If his impeachment inquiry noise-making gambit doesn’t work in swaying far-right House Republicans to get in line and move forward with appropriations bills that are at least passable in the Democrat-controlled Senate, then House Speaker Kevin McCarthy may have to grovel at House Democrats’ feet — again.
Continue reading “Where Things Stand: House GOPer Acknowledges McCarthy May Need Dems To Avoid Shutdown His Right Flank Is Thirsting For”5th Circuit Judges Liken Government To Mob, Say It ‘Strong-Armed’ Social Media Companies
A panel of judges Thursday invoked the mob in describing the federal government’s behavior and accused it of “strong-arming” social media companies, using “not-so-veiled threats” and holding “secret meetings.” The bizarre rhetoric came in oral arguments over a district court decision that barred wide swaths of the government from flagging misinformation to social media companies.
Continue reading “5th Circuit Judges Liken Government To Mob, Say It ‘Strong-Armed’ Social Media Companies”Chesebro Or Eastman: Who Really Masterminded Stop The Steal?
When I spoke with Ken Chesebro last year across several interviews, one thing was clear: He saw himself as an elite appellate lawyer and needed recognition.
Continue reading “Chesebro Or Eastman: Who Really Masterminded Stop The Steal?”Jack Smith’s Office Proposes That The Jan. 6 Case Go To Trial First
Special Counsel Jack Smith is proposing that the trial for Donald Trump’s Jan. 6 case begin on Jan. 2, 2024 — a proposal that, if granted by the judge, could mean that it would be the first of Trump’s three current criminal cases to go to trial.
Continue reading “Jack Smith’s Office Proposes That The Jan. 6 Case Go To Trial First”Listen To This: NOhio
A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Josh and Kate discuss a big election in Ohio, John Eastman’s admission that he did try to overthrow the government and an eyebrow-raising New York Times opinion column.
You can listen to the new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast here.
It’s Suddenly Dawning On Republicans That They Have A Major Abortion Problem
Republicans are reeling this week, days after Ohio voters handily defeated a ballot initiative widely understood to be a proxy fight for a coming proposal to enshrine abortion protections in the state constitution.
Continue reading “It’s Suddenly Dawning On Republicans That They Have A Major Abortion Problem”Readers on the Dobbs Backlash
From TPM Reader DS …
Continue reading “Readers on the Dobbs Backlash”I was in college from 2002-2006 so the Iraq War for better or worse will always be one main prism through which I think about American politics. And one of the things that always amazed me most about the whole thing was that the neocons and armchair strategists had spent more than a decade obsessed with toppling Saddam Hussein, yet had absolutely no idea what to do the day afterwards.
Indicted Trump Finds Time For Trolling, Will Visit Iowa With Entourage Of Florida Republicans
Former President Donald Trump is scheduled to visit the Iowa State Fair Saturday with nine House Republicans from Florida who chose to endorse him over their state’s governor Ron DeSantis.
Continue reading “Indicted Trump Finds Time For Trolling, Will Visit Iowa With Entourage Of Florida Republicans”Maui’s Deadly Wildfires Are A Reminder Of The Growing Risk To Communities That Once Seemed Safe
This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at The Conversation.
Wildfires, pushed by powerful winds, raced through Lahaina, Hawaii, on Aug. 8 and 9, 2023, leaving a charred and smoldering landscape across the tourist town of about 13,000 residents that was once the capital of the Kingdom of Hawaii. At least 36 people died, Maui County officials said. Others were rescued by the U.S. Coast Guard after going into the ocean to escape the flames.
Fires were still burning on Aug. 10, both in Maui’s tourist-filled west coast and farther inland, as well as on the Big Island of Hawaii. Dry grasses and strong winds, influenced by Hurricane Dora passing far to the south, heightened the fire risk.
Most fires in the U.S. are suppressed before they have a chance to threaten communities, but the winds were too strong to send helicopters into the sky to help contain Maui’s fires on the first day, leaving firefighters to battle the blazes from the ground.
Lt. Gov. Sylvia Luke issued an emergency declaration, activating the National Guard to help, and urged travelers to stay away.
Fires have become an increasing risk in many areas of the U.S. that people once considered safe.
Over the past two decades, a staggering 21.8 million Americans found themselves living within 3 miles (5 kilometers) of a large wildfire. Nearly 600,000 of them were directly exposed to the fire, with their homes inside the wildfire perimeter. That number — people directly exposed to wildfires — more than doubled from 2000 to 2019, my team’s recent research shows.
But while commentators often blame the rising risk on homebuilders pushing deeper into the wildland areas, we found that the population growth in these high-risk areas explained only a small part of the increase in the number of people who were exposed to wildfires.
Instead, three-quarters of this trend was driven by intense fires growing out of control and encroaching on existing communities.
That knowledge has implications for how communities prepare to fight wildfires in the future, how they respond to population growth and whether policy changes such as increasing insurance premiums to reduce losses will be effective.
What climate change has to do with wildfires
Hot, dry weather pulls moisture from plants and soil, leaving dry fuel that can easily burn. On a windy day, a spark from a power line, campfire or lightning can start a wildfire that quickly spreads.
Recent research on California’s fires found that almost all of the increase in that state’s burned area in recent decades was due to anthropogenic climate change — meaning climate change caused by human activities.
Our new research looked beyond just the area burned and asked: Where were people exposed to wildfires, and why?
Where wildfire exposure was highest
I am a climate scientist who studies the wildfire-climate relationship and its socioenvironmental impacts. Colleagues and I analyzed the boundaries of more than 15,000 large wildfires across the lower 48 states and annual population distribution data to estimate the number of people exposed to those fires.
If you picture wildfire photos taken from a plane, fires generally burn in patches rather than as a wall of flame. Pockets of homes within the fire boundary survive, but many also burn.
While the population has grown in the wildland-urban interface — the region where houses intermingle with forests, shrublands or grasslands — we found that population growth accounted for only about one-quarter of the increase in the number of humans directly exposed to wildfires across the lower 48 states from 2000 to 2019.
Three-quarters of the 125% increase in exposure was due to fires increasingly encroaching on existing communities. The total burned area increased only 38%, but the locations of intense fires near towns and cities put lives at risk.
In California, the state with the most people exposed to fires, several wildfire catastrophes hit communities that had existed long before 2000. Almost all these catastrophes occurred during dry, hot, windy conditions that have become increasingly frequent because of climate change.
What communities can do to lower the risk
Studies have shown that even in conservative scenarios, the amount of area that burns in Western wildfires is projected to grow in the next few decades.
How much these fires grow and how intense they become depends largely on warming trends. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions will help slow warming. But communities will also have to adapt to more wildfires. Developing community-level wildfire response plans, reducing human ignitions of wildfires and improving zoning and building codes can help prevent fires from becoming destructive.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Good Lord, Who Among Us Hasn’t Paid For A Clarence Thomas Vacation?
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
BREAKING …
A new report from ProPublica this morning on all the lavish gifts and freebies bestowed on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas over the years by conservative-minded benefactors:
At least 38 destination vacations, including a previously unreported voyage on a yacht around the Bahamas; 26 private jet flights, plus an additional eight by helicopter; a dozen VIP passes to professional and college sporting events, typically perched in the skybox; two stays at luxury resorts in Florida and Jamaica; and one standing invitation to an uber-exclusive golf club overlooking the Atlantic coast.
Some Things You Can’t Make Up
Former President Trump is now asking a federal judge to order the U.S. government to reconstruct a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) at Mar-a-Lago for pendency of his criminal trial.
Why? So that he is not inconvenienced whenever he wants to discuss with his lawyers the national defense information at the heart of the criminal case against him.
It’s such a preposterous request that it left observers sputtering and confused. Can a judge even do that? Would U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon dare grant such a request? Is there any precedent for such a thing (short answer: no).
If Cannon were to indulge this nonsense, I suspect this would be the first of what could be many pre-trial issues that Special Counsel Jack Smith would take to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals for relief.
Fun Reactions To The Trump SCIF Nonsense
- Katie Phang: “This ask by Trump is not only unusual, but basically asks Judge Cannon to make the literal scene of the crime into a SCIF…”
- Elizabeth de la Vega: “What authority would Cannon possibly have to order the government to establish a SCIF anywhere? A US District Court Judge has no authority to do that.”
- Joyce Vance: “It is, yet again, about fostering more delay to keep Trump from facing justice.”
Elon’s X Hit With $350,000 Court Sanction
We finally learned what a sealed legal fight in the Trump Jan. 6 investigation was all about: Elon Musk’s Twitter-turned-X failed to comply in a timely fashion with a search warrant for Trump’s Twitter account. The January 2023 search warrant and a related non-disclosure order to keep Trump from finding out about the search warrant became the subject of a extended fight at the district court level, where Twitter initially lost. It lost again on appeal in a decision rendered last month but not made public (in redacted form) until yesterday.
For what it’s worth, Twitter ultimately did comply months ago with the search warrant, so the investigation has not been stalled this entire time.
Are We Really Doing This Now?
The phrasing “X, formerly known as Twitter” has started popping up in news stories. TPM’s general approach is to call people and entities what they want to be called (within reason), so we’ll probably be making a similar adjustment, but … ugh.
Atlanta Indictment Watch
District Attorney Fani Willis is reportedly going to seek “more than a dozen indictments” in her investigation of 2020 election interference.
Miming Trump
Glenn Kirschner: Trump’s newest lawyer John Lauro seems confused about what his job actually is.
Arraignment In MAL Case
Former President Trump will be arraigned today in federal court in Ft. Pierce, Florida, on the charges contained in the new superseding indictment in the Mar-a-Lago case. This will be the first arraignment for Carlos De Oliveira, the newest defendant in the case. Trump himself has waived his right to appear. U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon rejected a request by a coalition of media outlets to allow electronic devices into the courthouse today.
MAGA Adherent Dies In FBI Raid
A Utah man was killed during an early morning raid in Provo when the FBI tried to serve arrest and search warrants on a MAGA adherent who had been posting to social media threats against Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg and President Biden, who was set to visit Utah later in the day.
A sampling of some of the threatening posts:
Wildfire Death Toll In Maui Climbs To 36
The wind-driven wildfire that devastated historic Lahaina has claimed at least 36 lives, local authorities reported overnight.
Some Good Ones On The NYT Opinion Page
- Charles M. Blow: The Montgomery Brawl Was, for Some, a Clarifying Moment
- David Wallace-Wells: Why Is America Such a Deadly Place?
- Alexander Nazaryan: Rewild The National Mall
Fernando Villavicencio Assassinated In Ecuador
NYT: “A presidential candidate in Ecuador who had been outspoken about the link between organized crime and government officials was assassinated Wednesday evening at a political rally in the capital, just days before voting begins in an election that has been dominated by concerns over drug-related violence.”
RIP Robbie Robertson
With Mick Jagger turning 80 last week and Robbie Robertson dying this week – both born the same year as my dad – my thoughts turned to the not-all-at-all pressing question of which rocker in my cohort will my son compare me unfavorably to when I’m 80 and not prancing around on stages lighting up large crowds. It took me all of one minute to figure it out: Fucking Dave Grohl.
Sums It Up!
Trae Crowder on the Ohio abortion vote: “Did they think people were going to line up around the block to disenfranchise themselves?”
@traecrowder Good on Ohio, protecting democracy and all. #traecrowder #politicalhumor #seemelive #linkinbio ♬ original sound – Trae Crowder
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