” “The repeal would effectively place thousands of outdated, heavy-duty engines that do not meet modern emissions standards that have been in effect in the last decade on our highways,” he said. “In short, a repeal puts our most disadvantaged communities at risk by walking away from the commitment to reduce their exposure to smog forming and toxic pollutants that impact public health, leading to additional hospitalizations, asthma cases, lost work and school days, and premature deaths.” Modern trucks that meet current emissions standards come with diesel particulate filters to capture toxic diesel particulate matter and selective catalytic reduction systems to NOx emissions. Cliff emphasized that reducing diesel PM is important to cut cancer and other health risks. “Glider builders have been circumventing the requirements for these important emissions controls by using pre-2007 remanufactured engines, misusing a loophole in the provisions to sell thousands of dirty trucks each year with completely uncontrolled emissions,” Cliff pointed out. Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland remarked that he was “baffled and confounded” as to why the EPA would consider repealing this rule. Raskin noted that after one of the largest manufacturers of gliders, Fitzgerald Glider Kits, located in Tennessee, failed to secure a legislative repeal of the glider kits rule via the annual appropriations process, Fitzgerald’s owners met directly with Pruitt this past May. According to Raskin, Fitzgerald’s petition included new information on glider vehicle criteria pollutant emissions which purported to show that glider vehicles were less polluting than non-glider vehicles. Though opponents of the exemption came out in droves – at least during the earlier part of the hearing – glider builder, trucker and owner of Clarke Gliders said he fully supported the proposal. “Glider engines, glider kits and glider vehicles are used parts that still have adequate life in them,” Clarke explained. “By recycling gliders, we can further the life of the existing parts that are so costly to buy new.” In his comments, Clarke stressed that the only new parts in a glider kit are the cab and the hood; the remaining parts of the truck are all used parts. “In no way should a glider be considered a new truck, subject to the new emissions rules set forth in August 2016 because all major components are used and already exist,” he explained. Clarke referenced a study recently conducted by Tennessee Tech University (TTU) comparing NOx levels in older engines versus new engines. He said the study found that older engines are just as clean – and some even better – than the new ones today, mainly due to cleaner sulfur content. Cliff, however, in his comments, noted that TTU study is “invalid and lacks scientific credibility.” In addition, Raskin had this to say about the study: “It is important to note that the study, run by Tennessee Tech University, has been criticized by experts for its poor and shoddy quality and has provoked serious ethical questions about the university’s academic independence and its cozy relationship with Fitzgerald,” he stated, adding that the study was done at Fitzgerald’s request and paid for with grant money from Fitzgerald. But during his presentation, Clarke also cited a Nov. 15 statement released from Pruitt that encouraged Americans to recycle more. Clarke claimed that according to most recent data from 2007, recycling and reclaimed and reused activities created more than 750,000 jobs and $6.7 billion in tax revenues. “We really should be thanking our glider builders,” he urged. “We should be encouraging every trucker in this country to use a glider, or should I say a recycled truck. This is exactly what we do in our business. We recycle old trucks, not only do we create hundreds of jobs, we save our trucking industry thousands of dollars.” EPA estimates that about 10,000 gliders are manufactured annually and make up about 5% of the entire Class 8 truck market. However, the agency previously said gliders could account about one-third of all nitrogen oxides and particulate matter emissions from the sector. Written comments regarding the proposed repeal will be accepted until Jan. 5.

Ford Super Duty trucks get a bit more super for 2018 Autoblog / December 5, 2017 More power, more torque, more payload, more towing capacity. Ford released specifications overnight for its 2018 F-Series Super Duty trucks, claiming best-in-class bragging rights in five areas: horsepower, torque, towing, gooseneck towing, and payload. Output of its 6.7-liter Power Stroke V8 turbodiesel has increased to 450 horsepower, up 10 from 2017, and it now makes peak torque of 935 pound-feet, which is also 10 more in the torque wars as truck manufacturers keep inching toward 1,000. Upgrades to the 6.7-liter diesel include cylinder heads redesigned for greater strength under higher loads, and optimized fuel and turbo boost calibrations. (Ford offered no word on specs for the 6.2-liter gasoline engine option or the 6.8-liter V10, which presumably continue on as options for 2018.) Ford also lays claim to best in class for conventional hitch towing capacity of 21,000 pounds and 7,360 pounds of payload. And an F-450 Crew Cab 4x2 dualie has been added to the Super Duty lineup for 2018. (The F-450 was previously only offered as a dual-rear-wheel 4x4 with the Power Stroke.) The truck has integrated gooseneck hitch mounts, and its ability to tow a gooseneck trailer has been upped to 34,000 pounds. That's up 1,500 pounds from last year's class-leading number. The 2018 Super Duty F-450 4x2 dual-rear-wheel pickup will be released this winter in XL, XLT, Lariat and Platinum trim. Base MSRP is $52,830.