#implemented some environmental protection and reversed some of the policies that trump made but i cant believe some ppl really think that

[seeinglittlestars]

Bruhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

[bongaboi]

Joe Biden: 46th President of the United States

President-elect Joe Biden is planning to quickly sign a series of executive orders after being sworn into office on Jan. 20, immediately forecasting that the country���s politics have shifted and that his presidency will be guided by radically different priorities.

He will rejoin the Paris climate accords, according to those close to his campaign and commitments he has made in recent months, and he will reverse President Trump’s withdrawal from the World Health Organization. He will repeal the ban on almost all travel from some Muslim-majority countries, and he will reinstate the program allowing “dreamers,” who were brought to the United States illegally as children, to remain in the country, according to people familiar with his plans.

Although transitions of power can always include abrupt changes, the shift from Trump to Biden — from one president who sought to undermine established norms and institutions to another who has vowed to restore the established order — will be among the most startling in American history.

Biden’s top advisers have spent months quietly working on how best to implement his agenda, with hundreds of transition officials preparing to get to work inside various federal agencies. They have assembled a book filled with his campaign commitments to help guide their early decisions.

Biden is planning to set up a coronavirus task force on Monday, in recognition that the global pandemic will be the primary issue that he must confront. The task force, which could begin meeting within days, will be co-chaired by former surgeon general Vivek H. Murthy and David Kessler, a former Food and Drug Administration commissioner.

There has also been a recognition of those around him that he may have to lean more on executive actions than he had once hoped. He can reorient various federal agencies and regulations, and he can adopt a different posture on the world stage.

But pushing major legislation through Congress could prove to be a challenge.

Although the Democrats will hold a narrowed majority in the House, the final makeup of the Senate is not yet clear. That will be decided on Jan. 5, with two runoff elections in Georgia. Democrats would need to win both races to effectively have control of the Senate — with Vice President Kamala D. Harris serving as the tie-breaking vote — while Republicans would retain a narrow advantage by winning at least one.

“The policy team, the transition policy teams, are focusing now very much on executive power,” said a Biden ally who has been in touch with his team who, like others interviewed for this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. “I expect that to be freely used in a Biden administration at this point, if the Senate becomes a roadblock.”

A Republican-held Senate — or even one with a narrow Democratic majority — probably will affect Biden’s Cabinet picks given the Senate’s power to confirm nominees.

One option being discussed is appointing Cabinet members in an acting capacity, a tactic that Trump also used.

“Just by virtue of the calendar and how many positions are filled, that’s always a possibility,” the person said. “Because the Senate moves so slowly now, so much more slowly than it used to.”

On Saturday afternoon, about two hours after networks called Biden the winner of the election, the president-elect had a brief call with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), who called to congratulate Biden on a “tremendous victory,” according to two Democratic officials.

Schumer called while en route to a celebration in Brooklyn, holding his flip phone out the window so that Biden could hear the cheering crowd.

If Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) stays as majority leader, he would be trying to manage a conference torn between two factions with different interests, but neither necessarily eager to help Biden — one with senators running for reelection in swing states in 2022, and another with those seeking the national spotlight as they vie for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

“In the old days, the mandate meant that the other side would be more amenable, or feeling they had an impetus to work,” said Sen. Robert P. Casey Jr. (D-Pa.). “I’m not sure that applies any longer.”

It is unclear whether Biden has communicated with McConnell yet directly; aides have not commented on any conversation.

A closely divided Congress could hamper Biden’s efforts to do sweeping legislative actions on immigration changes. He has also said he would send a bill to Congress repealing liability protections for gun manufacturers, and close background-check loopholes. He has pledged to repeal the Republican-passed tax cuts from 2017, an effort that could be stymied if Republicans hold the Senate majority.

Without congressional cooperation, however, Biden has said that he plans to immediately reverse Trump’s rollback of 100 public health and environmental rules that the Obama administration had in place.

He would also institute new ethics guidelines at the White House, and he has pledged to sign an executive order the first day in office saying that no member of his administration could influence any Justice Department investigations.

Biden has long pledged to rejoin the Paris climate accords by executive order, but he has also said that he would attempt to persuade other nations to adopt higher standards in an attempt to curb the impacts of climate change.

Sen. Christopher A. Coons (D-Del.), a longtime Biden ally who holds the seat Biden had for 36 years, offered a broad overview of Biden’s initial agenda: “Get us out of this pandemic that’s been made far worse by Trump’s bungled mishandling of it, rebuild our economy in a way that’s more sustainable and more inclusive, and deal with division and inequality.”

He noted that Biden’s style will be quite different, saying that Trump and Pelosi haven’t spoken in more than a year.

Coons suggested that Biden would promptly begin reaching out to leaders in both parties.

The coronavirus response has been foremost on Biden’s mind, and it is seen inside his campaign as a chief reason for his victory. He has previously said that even before the inauguration he would reach out to Anthony S. Fauci, the country’s top infectious-disease expert, asking him for advice.

Biden also wants to quickly appoint a supply commander to oversee production and distribution of testing — and, when ready, vaccines — as well as materials such as masks and gowns.

The coronavirus — and Biden’s response to it — could also significantly impact the traditional spectacle that surrounds the transfer of power. Inaugural balls could be altered. And while Biden has previously said he wouldn’t envision wearing a mask while being sworn in, he has said they could try to limit the traditional throngs that fill the steps of the U.S. Capitol.

Much of Biden’s early agenda — including which pieces of legislation to prioritize — will be determined in the coming weeks as his transition team begins taking on a far more prominent role.

Biden’s transition effort is being overseen by Ted Kaufman, one of his closest advisers. Kaufman, who was appointed to replace Biden in the Senate when Biden became vice president in 2009, also helped co-write an update to the law governing the transition process, which was passed in 2015 and signed by President Barack Obama.

Biden’s transition team has been given government-issued computers and iPhones for conducting secure communications, and 10,000 square feet of office space in the Herbert C. Hoover Building in Washington, although most of the work is being done virtually because of the coronavirus pandemic. His advisers have been granted temporary security clearances and undergone FBI background checks to fast-track the processing of personnel who can receive briefings on intelligence.

But one important next step is for the head of the General Services Administration to rule that the election results are final, enabling Biden’s transition team to expand its work and gain access to government funds. Biden officials are prepared for legal action if that administrator — Emily W. Murphy, a Trump political appointee — delays that decision, according to officials familiar with the matter.

Trump has so far not conceded defeat, falsely claiming Saturday that he won the election.

Pamela Pennington, a GSA spokeswoman, said that Murphy would ascertain “the apparent successful candidate once a winner is clear based on the process laid out in the Constitution.” Until that decision is made, she said, the Biden transition team would continue to receive limited access to government resources.

The transition from Trump to Biden would have few historic parallels, rivaled perhaps only by 1860-1861, when southern states seceded before Abraham Lincoln took office, and 1932-1933, when Herbert Hoover sought to undermine Franklin D. Roosevelt and prevent him from implementing his New Deal policies.

The last time there was a prolonged delay in a transfer of power was in 2000, when uncertainty over the results in the contest between then-Vice President Al Gore (D) and then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush (R) stretched out until the Supreme Court ended a Florida recount that gave Bush the victory on Dec. 12.

The Bush administration’s sluggish start and lack of qualified personnel in place was cited by the 9/11 Commission Report as a critical vulnerability to U.S. national security for the attacks that occurred less than eight months after the inauguration. That prompted changes to the law and the granting of access at an earlier date following the political conventions.

“When George W. Bush left he made clear to his Cabinet that this is going to be the best transition of power that’s ever occurred. Because we weren’t treated very well when we came into power,” said Michael Leavitt, who at the time was the outgoing secretary of Health and Human Services. “Barack Obama to his credit said the same thing. There was a spirit of cooperation that went on and needs to continue. Whether it will or not I don’t know. But we’re better prepared.”

Chris Lu, the executive director of the Obama-Biden transition in 2008, said that within two hours of the election being called in 2008 he had a formal letter beginning the transition process.

“We literally at 9 a.m. the next morning walked into a transition office and had access to it,” he said. “It was the model for the smoothest transition of power.”

Making a clear break from the Trump administration's adversarial posture toward the civil service is also a top priority for the Biden transition team.

The Trump administration's suspicion of career officials and early calls for them to “get with the program” or “go” created tensions with incoming political appointees that never dissipated. Biden officials are hoping to create a positive atmosphere by avoiding some of the terminology and labels they think contributed to the mistrust.

The teams of campaign staffers and other aides that first embed themselves into government agencies after an election have historically been called “landing teams” and “beachhead teams,” summoning the memory of the storming of Normandy during World War II.

To avoid any associations with war, some Biden aides are sticking to soberingly bureaucratic terms, referring to landing teams as “ARTs” or Agency Review Teams, and beachhead team members as “temporary employees.”

So far, Trump administration officials have reviewed succession plans for department officials, planning for which civil servants would take on acting roles amid vacancies. Briefing materials are slated to be delivered over the next several days to Biden’s transition team.

Leavitt, who oversaw transition planning in 2012 for Republican nominee Mitt Romney and has worked with Kaufman to change the law governing presidential transitions, said there are a range of moves the Biden team could make even without cooperation from Trump’s campaign. Cabinet members and other top White House staff could be picked, and key priorities for the start of the administration could be lined up.

“The current moment always seems like it’s the extreme, and often they are. But we get through them. The country survives,” he said. “The internal strength of the United States allows us to get through these things.”

John Hudson contributed to this report.

[bigyack-com]

Trump’s Trade Deal Steals a Page From Democrats’ Playbook

WASHINGTON — House Democrats return to Washington on Monday facing a difficult choice: Should they hand President Trump a victory in the midst of a heated impeachment battle or walk away from one of the most progressive trade pacts ever negotiated by either party?The Trump administration agreed with Canada and Mexico on revisions to the North American Free Trade Agreement one year ago, but the deal still needs the approval of Congress. A handshake agreement with the administration in the coming days would give the Democratic caucus a tangible accomplishment on an issue that has animated its base. It could also give Democrats a chance to lock in long-sought policy changes to a trade pact they criticize as prioritizing corporations over workers, laying the groundwork for future trade agreements.Those factors have coaxed Democrats to the table at an improbable moment, when Washington is split by partisan fights and deeply divided over an impeachment inquiry. After months of talks, including through the Thanksgiving break, both sides say they’re in the final phase of negotiations. But Democrats insist the administration must make more changes to the labor, environmental and other provisions before Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California will bring legislation implementing the new United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement to a vote.“By any standard, what we’ve already negotiated is substantially better than NAFTA,” said Representative Richard E. Neal of Massachusetts, who is heading the Democratic group negotiating with the administration. “Labor enforcement, in my judgment, is the last hurdle.”The deal presents a dilemma for Democrats because it contains measures they have supported for years, from requiring more of a car’s parts to be made in North America to rolling back a special system of arbitration for corporations and strengthening Mexican labor unions.In borrowing from the Democrats’ playbook, the revised pact reflects Mr. Trump’s populist trade approach — one that has blurred party lines and appealed to many of the blue-collar workers Democrats once counted among their base. It also reflects a broader backlash to more traditional free trade deals, which have been criticized for hollowing out American manufacturing and eliminating jobs.“Taken as a whole, it looks more like an agreement that would’ve been negotiated under the Obama administration,” said Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio and a former trade representative during the George W. Bush administration, who supports the pact. “There are some aspects to it that Democrats have been calling for, for decades.”In fact, it goes so far to the left of traditional Republican views on trade that some congressional Republicans only grudgingly support it — or may vote against the final deal. Senator Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania, one of the most ardent Republican critics of the deal, has called the pact “a complete departure from the free trade agreements we’ve pursued through our history” and urged fellow Republicans to vote it down. “If we adopt this agreement, it will be the first time that I know of in the history of the Republic that we will agree to a new trade agreement that is designed to diminish trade,” Mr. Toomey said at a hearing in July, sitting next to a large red sign that said: “NAFTA > U.S.M.C.A.”Still, most Republicans have supported the pact and urged rapid action. If the deal is not approved soon, proponents fear it could become the target of more frequent attacks by Democratic presidential candidates, making it even more difficult for Democrats in Congress to vote for the pact.Mr. Trump has spent weeks accusing Ms. Pelosi of being “grossly incompetent” and prioritizing impeachment over a trade deal that could benefit workers. “She’s incapable of moving it,” Mr. Trump said last week, warning that a “great trade deal for the farmers, manufacturers, workers of all types, including unions” could fall apart if the Democrats don’t take action. While long demonized by Mr. Trump, Democrats and labor unions, NAFTA has become critical to companies and consumers across North America, guiding commerce around the continent for a quarter century. Entire industries have grown up around the trade agreement, which allows goods like cars, avocados and textiles to flow tariff free among Canada, Mexico and the United States. But Mr. Trump and other critics have blamed the deal for encouraging companies to move their factories to Mexico. The president has routinely called NAFTA the “worst trade deal ever made” and promised during his campaign that he would rewrite it in America’s favor — or scrap it altogether.The revised pact took over a year of rancorous talks to complete, resulting in a complex 2,082-page agreement covering a wide range of topics. While much of it simply updates NAFTA for the 21st century, it also contains changes intended to encourage manufacturing in the United States, including by raising how much of a car must be made in North America to qualify for zero tariffs. The new agreement requires at least 70 percent of an automaker’s steel and aluminum to be bought in North America, which could help boost United States metal production. And 40 to 45 percent of a car’s content must be made by workers earning an average wage of $16 an hour. That $16 floor is an effort to force auto companies to either raise low wages in Mexico or hire more workers in the United States and Canada, an outcome Democrats have long supported.It also rolls back a special system of arbitration for corporations that the Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren has criticized as allowing companies to bypass the American legal system and Trump administration officials describe as an incentive for companies to send their factories abroad.The pact also includes, at least on paper, provisions that aim to do away with sham Mexican labor unions that have done little to help workers by requiring every company in Mexico to seek worker approval of collective bargaining agreements by secret ballot in the next four years. Some Democrats are skeptical that the Mexican government will allocate the necessary funds to ensure that companies are complying with these changes. But if the rules are enforced, Democrats say they may help stem the flow of jobs to Mexico and put American workers on a more equal footing. Several sticking points remain, including a provision that offers an advanced class of drugs 10 years of protection from cheaper alternatives, which Democratic lawmakers say would lock in high drug prices. Other Democratic proposals aim to add teeth to the pact’s labor and environmental provisions. Democrats want to reverse a change made by the Trump administration that they say essentially guts NAFTA’s enforcement system. They are also arguing for additional resources that would allow customs officials to inspect factories or stop goods at the border if companies violate labor rules. Mr. Neal told reporters late last month that he believed House Democrats could soon work out their differences with Robert Lighthizer, Mr. Trump’s trade representative. Ms. Pelosi, who has continued to suggest that she wants to “get to yes” on the deal, responded to Mr. Trump’s rebuke last week by saying that she needed to see the administration’s commitments in writing before moving forward. The agreement still has skeptics, including labor leaders and others on the left.“Unless Donald Trump agrees to add stronger labor and environmental standards and enforcement, and secures progress on labor reforms in Mexico, NAFTA job outsourcing will continue,” said Lori Wallach, the director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch. “And the Big Pharma giveaways Trump added must go: They make U.S.M.C.A. worse than NAFTA.”But Democrats say that if the additional changes they are seeking get made, the deal would be more progressive than the original NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership — both of which were negotiated by Democratic administrations. Mr. Trump pulled the United States out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership within days of taking office.Jesús Seade, Mexico’s chief negotiator for the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, said many tweaks Democrats want are “improvements.” “If the amendments suggested are acceptable improvements, then there’s no reason we should not be shaking hands next week,” he said on Friday, after meeting with Canadian officials.Some congressional Republicans, who generally oppose unions and believe the deal’s new rules could burden auto companies, have been taken aback by how far the administration has gone to woo Democrats. At a private lunch on June 11 at the Capitol, Republican senators peppered Vice President Mike Pence with questions about why the administration was not lobbying Democrats harder to back the deal. Mr. Pence claimed that it already had the support of 80 Democrats, a high number that caught some Republicans by surprise, according to a person familiar with the meeting who spoke on condition of anonymity. “What’s in it for Pelosi?” asked Senator Ben Sasse, Republican of Nebraska. Mr. Pence responded that the pact had the most aggressive labor and automotive standards ever put in a trade agreement — an admission for some Republicans in the room that it was the worst trade agreement they had been asked to support.Jennifer Hillman, a trade expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, said many of Mr. Lighthizer and Mr. Trump’s views on trade “are basically borrowing what Democrats have said for many, many years.”“To the extent that Trump gained votes in the industrial Midwest, it was by espousing Democratic trade ideas,” she said. Throughout the negotiations, Mr. Lighthizer has kept up a steady dialogue with labor unions like the United Steelworkers and Democrats like Ms. Pelosi, Mr. Neal and Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio. At times, Mr. Lighthizer appeared more at odds with congressional Republicans and traditional allies like the Chamber of Commerce, who he said should give up “a little bit of the sugar” that had sweetened trade agreements for multinational corporations.“If you can get some labor unions on board, Democrats on board, mainstream Republicans on board, I think you can get big numbers,” Mr. Lighthizer said in January 2018. “If you do, that’s going to change the way all of us look at these kind of deals.” Source link Read the full article

[vox]

The most damaging part of Trump’s climate change order is the message it sends

President Donald Trump signed his long-awaited executive order on “energy independence” yesterday. It was a sprawling mess — a laundry list of Obama policies Trump wants to “suspend, revise, or rescind.” If you want to know the details of what it does, read Brad Plumer’s explainer.

Before it is overshadowed by the next Trump outrage, I want to take a step back and try to get some perspective on what it tells us about Trump’s administration, and what it means for climate change.

The EO is a very different beast from the health care bill the Republicans just failed to pass, but it does have a few things in common: It expresses no coherent governing philosophy, it is an answer to no obvious problem, and moves policy in a direction that is wildly unpopular. The difference between this EO and the failed AHCA is that Trump doesn’t need Congress to do this, so he just did it.

This EO is a dangerous form of “soft power”

If there is philosophy binding together the disparate elements of the EO, it’s that climate change doesn’t matter.

The actions in it are clustered around the theme of undoing efforts to address climate change. And the message it sends to federal employees, other governments, and the private sector is this: The federal government is no longer interested in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

It is that message, its intangible and “soft power” effects, that is the most significant part of this EO — more significant, arguably, than its substance. (Nathan Richardson of Resources for the Future has a good piece on this.)

The signal it sends to the world is dismal and devastating: a blow to America’s “soft power,” a stain on its record, and an impediment to all future international cooperation.

But in its particulars, its damage is limited, and almost none of it immediate. (Its one immediate effect will be to serve as a full employment act for environmental lawyers.)

The headlines saying that Trump has wiped out Obama’s climate legacy are exaggerated. Much of Obama’s legacy cannot be reversed — with the stimulus bill alone, he set in motion changes in energy markets that have now achieved an unstoppable momentum. Renewable energy will continue to get cheaper and grow; coal will continue to decline.

It’s difficult to put numbers on how much the EO will affect carbon emissions. Larger structural factors, like the price of natural gas, will matter much more in the near term. Much of the EO’s impact will only be felt with the passing of years, and only truly felt if Trump wins a second term.

Its biggest targets — Obama’s EPA rules on carbon from both new and existing power plants, along with his methane regulations — cannot simply be erased. The EPA will have to launch a new rulemaking process for each of the three, and at every step along the way environmentalists will fight them in court. That process could easily take longer than a presidential term and there’s no way to predict how it will turn out.

The endangerment finding — EPA’s ruling that carbon dioxide is an air pollutant — is still in place. Until it is overturned (which is unlikely), EPA is legally required to regulate CO2. So EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt will have to write weaker rules and justify them in court, which will not be easy, as Plumer explained in detail. There’s no guarantee he will succeed. (The Bush administration’s efforts to implement weak regulations on mercury, introduced in 2005, were finally rejected by the Supreme Court in 2009.)

And those three rules are the only targeted policies with clear, quantifiable effects. The rest were somewhat more intangible, with long-term and largely unquantifiable implications. The CEQ guidance on incorporating climate into environmental reviews; the work done to quantify the social cost of carbon; orders to agencies on carbon mitigation and resilience — these were all, in their own ways, exhortations, nudges to get federal agencies to start thinking about this stuff.

Trump’s federal agencies won’t do much thinking about climate change when they make decisions. But we knew that already — nothing in Obama’s EOs could have forced them to.

What Trump can kill with this EO are seeds Obama planted that would have borne fruit in coming years, all the stuff he intended to hand off to Hillary Clinton for her to strengthen.

The EO is scattershot, unmotivated, and unpopular policy

It’s obscure what problem the EO is really intended to solve. No one was planning to build new coal plants anyway. The Clean Power Plan, for all the hype around it, wasn’t particularly stringent. Several states — indeed, most of the states suing the federal government over it — are already on track to meet its 2024 targets, with or without policy. Most carbon policy with teeth is being done at the state level anyway. Lifting the coal moratorium won’t boost coal production or coal jobs.

Lifting these restrictions on coal (along with the stream-protection rule Trump reversed earlier) is not going to spark any coal renaissance or create any new coal jobs. Coal is taking a beating in the market, here and around the world, because alternatives are cheaper.

There’s nothing Trump can do about the decline in coal jobs. Even the most anti-Obama coal executive on the planet, Robert Murray of Murray Energy, knows this. He supports Trump’s assault on climate policy and wants it to go further (after all, he stands to benefit!), but he’s under no illusion it will help coal miners. “I suggested that he temper his expectations,” Murray told the Guardian about his meeting with Trump. “He can’t bring [the jobs] back.”

All those coal miners at Trump’s signing ceremony? He told them, “You’re going back to work.” He literally said those words to their faces, just before signing.

He is lying to them, whether he knows it or not. They are being used as ghoulish props in a cheap populist pageant. Trump will not put any of them back to work.

Obama’s regulations took health costs that coal executives were externalizing onto the public and tried to internalize them into the price of coal. Trump is reversing that — allowing them to resume offloading their costs. He’s transferring wealth from the public to coal executives. That’s all.

It is almost comically plutocratic policy smeared with a thick sheen of populist rhetoric. There’s no public policy rationale for it.

And it’s wildly unpopular. The number of Americans who are “concerned believers” in climate change just hit a historic high, as Gallup reported. More to the point, carbon pollution restrictions on power plants have always been popular, across demographics. Even among Republicans! Even among Trump voters!

This is scattershot and utterly unmotivated policy, rooted in deep scientific ignorance, enriching a small set of fossil fuel executives on the basis of no coherent policy rationale.

And for what? So that Trump can go on TV and glad hand with coal miners.

There are 77,000 Americans mining coal. There are 260,000 Americans working on the solar industry.

As with health care, Trump made grand, impossible promises on the campaign trail. As with health care, he doesn’t seem to know or care much about policy details, so he turned writing the policy over to someone else. For health care, it was libertarian ideologues in Congress; for climate change, it was climate denialists and fossil fuel lobbyists.

As with health care, the climate EO is, to quote Jonathan Chait, an “ultimately doomed effort by a brain-dead party to ignore a problem with which their dogma cannot grapple.”

As ever, Trump seems oblivious to the gravity of what he’s doing, the potentially fateful consequences he is risking in exchange for little more than a photo op. The best hope climate hawks have is that, having “kept his promise” and had his dramatic signing, Trump will consider this a job well done and won’t feel the need to pull out of the Paris climate agreement. Predictions are useless these days.

Millions of lives and billions of dollars are at stake in climate change, along with untold suffering, unjustly distributed. Time is agonizingly short. Watching Trump bat the issue around for cheap populist huzzahs has the air of an absurdist nightmare.

[badthingstrumpdidtoday]

Bad Things Trump Did Today - February 21, 2017

(Image credit: Getty, as shown in Politico)

Memos discuss Trump administration’s tougher deportation policies, potential to reverse Obama administration decisions on immigration

Source: Politico

In addition to discussing potential changes regarding current policies, the memos also go over a possible increase in DHS immigration agents, as well as revoking Privacy Act coverage for undocumented immigrants:

The memos also say DHS will hire 10,000 new immigration officers and reverse a number of Obama administration policies. Specifics on how the agency will hire so many officers remain scarce, with the administration saying they are working on a "hiring plan."

"Except as specifically noted above, the Department no longer will exempt classes or categories of removable aliens from potential enforcement," the memo says. It adds: "The Department will no longer afford Privacy Act rights and protections to persons who are neither U.S. citizens nor lawful permanent residents."

Politico also provides coverage of Mexican officials response to these memos, which can be read HERE.

Trump reportedly plans Executive Orders to roll back Obama administration policies on climate, water pollution

Source: The Washington Post

Sources briefed on these plans reported details of the potential EOs, which signal a shift in the Executive Branch’s stance towards climate change:

While both directives will take time to implement, they will send an unmistakable signal that the new administration is determined to promote fossil-fuel production and economic activity even when those activities collide with some environmental safeguards. Individuals familiar with the proposals asked for anonymity to describe them in advance of their announcement, which could come as soon as this week.

This isn’t the first time Trump has worked to eliminate measures designed to protect the environment and American waterways:

Trump, who signed legislation last week that nullified a recent regulation prohibiting surface-mining operations from dumping waste in nearby waterways, said he was eager to support coal miners who had backed his presidential bid. “The miners are a big deal,” he said Thursday. “I’ve had support from some of these folks right from the very beginning, and I won’t forget it.” 

Spicer pushes back against the Anne Frank Center in the wake of Trump’s response to ongoing anti-Semitic threats

Source: The Independent, CNN, The Washington Post

Despite an increasing number of anti-Semitic actions and threats throughout the United States, including the desecration of headstones in a Jewish cemetery in Missouri, Trump did not issue a response until Tuesday. The Anne Frank Center condemned his statement as weak:

(Image credit: Bradd Jaffy’s (NBC Nightly News Senior news editor and writer) Twitter page)

Spicer went after the Center’s responses in an answer to Margaret Brennan of CBS, as covered by an article in The Washington Post, which can be read HERE:

“Look. The president has made clear since the day he was elected — and frankly going back through the campaign — that he is someone who seeks to unite this country. He has brought a diverse group of folks into his administration, both in terms of actual positions and people that he has sought the advice of. And I think he has been very forceful with his denunciation of people who seek to attack people because of their religion, because of their gender, because of the color of their skin.

“It is something that he’s going to continue to fight and make very, very clear that [it] has no place in this administration. But I think that it’s ironic that no matter how many times he talks about this that it’s never good enough.

“Today I think was an unbelievably forceful comment by the president as far as his denunciation of the actions that are currently targeted toward Jewish community centers, but I think he’s been very clear previous to this that he wants to be someone that brings this country together but not divide people, especially in those areas.

“So, I saw that statement. I wish that they had praised the president for his leadership in this area. Hopefully as time continues to go by they recognize his commitment to civil rights, to voting rights, to equality for all Americans.”

CNN provides further coverage of Trump’s responses, as well as the recent wave of anti-Semitism, HERE.

In other news, Lt. General H.R. McMaster was named the new National Security Adviser on February 20, 2017

Source: The Independent, CNN

McMaster, chosen as a replacement for Flynn, is an active-duty three-star general who is obligated to accept the position:

The selection of Mr McMaster, 54, has come as a surprise to some, as he is known for pushing back against authority. It calls into question how well he will work with a president who values loyalty to a fault and immediately attempts to discredit any criticism.

However, Mr McMaster – an active three-star general who had no choice but to say "yes" to the President – remains a well-respected military strategist.  

CNN provides additional background on Lt. Gen. McMaster HERE.

Want to learn more about how we can stop more bad sh*t from happening?

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Attend peaceful political protests and know your rights as a protestor.

Support organizations dedicated to investigative journalism and protecting our First Amendment rights.

Be sure to follow for tomorrow’s Bad Things Trump Did Today.

[rjzimmerman]

The articles lists the climate and environmental actions (primarily through regulations or executive action) taken by the Obama administration that have been targeted by trump’s transition team for action. That action could include reversal, amendment or decision not to enforce or to ignore it.

Here are some of those actions taken by the Obama administration that have been targeted, excerpted from this article. The list also includes actions that the author believes the trump administration will initiate, that do not reflect reversal of any Obama administration action, such as increasing leasing activities on federal lands for fossil fuel extraction and mining. The article doesn’t describe what the author thinks will be done by the trump administration. Although I suspect how some of these will play out, it’s foolish to guess right now with so many elements of the new administration in flux.

The Clean Power Plan

The Paris climate accord

The international commitment to phase down the use of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs)

Standards to reduce methane pollution and natural gas waste in the oil and natural gas industry

Restrictions on public financing for overseas coal projects

National Environmental Policy Act (CEQ) assessments of greenhouse gas emissions and climate impacts (Explanation: the Obama administration directed federal agencies to assess the greenhouse gas emissions and climate effects of federal actions as part of the implementation process)

Vehicle fuel economy standards

Clean energy (solar and wind) tax incentives

Minimum energy-efficiency standards for refrigerators, air conditioners, clothes washers, and other appliances and equipment

Exclusion of he Arctic and Atlantic oceans from the next five-year oil- and gas-leasing plan andpermanent protections from all future drilling for the majority of the U.S. Arctic and key portions of the Atlantic

Expansion of the leasing of federal lands and permitting use of waterways to private fossil-fuel companies to expand coal, oil, and gas extraction

Coal lease reforms and blocking of new leasing for coal mining

Rejection of the Keystone pipeline

Reversing the decision of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers regarding the Dakota Access Pipeline

Protection of the Bristol Bay, Alaska area from the Pebble Mine (copper and gold extraction)

Amending the Antiquities Act

Reducing the scope of national monuments declared by President Obama under the Antiquities Act, or eliminating them

The roadless rule (imposed during the Clinton administration) to protect the Tongass Forest in Alaska

Reducing the scope of the Endangered Species Act, and reversing decisions made (mostly pending) under the Endangered Species Act

Reversing decisions made to protect marine species under the Marine Mammal Protection Act

Reversing orders to eliminate trade in wildlife, such as actions taken to eliminate trade in ivory

Ceasing any further action to regulate or ban neonicitinoids

Reversing actions taken under the Clean Water Rule

Reversing the Waters of America Rule

Enhanced ozone protection standards

Expedite permitting by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers regarding discharges into waters or dredging of bodies of water and rivers

Reversal of the EPA decision to ban the insecticide chlorpyrifos

[lodelss]

Livia Gershon | Longreads | November 2019 | 7 minutes (1,863 words)

My family’s natural gas-fired furnace is 23 years old. That’s aged; the average lifespan of a system like ours is 15 to 20 years. I live in New Hampshire, which gets awfully cold in the winter and, every October, I wonder whether we’ll make it to March. If the furnace fails this year and we replace it with another one like it, we’re committing to burning fossil fuels until about 2042. If my household switches to electricity, which is better for the environment than what we’ve got, our gas bills will nearly double, to around $2,800 every year. Recently, I called Bill Wenzel, who owns a geothermal heating business the next town over from me.

A geothermal heat pump is like a refrigerator in reverse. A hole is drilled deep into the ground, where the temperature remains steady at 55-ish degrees, then the system warms up the air some more and pumps it through the house. Wenzel told me that one of his systems would probably cut my heating bill in half. It would also provide essentially free air-conditioning, since it can circulate 55-degree air in the summer, too. The trouble is that, including the cost of drilling a bore hole, installing a geothermal system would run $30,000, compared with something like $4,000 to just throw in new gas furnace.

New Hampshire does not encourage geothermal heating with climate-conscious tax breaks or environmental subsidies. There is a federal renewable energy tax credit that would reduce the cost to me by 30 percent, but it’s slated to phase out over the next several years unless Congress takes action. Wenzel said that he does most of his business over the border in Massachusetts, where a hodgepodge of state incentives, combined with the federal credit, cut the price in half and provide no-interest financing. “New Hampshire stinks,” he told me. “That’s why I’m selling a lot in Massachusetts.”

When we think about the climate crisis, we tend to think on two levels: a global one, where the players are nations and international bodies, and an individual one, where we’re asked to make personal changes that, in theory, add up to collective transformation. But in the United States, we know that the federal government is a disaster, and it’s hard not to feel like making an individual choice is more about relieving guilt than it is about real change. If I squint, I could almost make the math work on a geothermal system by moving to another state—here in New Hampshire, not so much. And even if my family wanted to suck it up and spend thousands of dollars on green heating, we’d know, deep down, that it wouldn’t make the slightest difference to polar bears or climate refugees. Wenzel told me that a lot of people make the same calculation.

Still, from the case of my home-heating system, it quickly became clear: at the moment, the most significant place for climate action in this country is at the state level. Lately, states have been passing a wave of ambitious climate legislation, not just in Massachusetts, but also, this year alone, in Colorado, Maine, Washington, New Jersey, and New Mexico. Groups like the Sierra Club; the Union of Concerned Scientists; and 350.org, an international climate action nonprofit, have supported those laws. “As soon as Trump was elected to office, it was really clear that attention needed to shift to the states,” Emily Southard, US Fossil Free Campaign manager at 350.org, told me. Local organizations with connections in state houses have pushed their governments to address the climate crisis; some of the same has happened in cities, too. “Your traditional green groups that might do more insider lobbying have moved with frontline groups that are seeing the first-hand impacts, whether it be polluted air or water from the fossil fuel industry,” Southard went on. “They can speak to different elected officials in different ways, and can hold their feet to the fire.”

***

The best recent example of state-level progress is the passage of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA), signed into law by Andrew Cuomo, New York’s governor, in July. Southard told me that it contains the strongest emission standards in the country. The force behind the CLCPA was NY Renews—a coalition of more than 180 environmental, social justice, faith, and labor organizations—that demanded not just an end to the burning of fossil fuels but also a sincere investment in green infrastructure. Of particular focus, they argued, had to be poor areas and communities of color, where environmental problems tend to hit the hardest. An estimate by the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst predicts that a plan on the scale of the CLCPA can create more than 160,000 steady jobs in renewable energy and energy efficiency; in New York, at least 35 percent of investments in housing and public transit will go to low-income or otherwise “disadvantaged” communities.

As soon as Trump was elected to office, it was really clear that attention needed to shift to the states.

  How will the CLCPA affect life in the state of New York? “You would expect to see a ton of additional public transportation—bus lines, maybe light rail—so that you and your family would not need to rely as much on your vehicle,” Arielle Swernoff, of NY Renews, told me. “In terms of the health of your community, you’d be looking at better air quality. Rates of asthma would go down. In terms of jobs and industry, solar and wind and renewable jobs tend to be much more stable than fossil fuel jobs; maybe your neighbors would be working in renewable energy.”

Swernoff said that the vision for the CLCPA was based on that of PUSH Buffalo, a founding member of NY Renews. PUSH—which stands for “People United for Sustainable Housing”—lobbied the State House for the legislation’s passage; many of those involved had already been doing work that the new law will expand, such as installing renewable power systems and weatherizing homes. Rahwa Ghirmatzion, PUSH Buffalo’s executive director, told me that when the group formed, 14 years ago, it didn’t have a focus on climate; the initiative grew out of a 400-person community meeting. “Most worked in service-industry, minimum-wage jobs,” Ghirmatzion recalled. They talked about how winter wind leaked into their apartments and how, during the cold months, they sometimes paid more for their utilities than their mortgages. Yet there were plenty of skilled construction workers, handymen, and plumbers in the community, plus empty houses and vacant lots.

In the years that followed, PUSH Buffalo used tactics like civil disobedience to force the local fuel monopoly to fund weatherization. With additional money from the 2009 federal stimulus and a 2012 New York State law that it also lobbied to pass, the group renovated more homes with the best available solar power and geothermal systems. PUSH opened a “hiring hall” for green-construction workers and started training Buffalo residents returning from prison and young people not on a college track. They’re now planning a 50-unit project with a zero-carbon footprint that includes supportive housing for people with substance-use disorders and mental illness. “We thread workforce through every single component,” Ghirmatzion said.

Organizers such as these draw connections between local needs and the global climate crisis; they’re effective lobbyists for state regulation because they’re looking out for their livelihood. The steps can be incremental, to be sure; Swernoff said that NY Renews will have to keep fighting for real progress. Currently on the agenda: getting the state to pay for its energy transition by setting a penalty for polluting industries and influencing appointments to the Climate Action Council, the body charged with implementing the CLCPA. Some member organizations are also fighting a fossil fuel pipeline. Overall, though, she has a sense of hope. “It’s really easy to just get discouraged by the lack of action at the federal level, and I feel and understand that, but I think it’s really critical that states are taking these steps,” Swernoff said. “The work that we’ve done, and that other states have done, figuring out policies, figuring out how this works, are also impactful.”

***

Setting a goal doesn’t guarantee reaching it. In California, a national leader in climate legislation, implementation has been a serious challenge. From 2016 to 2017, for instance, the state reduced carbon emissions by just 1.15 percent and, according to Next 10, a nonprofit that monitors California’s climate efforts, if that pace continues, the state won’t reach its 2030 goal until 2061. James Sweeney, a professor of management science and engineering at Stanford University, told me that California has made strong progress when it comes to generating electricity from renewable sources, but that conventional vehicles and agricultural emissions remain a problem. “The bottom line is that California set very ambitious goals, but then you measure the actual progress toward those goals, the progress is not as dramatic as the goals set,” he said.

Everything we do determines just how bad the problem becomes.

The key to meaningful change, Southard told me, is grassroots engagement. Almost every state battle on environmental legislation has come down to the work of people who have felt the stakes of the climate crisis—those who lost their homes in New York during Hurricane Sandy in 2012, or in California during the devastating recent fires. Southard, who is based in Denver, told me that much of the attention in her state is on fracking; climate activists have formed alliances with other local interest groups for whom the environmental consequences are personal. “Here in Colorado there’s been a real coming together of those diverse constituencies,” she said, “to make sure any climate legislation isn’t just about a renewable energy standard—where it might mean that we’re putting a lot of solar on rooftops but we’re not closing down a coal-fired plant in a people-of-color community.”

In New Hampshire, for the past two years, Chris Sununu, my state’s governor, has vetoed bills that would have helped develop a more robust renewable energy industry. But the climate movement is growing here, too. In September, in the state’s biggest environmental protest since the seventies, a group of 67 activists got themselves arrested while demanding the shutdown of one of the last coal-fired power plants in New England. Sununu, a Republican, remains resistant to climate action, yet it’s not hard to imagine that, as in other states, the environmental movement would expand and join forces with other grassroots forces to craft a comprehensive plan he can’t ignore. Maybe my aged furnace will even hold out long enough that, by the time it dies, a geothermal system installed by well-paid local workers will be a viable option.

When contemplating the climate crisis, it’s easy to get stuck; even the best signs of progress we’ve got might not be enough. But everything we do determines just how bad the problem becomes; Southard said that state and local action can provide a template for federal laws—so far in the 2020 campaigns, there’s been lots of talk about ambitious plans to help the U.S. reduce its monstrous carbon footprint—and they also matter on their own. As she told me, “Every time a municipality or a state is passing climate action, then it’s knitting together this massive framework which we need to truly address the climate crisis.”

***

Livia Gershon is a freelance journalist based in New Hampshire. She has written for the Guardian, the Boston Globe, HuffPost, Aeon and other places.

Editor: Betsy Morais

Fact-checker: Samantha Schuyler

[kansascityhappenings]

Republicans and Democrats trade blame for shutdown with no deal in sight

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WASHINGTON — The partial government shutdown will almost certainly be handed off to a divided government to solve in the new year, as President Donald Trump sought to raise the stakes Friday and both parties traded blame in the weeklong impasse.

Agreement eludes Washington in the waning days of the Republican monopoly on power, and that sets up the first big confrontation between Trump and newly empowered Democrats.

Trump is sticking with his demand for money to build a wall along the southern border, and Democrats, who take control of the House on Jan. 3, are refusing to give him what he wants.

The President reissued threats Friday to close the U.S.-Mexico border to pressure Congress to fund the wall and to shut off aid to three Central American countries from which many migrants have fled.

We will be forced to close the Southern Border entirely if the Obstructionist Democrats do not give us the money to finish the Wall & also change the ridiculous immigration laws that our Country is saddled with. Hard to believe there was a Congress & President who would approve!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 28, 2018

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“We will be forced to close the Southern Border entirely if the Obstructionist Democrats do not give us the money to finish the Wall & also change the ridiculous immigration laws that our Country is saddled with,” he wrote in one of a series of tweets.

The president also signaled he was in no rush to seek a resolution, welcoming the fight as he heads toward his own bid for re-election in 2020. He tweeted Thursday evening that Democrats may be able to block him now, “but we have the issue, Border Security. 2020!”

Incoming acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said Trump had canceled his plans to travel to Florida to celebrate New Year’s at his private Mar-a-Lago club.

The shutdown is forcing hundreds of thousands of federal workers and contractors to stay home or work without pay, and many are experiencing mounting stress from the impasse. It also is beginning to pinch citizens who count on public services. Gates are closed at some national parks, new farm loans will be put on hold beginning next week, and in New York, the chief judge of Manhattan federal courts suspended work on civil cases involving U.S. government lawyers, including several civil lawsuits in which Trump himself is a defendant.

The Smithsonian Institution also announced that museums and galleries popular with visitors and locals in the nation’s capital will close starting midweek if the partial shutdown drags on.

The Environmental Protection Agency will keep disaster-response teams and other essential workers on the job as it becomes the latest agency to start furloughing employees in the government shutdown. Spokeswoman Molly Block says the EPA will implement its shutdown plan at midnight Friday. That will mean furloughing many of its roughly 14,000 workers.

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., released a statement applauding a decision by the administration to reverse new guidance issued by the Department of Homeland Security that prevented the Federal Emergency Management Agency from writing or renewing National Flood Insurance Program policies during the current government shutdown. He said it was important that people could continue to get and maintain their flood insurance.

With another long holiday weekend coming and nearly all lawmakers away from the Capitol there is little expectation of a quick fix.

“We are far apart,” White House press secretary Sarah Sanders told CBS on Friday, claiming of Democrats, “They’ve left the table all together.”

Mulvaney said Democrats are no longer negotiating with the administration over an earlier offer to accept less than the $5 billion Trump wants for the wall. Democrats said the White House offered $2.5 billion for border security, but that Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer told Vice President Mike Pence it wasn’t acceptable.

“There’s not a single Democrat talking to the president of the United States about this deal,” Mulvaney said Friday

Speaking on Fox News and later to reporters, he tried to drive a wedge between Democrats, pinning the blame on House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi.

“My gut was that (Schumer) was really interested in doing a deal and coming to some sort of compromise. But the more we’re hearing this week is that it’s Nancy Pelosi who’s preventing that from happening,” he said, alleging that if Pelosi “cuts a deal with the president of any sort before her election on January 3rd she’s at risk of losing her speakership, so we’re in this for the long haul.”

Pelosi has all but locked up the support she needs to win the gavel on Jan. 3 and there is also no sign of daylight between her and Schumer in the negotiations over government funding.

Mulvaney added of the shutdown: “We do expect this to go on for a while.”

Democrats brushed off the White House’s attempt to cast blame.

“For the White House to try and blame anyone but the president for this shutdown doesn’t pass the laugh test,” said Justin Goodman, a spokesman for Schumer.

Pelosi has vowed to pass legislation to reopen the nine shuttered departments and dozens of agencies now hit by the partial shutdown as soon as she takes the gavel, which is expected when the new Congress convenes.

Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill added that Democrats “are united against the President’s immoral, ineffective and expensive wall” and said Democrats won’t seriously consider any White House offer unless Trump backs it publicly because he “has changed his position so many times.”

“While we await the President’s public proposal, Democrats have made it clear that, under a House Democratic Majority, we will vote swiftly to re-open government on Day One,” Hammill said in a statement.

But even that may be difficult without a compromise because the Senate will remain in Republican hands and Trump’s signature will be needed to turn any bill into law.

“I think it’s obvious that until the president decides he can sign something — or something is presented to him — that we are where we are,” said Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., who opened the Senate on Thursday for a session that only lasted minutes.

Trump had said during his campaign that Mexico would pay for his promised wall, but Mexico refuses to do so. It was unclear how Trump’s threat to close the border would affect his efforts to ratify an amended North American free trade pact.

He has repeatedly threatened to cut off U.S. aid to countries that he deems have not done enough to combat illegal immigration, but thus far he’s failed to follow through. Experts have warned that cutting off aid money to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras could actually exacerbate the problem by worsening the poverty and violence that push many migrants to leave.

And it is Congress, not the president, which appropriates aid money.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador reacted cautiously to Trump’s threat to close the border, calling it an “internal affair of the U.S. government.”

“We are always seeking a good relationship with the United States. We do not want to be rash,” he said.

from FOX 4 Kansas City WDAF-TV | News, Weather, Sports https://fox4kc.com/2018/12/28/republicans-and-democrats-trade-blame-for-shutdown-with-no-deal-in-sight/

from Kansas City Happenings https://kansascityhappenings.wordpress.com/2018/12/29/republicans-and-democrats-trade-blame-for-shutdown-with-no-deal-in-sight/

[theconservativebrief]

Sunday marked the beginning of COP24, the latest round of United Nations climate negotiations. Somewhat oddly, the meeting is taking place in Katowice, a small city in Poland that was built on coal mining. Coal still provides 80 percent of Poland’s power and seems to be the visual theme of the event. (Like I said, odd.)

This is the most significant meeting of the parties to the Paris climate agreement since that accord was hammered out in 2015. Though the agreement doesn’t technically go into effect until 2020, the Katowice meetings are meant to encourage early ambition and serve as an informal “stocktake,” a check-in with how countries are doing relative to their upcoming pledges.

As you may have heard, a few significant things have happened in the US since 2015. Among them, Donald Trump was elected president and pledged to withdraw from the Paris agreement. The US cannot formally withdraw until November 5, 2020, just days after the next presidential election, so it’s still a somewhat theoretical threat. Still, it has been enough to affect the course of events.

But how much? How well has the Paris process withstood Trump so far? Among the many other more concrete issues discussed in Katowice, that is sure to be at the top of everyone’s mind.

Here we go again. Sean Gallup/Getty Images

A newly published paper can help us wrap our head around Trump’s damage: “The Paris Climate Agreement Vs. The Trump Effect,” by Joseph Curtin at the Institute of International and European Affairs (IIEA), a Dublin-based climate policy think tank.

But before we dig in the details, let’s recall why the Paris agreement is uniquely vulnerable to Trump’s skullduggery.

The Paris agreement marked a new chapter in international climate negotiations — a sharp break from the past. For decades, the parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, a treaty adopted in 1992, had struggled to develop a legally binding agreement, with formal sanctions for failure.

That never happened, for many reasons, most notably the requirement that any such agreement garner unanimity among almost 200 countries, while the US, among others, was inalterably opposed.

The Paris agreement works differently. I have told that story in detail, but the capsule version is simple: instead of relying on legal or economic sanctions, Paris harnesses the power of transparency and peer pressure.

Each country comes up with its own emissions-reduction pledge, its own “Nationally Determined Contribution,” or NDC. (There are 165 NDCs so far — you can see a list and a map here.) Then, on a rolling five-year basis, there are formal “stocktakes,” in which countries report on their progress.

There’s no sanction for failing to hit your targets. You just have to honestly tell the rest of the world how you’re doing. If you fail to achieve your publicly proclaimed goals, you will be embarrassed and suffer reputational damage.

The idea behind the agreement is that making NDCs voluntary, with no risk of penalties, frees up countries to be less defensive — to just get started. As they do, they will learn and share, prompting a self-reinforcing cycle of rising ambition, driven by bragging rights and encouragement rather than shame and sanction.

IIEA

“It created a new type of institutional arrangement designed to generate momentum for innovation, deployment, learning by doing, new norm creation and general positive encouragement,” Curtin writes, “but without punitive enforcement mechanisms for non-compliance.”

For obvious reasons, an arrangement like this relies on trust and good faith. Countries act because they believe others are going to act. But if a major country, responsible for almost 15 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, craps all over the process and bails out … well, that hurts.

How much?

First, let’s acknowledge that it’s still early days. We’re talking about how a withdrawal that hasn’t happened yet is affecting an agreement that hasn’t gone into effect yet. In terms of the formal legal mechanisms of the Paris agreement, nothing has happened, so obviously Trump has had no effect.

Nonetheless, these years leading up to the formal launch of the treaty are incredibly important for setting expectations and ramping up early ambition. Trump is messing with both.

Curtin breaks down Trump’s effect into three buckets:

1) Trump’s regulatory rollbacks have shifted investment incentives.

Trump has started rolling back every Obama climate regulation he and his people can get their hands on, including the Clean Power Plan, Obama’s program to reduce emissions from existing power plants.

Many of those rollbacks will go through years of rulemaking and court battles before taking effect. (In concrete legal terms, there’s been very little actual deregulation yet.) But one thing Trump and his EPA have guaranteed is a long stretch of regulatory uncertainty and legal chaos. Even if and when his efforts fail in specific cases, he will still have successfully delayed implementation of a whole range of regulations.

Trump delights in witnessing some deregulation. Corey T. Dennis/Environmental Protection Agency

While there are big shifts happening in the energy sector that Trump can’t hope to stop, he can, at the margins, shift investment incentives toward the old (fossil fuels) and away from the new (clean energy).

Right now, activists and shareholders are trying to convince the financial world to pay heed to the danger of “stranded carbon,” i.e., carbon-intensive investments, like coal plants, that will be rendered uneconomic by climate policy. They want companies to disclose that “carbon risk,” and to act on it.

But the threat is premised on the idea that carbon policy will happen. To the extent that the US signals it’s wide open for fossil fuel investments, it will take the edge off that risk.

Curtin writes:

Analysis has found that a sharp flight from the dirtiest fossil fuels investments was reversed in 2017, and that American banks led a race back into unconventional energy. For example, JPMorgan Chase quadrupled its tar sands investments. In the coal sector, among 36 banks surveyed in the same study, investment increased by 6% in 2017 after a 38% drop in 2016. The other side of the same coin is that, according to the IEA, investment in renewables declined by 7% in 2017. Its Executive Director, Dr Fatih Birol, ascribed this to the uncertainties created by politics.

In short, despite the fact that Trump’s rollbacks are more promises than realities today, the US government can affect energy markets, and give fossil fuels a small measure of respite, merely with its promises.

2) Trump’s skullduggery offers other scofflaws political cover.

The Paris agreement relies on fairness. Everyone has to feel like everyone else, or at least most everyone else, is doing their part. Several countries have made pledges that are contingent on other countries matching their ambition. There was enough unanimity in the agreement’s first years that it left holdouts and renegades — of which international climate negotiations has always had its share — few places to hide.

Now that the US is out, though, all bets are off. Curtin writes:

In Australia, the Trump Effect was repeatedly cited to support abandoning legislation to deliver compliance with its Paris pledge. In Turkey, President Erdoğan announced he would not ratify the Paris Agreement, “after that step taken by America.” In Brazil, meanwhile, the newly-elected President, Jair Bolsonaro, tweeted an article defending Trump’s withdrawal the day after the decision, and has promised to follow President Trump by withdrawing Brazil from the Paris Agreement.

Brazil has also rescinded its offer to host climate negotiations next year.

President-elect Jair Bolsonaro, Trump’s buddy in Brazil. Buda Mendes/Getty Images

It’s not just the holdouts, though. There is tension in every government. Japan, Indonesia, Turkey, and South Korea have all lurched in a coal-friendly direction. Russia no doubt wants to sabotage Paris like everything else. Saudi Arabia still likes oil.

Even in China and India, which have stated that they will hold to their targets, developments are mixed and there are internal divisions within government. When the US, the world’s second big emitter, drops out to make as much money as it can on fossil fuels while the world burns, it strengthens the hand of naysayers in every national government.

This weekend, G20 leaders released a joint communiqué in which they all — with the sole exception of the US — pledged to fight climate change. That sends a message to every proto-Trump and mini-Trump the world over.

3) The erosion of trust poisons climate negotiations.

Very few countries are currently on a trajectory to meet their Paris targets. And Trump has likely put to rest the prospect of countries ramping up their pledges before 2020. Many countries will start the formal Paris process already behind.

And pushing them will be difficult when the US is out. For one thing, Obama pledged $3 billion to the Green Climate Fund, which helps developing countries cope with climate change. The US has paid $1 billion and Trump is adamant that not another penny will be forthcoming. There have always been tensions around the fund — it is the main incentive for many poor developing countries to participate — and its shortfall will throw sand in the gears of any talk about boosting ambition.

Everything becomes more difficult when the US refuses to engage in good faith.

How should we add all this up, the full Trump effect?

“At a time when greater speed of decarbonisation is essential,” Curtin writes, “the Trump Effect has clearly applied a brake. On the other hand, it is a mistake to suggest that the Agreement is in crisis, or worse still, that all parties are failing to live up to their commitments.” There are still plenty of countries moving forward aggressively.

A certain presence is sorely missed in climate talks. Eric Feferberg/AFP/Getty Images

There are three key points to add to the above analysis, to put it in perspective. Curtin provides the first two; I’ll add a third.

Point one: The proper comparison is not simply Trump’s effect to its absence. The right comparison is Trump’s effect to what might have happened if the US were being led by a competent administration committed to addressing climate change. The US, led by Hillary Clinton, would be ramping up its own ambition and engaging in Katowice in good faith.

“The US, working in tandem with like-minded partners, could have created much higher political, diplomatic, financial, technological, trade, and moral barriers for defection,” Curtin writes.

That’s the real Trump effect — the distance from that counterfactual.

Point two: The reality is that Trump, on this as on everything else, is not de novo. He is simply the crude and extreme version of the Republican Party — the culmination of longstanding trends on the right.

And it’s the right, specifically the Republican Party, that has had the true effect on international climate negotiations. Curtin summarizes the history:

The decision to withdraw [from Paris] cannot therefore be interpreted as an aberration — in fact, it is consistent with a pattern of Republican Administrations extending back nearly four decades. President Reagan famously declared open war on solar energy, and was determined to reverse as many environment regulations as possible in service of the drilling and mining lobbies. The George H. W. Bush Administration delayed the agreement of a climate treaty in the late 1980s, and at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit refused to commit to specific emissions reductions. A decade later George. W. Bush renounced the Kyoto Protocol. It is for these reasons that Paris is a non-binding Agreement, not a Treaty requiring ratification by the US Senate, and it is for these reason that it has a drawn-out withdrawal process — it was bent into a shape that fits the contours of domestic American politics.

The GOP is alone among major political parties in the world in rejecting mainstream climate science entirely. It has pledged itself openly to fossil fuels. To the extent that a climate agreement requires Republican support, it won’t happen. That’s how it’s been from the beginning. The entire history of international climate negotiations has been “bent into a shape that fits the contours of domestic American politics.”

Bush the younger, expressing his opposition to the Kyoto climate change treaty. The more things change … Mark Wilson/Getty Images

However big the Trump effect, it is only a small part of the GOP effect, which is immeasurably larger. And that’s why the 2020 presidential election won’t necessarily be the end of those effects, even if a Democrat wins. It has now become extremely clear to the entire world that any time the GOP gains control in America — which can obviously happen — all progress on international negotiations will be exploded.

Politically speaking, the US is a Jekyll and Hyde. Other countries don’t know what they’re going to get when they enter into agreements with it.

Point three: That being said, it very much matters for the Paris agreement who is elected US president in 2020. It’s just not clear that Paris could survive another four years of Trump and the US actively working to undermine climate policy and stimulate fossil fuel markets.

The Paris framework was designed to be resilient, to survive defections, but the US is an extremely large and influential defection. If it leaves for good, it will test the agreement’s strength dearly.

Some of your more hysterical US commentators (uh, me) reacted to Trump’s election by writing off Paris’s 2 degree climate target as a lost cause. It’s too early yet to say whether that was prescient or hyperbole. But I will say this: If Trump is reelected, Paris or no Paris, 2 degrees is off the table.

That will be some Trump effect.

Original Source -> The “Trump effect” threatens the future of the Paris climate agreement

via The Conservative Brief

[johnaculbreath]

Judge Alsup’s ‘Flawed Legal Premise’

Judge William Alsup halted the Trump administration’s plan to wind down the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy, because he found that the challengers were “likely to succeed on the merits of their claim that the rescission was based on a flawed legal premise.” But the only “flawed legal premise” in the case was Alsup’s misapplication of Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency (2007). The Supreme Court’s 2007 decision established several important principles of administrative law: For example, states have a “special solicitude” when suing the federal government and the Clean Air Act authorizes the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases. The case did not hold, as Alsup concluded, that an agency decision is “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or not otherwise in accordance with law” if it is merely “based on a flawed legal premise.” Indeed, the operative phrase of Alsup’s opinion, “flawed legal premise,” appears nowhere in Massachusetts v. EPA. I could not find it in any Supreme Court decision for that matter.

As best as I can tell, Alsup made it up. And he put all of his eggs in this “flawed legal premise” basket. His syllogism appears to work like this:

Attorney General Jeff Sessions recommended the decision to rescind DACA based on his legal conclusion that it was implemented “without proper statutory authority” and was “an unconstitutional exercise of authority by the Executive Branch”;

Alsup determined that Sessions was wrong, and in fact, that DACA was “within the statutory and constitutional powers of the Executive Branch”;

Therefore, because Acting DHS Secretary Elaine Duke’s decision to rescind DACA was premised on a “flawed legal premise,” it must be set aside.

But that’s not the correct standard. 5 U.S.C. § 706(2)(A) asks whether an action is “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or not otherwise in accordance with law.” Despite writing a 49-page opinion—replete with citations to several of the president’s tweets about DACA—Alsup offers zero analysis of whether the DACA reversal was “arbitrary” or “capricious” or an “abuse of discretion” or “not otherwise in accordance with law.” In several places, he merely parrots this quartet without elaboration, citing Massachusetts v. EPA. The relevant analysis from that case, however, does not support Alsup’s conclusion that DACA runs afoul of 5 U.S.C. § 706(2)(A).

As recounted by Justice John Paul Stevens, the EPA concluded that regulating greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide exceeded the EPA’s statutory mandate to regulate “emission of any air pollutant” from motor vehicles.  Specifically, the Bush administration contended that because “Congress did not intend it to regulate substances that contribute to climate change … carbon dioxide” should not be considered “an ‘air pollutant’ within the meaning of the provision.” Therefore, the agency argued, it lacked the authority to regulate carbon dioxide as an “air pollutant.” Justice Stevens noted that because “the Clean Air Act expressly permits review of such an action,” the Court “‘may reverse any such action found to be … arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law.’” The Court concluded that the “unambiguous” “statutory text”—which it described as providing a “sweeping definition of ‘air pollutant’”—“forecloses EPA’s reading.”

If indeed “unambiguous” text forecloses the administration’s interpretation of the law, it is quite literally “not in accordance with law.”  Since the EPA was wrong that the statute precluded regulation of greenhouse gases, regulation of such gases fell within the statutory mandate to regulate emissions. The EPA’s failure to even consider regulating greenhouse gases thus rested on an ambiguously wrong reading of the underlying statute. Hence, the EPA’s position was “arbitrary” and “capricious.”

The case for DACA’s legality is in no sense “unambiguous.” I argued long ago that the policy is unlawful, but for purposes of this post, I’ll assume it is a close question. The Obama administration, by its best lights, determined that DACA was legal. In striking down DAPA—the Obama Administration’s other signature immigration initiative—the Fifth Circuit strongly suggested that DACA—the basis of DAPA—was unlawful. As even Alsup was forced to concede, “at least some … [of the Fifth Circuit’s] reasons for holding DAPA illegal would apply to DACA.”  The short-handed Supreme Court divided 4-4 on that appeal, thus affirming the Fifth Circuit. I suspect that either Justice Antonin Scalia or Justice Neil Gorsuch would agree with the Fifth Circuit. The parallels that Alsup acknowledged between DACA and the legally flawed DAPA program demonstrate that the Trump administration’s decision to rescind of the former on legal grounds is not “arbitrary and capricious.” Rather, the Trump administration’s action merely reflects a different judgment about DACA’s legality.

Taken as a whole, the legality of DACA is, charitably, ambiguous. It is well within the executive’s power to wind down a policy whose legality is in such doubt—and the continued defense of that policy poses litigation risks. Under the rule in Massachusetts v. EPA, this action is not “arbitrary” or “capricious” or an “abuse of discretion” or “not otherwise in accordance with law.” There is a critical distinction between the regulation of carbon dioxide in Massachusetts, and the granting of lawful presence under DACA. According to Stevens’s majority opinion, the Clean Air Act unambiguously did not permit the EPA not to regulate greenhouse gases. In contrast, it is at best ambiguous under prevailing legal standards whether the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) supports the granting of lawful presence under DACA in the first place.

And in no sense does the INA prohibit DHS from not granting deferred action status. It is an entirely discretionary act that can be rescinded at any time. The Obama administration chose to provide those benefits to DACA recipients and acknowledged that it could be revoked at any time. Indeed, the fact that the benefits could be revoked was essential to the Office of Legal Counsel’s conclusion that it was lawful. The Trump administration has now chosen to rescind those benefits. The legal question before Alsup was whether DACA was permissible under the INA, not whether it was required. In that sense, Massachusetts v. EPA provides no guidance on DACA’s legality. To enjoin the rescission, the government it is not enough for a single district judge to conclude that Attorney General Sessions was mistaken. Congress did not enact the “arbitrary and capricious” standard to second-guess reasonable legal judgments.

Further, contrary to Alsup’s characterization of the government’s decision, Sessions expressly recognized that the administration had discretion to wind down DACA. It is not the case that the administration erroneously thought that the Obama approach was clearly prohibited by law, and provided no other justifications. Without a doubt, there can be reasonable disagreements concerning DACA’s legality—indeed, the Fifth Circuit has gone one way on the question, and the Ninth Circuit has gone the other way. That is enough for the reversal of DACA to survive review under 5 U.S.C. § 706(2)(A). Alsup’s failed to explain, at all, why Massachusetts v. EPA supports the “flawed legal premise” standard. It doesn’t.

In addition, the deference the President is due when construing his own statutory and constitutional authorities mandates even greater judicial restraint. This latter point is critical: Judge Alsup completely ignored the constitutional justification, focusing exclusively on the statutory question. Attorney General Sessions expressly cited the President’s duty to take care that the laws are faithfully executed, in addition to his construction of the INA. I am unable to think of any decision where a court has ordered a president to exercise discretionary authority he has deemed

Finally, the government argues that the rescission is not even subject to review in the first place, Noah Feldman��agrees, explaining that “it’s difficult to accept that once the government decides not to prosecute or deport someone, it must then justify the decision to change its mind.” He added, “[t]he asymmetry isn’t especially consistent with general principles of administrative law.” Feldman is right, and this argument provides an easy basis for the Supreme Court to summarily vacate and remand Judge Alsup’s ruling. For many reasons, this decision will not stand.

  Cross-Posted at Lawfare

Judge Alsup’s ‘Flawed Legal Premise’ republished via Josh Blackman's Blog

[anchorarcade]

Trump pulls plug on 'Dreamer' immigration program

http://ryanguillory.com/trump-pulls-plug-on-dreamer-immigration-program/

Trump pulls plug on 'Dreamer' immigration program

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump on Tuesday scrapped an Obama-era program that protects from deportation immigrants brought illegally into the United States as children, delaying implementation until March and giving Congress six months to decide the fate of almost 800,000 young people.

As the “Dreamers” who have benefited from the five-year-old program were plunged into uncertainty, business leaders, mayors, Democratic lawmakers, unions and civil liberties advocates condemned Trump’s move.

The action was announced not by the president but by Jeff Sessions, his attorney general, who called the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program an unconstitutional overreach by Democratic former President Barack Obama. There would be an “orderly, lawful wind-down,” Sessions said.

Trump later issued a written statement saying that “I do not favor punishing children, most of whom are now adults, for the actions of their parents. But we must also recognize that we are nation of opportunity because we are a nation of laws.”

The administration said nobody covered by the program, which provided work permits in addition to deportation protection and primarily benefits Hispanics, would be affected before March 5. Most of the people covered by DACA are in their 20s.

By deferring the actual end of the program, Trump effectively kicked responsibility for the fate of those covered by DACA to his fellow Republicans who control Congress. But neither Trump nor Sessions offered details of the type of legislation they would want to see, and Trump’s spokeswoman offered only a broad outline.

Since Trump took office in January, Congress has been unable to pass any major legislation, most notably failing on a healthcare overhaul, and lawmakers have been bitterly divided over immigration in the past.

The looming congressional elections in November 2018 could also complicate prospects for compromise between the two parties and within an ideologically divided Republican Party.

The Democratic attorney general of Massachusetts, Maura Healey, said a coalition of states planned to file suit in the coming days to defend DACA, and one advocacy group announced its own legal action.

“President Trump’s decision to end DACA is a deeply shameful act of political cowardice and a despicable assault on innocent young people in communities across America,” said Nancy Pelosi, the top Democrat in the House of Representatives.

“This is a sad day for our country,” added Facebook Inc (FB.O) founder Mark Zuckerberg. “The decision to end DACA is not just wrong. It is particularly cruel to offer young people the American Dream, encourage them to come out of the shadows and trust our government, and then punish them for it.”

Nearly 800,000 people stepped forward, admitted their illegal immigrant status and provided personal information to the government to apply for the DACA program, and now face the potential of being deported starting in March. The “Dreamers” are a fraction of the roughly 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States, most of whom are Hispanic.

Supporters of the program argue that people covered by it were raised and educated in the United States and integrated into society, with scant ties to their countries of origin. Opponents of DACA argue against amnesty for illegal immigrants and say that such immigrants take jobs from U.S. citizens.

“The cancellation of the DACA program is reprehensible,” the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said in a statement.

Sessions said the action does not mean DACA recipients are “bad people or that our nation disrespects or demeans them in any way.”

Demonstrators protest in front of the White House after the Trump administration today scrapped the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), a program that protects from deportation almost 800,000 young men and women who were brought into the U.S. illegally as children, in Washington, U.S., September 5, 2017. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

“To have a lawful system of immigration that serves the national interest, we cannot admit everyone who would like to come here. It’s just that simple. That would be an open-border policy and the American people have rightly rejected that,” Sessions said.

Ending DACA was the latest action by Trump that is sure to alienate Hispanic Americans, a growing segment of the U.S. population and an increasingly important voting bloc. Most of the immigrants protected by DACA came from Mexico and other Latin American countries.

The Mexican government said it “profoundly laments” the decision to phase out DACA and would strengthen efforts to guarantee consular protections for affected Mexican youth.

THREAT OF SUITS

Elaine Duke, acting head of the Homeland Security Department, issued a memo rescinding DACA. The department will provide a limited window – until Oct. 5 – for some DACA recipients whose work permits expire before March 5 to apply to renew those permits. In addition, the department will adjudicate any new DACA requests, or renewal requests, accepted as of Sept. 5. This would mean that some beneficiaries of DACA could work legally in the country through 2019.

DACA recipients whose work permits expire will be considered to be in the country and eligible for deportation, but will be a low priority for immigration enforcement, administration officials said.

The administration said the president’s decision was prompted in part by a threat from several Republican state attorneys general, led by Texas, to file legal challenges in federal court if Trump did not act to end DACA.

House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan called on lawmakers to find a long-term solution for the young people affected by the reversal of the program.

“At the heart of this issue are young people who came to this country through no fault of their own, and for many of them it’s the only country they know. Their status is one of many immigration issues, such as border security and interior enforcement, which Congress has failed to adequately address over the years,” Ryan said.

Trump made a crackdown on illegal immigrants a centerpiece of his 2016 election campaign and his administration has stepped up immigration arrests. As a presidential candidate Trump promised to deport every illegal immigrant.

Trump, who as recently as Friday said he “loved” the Dreamers, left the DACA announcement to Sessions, with whom the president has had tensions arising from the ongoing investigation into potential collusion between his presidential campaign and Russia.

DACA was devised after the Republican-led Congress failed to pass comprehensive immigration reform that would have created a pathway for citizenship for certain illegal immigrants.

The decision to scrap it is the latest action by Trump to erase key parts of his Democratic predecessor’s legacy.

This includes pulling the United States out of the Paris climate accord, abandoning a 12-nation Pacific trade deal, seeking to dismantle the Obamacare healthcare law, rolling back environmental protections, reversing parts of Obama’s opening to Cuba and removing protections for transgender people.

Graphic on DACA: tmsnrt.rs/2wC83sF

Reporting by Steve Holland and Yeganeh Torbati; Additional reporting by Doina Chiacu, Mica Rosenberg, Makini Brice, Tim Ahmann, Lawrence Hurley, Jonathan Allen and David Alexander; Writing by Will Dunham; Editing by Frances Kerry

Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Source link

[awesomefelicitylewis-blog]

Trump pulls plug on 'Dreamer' immigration program

http://ryanguillory.com/trump-pulls-plug-on-dreamer-immigration-program/

Trump pulls plug on 'Dreamer' immigration program

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump on Tuesday scrapped an Obama-era program that protects from deportation immigrants brought illegally into the United States as children, delaying implementation until March and giving Congress six months to decide the fate of almost 800,000 young people.

As the “Dreamers” who have benefited from the five-year-old program were plunged into uncertainty, business leaders, mayors, Democratic lawmakers, unions and civil liberties advocates condemned Trump’s move.

The action was announced not by the president but by Jeff Sessions, his attorney general, who called the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program an unconstitutional overreach by Democratic former President Barack Obama. There would be an “orderly, lawful wind-down,” Sessions said.

Trump later issued a written statement saying that “I do not favor punishing children, most of whom are now adults, for the actions of their parents. But we must also recognize that we are nation of opportunity because we are a nation of laws.”

The administration said nobody covered by the program, which provided work permits in addition to deportation protection and primarily benefits Hispanics, would be affected before March 5. Most of the people covered by DACA are in their 20s.

By deferring the actual end of the program, Trump effectively kicked responsibility for the fate of those covered by DACA to his fellow Republicans who control Congress. But neither Trump nor Sessions offered details of the type of legislation they would want to see, and Trump’s spokeswoman offered only a broad outline.

Since Trump took office in January, Congress has been unable to pass any major legislation, most notably failing on a healthcare overhaul, and lawmakers have been bitterly divided over immigration in the past.

The looming congressional elections in November 2018 could also complicate prospects for compromise between the two parties and within an ideologically divided Republican Party.

The Democratic attorney general of Massachusetts, Maura Healey, said a coalition of states planned to file suit in the coming days to defend DACA, and one advocacy group announced its own legal action.

“President Trump’s decision to end DACA is a deeply shameful act of political cowardice and a despicable assault on innocent young people in communities across America,” said Nancy Pelosi, the top Democrat in the House of Representatives.

“This is a sad day for our country,” added Facebook Inc (FB.O) founder Mark Zuckerberg. “The decision to end DACA is not just wrong. It is particularly cruel to offer young people the American Dream, encourage them to come out of the shadows and trust our government, and then punish them for it.”

Nearly 800,000 people stepped forward, admitted their illegal immigrant status and provided personal information to the government to apply for the DACA program, and now face the potential of being deported starting in March. The “Dreamers” are a fraction of the roughly 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States, most of whom are Hispanic.

Supporters of the program argue that people covered by it were raised and educated in the United States and integrated into society, with scant ties to their countries of origin. Opponents of DACA argue against amnesty for illegal immigrants and say that such immigrants take jobs from U.S. citizens.

“The cancellation of the DACA program is reprehensible,” the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said in a statement.

Sessions said the action does not mean DACA recipients are “bad people or that our nation disrespects or demeans them in any way.”

Demonstrators protest in front of the White House after the Trump administration today scrapped the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), a program that protects from deportation almost 800,000 young men and women who were brought into the U.S. illegally as children, in Washington, U.S., September 5, 2017. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

“To have a lawful system of immigration that serves the national interest, we cannot admit everyone who would like to come here. It’s just that simple. That would be an open-border policy and the American people have rightly rejected that,” Sessions said.

Ending DACA was the latest action by Trump that is sure to alienate Hispanic Americans, a growing segment of the U.S. population and an increasingly important voting bloc. Most of the immigrants protected by DACA came from Mexico and other Latin American countries.

The Mexican government said it “profoundly laments” the decision to phase out DACA and would strengthen efforts to guarantee consular protections for affected Mexican youth.

THREAT OF SUITS

Elaine Duke, acting head of the Homeland Security Department, issued a memo rescinding DACA. The department will provide a limited window – until Oct. 5 – for some DACA recipients whose work permits expire before March 5 to apply to renew those permits. In addition, the department will adjudicate any new DACA requests, or renewal requests, accepted as of Sept. 5. This would mean that some beneficiaries of DACA could work legally in the country through 2019.

DACA recipients whose work permits expire will be considered to be in the country and eligible for deportation, but will be a low priority for immigration enforcement, administration officials said.

The administration said the president’s decision was prompted in part by a threat from several Republican state attorneys general, led by Texas, to file legal challenges in federal court if Trump did not act to end DACA.

House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan called on lawmakers to find a long-term solution for the young people affected by the reversal of the program.

“At the heart of this issue are young people who came to this country through no fault of their own, and for many of them it’s the only country they know. Their status is one of many immigration issues, such as border security and interior enforcement, which Congress has failed to adequately address over the years,” Ryan said.

Trump made a crackdown on illegal immigrants a centerpiece of his 2016 election campaign and his administration has stepped up immigration arrests. As a presidential candidate Trump promised to deport every illegal immigrant.

Trump, who as recently as Friday said he “loved” the Dreamers, left the DACA announcement to Sessions, with whom the president has had tensions arising from the ongoing investigation into potential collusion between his presidential campaign and Russia.

DACA was devised after the Republican-led Congress failed to pass comprehensive immigration reform that would have created a pathway for citizenship for certain illegal immigrants.

The decision to scrap it is the latest action by Trump to erase key parts of his Democratic predecessor’s legacy.

This includes pulling the United States out of the Paris climate accord, abandoning a 12-nation Pacific trade deal, seeking to dismantle the Obamacare healthcare law, rolling back environmental protections, reversing parts of Obama’s opening to Cuba and removing protections for transgender people.

Graphic on DACA: tmsnrt.rs/2wC83sF

Reporting by Steve Holland and Yeganeh Torbati; Additional reporting by Doina Chiacu, Mica Rosenberg, Makini Brice, Tim Ahmann, Lawrence Hurley, Jonathan Allen and David Alexander; Writing by Will Dunham; Editing by Frances Kerry

Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Source link

[stogutrosenberry]

UCS tallies assaults on science during Trump’s first six months

Members of the public health community are aware of many of the ways the Trump administration and the 115th Congress are hindering and reversing evidence-based actions for public health – from an executive order requiring agencies to scrap two regulations each time they create a new one to advancing legislation that would make it harder for EPA to obtain and use the most up-to-date science in its work. With so many threats to public health arising each month, it can be hard to catch all of them, though. The Union of Concerned Scientists has performed a tremendous service by producing the report Sidelining Science from Day One: How the Trump Administration Has Harmed Public Health and Safety in Its First Six Months.

The authors of the UCS report – Jacob Carter, Gretchen Goldman, Genna Reed, Peter Hansel, Michael Halpern, and Andrew Rosenberg – remind us it’s so important for the US government to encourage, conduct, and make use of science:

Research in the 1970s about the neurological effects of lead on children resulted in policies to phase-out its use in paint and gasoline. Research on chemicals and metals has improved the quality of our air, water, and soil. Research on infectious diseases has saved innumerable lives by helping governments prevent or anticipate responses to future outbreaks. Advancements in technology have made household appliances, automobiles, and other consumer products safer, cleaner, and more cost-effective and energy-efficient. Government science has improved weather predictions, and climate studies have helped communities across the United States prepare for rising sea levels, drought, extreme heat, and other impacts of climate change.

All modern presidents have politicized science to some degree, they write, but “these threats to the federal scientific enterprise have escalated markedly” under the Trump administration. Here’s their summary of the current situation:

President Trump and his advisors and appointees, along with allied members of Congress, have willfully distorted scientific information, targeted scientists for doing their jobs, impeded scientists’ ability to conduct research, limited access to taxpayer-funded scientific information, disregarded the science in science-based policies, and rolled back science-based protections aimed at advancing public health. They have appointed officials with severe conflicts of interest to oversee industries to which they are tied, and, in some cases, they now lead agencies they have previously disparaged or even sued. They have dismissed climate science despite overwhelming evidence of the devastating impacts of climate change. And they have restricted agencies from considering scientific evidence fully in the decision-making process. Further, the president’s budget blueprints reveal the administration’s desire to scrap investments in basic data collection and research at major agencies, threatening the government’s ability to enforce our nation’s public health and environmental laws.

  Attacking work on climate and other aspects of public health It’s not a surprise that many of the harmful actions the report describes focus on climate change. These include the cancelation of CDC’s Climate and Health Summit; temporary media blackouts focused on agencies doing climate work; instructing employees at the Energy Department’s Office of International Climate and Clean Energy to avoid using the term “climate change” in written communications; removing language on climate change and sea level rise from a press release on new work by US Geological Survey scientists; failing to link greenhouse gas emissions and human activity in a NOAA news release; and an executive order reversing and stalling multiple climate-related policies from the Obama administration. And, of course, President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement will have grave consequences for public health.

The UCS report also catalogs some of the many public-health regulations that the Trump administration has delayed, with serious consequences for those who work with hazardous substances and live in communities with high levels of pollution. For instance, the administration is re-reviewing regulation of vehicle emissions standards; delayed implementation of the Risk Management Plan program intended to prevent disasters like the deadly fertilizer facility fire in West, Texas; put off the effective date of a regulation to better protect workers exposed to beryllium; rejected a petition to ban the pesticide chlorpyrifos, which studies have linked to neurodevelopmental problems; delayed enforcement of a rule to reduce workers’ exposure to lung-destroying crystalline silica; delayed implementation of a 2015 ozone pollution rule; and made chemical-industry-friendly changes to EPA rules implementing the updated Toxic Substances Control Act.

Although environmental and occupational health got the brunt of anti-regulatory fervor, other aspects of public health haven’t gone unscathed. The Department of Health and Human Services quietly removed a question about sexual identity from a survey of older individuals and abruptly terminated multi-year projects on teen pregnancy prevention. FDA has indefinitely delayed rollout of a nutrition label that reports added sugars. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has declined to renew the National Commission on Forensic Sciences that the Obama administration created in 2013.

Executive Order 13771, which instructs federal agencies to rescind two existing regulations each time it adopts a new one, considers the financial costs of regulations without appropriately recognizes their public-health benefits – and will mean fewer health-protective regulations overall. Public Citizen, NRDC, and Communications Workers of America have sued to block it.

In some cases, Congress and the administration have worked together to roll back public health protections and make it harder for public health agencies to do their jobs. Congress passed and Trump signed laws rescinding the Obama administration’s Stream Protection Rule, which limited the dumping of coal mine waste into streams, and Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces rule, which sought to reduce the extent to which federal contracts are awarded to companies engage in wage theft or violate laws on workplace safety.

The House has also passed the REINS Act, which would require regulations with $100 million in projected annual impact to be reviewed by a political appointee before taking effect; the HONEST Act and EPA Science Advisory Board Reform Act, which would make it much harder for EPA to receive and use up-to-date scientific advice and information; and the Regulatory Accountability Act, which would significantly disrupt the science-based rulemaking process at all agencies.

  Making life harder for federal scientists

The day before the six-month mark of the Trump administration, federal employee Joel Clement took a brave and important step. With an opinion column in the Washington Post, he blew the whistle on the Trump administration’s involuntary reassignment of dozens of senior Department of Interior employees. Clement writes:

Nearly seven years ago, I came to work for the Interior Department, where, among other things, I’ve helped endangered communities in Alaska prepare for and adapt to a changing climate. But on June 15, I was one of about 50 senior department employees who received letters informing us of involuntary reassignments. Citing a need to “improve talent development, mission delivery and collaboration,” the letter informed me that I was reassigned to an unrelated job in the accounting office that collects royalty checks from fossil fuel companies.

I am not an accountant — but you don’t have to be one to see that the administration’s excuse for a reassignment such as mine doesn’t add up. A few days after my reassignment, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke testified before Congress that the department would use reassignments as part of its effort to eliminate employees; the only reasonable inference from that testimony is that he expects people to quit in response to undesirable transfers. Some of my colleagues are being relocated across the country, at taxpayer expense, to serve in equally ill-fitting jobs.

I believe I was retaliated against for speaking out publicly about the dangers that climate change poses to Alaska Native communities. During the months preceding my reassignment, I raised the issue with White House officials, senior Interior officials and the international community, most recently at a U.N. conference in June. It is clear to me that the administration was so uncomfortable with this work, and my disclosures, that I was reassigned with the intent to coerce me into leaving the federal government.

Clement has filed a complaint with the US Office of Special Counsel, but we don’t need to wait for their decision to know that the environment has grown harsher for federal employees whose work involves science. The UCS report notes that the House of Representatives’ revival of the 1876 Holman Rule, which allows members of Congress to target specific federal offices or employees for elimination and reduce an individual employee’s salary, can create a climate in which federal employees feel pressured to avoid releasing information or issuing regulations that members of Congress are known dislike. Congress may also get distorted information from federal agencies if political appointees pressure agency employees or advisors to revise their testimony – something that happened to EPA Science Advisory Board’s Deborah Swackhamer as she prepared to testify to the House Science Committee on the role of states in environmental policy. And, when scientists are told not to attend conferences – for instance, the Alaska Forum on the Environment or an international conference on nuclear energy – it makes it harder for them to stay current and connected in their fields. Throw in a few political appointees who are underqualified and antagonistic to the agency’s work, and you’ve got a climate that seems engineered to demoralize federal employees involved with science.

  Moving forward

As the UCS report notes, members of the scientific and public-health communities are mobilizing to defend federal science and evidence-based rulemaking against recent attacks. Carter and his co-authors write:

Recognizing the stakes, scientists and science supporters are speaking up, taking advantage of the momentum of successful marches and new opportunities for political engagement. Scientists and science supporters are connecting the administration’s actions to consequences for public health and the environment. By understanding current and evolving threats and taking advantage of new vehicles for advocacy, we can defend the scientific enterprise our democracy depends on and preserve the public health, safety, security, and environmental protections that make our nation great. Scientists and science supporters, Congress, and the media can all play a role.

They make recommendations for scientists and science supporters, Congress, and the media:

Scientists and science supporters should scrutinize administration and congressional actions and sound the alarm when science is misused. They can also play a unique role in articulating to others the importance of science in our daily lives. Communicating the importance of science and science-based policies to the public and decisionmakers is crucial to fighting attacks on science in this highly charged political environment.

Congress should use its oversight authorities to investigate and hold accountable the administration for actions that threaten scientific integrity and science-based policies, and it should act to protect whistleblowers. With the growing trend of abuses against science in the Trump administration, Congress must exercise its full authority as a check against the executive branch. Also, Congress should pass legislation to better protect federal scientists and the integrity of science in our federal agencies.

Journalists must continue to hold administration officials and members of Congress accountable for their words and actions and investigate cases of suppressing, misrepresenting, manipulating, or otherwise politicizing science, along with related allegations of wrongdoing in our federal government. The media should seek out scientists as sources when possible and call out agencies that place unnecessary barriers on communications between journalists and government scientists.

Without strong action to oppose current assaults on science, it will only become harder to address threats to public health from infectious diseases, pollutants, and unsafe consumer products. Agency efforts to encourage healthier behaviors and built environments may see recent gains reversed and future progress stalled. Responding to the threats described in the the UCS reports is essential for the health of future generations.

To download a copy of Sidelining Science from Day One and see an interactive timeline of Trump Administration and Congressional Actions, visit the UCS website.

  Related posts Scientists join case against Trump’s 2 for 1 regulatory order (June 6) Paris and profits (June 6) Sad to be an American, grieving for Mother Earth and her people (June 1) Revolving door from chemical industry to EPA: No way to boost public confidence (April 20) Formaldehyde, scientists, and politics (April 19) House passes bills that will make it harder for EPA to protect public health (April 11) Health organizations warn about “regulatory reform” bills sweeping Congress (March 8) Scientific Integrity Act: Protecting the government science that protects all of us (February 27) Work for an agency? Have something to leak? (February 8) One step forward, two steps back. Dire consequences from Trump’s edict on regulations (January 30)

Article source:Science Blogs

[lodelss]

Power Up

Livia Gershon | Longreads | November 2019 | 7 minutes (1,863 words)

My family’s natural gas-fired furnace is 23 years old. That’s aged; the average lifespan of a system like ours is 15 to 20 years. I live in New Hampshire, which gets awfully cold in the winter and, every October, I wonder whether we’ll make it to March. If the furnace fails this year and we replace it with another one like it, we’re committing to burning fossil fuels until about 2042. If my household switches to electricity, which is better for the environment than what we’ve got, our gas bills will nearly double, to around $2,800 every year. Recently, I called Bill Wenzel, who owns a geothermal heating business the next town over from me.

A geothermal heat pump is like a refrigerator in reverse. A hole is drilled deep into the ground, where the temperature remains steady at 55-ish degrees, then the system warms up the air some more and pumps it through the house. Wenzel told me that one of his systems would probably cut my heating bill in half. It would also provide essentially free air-conditioning, since it can circulate 55-degree air in the summer, too. The trouble is that, including the cost of drilling a bore hole, installing a geothermal system would run $30,000, compared with something like $4,000 to just throw in new gas furnace.

New Hampshire does not encourage geothermal heating with climate-conscious tax breaks or environmental subsidies. There is a federal renewable energy tax credit that would reduce the cost to me by 30 percent, but it’s slated to phase out over the next several years unless Congress takes action. Wenzel said that he does most of his business over the border in Massachusetts, where a hodgepodge of state incentives, combined with the federal credit, cut the price in half and provide no-interest financing. “New Hampshire stinks,” he told me. “That’s why I’m selling a lot in Massachusetts.”

When we think about the climate crisis, we tend to think on two levels: a global one, where the players are nations and international bodies, and an individual one, where we’re asked to make personal changes that, in theory, add up to collective transformation. But in the United States, we know that the federal government is a disaster, and it’s hard not to feel like making an individual choice is more about relieving guilt than it is about real change. If I squint, I could almost make the math work on a geothermal system by moving to another state—here in New Hampshire, not so much. And even if my family wanted to suck it up and spend thousands of dollars on green heating, we’d know, deep down, that it wouldn’t make the slightest difference to polar bears or climate refugees. Wenzel told me that a lot of people make the same calculation.

Still, from the case of my home-heating system, it quickly became clear: at the moment, the most significant place for climate action in this country is at the state level. Lately, states have been passing a wave of ambitious climate legislation, not just in Massachusetts, but also, this year alone, in Colorado, Maine, Washington, New Jersey, and New Mexico. Groups like the Sierra Club; the Union of Concerned Scientists; and 350.org, an international climate action nonprofit, have supported those laws. “As soon as Trump was elected to office, it was really clear that attention needed to shift to the states,” Emily Southard, US Fossil Free Campaign manager at 350.org, told me. Local organizations with connections in state houses have pushed their governments to address the climate crisis; some of the same has happened in cities, too. “Your traditional green groups that might do more insider lobbying have moved with frontline groups that are seeing the first-hand impacts, whether it be polluted air or water from the fossil fuel industry,” Southard went on. “They can speak to different elected officials in different ways, and can hold their feet to the fire.”

***

The best recent example of state-level progress is the passage of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA), signed into law by Andrew Cuomo, New York’s governor, in July. Southard told me that it contains the strongest emission standards in the country. The force behind the CLCPA was NY Renews—a coalition of more than 180 environmental, social justice, faith, and labor organizations—that demanded not just an end to the burning of fossil fuels but also a sincere investment in green infrastructure. Of particular focus, they argued, had to be poor areas and communities of color, where environmental problems tend to hit the hardest. An estimate by the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst predicts that a plan on the scale of the CLCPA can create more than 160,000 steady jobs in renewable energy and energy efficiency; in New York, at least 35 percent of investments in housing and public transit will go to low-income or otherwise “disadvantaged” communities.

As soon as Trump was elected to office, it was really clear that attention needed to shift to the states.

  How will the CLCPA affect life in the state of New York? “You would expect to see a ton of additional public transportation—bus lines, maybe light rail—so that you and your family would not need to rely as much on your vehicle,” Arielle Swernoff, of NY Renews, told me. “In terms of the health of your community, you’d be looking at better air quality. Rates of asthma would go down. In terms of jobs and industry, solar and wind and renewable jobs tend to be much more stable than fossil fuel jobs; maybe your neighbors would be working in renewable energy.”

Swernoff said that the vision for the CLCPA was based on that of PUSH Buffalo, a founding member of NY Renews. PUSH—which stands for “People United for Sustainable Housing”—lobbied the State House for the legislation’s passage; many of those involved had already been doing work that the new law will expand, such as installing renewable power systems and weatherizing homes. Rahwa Ghirmatzion, PUSH Buffalo’s executive director, told me that when the group formed, 14 years ago, it didn’t have a focus on climate; the initiative grew out of a 400-person community meeting. “Most worked in service-industry, minimum-wage jobs,” Ghirmatzion recalled. They talked about how winter wind leaked into their apartments and how, during the cold months, they sometimes paid more for their utilities than their mortgages. Yet there were plenty of skilled construction workers, handymen, and plumbers in the community, plus empty houses and vacant lots.

In the years that followed, PUSH Buffalo used tactics like civil disobedience to force the local fuel monopoly to fund weatherization. With additional money from the 2009 federal stimulus and a 2012 New York State law that it also lobbied to pass, the group renovated more homes with the best available solar power and geothermal systems. PUSH opened a “hiring hall” for green-construction workers and started training Buffalo residents returning from prison and young people not on a college track. They’re now planning a 50-unit project with a zero-carbon footprint that includes supportive housing for people with substance-use disorders and mental illness. “We thread workforce through every single component,” Ghirmatzion said.

Organizers such as these draw connections between local needs and the global climate crisis; they’re effective lobbyists for state regulation because they’re looking out for their livelihood. The steps can be incremental, to be sure; Swernoff said that NY Renews will have to keep fighting for real progress. Currently on the agenda: getting the state to pay for its energy transition by setting a penalty for polluting industries and influencing appointments to the Climate Action Council, the body charged with implementing the CLCPA. Some member organizations are also fighting a fossil fuel pipeline. Overall, though, she has a sense of hope. “It’s really easy to just get discouraged by the lack of action at the federal level, and I feel and understand that, but I think it’s really critical that states are taking these steps,” Swernoff said. “The work that we’ve done, and that other states have done, figuring out policies, figuring out how this works, are also impactful.”

***

Setting a goal doesn’t guarantee reaching it. In California, a national leader in climate legislation, implementation has been a serious challenge. From 2016 to 2017, for instance, the state reduced carbon emissions by just 1.15 percent and, according to Next 10, a nonprofit that monitors California’s climate efforts, if that pace continues, the state won’t reach its 2030 goal until 2061. James Sweeney, a professor of management science and engineering at Stanford University, told me that California has made strong progress when it comes to generating electricity from renewable sources, but that conventional vehicles and agricultural emissions remain a problem. “The bottom line is that California set very ambitious goals, but then you measure the actual progress toward those goals, the progress is not as dramatic as the goals set,” he said.

Everything we do determines just how bad the problem becomes.

The key to meaningful change, Southard told me, is grassroots engagement. Almost every state battle on environmental legislation has come down to the work of people who have felt the stakes of the climate crisis—those who lost their homes in New York during Hurricane Sandy in 2012, or in California during the devastating recent fires. Southard, who is based in Denver, told me that much of the attention in her state is on fracking; climate activists have formed alliances with other local interest groups for whom the environmental consequences are personal. “Here in Colorado there’s been a real coming together of those diverse constituencies,” she said, “to make sure any climate legislation isn’t just about a renewable energy standard—where it might mean that we’re putting a lot of solar on rooftops but we’re not closing down a coal-fired plant in a people-of-color community.”

In New Hampshire, for the past two years, Chris Sununu, my state’s governor, has vetoed bills that would have helped develop a more robust renewable energy industry. But the climate movement is growing here, too. In September, in the state’s biggest environmental protest since the seventies, a group of 67 activists got themselves arrested while demanding the shutdown of one of the last coal-fired power plants in New England. Sununu, a Republican, remains resistant to climate action, yet it’s not hard to imagine that, as in other states, the environmental movement would expand and join forces with other grassroots forces to craft a comprehensive plan he can’t ignore. Maybe my aged furnace will even hold out long enough that, by the time it dies, a geothermal system installed by well-paid local workers will be a viable option.

When contemplating the climate crisis, it’s easy to get stuck; even the best signs of progress we’ve got might not be enough. But everything we do determines just how bad the problem becomes; Southard said that state and local action can provide a template for federal laws—so far in the 2020 campaigns, there’s been lots of talk about ambitious plans to help the U.S. reduce its monstrous carbon footprint—and they also matter on their own. As she told me, “Every time a municipality or a state is passing climate action, then it’s knitting together this massive framework which we need to truly address the climate crisis.”

***

Livia Gershon is a freelance journalist based in New Hampshire. She has written for the Guardian, the Boston Globe, HuffPost, Aeon and other places.

Editor: Betsy Morais

Fact-checker: Samantha Schuyler

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Here’s What The First 100 Day Of A GOP Presidency Could Look Like

The various GOP presidential hopefuls, like all politicians since time immemorial, have made a lot of promises this campaign season. Here are some of the things they’ve vowed to do if they make it to the White House.

Reverse action on climate change.

Republicans across the board have sworn to roll back the country’s efforts to mitigate climate change, despite polls showing that a majority of Americans are in favor of addressing the problem. First to go would be the Clean Power Plan, which the Environmental Protection Agency announced in August. The plan would cut carbon emissions to 32 percentage below 2005 levels by 2030 and enable the U.S. to meet its current commitments to the United Nations.

Every GOP candidate running for chairman has come out against the Clean Power Plan. Even former New York Gov. George Pataki, who has supported other measures to rein in climate change, told Bloomberg in August that the Clean Power Plan “is a classic top-down, government-imposed solution” that will “result in higher costs of energy[ and] an increase in the vulnerability of the electrical supply, and I think it’s just completely wrong.”

Other candidates have taken a harder line against the Clean Power Plan, and indeed against all executive actions taken by President Barack Obama.

“If you live by the pen, you die by the pen, ” Sen. Ted Cruz( Texas) told The Washington Post in June for an article about what his first 100 days would look like. So there’s that.

Repeal Obamacare.

After two years of sign-ups following the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, more than 16 million people now have health insurance who didn’t have it before. But every GOP candidate except Ohio Gov. John Kasich has promised to repeal Obamacare — though for the most proportion, they’ve been pretty vague about what would take its place.

“[ I’d] figure out a way to repeal Obamacare, ” former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said at a roundtable in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, this May, responding to a question about actions he’d take in his first 100 days. “I think repealing Obamacare and replacing it with a 21 st-century consumer-directed, patient-driven health care insurance system has to be a high, high priority.”

Deport, deport, deport.

Last year, Obama bolstered the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and initiated a new one: Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents. These actions would defer the prosecution of children arrivals to the U.S. for two years and allow the parents of any U.S. citizen or resident to live and work in the country without anxiety of expulsion — meaning that 6. 3 million U.S. citizens wouldn’t have to see their families dismantled.

But the Republican presidential candidates have opposed this, for the most proportion characterizing it as executive overreach, a la Cruz, who called the measure “patently unconstitutional.”

Real estate mogul Donald Trump has been the most aggressive nominee on immigration. He has repeatedly promised that his plan to lead the forceful removal of 11 million immigrants, reminiscent of a 1954 program called “Operation Wetback, ” would be done in “a very humane way.” Experts tell that’s not possible.

Win McNamee/ Getty Images Demonstrators appeal to the Supreme Court to implement President Obama’s immigration reforms.

Make America “great” again, and stimulate China a loser.

On Trump’s campaign website, the candidate have committed themselves to take swift action against China for not playing fair: “On day one of the Trump administration the U.S. Treasury Department will designate China as a currency manipulator.”

Democrats like Sen. Charles Schumer( N.Y .) would exult. He and many in Congress agree that China’s intervention in the world’s currency market is stifling U.S. exports and costing the country millions of manufacturing tasks.

China purposely devalues its currency — which should be traded at the highest rates, because it’s in greatest demand by all the countries that need to buy China’s exportations in the local currency — by using its massive reserves to buy up U.S. dollars. This lowers the supply of the dollar compared to the Chinese yuan, which induces U.S. exportations more expensive, and therefore tougher to sell.

The U.S. trade deficit “has increased by $ 200 billion to $500 billion per year as a result, ” according to a 2012 report by the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “The United States has lost 1 million to 5 million jobs due to this foreign currency manipulation.”

Earlier this year, the International Monetary Fund declared China’s currency “fairly valued.”

Remind Congress that it’s super important for everyone to get along.

In response to a question about how his first three months in office would be unique, former neurosurgeon Ben Carson told at a National Press Club event that he would call a joint session of Congress to address hyper-partisanship in the legislature, emphasizing the importance of Judeo-Christian values.

“We’ve gotten to the point which is something we believe that if somebody disagrees with you, then you need to try to destroy them, destroy their family and their subsistence, ” Carson told. “Where did that come from? I assure you, it did not come from our Judeo-Christian values and roots.”

Wage yet another war against same-sex marriage.

This summer, a week after the Supreme court ruled in favor of marriage equality, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said he would not accept the ruling.

“I reject this decision and will oppose from ‘Day One’ of my administration to defend our Constitution and protect religious autonomy, ” Huckabee told of the Supreme Court’s ruling in a press release.

On his website, Huckabee promises to push for a constitutional amendment to define marriage as between one man and one woman.

Those endeavours would likely be a waste of time, since a constitutional amendment requires a two-third majority in Congress — or in a state election — and same-sex marriage currently enjoys record-high supporting among Americans.

George Frey/ Getty Images Demonstrators protest new anti-gay policies from the Mormon church.

Roll out the red carpet for Wall street, and let them wipe their feet on consumers.

Everyone in the GOP field has promised to repeal the Dodd-Frank Act, which put into place a package of Wall street regulations following the 2008 fiscal meltdown. Dodd-Frank also established the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to act as an arbiter for the public in the face of unscrupulous business practices.

In July, Carson wrote in a Washington Hour op-ed that the CFPB is “the ultimate example of regulatory overreach, a nanny state mechanism asserting its control over everyday Americans that they did not want, did not ask for and do not need.”

For what it’s worth, the CFPB has secured over $10 billion in relief for customers since its creation in 2011. It’s currently addressing the student indebtednes crisis by suing for-profit colleges for fraud and taking on the country’s largest student loan company for allegedly cheating borrowers.

Reduce college student loan debt by discouraging liberal arts degrees.

Sen. Marco Rubio( Fla .), who has voted consistently against Dodd-Frank and the CFPB, said in November that within his first 100 days as chairman, he would deal with the student indebtednes issue by adjusting the academic accreditation system to incentivize low-cost training of professions like welding, rather than doctrine degrees, for example.

Renege on the Iran deal.

GOP candidates Rubio, Cruz, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina and former Sen. Rick Santorum( Pa .) have all promised to instantly undo an international agreement that lifts fiscal imposing sanctions on Iran in exchange for constraints on uranium enrichment programs entail for the development of atomic weapons.

Expressing dissatisfaction with the deal in September, Fiorina said the first thing she’d do in the Oval Office would be to stimulate two phone calls. The first would be to reassure Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of America’s support. The second would be a message to Iran’s supreme leader: “Until you open every nuclear and every military facility to full, open, anytime, anywhere, for-real inspections, we are going to make it as difficult as is practicable for you to move fund around the global fiscal system.”

Chip Somodevilla/ Getty Images Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fulfills with U.S. Senate leaders following the Iran nuclear bargain.

End mass government surveillance?

Rand Paul’s staunch opposition to the government collecting metadata from U.S. citizens is one reason the Kentucky senator may not win the Republican nomination in a time of heightened fear over national security. To date, he’s been the only person in the fields who’s was contended that privacy should win out.

“The president generated this vast dragnet by executive order, ” Paul said at the beginning of his campaign. “As president, on day one, I will instantly objective this unconstitutional surveillance.”

Boost cybersecurity, somehow.

Carson has said he would prioritize stiffening cybersecurity, although he’s been less specific about it than some critics would like.

“We must immediately hardened our electrical grid and have multiple layers of alternative energy, ” Carson told The Washington Examiner in September. “That’s critical … We also must beef up our cyber abilities both offensive and defensive.”

Keep former lawmakers from running straight to K Street.

Pataki has taken a strong stance on eliminating the “revolving door” between lawmakers and lobbyists, though he’s in the minority as far as actually making this a campaign issue.

In September, Pataki said he would “propose a law on day one” of his presidency: “You serve the working day in the House or Senate, there’s a lifetime forbid on you ever being a lobbyist in Washington , D.C.”

Invade Chinese airspace with Air force One.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie would solve U.S. challenges with China by flying Air force One over military installments in the South China Sea to show them “we mean business.”

At the undercard GOP debate in November, Christie said this would be the first thing he would do when it comes to China — surely a smart way to establish a good rapport with the United States’ primary trading partner.

Send Vladimir Putin a message — that we’re gonna keep doing what we’ve been doing.

Fiorina pledged at a town hall meeting in August to address the threat of Russia by “rebuild[ ing] the 6th Fleet, ” a part of the U.S. Navy that conducts operations in Europe and Asia. But as Vox’s Ezra Klein points out, the 6th Fleet doesn’t actually need rebuilding. In fact, most of what Fiorina has promised to do regarding Russia in her first 100 days, including starting military exercises in the Baltic States and putting more troops in Germany, are things the Obama administration is doing or has already done.

Balance the budget, by sheer force-out of will.

Never fear! Amid all the flurry, Kasich has promised he’ll was also able to balance the budget, using … methods.

“I spent my entire lifetime balancing federal budgets, growing tasks, the same in Ohio. And I will go back to Washington with my plan. And I will have done it within 100 days, and it will pass, and we will be strong again, ” Kasich said during an October GOP debate. “Thank you.”

No, governor, thank you.

Actual Strategy From A Leaked GOP Memo — We Didn’t Make These Up

Actual Strategy From A Leaked GOP Memo — We Didn’t Make These Up

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Chiles new route of parks aims to save the wild beauty of Patagonia

The country has just added 11m acres of land to the national parks

The road to Parque Pumaln is festooned with dozens of whitewater waterfalls that slip down the steep cliffs into a thick forest overrun by ferns and plants with leaves as big as beach umbrellas. An active volcano threatens to wipe out the sparse human settlements that are scattered like frontier outposts, often holding populations of fewer than 100 residents. The scenery, however, suddenly changes at El Amarillo, a town of perfect picket fences, exquisitely designed bridges and hand-lettered wooden signs offering help on camping and trekking.

It is here that a 25-year experiment in environmental conservation is finally coming to fruition. Parque Pumaln is a million-acre collection of untrammelled vistas and valleys that was patched together by a pair of American conservationists whose mission, known as wildlands philanthropy, was to keep the lands free from industrial development.

Chile’s national parks

After decades of cajoling urban residents, multinational businesses and small farmers to colonise and exploit these corners of wild Patagonia, the Chilean government has made a U-turn and announced a massive conservation campaign. Spurred by the gift of Parque Pumaln, which is the largest private donation of land to a government in Latin America, the Chilean president, Michelle Bachelet, signed an agreement to create five new national parks and join the million acres of Pumaln with 10 million acres of federal land. All this land will be placed under strict environmental protection as newly designated national parklands.

The protected areas are 5,000 times the size of Manhattans Central Park and include volcanoes, virgin forests and miles of wild coastline. Even the combined size of Yosemite and Yellowstone national parks would be less than one third of the land preserved by Bachelet.

Standing before glacier-topped mountains and steep granite faces reminiscent of Yosemite, Bachelet praised US philanthropists Doug Tompkins and Kristine McDivitt Tompkins for their decades-long campaign to preserve swaths of wild Patagonia. Doug Tompkins, who died in a kayak accident in December 2015, was singled out by Bachelet as a visionary who battled accusations and attempts to sabotage his conservation dream. Doug, we did it and I should say, we finally did it, said Bachelet, as she signed an accord to convert Tompkins private Parque Pumaln into a Chilean national park. Today, she said, we are bequeathing to the country the greatest creation of protected areas in our history.

Yvon Chouinard, the founder of clothing company Patagonia and long-time climbing partner of Tompkins, was ecstatic as he watched the announcement, noting that in a single day Chile had jumped into the ranks of countries with the highest percentage of protected lands. That puts Chile right up there with Costa Rica in terms of the percentage of protected lands, said Chouinard, who described the donations by Tompkins Conservation as historic. No other human has ever created this many acres of protected wildlands [through private philanthropy] and he did not do it with the stroke of a pen. These are tourist-ready parks with trails and cabins and infrastructure.

Kristine McDivitt Tompkins smiled broadly as she addressed hundreds of environmental activists, local residents and park employees at the entrance to the new national park. I wish my husband Doug, whose vision inspired todays historic pledge, were here on this memorable day. Our team and I feel his absence deeply, she said. National parks exist in almost every country in the world. God knows what form they are in, but they exist everywhere. Some of them are battered, some are ill-funded, probably most. But they exist. And by and large, that holds the firmest, most consistent possibility for longevity in terms of terrestrial conservation.

The audience applauded wildly as she described the conservation accord as a crucial first step towards uniting Chilean national parks in what will be known as the route of parks. This is unprecedented and will become one of the most famous routes in the world, connecting up communities and bringing new economic activity to each region. There is no long-term conservation possible unless neighbouring communities find that their best interests are served. National parks have proven to be a strong source of national pride, creating honour and admiration throughout their citizenry.

With foreign tourism booming in Chile, the route of parks concept is expected to consolidate what today is a haphazard and largely unorganised tourist circuit stretching for 2,400km from the city of Puerto Montt in the north to the Beagle Channel astride Tierra del Fuego in southernmost Chile. National parks are the gold standard of conservation, said Hernn Mladinic, who spent years working to persuade the Chilean government to preserve intact ecosystems in southern Chile. For every dollar you invest in national parks, you get 10 back; its more profitable than copper.

Douglas Tompkins and Kristine McDivitt Tompkins spent 25 years working to save wild habitat and ecosystems in Chile and Argentina. Photograph: Tompkins Conservation

The transition from private park to national park will be incremental over the next two years as Chilean government officials seek to maintain the aesthetics and design with which Tompkins infused Parque Pumaln.Today is the beginning of a roadmap for the creation of 10 million new acres of national parks under the patrimony of the Chilean national park service with a level of beauty and integrity that Doug hoped would raise the whole concept of what national parks mean for the Chileans and what national parks mean for the world, said Rick Ridgeway, vice president of public engagement at Patagonia clothing company and a long-time climbing partner of Tompkins. His dream was to inculcate this sense of pride into the Chileans and into the citizens of the world.

Employing an American concept known as wild and scenic highways, the new parks will seek to implement a design aesthetic that includes scenic lookout points, artfully designed signage and attempts to have roads follow the contours of the land rather than ripping straight lines through the rugged terrain.

Parque Pumaln. Photograph: 2007 Linde Waidhofer

While there was no opposition to the announcement of the new park, Tompkins had long faced bitter resistance. Local politicians accused him of harbouring secret plans to kick settlers off their land or create a dump for radioactive material. Others alleged that Tompkins planned to create a Jewish homeland or wanted to breed a mixed-race beast by crossing African lions with Patagonian pumas to attack local livestock. I remember a local farmer saying that Doug flew his plane so low that it wouldnt be hard to wait on the hillside with a Mauser and shoot it down, said Laura Casanova, a hotel operator in El Amarillo, who knew Tompkins for some 20 years.

While his relationship with Chilean authorities was rocky at times, both Tompkins and his partner Kris found wide success across South America. In Argentina they worked closely with the national government to create Monte Lon national park and had several other large-scale projects reaching completion including Iber National Park in Corrientes.

In Argentina, Kris Tompkins oversees programmes to reintroduce endangered species including jaguars, giant anteaters, peccaries, tapirs and pampas deer. Known as rewilding, the programme has been extremely successful as species on the brink of extinction, including the pampas deer and the giant anteater, are now thriving.

What I would like to do is change the way national parks look at rewilding everywhere in the world where there are extirpated [locally extinct] species and make it one of the goals of national parks everywhere, to rewild, she said. As they say, landscape without wildlife is just scenery.

The Chilean move stands in stark contrast to the policies of US president Donald Trump, who has rejected global warming, plans to slash the budget of the US Environmental Protection Agency and is seeking to reverse preservation accords signed by the Obama administration.

It is not just US citizens who have to resist Trump and the influence of extreme right-wing Republicans and the intrinsic selfishness, blindness, anti-science, anti-environment attitude that have recently gotten the upper hand in the States, said Lito Tejada-Flores, a renowned mountain climber and photographer who was a lifelong friend of Tompkins. I find it very encouraging that we have some smart leaders in South America on both sides of the Andes who have said Yes, conservation is important and science is real.

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