#sen markey

[onlytiktoks]

Also ↓ senator ed markey is fighting for you, Massachusetts

[reasonsforhope]

Less than three months after U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin and her colleagues launched an investigation into the four major American manufacturers of inhalers, three of the companies have relented, making commitments to cap costs for their inhalers at $35 for patients who now pay much more.

25 million Americans have asthma and 16 million Americans have chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), meaning over 40 million Americans rely on inhalers to breathe.

Inhalers have been available since the 1950s, and most of the drugs they use have been on the market for more than 25 years.

According to a statement from the Wisconsin Senator’s office, inhaler manufacturers sell the exact same products at a much lower costs in other countries. One of AstraZeneca’s inhalers, Breztri Aerosphere, costs $645 in the U.S.—but just $49 in the UK. Inhalers made by Boehringer Ingelheim, GlaxoSmithKline, and Teva have similar disparities.

Baldwin and her Democratic colleagues—New Mexico Sen. Ben Ray Luján, Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey, and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders—pressured the companies to lower their prices by writing letters to GSK, Boehringer Ingelheim, Teva, and AstraZeneca requesting a variety of documents that show why such higher prices are charged in America compared to Europe.

As a ranking member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, Baldwin recently announced that as a result of the letters they had secured commitments from three of the four to lower the out-of-pocket costs of inhalers to a fixed $35.00 rate.

“For the millions of Americans who rely on inhalers to breathe, this news is a major step in the right direction as we work to lower costs and hold big drug companies accountable,” said Senator Baldwin.

A full list of the inhalers and associated drugs can be viewed here.

It’s the second time in the last year that pharmaceutical companies were forced to provide reasonable prices—after the cost of insulin was similarly capped successfully at $35 per month thanks to Congressional actions led by the White House.

-via Good News Network, March 25, 2024

[sunny-day-jack-official]

URGENT! Stop KOSA!

Hey all, this is BáiYù and Sauce here with something that isn't necessarily SnaccPop related, but it's important nonetheless. For those of you who follow US politics, The Kids Online Safety Act passed the Senate yesterday and is moving forward.

This is bad news for everyone on the internet, even outside of the USA.

What is KOSA?

While it's officially known as "The Kids Online Safety Act," KOSA is an internet censorship masquerading as another "protect the children" bill, much in the same way SESTA/FOSTA claimed that it would stop illegal sex trafficking but instead hurt sex workers and their safety. KOSA was originally introduced by Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass. and Bill Cassidy, R-La. as a way to update the 1998 Children’s Online Privacy Act, raising the age of consent for data collection to 16 among other things. You can read the original press release of KOSA here, while you can read the full updated text of the bill on the official USA Congress website.

You can read the following articles about KOSA here:

EFF: The Kids Online Safety Act is Still A Huge Danger to Our Rights Online

CyberScoop: Children’s online safety bills clear Senate hurdle despite strong civil liberties pushback

TeenVogue: The Kids Online Safety Act Would Harm LGBTQ+ Youth, Restrict Access to Information and Community

The quick TL;DR:

KOSA authorizes an individual state attorneys general to decide what might harm minors

Websites will likely preemptively remove and ban content to avoid upsetting state attorneys generals (this will likely be topics such as abortion, queerness, feminism, sexual content, and others)

In order for a platform to know which users are minors, they'll require a more invasive age and personal data verification method

Parents will be granted more surveillance tools to see what their children are doing on the web

KOSA is supported by Christofascists and those seeking to harm the LGBTQ+ community

If a website holding personally identifying information and government documents is hacked, that's a major cybersecurity breach waiting to happen

What Does This Mean?

You don't have to look far to see or hear about the violence being done to the neurodivergent and LGBTQ+ communities worldwide, who are oftentimes one and the same. Social media sites censoring discussion of these topics would stand to do even further harm to folks who lack access to local resources to understand themselves and the hardships they face; in addition, the fact that websites would likely store personally identifying information and government documents means the death of any notion of privacy.

Sex workers and those living in certain countries already are at risk of losing their ways of life, living in a reality where their online activities are closely surveilled; if KOSA officially becomes law, this will become a reality for many more people and endanger those at the fringes of society even worse than it already is.

Why This Matters Outside of The USA

I previously mentioned SESTA/FOSTA, which passed and became US law in 2018. This bill enabled many of the anti-adult content attitudes that many popular websites are taking these days as well as the tightening of restrictions laid down by payment processors. Companies and sites hosted in the USA have to follow US laws even if they're accessible worldwide, meaning that folks overseas suffer as well.

What Can You Do?

If you're a US citizen, contact your Senators and tell them that you oppose KOSA. This can be as an email, letter, or phone call that you make to your state Senator.

For resources on how to do so, view the following links:

https://www.badinternetbills.com/#kosa

https://www.stopkosa.com/

https://linktr.ee/stopkosa

If you live outside of the US or cannot vote, the best thing you can do is sign the petition at the Stop KOSA website, alert your US friends about what's happening, and raise some noise.

Above all else, don’t panic. By staying informed by what’s going on, you can prepare for the legal battles ahead.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Phillip Jackson at HuffPost:

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) introduced a bill Wednesday that would give federal and state officials more power to hold police departments accused of bad behavior to account. The Enhancing Oversight to End Discrimination in Policing Act, led by Warren and in the House by Rep. Marilyn Strickland (D-Wash.), would strengthen the power of state attorneys general to launch investigations into police departments involved in civil rights violations if the Justice Department fails to act on them. The bill would also task the Justice Department with looking beyond “traditional law enforcement mechanisms” when providing reforms to selective police departments such as mental health support, civilian oversight bodies, and community-based restorative justice programs, according to Warren’s office.

Warren had introduced a version of the bill in 2020. This newest version of the measure would also revitalize the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, granting an increase in funding to pursue civil rights investigations into police departments and other government offices accused of discriminatory practices. It would increase funding for the civil rights division to $445 million per year over a 10-year period. (For scale, the 2023 budget for the division was $189.9 million.)

Warren first introduced her bill following the death of George Floyd in 2020. That earlier draft also called for Attorney General Merrick Garland to rescind a 2017 memorandum from his predecessor, Trump-era Attorney General Jeff Sessions, that limited the DOJ’s ability to initiate consent decrees on police departments — a key way of stopping bad behavior. (Garland rescinded that memorandum in April of 2021.)

Nine senators co-sponsored the bill: Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Peter Welch (D-Vt.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), and Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii). Several civil rights organizations are backing Warren’s new bill, including the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the National Urban League and others.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and 9 other co-sponsors in the Senate are supporting the Enhancing Oversight to End Discrimination in Policing Act to strengthen police accountability. Rep. Marilyn Strickland (D-WA) is pushing this in the House.

[saywhat-politics]

‘Alarming’: RFK Jr sought to stop Covid vaccinations 6 months after rollout: NYT

In May 2021, just six months after the rollout of the Covid vaccine, Robert F. Kennedy Junior tried to stop all coronavirus vaccinations in the U.S., the New York Times reports. Sen. Ed Markey joins to discuss that and more.  

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preserved on our archive

By Julia Métraux

Voters are asking questions—and the Harris campaign needs a plan.

Three years ago, after developing Long Covid, 62-year-old Martha applied for Social Security Disability Insurance, which provides a modest monthly benefit to aging and disabled adults. Martha has no health insurance, which prevents her from getting the medical treatment she needs, and is homeless.

On Thursday, when she asked Vice President Kamala Harris about the issue at a town hall hosted by the Spanish-language news network Univision, she still hadn’t received a decision.

In the twelve-month stretch from October 2022 through September 2023, 30,000 people died while waiting for federal disability determinations, according to Social Security Commissioner Martin O’Malley. Martha asked Harris what she would do as president for people, like herself, who are waiting for disability decisions while in desperate need of health insurance.

Delays in those decisions, driven in part by understaffing and a Covid-related rise in disability rates, have driven the typical wait time from four months in 2019 to seven months today, often coupled with the need to appeal an initial rejection, which can take years. The processing times represent a mounting crisis for the more than 1 million Americans who apply for disability in a given year.

Harris, starting off on track, highlighted her recent push for Long Covid to be recognized under the Americans with Disabilities Act. But the vice president didn’t acknowledge the issue of wait times for federal disability benefit determinations, talking instead about how medical debt impacted credit scores.

Harris’ push to incorporate Long Covid into the ADA is welcome. Latino people are the likeliest of any racial group to report having Long Covid, according to Census data; many also participate in SSDI, and her Univision non-answer on wait times was eyebrow-raising.

But a Long Covid–friendly ADA doesn’t mean any change in Social Security practices, which are separate. Securing disability income is a much more complex, demanding process than securing ADA accommodations (which can be hard enough). Separate action is needed on both—and within Harris’ grasp, should she land in the White House.

That’s not to say that Democrats have made no moves to address challenges around Long Covid and Social Security disability delays. In August, a Senate group including Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Vir.), Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Sen Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Ver.) sent O’Malley a letter asking a similar question: what was the Social Security Administration doing to address the barriers that applicants with Long Covid face? They have yet to receive a response—at least publicly.

[truth-has-a-liberal-bias]

Senators are trying to add bills that are aimed at boosting kids online safety into a must-pass Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reauthorization act.

Two bills aimed at increasing safety of minors online through data privacy updates and rules to limit potentially harmful features are being put forward as amendments to be added to the FAA reauthorization that must pass ahead of a May 10 deadline.

Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Bill Cassidy (R-La.) filed their bill COPPA 2.0, which would update the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, as an amendment to the FAA bill Thursday.

...

Another bill, the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), was put forward as an amendment to the FAA by Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) on Wednesday, a spokesperson for Blackburn confirmed.

The spokesperson said the two senators are pursuing “all possible paths to see KOSA signed into law,” including by attaching it to the upcoming FAA reauthorization. [...]

[tomorrowusa]

It's foolish to think that Putin isn't orgasmic over what the Trump administration has been doing to screw America.

Trump and his co-president Elon Musk have now targeted the EPA for revenge and retribution.

Trump, Musk move to oust EPA staff in the Great Lakes region, including dozens responsible for protecting drinking water for 30 million in U.S. and Canada

Trump purged dozens of career officials in the Chicago office during his first term. His latest attempt to cull the workforce is led by billionaire Elon Musk, whose companies Tesla and SpaceX have been fined by the EPA for multiple violations of environmental laws. “Elon Musk wants to turn EPA into every polluter’s ally,” U.S. Sen. Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, said Thursday at a rally in front of the agency’s headquarters. “He wants to take environmental cops off the beat.” History suggests Musk and scores of other polluters are going to catch a break during the next four years. Water pollution cases filed by the EPA in the Great Lakes region declined during each of the first three years Trump was president, according to an analysis of agency records by the nonprofit Environmental Law and Policy Center. Meanwhile, the number of chronic violators of the Clean Water Act in the heavily industrialized states skyrocketed under Trump, who as a candidate in 2016 vowed to abolish the EPA. [ ... ] More than 8 million people in Illinois get their drinking water from a utility where at least one PFAS has been detected, a 2022 Chicago Tribune investigation found. The discovery of high levels of ethylene oxide pollution led to the closure of a sterilization plant in southwest suburban Willowbrook and prompted a state law requiring another facility in north suburban Waukegan to dramatically reduce emissions.

Trump feels it's his right to make life easy for polluters who have given him and other far right Republicans huge campaign contributions.

States like Illinois can step up enforcement. But they don't have the reach and resources of the federal government. Be prepared to get sicker over the next few years.

[dertaglichedan]

Democrat Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey has claimed that the Los Angeles fires are the result of a climate change “disaster” stoked by President-elect Donald Trump’s embrace of “Big Oil” — and there is “more death” coming as a result.

“Trump has been bought for $1 billion by Big Oil. Just a payoff to kill the IRA and the Green New Deal. We know what will happen. More fires, more climate disasters, more death. The LA fires are preview of coming atrocities,” Markey wrote on X on Saturday.

[beardedmrbean]

A Texas-led bill that would mandate AM radio capability in car manufacturing was blocked from passing in the U.S. Senate on Tuesday.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, requested a unanimous consent decision on his AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act. The legislation was blocked by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, who said the mandate on private companies would be an overstep of congressional power.

For months, Cruz has pushed for vehicle manufacturers to retain AM radio in new car models to protect emergency communication channels and diverse content. He partnered with Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., in May to introduce the legislation, which had broad bipartisan support in the Senate.

A corresponding bill was introduced in the House and has 191 cosponsors, including two Democrats and 12 Republicans from Texas.

AM radio is “enormously important to millions of Texans,” Cruz told The Texas Tribune in October. He noted the platform is essential for diverse talk radio — especially for conservative voices.

“I think silencing those voices is enormously harmful to both free speech but also to a robust democratic process,” Cruz said.

On the Senate floor Tuesday, Cruz pointed to conservative commentators Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, Sean Hannity or Glenn Beck, who all found audiences on AM radio.

“AM radio is a haven for people to speak, even if their views are disfavored by the political ruling class,” Cruz said on the Senate floor. “Rush Limbaugh would not exist without AM radio. The views of my friend, [Rand Paul] the Senator from Kentucky, would be heard by many fewer people without AM radio.”

AM radio in rural Texas and other southern states is also a platform for religious, local news and sports programming. Local stations will also run chain or network programming with more well-known commentators, according to Al Cross, director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues.

Some rural communities are dependent on getting local interest information from a single radio station or single newspaper, Cross said.

“If you allow the manufacturers to not put AM on cars, then you're killing off an essential part of the media landscape of the United States,” Cross said.

Supporters of the bill also point to AM radio’s importance as a means to protect emergency communication channels. A fall 2022 Nielsen survey showed AM radio reaches over 80 million Americans monthly.

“During times of disaster, AM radio is consistently the most resilient form of communication,” Cruz said.

AM radio is used as an alert system by federal, state and local agencies to communicate in times of disaster when other forms of communication fail, like during a power outage.

Cruz said he was confident that the legislation would pass overwhelmingly if brought to the floor for a vote, but since it was blocked on Tuesday it now awaits scheduling by Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.

The congressional pressure already provoked change in the industry. Days after the bills were introduced in May, the CEO of Ford announced that the company would keep AM radio in 2024 models.

Car companies started cutting AM radio capacity to simplify manufacturing and because of assumptions that American consumers don’t find AM radio necessary, according to Oscar Rodriguez, the president of the Texas Association of Broadcasters. Companies also can make revenue from car owners’ subscription-only radio services.

“It became very clear very quickly to the automakers that this is a highly valued service that's extraordinarily important,” Rodriguez said. “It's not just an entertainment service. It is an emergency communications service.”

AM station signals cover 90% of the American population, according to the National Association of Broadcasters, and are able to continue operations during power outages.

But a number of national trade associations have defended manufacturers’ right to exclude AM capacity, arguing that FM radio, internet access and text emergency alerts can replace the loss of AM radio.

“This is giving preference to a technology that is facing fierce competition,” said India Herdman, manager of policy affairs for the Consumer Technology Association.

A FEMA strategic plan pointed out that Americans are “moving away” from radio and broadcast television as primary sources of news and information, one reason for emergency managers to prioritize alerts to smartphones and other methods.

Herdman said that a mandate for AM radio contradicts previous congressional action authorizing federal funding for updated emergency communications.

“What are we spending those appropriated dollars for if we're just going to go back to using century-old technology?” Herdman said.

But in a state like Texas, with a significant rural population, proponents of AM broadcasting argue the access is key.

Cooper Little, executive director of the Independent Cattlemen’s Association, said Texans in the agricultural sector rely on AM radio for reports on livestock and markets, as well as severe weather alerts.

“Things happen at a moment's notice,” Little said. “In areas where there's not necessarily cell service, that's how you spread the word.”

[reasonsforhope]

Holy crap, I didn't think Biden would be able to get the Climate Corps established without Congress. This is SUCH fantastic news.

--

"After being thwarted by Congress, President Joe Biden will use his executive authority to create a New Deal-style American Climate Corps that will serve as a major green jobs training program.

In an announcement Wednesday, the White House said the program will employ more than 20,000 young adults who will build trails, plant trees, help install solar panels and do other work to boost conservation and help prevent catastrophic wildfires.

The climate corps had been proposed in early versions of the sweeping climate law approved last year but was jettisoned amid strong opposition from Republicans and concerns about cost.

Democrats and environmental advocacy groups never gave up on the plan and pushed Biden in recent weeks to issue an executive order authorizing what the White House now calls the American Climate Corps.

“After years of demonstrating and fighting for a Climate Corps, we turned a generational rallying cry into a real jobs program that will put a new generation to work stopping the climate crisis,” said Varshini Prakash, executive director of the Sunrise Movement, an environmental group that has led the push for a climate corps.

With the new corps “and the historic climate investments won by our broader movement, the path towards a Green New Deal is beginning to become visible,” Prakash said...

...Environmental activists hailed the new jobs program, which is modeled after the Civilian Conservation Corps, created in the 1930s by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, a Democrat, as part of the New Deal...

Lawmakers Weigh In

More than 50 Democratic lawmakers, including Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, had also encouraged Biden to create a climate corps, saying in a letter on Monday that “the climate crisis demands a whole-of-government response at an unprecedented scale.”

The lawmakers cited deadly heat waves in the Southwest and across the nation, as well as dangerous floods in New England and devastating wildfires on the Hawaiian island of Maui, among recent examples of climate-related disasters.

Democrats called creation of the climate corps “historic” and the first step toward fulfilling the vision of the Green New Deal.

“Today President Biden listened to the (environmental) movement, and he delivered with an American Climate Corps,” a beaming Markey said at a celebratory news conference outside the Capitol.

“We are starting to turn the green dream into a green reality,” added Ocasio-Cortez, who co-sponsored the Green New Deal legislation with Markey four years ago.

“You all are changing the world,” she told young activists.

Program Details and Grant Deadlines

The initiative will provide job training and service opportunities to work on a wide range of projects, including restoring coastal wetlands to protect communities from storm surges and flooding; clean energy projects such as wind and solar power; managing forests to prevent catastrophic wildfires; and energy efficient solutions to cut energy bills for consumers, the White House said.

Creation of the climate corps comes as the Environmental Protection Agency launches a $4.6 billion grant competition for states, municipalities and tribes to cut climate pollution and advance environmental justice. The Climate Pollution Reduction Grants are funded by the 2022 climate law and are intended to drive community-driven solutions to slow climate change.

EPA Administrator Michael Regan said the grants will help “communities so they can chart their own paths toward the clean energy future.”

The deadline for states and municipalities to apply is April 1, with grants expected in late 2024. Tribes and territories must apply by May 1, with grants expected by early 2025."

-via Boston.com, September 21, 2023

[notwiselybuttoowell]

Congressional Democrats call on Biden to disburse remaining IRA climate funds before leaving office

Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) called on President Biden in a letter Wednesday to ensure climate-related Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) funds are disbursed before he leaves office in January.

Markey and Ocasio-Cortez, who co-sponsored the original Green New Deal resolution in Congress, have been vocal backers of the Biden administration on environmental policy, joining the president at an Earth Day event earlier this year to celebrate the establishment of the American Climate Corps. They were joined on the letter by Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-N.M.), Interior Secretary Deb Haaland’s successor in the House.

The letter is also signed by Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and 46 other House members, including Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), House Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member Raúl Grijalva (D-Az.), and Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), who has announced his candidacy to succeed Grijalva.

“To avoid future politicization or manipulation of climate programs, we ask that your agencies move expeditiously to disburse key climate and clean energy programs at the White House and the Department of Energy (DOE), the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Department of Transportation, the Department of the Treasury, the Department of the Interior, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the General Services Administration, and the U.S. Postal Service,” the members wrote.

The members also wrote that they “support” the outgoing administration in releasing guidance for tax credits under the laws, some of which has not yet been published. While the letter does not identify those credits, the administration has yet to release guidance for hydrogen power tax credits or electric vehicle charger credits.

The letter does not mention President-elect Trump by name, but comes in the shadow of his denial of climate change and frequent disparagement of renewable energy. Trump has not signaled he will seek to reverse the IRA outright, but before the election, a coalition of vulnerable House Republicans called for him to consider preserving some of its tax credits for renewables in the event of a GOP trifecta.While a full repeal of the law is likely to be a complex process that would encounter pushback due to potential job losses in Republican districts, the White House and Republican Congress would have broader latitude in determining how funds are disbursed, including altering eligibility criteria.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Lisa Needham at Public Notice:

You’re forgiven for forgetting about TikTok for the last couple of days, what with the horrorshow avalanche of executive orders and gleeful deployment of Nazi salutes (plural!) from the world’s richest man. Nonetheless, TikTok is ostensibly banned in the United States as Democrats and Republicans overwhelmingly voted only nine months ago to outlaw the app unless its parent company, ByteDance, agreed to sell it. The US Supreme Court even upheld the law just last week. However, TikTok lives, thanks to the whims of Donald Trump, the same person who, in August 2020, issued an executive order giving ByteDance 45 days to sell the app or see it banned. Trump has been extremely transparent that he flip-flopped on TikTok because the app helped him win the election last year, in part because it became a hotbed for criticism of Biden’s support for Israel. “We won young people and I think that's a big credit to TikTok,” Trump told Newsmax earlier this month (even though he in fact lost the youth vote). “So I'm not opposed to TikTok ... I had a very good experience with TikTok." Lost in the current discourse about TikTok is an important conversation about whether it violates the First Amendment to ban a social media app based on national security concerns about its Chinese-owned parent company. Also lost is a debate about whether it’s fair to single out TikTok over worries about user privacy, data harvesting, and manipulative algorithms when such issues are common to all social media platforms. There’s also a discussion to be had about whether singling out TikTok is racist — though there’s a good argument it is. Instead, what’s happening here is the creeping oligarchy of companies and capital aligning around an authoritarian president, with everyone fully aware that sucking up to Trump personally, ideally along with staggering sums of cash, is the only way to evade scrutiny.

[...]

The art of the deal

To be scrupulously fair to Trump, he isn’t the only person who reversed course on TikTok. Once it was clear that the public opposed the ban and that the Supreme Court might not step in to save legislators from themselves, the Biden administration spent last week trying to figure out how to keep TikTok alive. Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Edward Markey introduced legislation to delay by 270 days the initial January 19 deadline for TikTok to be sold, despite having voted for the ban in the first place. The problem these efforts faced, however, is that TikTok wasn’t interested in working with the Biden administration or Senate Democrats to fix the problem. And why would they be, when Democrats are hobbled by a persistent inclination to actually follow laws rather than treat everything as an episode of The Apprentice, where flattering Trump as a master dealmaker is all that matters?

It’s exactly the latter approach that TikTok took. The ban required Google and Apple to remove it from their app stores or face steep fines for each user who downloaded the app. What it did not do, however, was penalize anyone who already had the app on their phone or accessed TikTok on the web. So the real financial peril would initially fall on Google and Apple if they kept the app available. After the Supreme Court decision last week, the Biden administration suggested it would not penalize those companies for continuing to host the app, a move TikTok said didn’t provide them enough “necessary clarity and assurance,” and they would therefore shut down in the United States on January 19. Thus began the public kayfabe of TikTok pretending that only Trump could fix it, knowing full well that he would happily go along. So the app went abruptly, ostentatiously dark on the evening of the January 18, only to pop back up some 12 hours later on January 19 with a gushing message to Trump: “We thank President Trump for providing the necessary clarity and assurance to our service providers that they will face no penalties providing TikTok to over 170 million Americans and allowing over 7 million small businesses to thrive.”

One might note, of course, that Trump was not president on January 19. One might also note that what Trump did promise — basically, that he would not enforce a law passed by Congress, signed by the president, and upheld by the Supreme Court — is not functionally any different than what Biden or Markey were trying to offer, albeit without a demand the company show them personal fealty. But if TikTok had simply left the lights on for those 12 hours and waited for the incoming administration to decide how to enforce the ban, it would have missed the opportunity to let Trump be the savior who brought the app back from the dead. And the one thing social media companies have learned about Trump is that their success will rise and fall with his impulses.

When social media platforms let Trump and his hangers-on say and do whatever they like, he loves them. Once X was purchased by president-unelect Elon Musk, it became transformed into a MAGA megaphone and no longer faces scrutiny from Trump. That’s a change from January 2021, when Trump complained that then-Twitter was “not about FREE SPEECH” after it banned his account following the insurrection. Though Meta didn’t change hands, it still transformed — or more accurately, perhaps, deformed — to meet the new Trump era. CEO Mark Zuckerberg got rid of third-party fact-checking on Facebook, calling it “politically biased,” and revised its hateful speech policy to explicitly allow for attacks on trans people. Zuckerberg donated $1 million to the inauguration, went to church with Trump Monday morning, and hosted a reception Monday night. For the inauguration itself, Zuckerberg, along with Musk, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and Google head Sundar Pichai, was basically in the front row. Nothing says “incipient oligarchy” like an inauguration dominated by the richest men in the world, private citizens all.

TikTok’s cozying up to Donald Trump is a bad thing.

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from Mother Jones:

At a Senate committee hearing on Wednesday, Donald Trump’s nominee to run the Environmental Protection Agency, Lee Zeldin, acknowledged climate change is “real” and that greenhouse gasses are making the planet hotter—but stopped short of saying the agency must regulate them.

About 90 minutes into the hearing before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), asked Zeldin, a former New York congressmember, whether the EPA is obligated to regulate greenhouse gas emissions as required by the Supreme Court’s 2007 ruling in Massachusetts v. EPA, which defined carbon dioxide as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act. “Do you accept that as a mandate?”

“Authorized—yes, senator,” Zeldin countered Markey. “Authorized to.” His argument being that the 2007 ruling allowed the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases, but did not require it to do so. “There are steps that the EPA would have to take in order for an obligation to be created,” he added. “I’m just going off the actual text.”

What Zeldin failed to acknowledge, however, is that the 2007 ruling did require EPA to regulate greenhouse gases—if the agency determined they pose a danger to public health.

And the agency did make that determination, in 2009. As Michael Gerrard, an environmental lawyer and director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School, explains, that year the EPA issued its “Endangerment Finding,” concluding that greenhouse gases “threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations.” This obligated the agency to regulate the emissions. While the incoming Trump administration could try and reverse that finding, doing so, Gerrard says, would be a “fool’s errand”: “The amount of scientific evidence available when the Endangerment Finding was first made in 2009 was overwhelming. It’s now overwhelming-squared.”

Jillian Blanchard, the vice president of Climate Change and Environmental Justice at Lawyers for Good Government, says Zeldin’s response “may be a signal” that he’s considering changing the Endangerment Finding, but she agrees the science remains clear: “If anything,” she says, “the science has made it more clear that more regulation of greenhouse gas emissions is going to be necessary to protect the public health.”

Zeldin, as the New York Times reports, received more than $270,000 from oil and gas interests over the years, and has little environmental experience.

Still, his testimony offered a contrast to Donald Trump, who’s repeatedly called the climate crisis a “hoax” and promised to “drill baby drill.” As Zeldin told the committee on Wednesday, “I believe that climate change is real,” adding, “we must, with urgency, be addressing these issues.”