...Two of its staunchest defenders in the Democratic Caucus, Sinema and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), are now leaving. And Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell stepping down as GOP leader won't do anything to shore up the Senate’s 60-vote requirement on most legislation.
...Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), who may be the most conservative Democrat left in the Senate if he wins a tough reelection bid this fall, said he does not want to abolish the filibuster altogether but would like to make it harder for individual senators to stop bills: “A talking filibuster is not necessarily a bad thing.”
And Democratic leaders aren't shy about the fact that they still want "real changes in the Senate rules," as Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) put it.
"This is no longer a deliberative, legislative body,” he said. “We’ve got to change the current set of rules as they are now. I think the Senate is drifting into obscurity.”
Much ballyhoo later, they still don't have anyone running for president. At this point the "party" is just a vehicle for ratfcking Democrats.
This passel of clowns and mountebanks is now a generational nuisance and, as such, it apparently decided that its real purpose in our politics is as a well-financed vehicle for ratfcking the incumbent Democratic Presidents of the United States. Candidates? We don't need no stinking candidates.
...These people care about as much about the future of our democratic republic as the former president* does. They fancy themselves some sort of national conscience when, in fact, they are the quislings of self-government. They fancy themselves as above partisan politics when they are in fact the most narcissistic partisans practicing the most narcissistic politics of all. They are awash in petty grievances — Joe Lieberman, Mark Penn — and in corporate money that is frustrated because it doesn't get its calls returned the way it did back in the glory days of the Democratic Leadership Conference and the Clinton administration. They are the flotsam of economic and political policies that sank in the fall of 2008 when many of their warmest advocates broke the entire world economy and then proceeded to steal what was left of it. That was their golden age. They are the crumbled statues on a desert plain.
Arsonists calling themselves the Volcano Group left Tesla’s German factory without electricity on Tuesday, leading to damages the company claims could approach $1 billion.
..."The complete destruction of the Gigafactory and the lopping off of technofascists like 'Elend' Musk are a step on the path towards liberation from the patriarchy," the group said in a statement sent to media, using a wordplay for Musk's first name that in German means "misery".
...Relatively little is known about the small-time saboteurs, who—despite being the “dumbest eco-terrorists on Earth” according to Musk—have escaped arrest so far.
Their method appears to be striking only once every year or two in largely remote locations, setting fire to electronic cables that control everything from telecommunication and trains to manufacturing plants.
The Federal Association for the Protection of Critical Infrastructures (BSKI) in Germany said these targets are little more than sitting ducks since too little is being done to guard them.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk said Wednesday he will not donate to the campaigns of either President Joe Biden or former President Donald Trump.
“Just to be super clear, I am not donating money to either candidate for US President,” Musk said in a post on his social media site X.
Musk’s tweet came a day after The New York Times reported that last weekend he met with Trump and what the newspaper called a few wealthy Republican donors, in Palm Beach, Florida. The former president’s home, in his Mar-a-Lago club, is in Palm Beach.
Musk is one of the wealthiest people in the world, with an estimated net worth of $195 billion, according to Forbes.
Musk, who also heads SpaceX, could support Trump or Biden in ways other than a direct donation to their campaigns.
He could, for instance, donate to a political action committee backing either contender.
Regulators on Wednesday passed a rule requiring companies to share how much they pollute. But, after two years of backlash, the final rule was significantly watered down from its original version.
Some business leaders and lawmakers said the rule overstepped; climate activists argued it didn’t do enough. The version the Securities and Exchange Commission passed won’t require companies to include some of the secondary climate effects of their products.
On Wednesday, SEC chairman Gary Gensler said he thought the finalized rules would “produce more useful information to investors. Far more useful, I think, than what they get today.”
...The newly adopted rule dropped one of the most contentious elements of the SEC’s initial March 2022 proposal, requiring companies to disclose emissions they are indirectly responsible for, called scope 3 emissions. Scope 3 emissions from an oil company, for example, might be the thousands of metric tons of carbon dioxide produced by gas-powered vehicles, even though oil companies do not produce cars.
Former president’s rhetoric shows voters seeking to punish Joe Biden for backing Israel face dilemma in upcoming election.
Donald Trump has voiced explicit backing for Israel’s war on Gaza, suggesting that he supports the goal expressed by the hardline government in Tel Aviv of continuing the assault until “total victory”.
Asked if he is “on board” with the way Israel was “taking the fight to Gaza”, the frontrunner for the Republican US presidential nomination responded: “You’ve got to finish the problem”. With Trump set to race incumbent Joe Biden, his words suggest that voters opposed to United States support of Israel’s war will face a dilemma in November’s presidential election.
...But while the urge felt by some left-leaning and pro-Palestinian voters to punish Biden at the polls remains strong, they may find they have little choice but to vote for the Democrat in November’s poll if they wish to keep Trump from returning to the White House.
,,,“I don’t think the vice president would have made such a sweeping statement if Super Tuesday wasn’t happening, and we have been seeing the same thing with President Biden,” said Asma Nizami, a “vote uncommitted” organiser in Minnesota.
“Because it’s going national and because there are other states that are part of this,” the administration can’t sweep it aside, she said.
“The climate movement doesn’t have a persuasion problem as much as we have a turnout problem,” says Nathaniel Stinnett of the Environmental Voter Project.
All over the planet, elections are taking center stage this year, as some 4 billion people across more than 50 countries head to the polls — roughly half the world’s population. In the US, March 5 marks what’s known as Super Tuesday, when the greatest number of states hold primary elections and caucuses to determine the presidential candidates come November.
You could be forgiven for thinking that climate change is high on the list of election issues, or for assuming that Americans who care about it will be running, not walking, to the ballot box to vote. The US endured a whopping 28 disasters costing $1 billion or more in damages in 2023, which was also the hottest year in recorded history. This year is shaping up to match or exceed that record.
A judge says three business owners were discriminated against by an agency, set up under the Nixon administration to help ethnically-marginalized groups, because they’re white.
A judge in Texas has ruled that a federal agency created to help minority-owned businesses must open up its services to all races and ethnicities, including white people.
The Minority Business Development Agency was created in 1969 under the Nixon administration to assist racially and ethnically marginalized groups of people, “including Hispanic and Latino American, Asian Pacific American, African American, and Native American businesses.”
...“The [Minority Business Development Agency] advertises services exclusively for some races but not others,” read the ruling. “That racial presumption fails strict scrutiny and thus violates the Fifth Amendment’s equal protection guarantees. While the Agency’s work may help alleviate opportunity gaps faced by [minority business enterprises], two wrongs do not make a right.”
Can newsrooms really expect people to trust their reporting if they fund it by spreading misinformation?
First, Letitia James took on Donald Trump. Now, she’s taking on the meat industry. In a first-of-its-kind lawsuit filed last week, the New York Attorney General accused JBS USA—the American arm of the world’s largest meatpacking company—of “fraudulent and illegal environmental marketing practices” surrounding its claims of sustainability. Specifically, the lawsuit claims JBS USA’s advertisements promising to reach “net zero emissions by 2040” are fabrications, designed to trick environmentally conscious consumers into purchasing an environmentally harmful product.
It’s not the first time Brazil-based JBS has been accused of misleading the public with climate ads. In June 2023, the meat conglomerate—whose brand names include “Swift,” “Certified Angus Beef,” and “Grass Run Farms”—was told by the National Advertising Review Board (NARB), the advertising body of the Better Business Bureau, that it should stop advertising its net zero commitment. The NARB concluded that JBS’s claims were unsubstantiated, as the company “does not have a formulated and vetted plan” to reach net zero emissions. It said that “evidence did not support the broad message … that JBS is on a path towards net zero.”
...And yet, despite the evidence to the contrary, JBS has continued to claim in marketing that it’s on the path to net zero emissions. Worse, some of the most trusted news outlets in the United States have aided in the process, spreading the beef industry’s climate misinformation for a profit. In our analysis of ad monitoring data, we found more than 20 major media outlets that ran JBS climate ads, including Reuters, the Houston Business Journal, CNN, Fast Company, the Guardian, the Los Angeles Times, and more.