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Millions of people in Texas are still suffering without power in the wake of a record-breaking winter storm, all because—if we understand correctly—The Squad snuck in with a duffel bag full of solar panels years before being elected to Congress and implemented the Green New Deal before it existed when no one was looking.
- At least 31 people have died in storm-related incidents across the country. In Texas, nearly three-million households still had no electricity as of Wednesday afternoon, and officials had no clear idea of when the outages would be resolved. Some families have been burning their belongings to heat their homes, dozens of people have been hospitalized for carbon-monoxide poisoning, and power outages at water-treatment plants have caused dangerously low water levels in many Texas cities. The state’s most vulnerable communities have, as usual, been hit the hardest. Meanwhile, another major storm is on the way.
- Things are so bad that even Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) saw his 24-hour culture-war generator get knocked offline. Thankfully, other Texas Republicans brought batteries! Here’s Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) on Fox News, trying to blame the dire, preventable crisis unfolding under his watch on AOC’s Frozen Wind Turbines™: “This shows how the Green New Deal would be a deadly deal for the United States of America.” Fossil fuel groups and right-wing commentators have enthusiastically taken up that chant, omitting that it happens to be a bald-faced lie. Texas primarily relies on natural gas, which has failed spectacularly in the extreme cold. According to Abbott’s own energy department, wind turbines (which can operate in the Arctic Circle, when winterized correctly) were the least significant factor in the blackouts.
- Texas’s dangerous situation is actually the direct result of conservative policies, if you can believe it. Texas is the only state in the Lower 48 that uses its own electric grid, called ERCOT, to avoid the kind of federal regulations that might have required it to be ready for this scenario. Power plant operators had no financial incentive to prepare for extreme winter weather that Texas rarely gets, so they made no preparations—even after an almost identical episode 10 years ago. In former Energy Secretary/Texas Governor/Man Who Somehow Looks Dumber In Glasses Rick Perry’s professional estimation, the people trying not to freeze to death in their homes think this system fuckin’ rocks: “Texans would be without electricity for longer than three days to keep the federal government out of their business.”
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The Biden administration has offered a, uh, slightly different takeaway.
- President Biden’s pick to lead the Energy Department, former Gov. Jennifer Granholm (D-MI), emphasized that Texas’s crisis is just the latest illustration of our national vulnerability in the climate emergency: “One thing is certain: America’s electricity grid is simply not able to handle extreme weather events. Whether it’s wildfires in California or snowstorms in Texas, we need to upgrade our grid infrastructure ASAP.” Biden’s $2 trillion infrastructure plan calls for equipping the country’s electric grid with better transmission systems and battery storage to make it more resilient against extreme weather, which sounds pretty good this week.
- In the meantime, it’d be great if the climate crisis could hold off until we finish our public-health crisis. On Tuesday, CDC projected “widespread delays” in coronavirus-vaccine shipments and deliveries across the country due to the winter storm. Multiple states have also had to temporarily shut down vaccination sites or delay appointments. There were 11 million vaccine doses scheduled for delivery this week, but it’s unclear how many of them will be affected.
After Republicans spent a full year politicizing the pandemic they failed to contain, it should come as no surprise that they would lie about another emergency that they could have prevented to own the libs and dodge accountability. Welcome to the post-Trump (sort of) GOP: It’s culture wars, lies, and blame shifting all the way down.
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Over on the Crooked Youtube channel, Jon Favreau joined Alyssa Mastromonaco on her series Let's Break it Down to talk about how he went from a blank page to the State of the Union address in the Obama White House. They go behind the scenes and talk about how it all works, and how they decided on the important details. Head to youtube.com/crookedmedia to check it out!
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White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki has warned that two emerging Ebola outbreaks in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Guinea require swift action to stop them from becoming large-scale epidemics. On February 7, the DRC confirmed four cases of Ebola in Butembo, a city that was the epicenter of the second-largest Ebola outbreak in the world, which was declared over in June. A week later, officials in Guinea declared an Ebola epidemic, after at least three people died and four others were infected. The outbreaks aren’t linked, according to public health experts. The WHO has urged West and Central African countries to stay on high alert for potential infections, and national security advisor Jake Sullivan has spoken with ambassadors from Guinea, the DRC, Sierra Leone, and Liberia “to convey the United States’ willingness to work closely” with those countries.
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- President Biden pitched his $1.9 trillion coronavirus-relief plan at a CNN town hall in Wisconsin on Tuesday night, and pledged that vaccines will be available to all Americans who want one by the end of July. The House is on track to vote on the package by the end of next week.
- During the town hall, Biden shot down the idea of forgiving up to $50,000 of federal student-loan debt through executive order, arguing that a) it would disproportionately benefit students at elite private colleges (who actually tend to have the least debt), and b) that he doesn’t have the authority. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer released a statement pushing back on that claim.
- Pentagon officials delayed promotions for two female generals over fears that the Trump White House would derail them, proving once again that toxic misogynists are simply too emotional to be in charge of our national security.
- The founder and leader of neo-Nazi terror group the Base used to work for the Department of Homeland Security, in an acute example of a larger problem: Some veterans of the military, law enforcement, and counterterrorism efforts are now applying their expertise to committing domestic terrorism.
- Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) threatened to withhold vaccine doses after local officials criticized his decision to prioritize wealthy neighborhoods connected to GOP megadonors for vaccine distribution.
- Democratic New York Assemblyman Ron Kim said Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) called and threatened to destroy him if he didn’t issue a statement of support amid revelations that the Cuomo administration covered up the number of coronavirus deaths in nursing homes. On Wednesday, Cuomo attacked Kim in a press briefing.
- The Justice Department unsealed charges against three North Korean hackers who are accused of conspiring to steal and extort more than $1.3 billion from banks and other businesses.
- A (different) hacker claims to have stolen and leaked files belonging to the law firm Jones Day, whose prominent clients include Donald Trump. Jones Day denied that its network had been breached, but acknowledged that a file-sharing company the firm uses was recently compromised.
- Here, watch Trump’s Atlantic City casino implode. Sorry, we meant to show you this angle. Whoops, ok, last one.
- In other felled monuments of the ugliest forces of conservatism, Rush Limbaugh has died.
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Republican lawmakers have introduced anti-transgender bills in at least 20 states as part of a coordinated assault by centralized far-right groups. Last week, the North Dakota House of Representatives passed a bill that would ban trans student athletes from joining teams that match their gender identity. The Mississippi Senate passed its own athletic ban on the same day, and lawmakers advanced similar legislation in Georgia, Kansas, Utah, and Tennessee in the same week. So far, only Idaho has passed a trans-sports law, which was crafted with the help of the Alliance Defending Freedom, an Arizona-based anti-LGBTQ group. The ADF wrote a similar bill under review in Montana, and the language in those measures is interchangeable with trans-sports bills all over the country. The ADF, Heritage Foundation, and other groups have also written model legislation banning transition-related medical care for minors. Why work to make constituents’ lives better when you can simply copy and paste some bills that exist for the sole purpose of sowing hate? Here’s a full list of the active anti-trans bills to check if you need to give your state lawmakers a call, and to get more involved, here’s how to find your local ACLU affiliate.
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The Biden administration will spend $1.6 billion to expand coronavirus testing, scale up genomic sequencing, and address supply shortages, as a holdover until Congress approves more funding.
The Los Angeles Board of Education has approved a plan to cut down its police force and divert the funds towards improving educational outcomes for Black students.
New studies have found that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines do offer protection against the new coronavirus variants, including the one first identified in South Africa.
California lawmakers have introduced a bill that would ban fracking in the state in 2027, and halt new fracking permits at the start of 2022.
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