A special edition of TPM’s Morning Memo, where I test your willingness to put up with me writing about the glittering world of property insurance – but it’s really about climate change, if that helps. Sign up for the email version.

‘A Change Is Gonna Come’

With respect to Sam Cooke … a lot has been written in the past few weeks about the property insurance industry beginning to assess (properly!) the growing risk of climate change.

It’s not surprising that the initial pinch of climate change for property owners as a group would come not in the real estate market but in the property insurance market. It’s just surprising that it’s taken this long to begin to show up … except has it really?

When I bought my first house back in 1996 in Louisiana, memories of Hurricane Andrew were still fresh, and major insurers had started to pull back from underwriting, as I recall it, south of I-10, which is where I was. It put me in a real bind at the time. While the bigs were recalibrating and limiting their coastal exposure, other insurers were willing to issue policies, but if memory serves they were crappy and expensive.

As it turned out, even the big insurers apparently had some discretion. I was 26 and had no idea what I was doing. So my first editor and first publisher went to bat for me with the State Farm agent they used and after a brief but nerve-wracking scramble that threatened to hold up the closing, I obtained a proper policy at a suitable rate and completed the home purchase.

I don’t have a great sense of how the ebb and flow of underwriting along the immediate coast has gone in the 27 years since then, but there are signs we’ve turned a corner. I suspect your initial reaction is: “Wow, this is bad!” But pricing in climate change impacts is actually an important step towards confronting the current reality, so there’s a way in which this is really a good thing.

We have a property value bubble right now, especially along the coasts, and insurers tightening up will be the kind of thing that takes the air out the bubble. That will be a painful readjustment financially for millions of Americans, especially if the collapse comes all at once, but that’s not the fault of whatever or whoever comes along and pops the bubble. It reminds me of the movie version of The Big Short, when mortgage default rates had gone through the roof but the pricing on even the crappiest mortgage bonds was impervious to the erosion – at least initially. The main characters were pulling their hair out at the incongruity (and fraud) of it all. Bubbles can be stubborn and persistent things, until suddenly they’re not.

But is this really a good thing? Maybe focusing not on current property owners but prospective ones will help make it clearer. We’ve all marveled at the unceasing pace of coastal development over the last 10-20 years despite the obvious and ever-plainer risks. Even in the immediate aftermath of devastating hurricanes, out come the hammers, plywood decking, and 2 x 4s. We do it all over again. But as this particular story shows, if developers can’t get insurance on their investments, they don’t build, at least not there.

I was warily looking at coastal property last year in a particularly vulnerable part of the country. Clearly, climate risk wasn’t being priced in yet. I asked one real estate agent how he talked to clients about the climate change risk. “Well, it depends on your time horizon. Is this your forever home?” I was not reassured.

Part of what got us into the climate change mess (at least in the 40 some odd years since the public became generally aware of the inexorable physics of global warming) has been externalizing the costs of carbon emissions. Until we begin to capture those costs, the incentives for decarbonizing won’t be lined up. This is a painful but important step in that direction, but it will need to be managed, regulated, and tackled as a public policy matter, not just a market correction. Not much good news to report on that front, I’m afraid.

McCarthy Catches His Impeachment White Whale

The eventual impeachment of Joe Biden was assured before he took the oath of office, so long as Republicans could recapture the House. There’s no one motivation behind this power play, but revenge for Donald Trump’s two impeachments is a major driving force.

It is of course laughable and a disgraceful abuse of power while also being potentially effective, so long as the D.C. press corps lives up to GOP’s quite-low expectations. So far so good on that front. Political journalism still isn’t up to this task. More on that in the coming days at Morning Memo.

In the meantime, not everyone in the press corps is a gullible dope:

“If you had evidence that Joe Biden was linked to Hunter Biden's business deals in a way that is illegal, we wouldn't be having this conversation. You would probably have the votes for an impeachment inquiry, but you don't” pic.twitter.com/85K2O9L1d5

— Acyn (@Acyn) September 13, 2023

"If you can't see that! If you are that blind!" — Rep. Scott Perry gets very mad at a reporter who asks him what actual evidence Republicans have against Biden (he never cites evidence!) pic.twitter.com/pqlI7PXcgR

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 12, 2023

The Silliest Of Impeachments

• NYT: Trump Has Been Privately Encouraging G.O.P. Lawmakers to Impeach Biden
• Politico: How Donald Trump’s DOJ gave Biden a major assist in the coming impeachment probe

Disqualification Clause Watch

• TPM: New Lawsuit Seeks To Use Disqualification Clause To Keep Trump Off Minnesota Primary Ballot
• WaPo: GOP lawyer with ties to three Trump rivals enters 14th Amendment fray

Georgia RICO Miscellany

• Rudy Giuliani wants no part of the speedy trial some defendants are seeking.
• Fani Willis wants to make sure defendants who are getting off the speedy trial train now aren’t allowed to get back on it later.
• The 11th Circuit added a wrinkle to Mark Meadows’ effort to remove his case to federal court.

Wisconsin GOP Floats A New Redistricting Con Job

AP:

Wisconsin Democratic Gov. Tony Evers shot down as ‘bogus’ a surprise plan Republicans floated Tuesday that would have the Legislature approve new maps drawn by nonpartisan staff, preempting the state Supreme Court from tossing the current GOP-drawn boundaries.

More here.

Good Read

Josh Marshall: The End of The Pro-Life Movement

Comic Book Villainy

Semafor: Elon Musk’s X/Twitter appears to throttle New York Times

ICYMI

Colin Woodard applies his study of America’s regional cultures to life expectancy: America’s Surprising Partisan Divide on Life Expectancy

Take It Down A Notch

WSJ: Try Hard, but Not That Hard. 85% Is the Magic Number for Productivity.

A Proper Reaction 😂

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Uncharted Territory

An impeachment with no wrongdoing.

A impeachment launched in hopes of finding some evidence of wrongdoing that can justify its existence.

An impeachment inquiry designed to buy off Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s rabid and restless far-right flank so he can avoid a government shutdown that those same extremists are angling for.

It’s unchartered territory, but that’s where things stand as the House reconvenes today after a long summer recess. The stage is set for the rest of September, with government funding running out at the end of the month.

McCarthy Throws In On Bogus Impeachment

Speaker Kevin McCarthy is expected to give the House GOP a green light this week on initiating a groundless impeachment of President Biden, according to reporting from Punchbowl, which points to a Thursday closed-door conference meeting as the fulcrum of the House’s first week back.

McCarthy Squeezed By Senate GOP

The Senate is remarkably unified on proceeding with appropriations votes while the House GOP ties itself in knots. That adds more pressure on McCarthy to figure something out. And the bargain he seems to be trying to make is to placate his extreme wing by tossing them an impeachment bone. But as is so often the case, there’s no real reason to think that will be enough to buy their acquiescence on avoiding a government shutdown. The end result may very well be we get both impeachment and shutdown this fall. Yay. Thanks, Kev.

It’s Happening, Y’all

The obvious fact that Joe Biden is old is becoming a beginning, middle and end to 2024 horse race coverage. It’s the “but her emails” of 2024. It’s a fact so obvious and glaring that you can use it to make any point and buttress any argument, at which point of course it becomes meaningless drivel.

Josh Marshall noted one particularly ripe instance of the “age issue” being pumped up into something meant to be political analysis. Here’s another piquant example from the WSJ: “Is Biden Too Old to Run Again? We Asked People Born on His Exact Birthday.” You know it’s become a crutch of conventional wisdom when reporters are pitching and editors are greenlighting new “angles” on Biden’s longevity. Clever!

What makes it so insidious is that it’s no one story, no one piece of less-than-trenchant analysis, no single lazy cable news segment. It’s the sheer totality of the conventional wisdom being ingested by journos and pumped out nonstop. It becomes a substitute for original thinking, a balm for those either unable or unwilling to hold the real complexities of the world in their heads, and a shortcut for reporters without anything new to offer.

‘I Just Had Another One’

Politico: How McConnell scrambled to protect his job after two freeze-ups

Alabama Dares SCOTUS To Show Some Self Respect

You know the basic details already:

• In a big surprise in June, the Supreme Court rejected Alabama’s congressional district map and ordered a do-over. The gist was that the Alabama map needed to have a second majority Black district (though it should be said that the ruling was arguably slightly less categorical than that).
• In response, Alabama’s GOP-controlled statehouse coughed up another congressional district map but again included only one majority Black district.
• Last week, a three-federal-judge panel rejected the new map, again for lack of a second majority Black district.

That brings us to yesterday. Alabama had asked the three-judge panel to stay its ruling while Alabama appeals to the Supreme Court – and was practically laughed out of court:

Alabama brushed off the setback and immediately went to the Supreme Court for a stay. Ball in your court, SCOTUS.

In a NYT op-ed – “Alabama Has Put the Supreme Court’s Legitimacy on the Line” – Kate Shaw writes: “Facing a crisis in public confidence, the court should take the opportunity to regain some of its rapidly dwindling legitimacy by sending a clear message that even its ideological fellow travelers do not get a pass from abiding by its rulings.”

Trump Seeks Long-Shot Recusal Of Chutkan

It’s going to be fun watching Donald Trump try out all the maneuvers the hundreds of convicted Jan. 6 rioters tested out and watched fail in their own cases: judge recusal, change of venue, legal challenges to the underlying criminal charges. It’s going to be a long list.

For what it’s worth, Trump’s recusal bid is unlikely to go anywhere with U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan or the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Trump’s Low Energy Defense In Georgia

Presumably it’s part of his delay strategy, but Donald Trump has been slow and lethargic in responding in court to the sweeping RICO indictment in Georgia. Yesterday, rather than filing his own motions, he adopted and joined in several of the motions filed by his co-defendants, including one seeking to dismiss the indictment.

Feds Drop Case Against Mike Flynn Compadre

Prosecutors originally won a 2019 conviction against Bijan Rafiekian, a former biz partner of Mike Flynn, for illegally lobbying for Turkey, but the trial judge set aside the verdict. Now prosecutors have dropped “one of the last prosecutions stemming from investigations into alleged foreign influence over Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign,” as Politico put it.

Extremists Keep Targeting The Grid

Politico: Extremists keep trying to trigger mass blackouts — and that’s not even the scariest part

TPM flashback to April: Aspiring Right-Wing Terrorists Are Targeting The Power Grid Amid Rise In Accelerationist Extremism

Sign Of The Times

(1 of 5) JUST IN: The all-time highest number of billion dollar disasters on record occurred.

23 confirmed year-to-date B$D events.

More from our #August 2023 #StateofClimate.

Report: https://t.co/DMEkGeGbNf@NOAANCEI #Climate pic.twitter.com/gwTtx5Czcu

— NOAA (@NOAA) September 11, 2023

Uncertain Death Toll In Devastating Flood In Libya

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