Crooked Media - What A Day: The new warm-al

Humanity has guaranteed itself a thoroughly bad time by procrastinating on fighting climate change, according to the latest U.N. climate report, but there’s still a short window to avoid the most catastrophic outcome. Seems like a good moment for some big fat climate investments!
 

• The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has released a cheerful new report concluding that our global dithering on reducing fossil-fuel emissions has locked us into 30 years of rising temperatures and worsening extreme weather, no matter what steps world leaders take now. But they can prevent the outlook from getting even worse. In order to keep global warming from rising past 1.5 degrees Celsius, the report says, countries will need to reach net zero emissions by around 2050—which would require a rapid, coordinated shift away from fossil fuels, starting immediately.
   
• Some of the consequences of inaction are still unpredictable. For example: Global warming has brought a critical water circulation system in the Atlantic Ocean dangerously close to Completely Fucked, according to a new study. If it collapses, it could bring extreme cold to Europe and parts of North America, flood out the east coast of the U.S., and disrupt seasonal monsoons. The IPCC concluded with “medium confidence” that the ocean system probably won’t break down on us this century, but noted that as temperatures rise, the risk of that kind of exciting challenge goes up, too.
   
• The U.N. report drives home what millions of people scrambling away from deadly floods and outsized wildfires have perhaps suspected: The climate emergency is already here. This week alone, the Dixie Fire burning through Northern California has become the second-largest blaze in state history, and the Pacific Northwest is bracing for another sweltering heat wave. Farther afield, Greece is still battling unprecedented wildfires that have forced thousands of people to evacuate.

In other words, we’ve got a problem. Fortunately, we’ve also got a bit of movement towards a solution.
 

• Senate Democrats have released their $3.5 trillion budget blueprint, which calls for major investments in clean energy and electric vehicles. The current plan also includes an extension of the child tax credit, a Medicare expansion, paid leave, universal pre-K, free community college, child-care subsidies, affordable housing, and a path to legal citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants (though the Senate parliamentarian has yet to determine whether all of these measures are consistent with the chamber’s budget rules). Democrats will move to pass the budget resolution immediately after the Senate passes the bipartisan infrastructure bill, as it’s now expected to do on Tuesday morning.
   
• As Democrats hinted last week, the budget resolution does not include an increase to the debt limit, setting up a staring contest with the GOP senators who have vowed to filibuster any bill that includes it—even if that means tanking the economy. The Biden administration appears to be on board with that gamble: On Monday, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen called on Congress to raise or suspend the debt ceiling on a “bipartisan basis.” As long as Republicans cave first, as they’re so famous for doing in recent years, that should be no problem at all.

Monday’s IPCC report is a kick in the teeth, but it should fuel determination, not hopelessness. We probably can’t roll back the climate damage that’s already been done, but we still have time to hit the emergency brakes and stop further damage. For U.S. leaders, that means overruling the party that’s happy to watch the world burn, charting a course towards President Biden’s ambitious climate goals, and then going even further.

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Georgia Republicans have quietly begun the process of using their new election-subversion law to disenfranchise most Atlanta voters. Last month, two groups of GOP state lawmakers sent letters to the GOP-controlled state elections board citing a fraud conspiracy theory amplified by Tucker Carlson, and seeking a “performance review” of election officials in Fulton County, which encompasses most of Atlanta. The elections board is likely to open that investigation, and, thanks to Georgia’s new elections law, could then use it as a pretext to remove Fulton County’s local elections board and replace it with a right-wing temporary superintendent. That official would have nine months in office with the power to kick voters off the rolls, shut down polling places, and refuse to certify the election after the fact. There’s no telling how quickly any of that might happen, but Georgia Republicans have knocked down the first domino in a chain that ends in stealing the 2022 election.

• Former Acting Attorney General Jeff Rosen gave closed-door testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Saturday about former DOJ civil division head Jeffrey Clark’s efforts to overturn the election. Rosen also provided new details to the Justice Department’s inspector general. 
   
• Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will issue a vaccine mandate for active duty troops when the FDA gives final approval to the Pfizer vaccine or by mid-September, whichever comes first.
   
• A federal judge granted Norwegian Cruise Line a preliminary injunction, temporarily allowing it to require proof of vaccination in Florida despite Ron DeSantis’s law protecting the rights of COVID-19.
   
• More than 3,000 Louisiana children have tested positive for coronavirus in the span of four days, and the state now leads the nation in total new cases. 
   
• The Taliban has seized six Afghan cities in a matter of days, raising fears that they’ll once again gain control of Kabul.
   
• The GOP fundraising machine WinRed PAC hasn’t disclosed its expenses in the 2020 election—which could be in the tens of millions—in an apparent violation of campaign-finance law.
   
• A former Newsmax host who called Anthony Fauci a “lying freak” has died of coronavirus complications, having missed Step Three in the Right-Wing Anti-Vax Media Personality playbook: Get Vaccinated In Secret.
   
• Researchers found evidence of a potential carcinogen in another selection of sunscreens, and have asked the FDA to pull them off the shelves.
   
• A mob of anti-vaxxers tried to storm the BBC but wound up at a London studio that mostly makes daytime TV, illustrating the pitfalls of trying to plan an action when your group’s uniting principle is proudly being so, so dumb. (Sooo, so dumb.)

The aides and advisors closest to Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) have begun resigning in disgrace, as he prepares to finally do the same, of course tries to finagle a deal with state lawmakers to avoid impeachment. (State lawmakers say they aren’t having it.) Cuomo’s top aide Melissa DeRosa, who led efforts to discredit his accuser Lindsey Boylan, resigned on Sunday night. Roberta Kaplan, the chairwoman of Time’s Up, resigned on Monday over her role in advising Cuomo’s staff on that discrediting campaign, having skimmed through the mission statement of Time’s Up for the first time. And the boards of the Human Rights Campaign have launched an independent investigation of the group’s president, Alphonso David, for his involvement in the same gross effort. David had previously served as Cuomo’s in-house counsel.

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Average pay in U.S. restaurants and supermarkets has climbed above $15 an hour, for the first time.

Gov. Jay Inslee (D-WA) has announced a vaccine requirement for all state workers, contractors, and health care workers. 

The Senate has confirmed longtime public defender Eunice Lee to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.

The NBA Foundation has distributed $6 million in grants to Black-owned businesses and youth-centered groups.