Finally: Panic Washes Over GOP... But They Will Still Persist In Their Hateful And Unpopular Agenda

 

Republicans in Congress are preparing to triage Trump-- but not Amy Coney Island Baby. That's the hill they all seem happily willing to die on, a hill that symbolizes anti-Choice fanaticism, anti-healthcare mania, a pro-corporate and anti-regulatory extremism and, of course, the religious bigotry the GOP has wrapped itself in over the past two decades.

Republican Senators, Congress Members, state legislators, local officials, operatives and donors are all blaming Trump for their predicament. I hate Trump as much as anyone but if they want someone to blame for the tsunami headed their way, they should look in the mirror, not just to the White House. There was no time when they could not have said, "Wait, you are a fucking fascist and I am not and neither is my party." Too late for that now, though, because now their party is fascist and they have been enabling a fascist agenda-- eyes wide open.

The phrase on the lips of virtually all Beltway Republicans this month: "sinking ship," a way to describe the Trump reelection campaign, a battle being fought not in states Hillary won narrowly like New Hampshire, Virginia, Minnesota, Nevada and Maine but in states that were firmly in the Republican column way back then-- Arizona, Iowa, Georgia, Alaska, Ohio... even Texas.

And now, down-ballot Republicans are realizing-- too late-- they they are going down with that sinking ship. Some are even hoping to start showing their "independence" from Trump by breaking with his policies might help, after after their years of willing spineless subservience. Foolishly, they've chosen the wrong policy to break with. Trump, desperate to offer something to the voters, has ordered-- or re-ordered-- Mnuchin to work with Pelosi on a pandemic relief package that will include stimulus checks for struggling Americans (voters). For Mitch McConnell and his Senate colleagues that's a step too far. On Friday, Jonathan Swan and Alayna Treene reported for Axios that McConnell refuses to be tethered to Trump's growing desperation and that the president "has zero leverage to push them to support a bill crafted by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and congressional Republicans aren’t inclined to wrap themselves any tighter to a sinking ship." McConnell's camp says "You’re never going to get a deal out of Pelosi that Republicans can support. So do you really want to divide your party within days of an election? This entire exercise from Pelosi is basically trying to jam up the Senate in the midst of a Supreme Court confirmation. They know that from a procedural standpoint McConnell can drive this train to conclusion, so what they’re trying do is throw as many roadblocks in the way as possible-- and the best way to do that is get the president focused on some extraneous issue." Swan and Treene concluded that even if Pelosi and Mnuchin were to strike a deal, "there is little chance the Senate GOP would get on board with it... Senate Republicans remain far apart on what they want as a conference. They also view Trump and Mnuchin as far more willing to give more to Pelosi than what they're comfortable with-- both numbers-wise and on policy." And to make matters worse, "McConnell doesn’t want to do anything to interrupt the only visible Republican win before the election in his chamber-- the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court."


Americans have been voting-- and in much biggest numbers than ever before this early. No one needs a debate. This is a referendum on Trump and his enablers. Biden is horrible. People don't care. The majority of the Democrats recruited by the DCCC are horrible-- as are all the Democrats recruited by Schumer. No one cares. (They will in 2022, but not now. Now they only care about Trump and those who allowed him to run amok.) In early voting reporting yesterday's NY Times, a trio of writers noted that early returns give Democrats a 10 point advantage among the 275,000 first-time voters nationwide who had already cast ballots and an 18-point lead among 1.1 million "sporadic voters" who had already voted.

As of Saturday, more than 8.8 million ballots had already been received by elections officials in the 30 states that have made data available. In five states-- including the battlegrounds of Wisconsin and Minnesota-- the number of ballots returned already is more than 20 percent of the entire 2016 turnout.

The L.A. Times headline was hardly unique: As Trump’s fortunes sink, Republicans start to distance themselves in bid to save Senate. Evan Halper wrote that as "Trump skids deeper into political peril, anxious Republicans have started to try to distance themselves from his fate, appealing to voters to elect them as a check on a Joe Biden administration. As they make closing arguments in a desperate bid to keep control of the Senate, even Trump loyalists are chafing when asked how deep their support for the president runs. Senate campaigns, which long focused on electing candidates who would be loyal to Trump, now pitch a darker message to Republican voters-- one that assumes Trump won’t be there. 'If we lose the Senate, there will be no firewall to stop the Democrats from implementing their Armageddon plan to pack the courts with activist judges and to add four new Democrats to the Senate by giving statehood to DC and Puerto Rico,' said a fundraising appeal from the Senate Conservative Fund."

Halper noted that McConnell, who has been "one of Trump’s most loyal lieutenants, abruptly jumped off the Trump train this week to stake out a politically-- and medically-- safer position on the coronavirus crisis that is Trump’s biggest political liability. McConnell said at a news conference Thursday in Kentucky that he had not been at the White House for more than a month because he did not think its safety standards were stringent enough. 'My impression was that their approach to how to handle this is different from mine and what I suggested that we do in the Senate, which is to wear a mask and practice social distancing,' said McConnell, who is 78 and in an expensive fight for reelection this year. Veteran Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn, in his pitch for an endorsement from the Houston Chronicle, scolded Trump for downplaying the dangers of the coronavirus. The paper, which had endorsed Cornyn in the past, ultimately opted to support Democrat MJ Hegar."

“I think Trump might cause us a tidal wave,” said one top Republican strategist and Trump supporter, who asked not to be named discussing internal party matters. “He is ankle weights in a pool on Senate candidates.”

The move away from Trump resembles the strategy Republicans followed in 2016, when many party leaders assumed he would lose, and in 1996, when the party’s nominee, Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas, badly trailed President Clinton.

In both cases, the approach was to avoid directly criticizing the nominee for fear of alienating his loyalists, while appealing to voters to keep a Republican Congress to deny Democrats a “blank check.”

...“A lot of Republicans are now having to walk this line where they don’t want be too critical of Trump and anger his base, but they need to reach out to moderates and independent,” said J. Miles Coleman, associate editor at the political forecasting journal Sabato’s Crystal Ball.

Yesterday, GOP lifer Ed Rollins, chair of Trump's Great America PAC, told CNN that the jig is up. "I'm afraid the race is over... What happened after the first presidential debate is every Senate race saw a 3- to 4-point drop for Republican candidates across the board. So campaigns are panicking and it’s the first time in a long while that they are being outraised. The potential is there to lose not only the presidency but the Senate as well… and to see the kind of wipeout we haven’t an experienced since the post-Watergate year of 1974." How could it can any worse for Trump. Well the Taliban could endorse him. Actually, they did.

NBC News reported that "some Republican operatives and donors" have given up on Trump's reelection and are "proposing that the party shift focus to protecting seats in Congress." Former NRCC staffer Ken Spain told NBC's Sahil Kapur that he sees "growing chances of a tsunami that drowns congressional Republican candidates," calling Trump's unpopularity "an anchor" for GOP candidates and worrying not about races in Colorado, Arizona and Maine-- that Republicans have given top on winning-- but in South Carolina, Georgia, Kansas and Alaska that they are in danger of losing.

Brendan Buck, a Republican consultant, who was a top adviser to former House Speaker Paul Ryan, said it would be a rational response to steer resources to saving endangered incumbents.

“We need to protect the Senate and limit the damage in the House,” he said. “They can’t say it out loud, but the president is likely toast, and a Republican Senate can serve as a check on a Biden administration and Democratic House. Republicans also need to keep the House in reach of flipping it back in 2022.”

If Republicans are struggling to protect an incumbent in the deep-red Palmetto State, it means the seat of Sen. John Cornyn in electoral vote-rich Texas may not necessarily be safe either, along with about a dozen others in a cycle in which Democrats need to pick up four seats to secure control, or three if they win the White House.

Biden’s campaign appears more bullish on Texas, purchasing $6.3 million in ads on TV and radio in the Lone Star State from Wednesday through Election Day, according to Advertising Analytics. His wife, Jill Biden, plans to travel to the state next week, the campaign announced Friday, with an itinerary a Biden campaign spokesperson said would include stops in Dallas, Houston and El Paso.

“Trump is definitely helping us,” Beto O’Rourke, a former Texas congressman and presidential candidate, told NBC News. “They have been neck and neck for weeks now, and Biden’s chances are only improving after his and Kamala (Harris)’s strong debate performances.”

O’Rourke, who came within 3 points of winning a Texas Senate race in 2018, insists the state and its 38 electoral votes are in play, and has been pleading with the Democrats to invest more there.

Democrats running for Republican-held congressional and state legislative seats are on the attack in Texas and closing in on Republican incumbents. Yesterday, Julie Oliver, progressive Democratic candidate running against crooked conservative Roger Williams in an R+ 11 district that the DCCC has completely ignored, told me that "We're in the middle of a pandemic that has killed hundreds of thousands of people. Many of our kids' schools are still closed. Women are having to leave their jobs. We've lost millions of jobs. And meanwhile, both Donald Trump and Roger Williams have consistently put themselves and their financial interests before the people in Texas. This presidency has been an unmitigated failure-- and Roger Williams has enabled him, every step of the way." Polling has turned so positive towards Oliver that last week the DCCC felt compelled to add her to their Red-to-Blue program. Same just happened in the district next door, TX-10, where Mike Siegel has battle the wealthiest man in the House, Trump lieutenant Michael McCaul to a dead heat. (You can contribute to both Siegel and Oliver here.)

Although Democrats stand to pick up a half dozen Texas congressional seats-- and win back the state House to boot-- Texas isn't the only "red" state preparing the shed more seats to the Democrats. Kapur's report noted Beltway imbeciles-- he was more polite-- who long believed the GOP would gain seats are now confronting the prospect that their minority might shrink. "Cook Political Report’s forecast gives Democrats a better than even chance of expanding their House majority." That can be interpreted as "even the conservative fools at Cook fear Democrats are on the verge of winning dozens of seats we scoffed at the idea of flipping just a few weeks ago."

Beltway insiders like Cook and the DCCC have never taken Audrey Denney's race against Trump appendage Doug LaMalfa seriously. After all, CA-01, in the northeast corner of rural California where it borders on Republican parts of Oregon and Nevada, has a daunting PVI of R+11. It was one of only 2 districts in California where Hillary took less than 37% of the vote and in the midst of 2018's "Blue Wave," neither Gavin Newsom nor Dianne Feinstein won a single one of CA-01's eleven counties. But look a little closer at the 2018 results and you'll notice that in both the biggest and third biggest counties in the district-- Butte and Nevada-- Denney beat LaMalfa with substantial majorities. This cycle, she's been expanding her base into Shasta, Placer, Siskiyou and Placer counties and is poised to make up the 9 point vote deficit from 2018. Her latest tracking poll by Lake Research, one of the most consistently accurate polling firms in the country, shows her and LaMalfa in a dead heat. Please consider contributing to Denney's campaign here and take a look at this analysis from Lake, an analysis that shows exactly how a deep red district flips progressive blue:

Why Can't The Conservative Brain Grapple With Science-- And Will The Climate Crisis Destroy Us All Because Of That Flaw?

 

Audrey Denney is running for Congress in the northeast corner of California (CA-01), where the state meets Oregon and Nevada. It's a largely rural district with the most exposure to Climate Change-induced wildfires anywhere in the state. She told me yesterday that the Trumpist incumbent, Doug LaMalfa "does not believe in human induced climate change. He has recently called climate change policies 'radical.' He either has been bought and paid for by the oil and gas industry (as his FEC reports show)-- or he doesn’t have the capacity to wrap his mind around science. He has also been quoted as saying abortions cause breast cancer-- so I am leaning toward both."

Denney, whose campaign leans heavily on talking with voters about the Climate Crisis said that "Climate change is not a threat in the distant future. It is taking the lives, homes, and livelihoods of people who live in my district today. We lost 93 lives in 2018 in the Carr and Camp Fires and we lost at least 15 lives last week in the North Complex fire. In 2018 the Carr fire and Camp Fire alone emitted nine times as much CO2 as the state of California was able to reduce our emissions by that year.  Our federal forests are MASSIVE carbon sources-- but have the potential to be carbon sinks-- actually helping us turn the dial back on climate change. Forty-one percent of my district-- and fifty seven percent of the state of California-- is federal forests. And the vast majority of them are in desperate need of vegetation management work and forest restoration work to bring them back to a state of health. This is the only way we will reduce our fire risk and be able to mitigate climate change. If you do not think this work is critically important than you are not paying attention. Or perhaps live in one of the few places that is not shrouded in smoke from the West’s fires... Only by restoring our forests to health by doing the critical thinning, selective logging, and fuels-reduction work, will we be able to lessen our wildfire risk and mitigate the dangerous result of climate change. We can create economic incentives to find new industry utilization for the woody biomass removed from our forests. This will look like manufacturing sustainable building materials like cross laminated timber (CLT) and processing woody biomass into low carbon transportation fuels. We can set policies in place to support the career and technical education programs and apprenticeship programs that will be necessary to build the required local workforce. All of these opportunities mean high paying jobs and more economic opportunity for the real people of California’s first district."

Yesterday, Ron Brownstein's Atlantic column asks a simple question millions of Americans probably have asked themselves at one time or another, Why is it that Republican officials still don’t care about Climate Change?. He begins by introducing us to Mary Nichols, who's been "part of the struggle to prevent catastrophic climate change for about as long as anyone in American life. For years, she’s directed California’s pathbreaking efforts to reduce carbon emissions as the chair of the California Air Resources Board-- a position she held first in the 1970s before taking it up again in 2007. Nichols has also served at the federal level, working as the chief regulator for air pollution at the Environmental Protection Agency under President Bill Clinton in the 1990s. And yet even Nichols has never seen anything that crystallizes the dangers of climate change more clearly than the historic outbreak of wildfires scorching California and other western states this year. 'Yes, absolutely,' she told me earlier this week, when I asked her whether this year’s fires are the most tangible danger to California that she’s seen from climate change. 'It’s not suddenly going to reverse itself … to years when there’s no fire season, or it’s not going to happen until October. The changes are going to be real, and they are going to be long-lasting.'"

Then he introduced us to Carol Browner who served as the EPA administrator for both of Clinton’s presidential terms and later worked as Obama’s first White House adviser on climate. "When she looks at the confluence of extreme-weather events battering the United States in recent years-- not only the wildfires, but also the Gulf Coast hurricanes, Midwest flooding, and the Southwest’s extreme heat-- Browner likewise sees stark evidence that climate change is disrupting American life earlier and more powerfully than almost anyone expected when the debate over these issues seriously began about three decades ago. 'What we have now is the absolute environmental demonstration or evidence of just how dramatic the impact of climate change is going to be. This is not going to stop,' Browner told me. 'There is going to be something next year, and the year after, if we don’t get on it.'"

Environmental scientists and policy experts around the country agree that the massive wildfires are just the latest indicator that climate change has thrust the U.S., and the world, into a dangerous new era. But it’s far from certain that the growing recognition of that threat can break the stalemate over climate policy in Washington. The accumulating evidence about climate change’s destructive power represents an irresistible force for action. But it’s colliding with an immovable object: the unbreakable resistance to any response among both Republican voters and elected officials.

Polling shows that, overall, a growing share of Americans believe climate change is happening, that human activities are driving it, and that the threat is manifesting right now. But as on many issues, the gap on all of these questions is widening between voters in the Republican coalition and other Americans. Annual polls by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication show that although the numbers have increased markedly for Democrats, Republican partisans are no more likely than in 2008 to believe that human activity is causing climate change, and they express even less concern about its impact now than they did then. (Belief in human causation has declined somewhat among independents, but concern about the effects of climate change has increased substantially.)

These attitudes within the GOP coalition both reflect and reinforce Republican officials’ rejection of any effort to reduce carbon emissions. [The Donald], echoed by many prominent conservative commentators and congressional Republicans, continues to dismiss the evidence that climate change is even contributing to the spike in extreme-weather events. With Joe Biden offering the most aggressive climate-change agenda of any Democratic presidential nominee in history, the conditions for the long-stalled debate over the issue in Washington are becoming as combustible as the dried forest floors of California.

Anthony Leiserowitz, the director of the Yale climate program, says that in the past, even those Americans concerned about climate change tended to see it as a remote problem. “It was distant in time, [in] that the impacts won’t be felt for a generation or more,” he told me. And it was “distant in space”-- “this is about polar bears and maybe some developing countries, but not the United States … not my friends, not my family, not me.”

Seen through that lens, he said, climate “just blended in the background with 1,000 other issues out there... so we can deal with it later. That’s where more of the country was in 2007 and 2008. Now we skip forward to today, that’s not true anymore because of the [weather] events we’ve been talking about.”

In Yale’s polling, the share of Americans who say that climate change is affecting weather at least somewhat reached nearly three-fifths in 2020, up from about half in early 2013. But Leiserowitz said more disruptive weather events aren’t the only things moving attitudes on climate. Another important factor is the broad, diverse chorus of voices expressing worry about it. Ten years ago, he noted, Americans might have heard concern about the climate only from “environmentalists and liberal politicians like Al Gore”; now it’s much more common to hear concerns raised by public-health professionals, business executives, and even faith leaders, such as Pope Francis.

The result has been an undeniable, though not overwhelming, shift in public opinion. In Yale’s latest national survey this spring, slightly more than three-fifths of Americans said human activities are causing the climate to change, a new high. The share of Americans who say they are very worried about climate change’s impact is relatively modest, at 27 percent. But it’s nearly double the level it was in 2008; overall, about two-thirds of respondents are now either very or somewhat worried.

Americans’ attitudes about the imminence of the danger have changed more drastically: 45 percent in the latest survey described climate change as a threat to Americans now, a big increase from 33 percent in 2008. The share who say climate change won’t be a problem for 25 years or more is at 42 percent, down 10 points compared with 2008.

Yet, on all of these fronts, the movement has not been symmetrical. Democrats are expressing much more concern than they were a decade ago, and most independents slightly more. Republicans, meanwhile, are either no more or even less concerned. (Rigid GOP attitudes largely explain why the overall shift in public opinion on many questions hasn’t been more dramatic, despite the quickening pace of weather disruption.) Since 2008, for instance, the share of Democrats who say human activity is causing climate change has spiked from 70 percent to 85 percent; among Republicans, it’s virtually unchanged, at just 37 percent. And although nearly half of Democrats now say they are very worried about climate change (almost double the level in 2008), only about one in 14 Republicans is equally concerned. That share is essentially unchanged from 12 years ago.

This pattern of public attitudes looks very similar to opinions on racial-equity issues: Compared with a decade ago, substantially more Democrats of all races accept that systemic racism against Black Americans is a serious problem; however, many Republicans are even less likely to agree it exists compared with 10 years ago. The divergence between the parties on climate, as on race, reflects the larger resorting of the electorate along lines of culture rather than class. (Republicans, as I’ve written, increasingly rely on a coalition of older, non-college-educated, evangelical, and rural white voters, while Democrats depend heavily on young people, people of color, and college-educated white Americans.)

Just as many Republican voters have cheered GOP attacks on public-health experts during the coronavirus crisis, portraying them as “elites” who look down on and want to control ordinary people, they have embraced similar accusations against climate scientists. “Climate change is an issue... where most people don’t know that much... and in those circumstances-- especially for an abstract, seemingly far away, invisible problem like climate change-- they look to their leaders to help guide them through that incredibly complicated landscape,” Leiserowitz told me. “Republicans who began talking about climate change as if it was a ‘hoax’ had an incredible impact on other Republicans.”

Many environmentalists have hoped that more and more exposure to the furious effects of weather disruption might soften resistance among Republican voters and leaders to acting on climate change. But in dramatic polling last year from the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Washington Post even Republican voters who acknowledge that their communities are facing more extreme weather overwhelmingly reject the notion that climate change is significantly contributing to those events.

Detailed results provided to me by Kaiser underscore an astonishing gap between the parties. Among people who agree that their communities are experiencing either more hot days, more floods, or more droughts, at least three-fourths of Democrats say climate change is a “major factor” in those events; but at least seven in 10 Republicans in each case say it is only a minor factor, or does not contribute at all. Slightly more than seven in 10 Democrats living in places experiencing more wildfires consider climate change a major factor in causing them; three-fourths of Republicans see climate as little or none of the cause. Even after this summer’s searing events, an Economist/YouGov poll released yesterday found that although three-fourths of Biden supporters said “the severity of recent hurricanes and Western wildfires is most likely the result of global climate change,” fewer than one in five Trump voters agreed.

Those contrasts offer very little reason for optimism that even if Biden wins, any meaningful numbers of congressional or state-level Republicans will feel pressure to support measures to reduce carbon emissions. Among other reasons for pessimism: In both presidential and Senate elections, Republicans are more and more reliant on the states that produce the most fossil fuels, which tend to be the same states with large populations of non-college-educated, Christian, and rural white voters drawn to Trump’s message of racial and cultural backlash.

Across the 20 states that emit the most carbon per dollar of economic output-- a good proxy for states’ integration into the fossil-fuel economy-- Republicans now hold 35 of their 40 Senate seats. That’s nearly enough senators to sustain a GOP filibuster against climate action on its own. The final brick in the wall of GOP opposition is that fossil-fuel producers, once an important source of campaign funding for southern Democrats such as Lyndon B. Johnson, are all-in on bolstering Republican power. Over the past 30 years, oil and gas producers have directed more than 80 percent of their massive $711 million in total federal campaign contributions toward Republicans, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

Gene Karpinski, the longtime president of the League of Conservation Voters, the environmental movement’s principal electoral arm, sees little prospect for GOP participation on climate even if Trump loses. “Because of the fossil-fuel influence on the Republican Party and the leader of the party still calling climate change a ‘hoax,’” GOP skepticism about “climate change is out of step with the rest of the country,” he says.

But others see some cracks in the resistance. Kenneth Medlock, the director of the Center for Energy Studies at the Baker Institute for Public Policy in Houston, says the terms of daily discussion in Texas and in neighboring states have changed since Houston was deluged with historic floods during Hurricane Harvey in 2017. “Even in the Gulf Coast, the conversation around extreme-weather events and the like is more the norm than it was five years ago,” he told me. “Up until Harvey happened, nobody really wanted to address the elephant in the room, which is that the climate is changing and this is a real risk.”

Even with that evolving dialogue, Medlock doesn’t expect big changes among Republican elected officials in Texas. He predicts that, to the extent that they acknowledge climate change, they would be more likely to talk about fortifying communities against its effects (an issue he considers important too) than to talk about reducing carbon emissions. But Medlock anticipates that position will become more and more untenable for Republicans over time-- not because their voters necessarily demand more action, but because the business community and institutional investors will keep moving ahead without them to cut carbon.

The dialogue among elected Republicans, he told me, “has kind of quietly shifted.” He explained that the Baker Institute, which is based at Rice University, is involved in several initiatives aimed at reducing net-carbon emissions in the region. “What’s really interesting about [those] efforts is that when we talk to state lawmakers and federal lawmakers [including Republicans], there’s no resistance,” he continued. “You open the conversation with, ‘The world is changing; consumers and investors are demanding lower carbon footprints; this is an economic opportunity for Texas...’ and immediately the conversation becomes very lively. So, in some ways, it’s about how you approach the conversation.”

Sean McElwee, the Data for Progress pollster who analyzes progressive causes, sees a similar opening. Although most Republican voters still recoil from measures presented as addressing climate change, more are open to promoting clean-energy sources, he says. (Yale’s polling has found that too.) “When we do testing … clean energies are very popular among Republican voters, and people are really interested in the jobs framework,” he told me. Just as important: Relatively few Republican voters intuitively embrace arguments from Trump and others that defending oil, gas, and coal is a culture-war statement against “elitists” promoting solar and wind energies. “I don’t think voters have an allegiance to coal and oil the way Republican politicians have,” he said.

Browner, the former EPA head, is also a voice of relative optimism. “If Biden wins and they start moving forward” with a climate agenda, she told me, “there will be Republicans calling. Maybe I’m a minority on this, but when they see you are serious and you want to do something, they want a seat at the table.”

Even if Republicans remain obdurate, unified Democratic control of Congress and the White House is more likely to produce climate action than the last Democratic trifecta in 2009 and 2010, most experts I spoke with said. At that point, the House Democratic Caucus still contained a large number of southern and rural “blue dog” members who resisted cap-and-trade climate legislation the chamber passed in 2009. (Forty-four Democrats voted no.) Now the House Democratic Caucus is overwhelmingly centered on urban and suburban districts where acting on climate is popular. As Karpinski said: “If you look at 2018, the key reason why Nancy Pelosi is now the speaker [is because] it’s mostly suburban and some of the semi-urban districts. It’s a combination of young people, communities of color, and suburban women. They are the most supportive of this issue and want action.”

If Biden wins and Democrats gain the Senate majority, he could drive a big part of his climate agenda through a coronavirus-relief stimulus package; his plan includes massive spending to promote renewable power, electric cars, and energy-efficiency upgrades for homes and businesses. Obama did the same thing in the stimulus package he signed to counter the Great Recession, tucking in huge investments in clean energy (that Biden as vice president was assigned to oversee).

But to secure Senate approval for measures that directly limit carbon emissions, Democrats would almost certainly have to end the filibuster, which empowers what I’ve called the “brown blockade” of Senate Republicans who represent the fossil-fuel-producing states. (Unable to overcome a filibuster, the Senate never considered the cap-and-trade climate bill the House passed in 2009.) And even if Democrats do end the filibuster, serious climate legislation could face a tight squeeze to reach a simple majority, with Joe Manchin, from coal-producing West Virginia, and possibly other Democratic senators having to take a very tough vote.

All of those outcomes are impossible to predict. But what’s clear is that the tension will grow between a sluggish political system locked in a partisan standoff and a climate system that is poised to generate disruption at an accelerating pace. “This is not some ‘new normal’ that we can plan around … it’s a system that continues to spiral out of control,” says Vijay Limaye, an environmental epidemiologist at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “There definitely is a signal in these record-setting months that … we are heading into a new era when we will see records set, and they will fall just as quickly … It’s hard for people to wrap their heads around now, but as bad as things have been this year, unquestionably, they will get worse.”

Nichols, the veteran climate regulator, is just as stark in her warning: Even today’s extreme weather may soon seem like the (relative) calm before the storm. “The rate of change is accelerating, so it is absolutely possible that we’ll see more visible signs of bigger storms,” as well as higher temperatures and sea-level rise, she said. “All of those things could happen much faster.”





She explained that the famous apocalyptic scene from the movie The Day After Tomorrow still isn’t likely to happen, where big waves wash over the skyscrapers of New York City. “But bigger storms and more damage and loss of property and loss of life as a result absolutely is likely going to continue-- not just in a gradual slope, but at a rate of acceleration that is greater than was predicted before,” she said.

The biggest message of the California wildfires may be that not only the terms but the tense of the climate debate is changing. Climate change has evolved from something that will threaten America to something that is doing so today. “The people who used to talk about how they were trying to save the world for their grandchildren need to start thinking about their children and even themselves,” Nichols said.

Kara Eastman is the Democratic candidate running for the Omaha-based congressional seat (NE-02) occupied by Trumpist stooge, Donald Bacon. The Climate crisis is a big issue she talks with Nebraska voters about constantly promising to help lead the battle when she replaces-nothing-Bacon in Congress:

Climate change-- appropriately called climate chaos by many-- is clearly the result of human activity. The wildfires on the West Coast bring this reality into dramatic relief. In order to reverse this trend we need immediate action from policy-makers from the entire political spectrum. In the past, there was an environmental consensus. Major environmental legislation from the Clean Water Act through the Montreal Protocol Treaty were passed by huge majorities on both sides of the aisle. Unfortunately, due to the extremist takeover of the Republican party, led by Donald Trump and Don Bacon, the GOP is no longer the party of the environment. On the contrary, they continue to give voice to the fringe belief that the massive climate upheavals we are witnessing in real-time today are part of some "normal" weather cycle, moreover, that these events we can see with our eyes and choke on in our lungs aren't really even happening.

Don Bacon wants to have it both ways. In front of a Republican audience, he says the the science is "uncertain" on climate, but on the other hand he claims membership to the bipartisan but largely ineffectual climate solutions caucus when he's confronted by local voters. Meanwhile, in Nebraska's Second Congressional District, we suffered from one of the hottest and driest summers on record, a year after central Nebraska suffered from devastating floods.

When I am in Congress, I will join my colleagues in putting climate front and center of the agenda. Nebraskans will be able to count on me to push a climate agenda, not simply push greenwashed window dressing. It's no longer some distant future crisis. It's here and now and we need to get to work.

Beth Doglio is in a D v D congressional general election in Washington. She's a progressive, endorsed by the Congressional Progressive Caucus and her opponent is a ConservaDem endorsed by the Chamber of Commerce and the Wall Street owned and operated New Dems. There is no issue more important in her campaign than Climate. And Beth has a stellar record while her opponent's record is putrid and, basically, Republican. Yesterday Beth told me that "As the wildfires rage on the West Coast, lives are being lost, towns are burning to the ground, and millions of acres of land are now charred deserts. This is climate change. The stakes have never been higher and the consequences of failing to act have never been more clear. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projects that we have just one decade, one last chance to act, before it’s too late." She continued:

The United States must step up and must act with the urgency this moment demands. And the reality is that beyond its dangers, climate change actually presents us with a great opportunity. We can build a clean energy economy, strengthen our middle-class, and create millions of good union jobs. But we need leaders with expertise to get us there. Leaders who have stood up to the fossil fuel industry and won. Leaders who have actually passed policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and grow jobs.

As a climate advocate, I led the effort to stop the development of 7 coal export terminals dead in their tracks, while my opponent as mayor was busy working to site the world’s largest Methanol plant in her town. While she points in part to her support for community gardens as her track record on climate issues, I point to playing a pivotal role in passing legislation that significantly reduces greenhouse gas emissions-- like the nation’s best 100% Clean Electricity Bill that integrates equity and labor standards with hard deadlines to remove fossils fuels from our electric sector and grow clean energy jobs. Or my first of its kind Green Buildings Law that makes our buildings more healthy and efficient at the same time it creates jobs. I’m calling for a sector-by-sector decarbonization of our economy. I am serious about and experienced in pushing for and passing emission reduction policies that will leave a safe planet for my kids.

You can ask anyone-- I love gardening and, in fact, I helped build a robust garden program at my children's elementary school-- but gardening is not what is going to get us out of this! This issue can no longer take a backseat, play second fiddle, remain an afterthought. We must have a plan, it must be ambitious, it must go far enough. I am calling for Washington, D.C. to follow Washington state’s lead and get serious about passing legislation to address the issue at scale.

The Brainwashing Of America-- Will It Re-Elect Trump And His GOP Allies In November?

What Campaign? by Nancy Ohanian

This morning, Washington Post reporters Meg Kelly and Elyse Samuels, did a blockbuster report about how, Trump is creating an alternative reality online about coronavirus. In this alternative world-- shared by millions of Americans through Fox News, hate-talk radio and the rest of the right-wing media, Trump has successfully met the challenge of the pandemic. At a news conference on May 11th, Trump said "We have met the moment and we have prevailed. Americans do whatever it takes to find solutions, pioneer breakthroughs, and harness the energies we need to achieve a total victory."

In the real-- and well-documented-- world, Trump and his regime have lied their way through the pandemic-- from the first day until today. His Twitter and Facebook feeds tell a bizarro-world story, dishonest narratives that have attempted to illustrate and amplify a successful (but bogus) picture of the response. "The Trump administration’s mishandling of key moments in the novel coronavirus outbreak has been well documented," wrote Kelly and Samuels. Early travel restrictions from China and Europe were meant to buy time, but inaction or poor planning squandered much of the benefit. Delays in testing allowed the virus to spread across the country largely undetected. A shortage of personal protective equipment while cases surged overwhelmed hospitals and health-care workers. The president promoted unproven, and sometimes dangerous, medical approaches to fighting the disease, in some cases with potentially deadly consequences. He misrepresented how quickly a vaccine will be available.

Trump and his people are working hard to blanket the zone with his parallel universe version of what happened. "The campaign has spent $32.6 million on Facebook ads since January 2019, more than double the Facebook ad spending of presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden. And campaign officials spent the past four years rigorously building a digital infrastructure to connect with voters not only through on social media, but with online polls, email lists and rally registration forms. In other words, when the 2020 election went online only, the Trump team was ready. Trump and the White House often say they turn to social media because a hostile, left-leaning news media does not depict Trump’s achievements accurately. The Fact Checker video team analyzed thousands of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube posts and ads from Trump, his campaign and a long list of surrogates. The data revealed the backbone of a five-point strategy to tell their version of the coronavirus story: rewriting mistakes, highlighting achievements, deflecting blame, declaring victory and creating distraction."

The Facts

Nothing to see here

In the first phase of the outbreak, Trump and his allies consistently played down the threat of the virus. Trump held eight campaign rallies between Jan. 21 (when covid-19 was confirmed in the United States) and March 2. His speeches focused on just about everything else-- at one point referring to concerns about the coronavirus as the Democrats’ “new hoax,” akin to the Russia investigation and the Ukraine-related impeachment probe.

The Fact Checker collected data of social media posts from Brandwatch, a digital consumer intelligence company, Crowdtangle, a social media analytics tool owned by Facebook, and Nick Monaco at the Digital Intelligence Lab. The data shows that Trump’s conversation about the coronavirus online was minimal in late January and February, even though Trump in late January announced that he would impose some travel restrictions on non-U. S. citizens traveling from China. His campaign and surrogates echoed the same trend.

Instead, analysis from Brandwatch revealed that Trump’s most talked about topics online included his impeachment trial, Nancy Pelosi, the Second Amendment, and 2020 Democratic primary candidates at the time such as former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Biden.

“When he was getting the intelligence on this back in … January, (if he) took the same level of seriousness about it that other nations were starting to do, had utilized the Defense Production Act fully, which still has not to this day been fully implemented relative to the things that we need and that the businesses in particular could do and have offered to do,” said Michael Steele, former chairman of the Republican National Committee. “If all of those early pieces had been put in place, you’d have a very different narrative today.”

We’re doing a great job

In early March, as covid-19 cases and deaths started to increase in the United States, Trump’s tone on the virus changed. He started holding regular news briefings with his coronavirus task force and took more tangible steps to fight the spread of the disease.

The refocus on coronavirus was reflected in the Trump campaign’s online rhetoric, too. However, the ways in which he and his campaign talked about covid-19 online were often not based in facts or misrepresented the reality of the situation. For instance his most talked about topics at this time included the terms “Chinese virus” and “Fake News.”

The campaign apparatus promoted videos online that tried to rewrite the narrative. For example, this video, which bashed the media’s response, skipped over February, trying to erase a period of slow intervention by the administration. (Trump in February also kept saying that the virus would soon go away and praised China for its handling of the crisis.) The campaign also shared cherry-picked video clips on social media, highlighting Trump’s comments at news conferences that were inaccurate. Other videos clipped politicians and governor’s statements or used the wrong context for their quotes. The ads inaccurately made it sound as if these people were praising Trump’s response. Lastly, video ads deflected blame to China and used this talking point to attack political rivals such as Biden, Trump’s likely opponent in this year’s presidential contest.

“One of my biggest concerns about the way that the pandemic is already shifting and will continue to shift online political campaigning is that it will drive the discourse to be even more uncivil, to be even more provocative, to be ultimately potentially hateful,” said Rebekah Tromble, professor of media, politics, digital research and ethics at George Washington University.

Give Him A Break by Chip Proser

We’ve won

In mid-April and early May, Trump and his team appeared to all but claim victory over the virus. Fearing economic downfall, they have called for the country to reopen, even while health experts warn of consequences from loosening shutdown restrictions too soon.

“If some areas, cities, states or what have you, jump over those various checkpoints and prematurely open up without having the capability of being able to respond effectively and efficiently, my concern is that we will start to see little spikes that might turn into outbreaks,” said Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “I have been very clear in my message-- to try, to the best extent possible, to go by the guidelines, which have been very well thought out and very well delineated.”

Despite these concerns, Trump’s incentives to reinvigorate the economy only continue to grow. His presidency and candidacy have centered on economic growth, which will become an even greater focal point in the upcoming election.

“He’s the businessman. He’s the person there to lead the economy,” Tromble said. “We’re now in a situation where we’re looking at Great Depression levels of unemployment, and we can’t deny that the economy is in a free fall. And so that particular message is lost unless the Trump administration reshifts to trying to reopen the economy. And that’s very clearly what they’re doing now.”

In addition to the economy, Trump and his team have moved on to discussing new topics online. Their posts and ads have often focused on controversial and inflammatory topics, such as charges against former national security adviser Michael Flynn and attacks directed at the news media or House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). The campaign has also launched ads targeting Biden that include age-related attacks and conspiracy theories about his ties to China.

The White House and Trump campaign declined to comment.

The Bottom Line

It remains to be seen whether this messaging is effective with voters and will affect the way in which Americans remember the pandemic. A Washington Post-Ipsos poll from April 27 to May 4 showed 43 percent of Americans approved of Trump’s handling of the outbreak. While Trump pushes to reopen, some Republican governors are facing pushback for moving into that phase too quickly.

“We expect our presidents to be optimistic about the future,” Steele said. “But there’s also a level of realism in that optimism. Because we know real, we see that and we still see people getting sick and dying around us. And so I think perspective is really what people are looking for."

All presidential campaigns try to portray their candidate in the best possible light, but what is notable about the Trump campaign is that its social media reach allows the campaign to rewrite even the most recent history.

The Post's Jim Hohmann followed up a couple of hours later-- for anyone who didn't grasp what Kelly and Samuels were trying to say in their long, statistic-heavy piece. He wrote that Trump "paints a picture of the alternative reality that the president’s reelection effort is trying to create for low-information voters who don’t follow traditional news organizations."

Congress is crawling with Trump rubber stamps. Georgia congressman Buddy Carter is a perfect example. His progressive opponent, Lisa Ring-- endorsed by People for the American Way this morning-- told us that Carter is "a Trump puppet and has been from the beginning. Not only has he promoted the failed policies and defended the corruption of this administration (indeed, he was one of the legislators who stormed the SCIF, cell phone in hand), he has actively pushed a false narrative about every issue as a self-service for profit and power. His latest push is to praise Trump for both the economy and his handling of COVID-19 and to demonize China and any Democrats pushing financial assistance for ordinary folks. Carter is always looking for a way to profit from any situation. If you follow the money trail, you'll see why Carter, backed by big pharma and the healthcare industry, is blaming China for the pandemic and how the U.S. responded."

Audrey Denney, the progressive candidate in the rural northeast corner of California, sees her opponent, Doug LaMalfa in much the same way Lisa sees Buddy Carter. She told us that while she "would certainly advocate that living in extremely rural counties require us to carefully examine health department data and make sure we are applying effective restrictions in a manner that makes practical sense for our part of the world, communicating a narrative that this virus is in the past is reckless and dangerous. I was dismayed to see Congressman LaMalfa spending the weekend attending anti-mask protests and then going to Memorial Day events where, without any distancing or precautions, was standing side by side some of the most vulnerable among us, our dear veterans."

Doug LaMalfa-- spreading COVID-19 in his district?

J.D. Scholten is a second-time's-the charm candidate-- just like Julie, Audrey, Lisa and Kathy. And he's taking on Steve King, who he nearly beat in 2018. This afternoon, he told us that "During a global pandemic that has cost over 100,000 American lives, Steve King continues to focus on himself. He lavishes Trump's handling of this pandemic, blames his own party's leadership for losing his committee assignments, and posts incessant memes to 'trigger' the left. This isn't leadership. Folks in Iowa's 4th district need a voice of reason, calm, and information-- not more divisiveness and self-promotion."

It's very much the same with Roger Williams, a fully-committed Trump bootlicker in central Texas (TX-25). Julie Oliver told us that Williams has "been lying about voting by mail-- as a byproduct of this pandemic and reasonable fears of getting exposed to the virus from voting in person. Ever since Jim Crow-- and indeed, ever since Reconstruction-- the right to vote has been under attack, explicitly targeting Black and Brown communities. Roger Williams' lying and saying that vote-by-mail is unsafe or somehow more susceptible to fraud is straight out of the same playbook-- to confuse people about voting by making it harder or by delegitimizing the democratic process entirely. We need to expand voting rights in America, end gerrymandering, get big money and unaccountable dark money out of Congress and out of our politics and get our democracy back."

If Missouri Congressman Jason Smith started advertising that he's a Trump puppet, sit wouldn't surprise anyone that he was embracing what everyone already knows. His opponent, Kathy Ellis told us that "Since the start of this pandemic, Jason Smith has done nothing but lie about the state of our country. Just this past week, he tweeted-- one of his few forms of communication with his consitutients-- that 'Trump acted with swift, decisive action' and he's 'thankful for the strong leadership he's shown.' Give me a break. Since the start of this pandemic, we've seen over 100,000 Americans die, and it didn't have to be this way. With better and stronger leadership at the head of our country, we could have prevented many of these deaths. Jason Smith's attempt to negate this is an attempt to trick the voters in his District into thinking that his plan of inaction is working. Well, it isn't working, and we're seeing voters start to question that in in MO-08."

Farms Need The Climate Crisis Ameliorated More Than Anyone Else-- Audrey Denney And Bernie Sanders Realize That And Were Working On It Together Last Week

I had dinner with a member of Pelosi's leadership team this week to talk about 2020 House candidates. Who was the first candidate the Member wanted to talk about? Audrey Denney. So I had a real shock ready. Chico, up in Butte County, isn't exactly a bustling metropolis. The population is about 94,776, not exactly the kind of place presidential candidates are flocking to. But it's the biggest city in CA-01, the predominantly rural northeast California congressional district where Denney is running to replace Trump enabler Doug LaMalfa. Not even Kamala Harris has bothered with the area since she thinks it's too red and too Trumpified.

Denney was in Washington after the fires that devastated the area, some of which Bernie toured this week, to persuade members of Congress that northeast California needed help-- stat. One of the members she met with was fellow progressive, Bernie Sanders, who promised to come-- and did. He laid out his program for tackling the Climate Crisis in Chico... and asked Audrey Denney to introduce him to her neighbors. That's what the video up top is.

CA-01 has a PVI of R+11. That's very red. Trump beat Hillary there 56.2% to 36.5%. But last cycle, Denney ran an incredible progressive grassroots campaign and-- with ZERO help from the DCCC-- came closer than anyone else has in dislodging LaMalfa. Matching him dollar for dollar in fundraising, she kept him down to a 54.9% to 45.1% win-- doing 10% better than Clinton. She also won the biggest county in the district, Butte, and the third biggest, Nevada, out of the 11 counties in the district. She nearly won Siskiyou and made significant headway in Place County. She out-performed both Gavin Newsom and Dianne Feinstein in the district as well.

What Denney has been telling voters in the North Country is that "Climate change is not a threat in the distant future. It is threatening the lives, homes, and livelihoods of people who live in my district today. We have to take bold action to mitigate climate change and restore our forests to health. The Green New Deal is not a plan to mitigate climate change-- it is a bold commitment to the belief that we can. I want to be a policymaker who crafts pragmatic policies that support the vision of the Green New Deal-- tailored to benefit the people and the communities of California’s first district. I will be the voice at the table that represents rural America, our farms, ranches, and forests. A lot of misinformation about the GND has been propagated and folks in conservative districts range from skeptical to afraid of it. I believe the GND is a tremendous opportunity for us to push forward innovative policies that will help our farmers and ranchers prosper, make our forests healthy and our communities safer from wildfires, and restore our rural economies-- all while doing our part to mitigate climate change. The incumbent I am running against refuses to even have discussions about this issue because he doesn’t believe climate science." Listen to her own take on Climate in the video below that her campaign put out:




Trump's trade wars are killing farms in districts like Denney's-- and the Democratic Party realizes they can win back rural districts. So far they've only been looking for conservative corporate shills and Republican-lite schnooks with not much to offer other than "Trump bad-- me not as bad." I doubt the DCCC will lift a finger for Denney, not while a corporate monster and conservative like Cheri Bustos runs what's left of the DCCC. But with farmers in northeast California struggling to get by as prices plummet and markets dry up and as unsold crops rot, several presidential candidates have put together impressive plans to revitalize rural America, none as vibrant and powerful as Bernie's. The thermometer on the right is where you can contribute both to Audrey's and to Bernie's campaigns. I hope you'll click on it and give what you can.

Bonus video-- the deadly California wildfires-- and why the Sunrise Movement endorsed only one congressional candidate: Audrey Denney.

Far Far Away-- In The Northeast Corner Of California, One Can Sense Something Is Starting To Flip

We try to say it at least once a week-- and we've been doing that for over two years: Audrey Denney would make a kick-ass, effective member of Congress. It's not her fault she was born and raised and still lives in a sprawling rural district that voted for Trump by 20 points or that the PVI is a daunting R+11. That was certainly enough to make the DCCC look elsewhere. But it didn't discourage Denney. She campaigned like she could actually win. She knocked on doors and did town hall meetings and phone-banked and raised $1,088,140 (to her opponent's $1,028,857). In the end, she couldn't overcome the gigantic Republican registration advantage-- but she sliced it in half. In fact, she did better on election day than anyone remembers any Democratic congressional candidate ever doing before. Although Doug LaMalfa beat her 160,046 (54.9%) to 131,548 (45.1%), she took the the biggest county in the district, Butte, and did even better in the 3rd biggest, Nevada County.

The Congressional Progressive Caucus just sent their superstar political director, David Keith, up there to suss out the district. "She can win this time," he told me today. "She's on fire and the district knows her now. She's them; they're her. She's turned Siskiyou around and Placer is going her way. You watch in November when the votes start being reported from Shasta... They love her in Redding now." I've never heard anyone from the DCCC talk about anything like that before. I hope he tells them.

Alex Kotch wrote a powerful piece about her opponent and about the CA-01 race for Sludge. I recommend that you read the whole thing. If you like these excerpts do it-- and think about contributing to her campaign by clicking on the Blue America congressional thermometer on the right. Kotch introduced his subject by pointing out that LaMalfa is cozy with the fossil fuel and logging industries and that Denney recently announced a second campaign to oust him. "The first candidate to sign the Green New Deal Pledge, Denney, an agricultural educator, scored the first 2020 endorsement by environmental activist group Sunrise Movement on April 27."

“In 2018, 93 lives were lost in my district in the Carr and Camp Fires,” said Denney in a Sunrise Movement press release. “Wildfires exacerbated by drought, climate change, and a lack of forest management threaten the lives, homes, and livelihoods of the people who live in California’s 1st District. I’m running for Congress because we need a representative who is only beholden to their constituents, not to corporate interests and political gamesmanship.”

Denney has pledged to reject campaign contributions from corporate political action committees and is a No Fossil Fuel Money pledge signer, meaning she’ll also refuse large donations from executives of oil, gas, and coal companies. This won’t affect her campaign finances much, as she received less than $2,000 from individuals and PACs in the energy and natural resources sector in the 2018 elections.

LaMalfa, on the other hand, has benefited from support from fossil fuel companies. From 2013 through 2018, LaMalfa’s campaigns received $192,156 from PACs and individuals in the energy and natural resources sector, with 84% of that total coming from PACs, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. He has received over $103,000 from PACs and individuals in the oil and gas industry.

Denney is a foil for LaMalfa, who has denied man-made climate change, as well as its role in increasing the frequency and intensity of forest fires, which roiled his district just last year, killing dozens of people.

“The congressman’s ineffectiveness given his status on the House Agriculture Subcommittee on Conservation and Forestry goes far beyond his denial of science and speaks to his failure to serve in his most basic capacity as the voice of our rural district in Washington,” Denney told Sludge. “Under his leadership, we’ve seen increased mismanagement of our forests, policy missteps between federal and state government agencies that have limited our land management strategies, and increased cuts to federal conservation and forestry funding that have crippled our rural economies and made forest health the most urgent public health crisis facing rural Californians today.”

As deadly forest fires ravaged his California district, LaMalfa, the ranking member on the Conservation and Forestry Subcommittee, sponsored legislation to open up more federal lands to the for-profit logging industry while bypassing standard environmental assessments.

...[In 2017] LaMalfa co-sponsored the Emergency Forest Restoration Act to loosen environmental regulations on national forests. Sponsors claimed their legislation, which would open up more national forest lands to commercial logging and exempt certain areas from the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, would protect and regenerate forests.

In 2019, LaMalfa continues his effort to expand logging and derail environmental protections. He is the primary sponsor of the CARR Act, which “exempts wildfire mitigation activities [including forest thinning] conducted within 300 feet of a road from all laws governing” environmental review and endangered species protection.

Speaking about wildfire protection to a room full of government officials and representatives of the logging, forestry, and construction industries in February, LaMalfa said, “We need to advance the force of the private sector.”

LaMalfa’s campaigns have received contributions from officials at Anderson, California-based Sierra Pacific Industries, the nation’s fourth-largest lumber producer. Mark Emmerson, the chief financial officer and a member of the billionaire family that owns the company, gave the LaMalfa campaign $500 last October, while corporate affairs director Andrea Howell donated $250 on the same day.

...This year, LaMalfa’s biggest donor by far is Take Back the House PAC, a committee that supports Republican candidates and took in millions of dollars in the first quarter. On March 29, LaMalfa got $72,000 from the PAC, which had received $25,000 from Mark Emmerson [CFO of Sierra Pacific Industries, the nation’s fourth-largest lumber producer] one week earlier.

...Denney told Sludge, “We must have policies that bring diverse stakeholders to the table in order to support selective sustainable logging, to restore appropriate density to the forests, and remove excess and dead trees. A healthy and fire-safe forest requires that we support education and implementation of scientifically proven forest management strategies that provide for the diversity of species and ages of trees in the forest, reducing the chance of massive die-off from disease or pest outbreaks that exasperate our fire risks.”

The challenger said that to address forest health and climate change, solutions include “training foresters to adopt climate-friendly practices, utilizing selective sustainable logging to restore appropriate density to forest land, supporting education and implementation of proactive fire control measures, new industry utilization of woody biomass removed from public land…and increasing incentives for investments in renewable energy.”

LaMalfa is a member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and sits on the Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines, and Hazardous Materials, which has jurisdiction over oil and gas pipelines, and the Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment, which oversees oil spills and other water pollution issues.

Accordingly, from 2013 through 2018, LaMalfa’s campaigns took in significant amounts from the PACs of oil and gas companies and utilities that burn or deliver fossil fuels. For example, he has received $11,000 from the Occidental Petroleum PAC, $7,500 from Exxon Mobil’s PAC, and $6,500 from Chevron’s PAC. In addition to other petroleum trade groups such as the American Petroleum Institute and the American Gas Association, the California Independent Petroleum Association has given his campaigns $1,000.

From the PAC of California-based Pacific Gas and Electric utility, he has received over $21,000, and he’s gotten $6,000 from the PAC of California-based Edison International, a utility holding company based in California, and $3,000 from California-based Sempra Energy.

...Denney was critical of LaMalfa’s extensive corporate funding.

“The people who live in my district deserve a representative that only works for them,” she said. “I have pledged not to take money from any corporate PACs-- including fossil fuel PACs-- because I will only answer to the people in my district. How can we expect our leaders to take bold action to protect citizens when their re-election depends on checks from fossil fuel, pharmaceutical, and telecom company PACs?”

LaMalfa has displayed his interest in the oil and gas industry in other ways besides campaign fundraising. In 2017, he sent a natural resources legislative assistant on a tour of Texas oil and gas facilities sponsored by the American Exploration and Production Council and oil and gas private equity firm Enervest.

The California congressman may have a personal financial stake in climate change denial. According to his 2017 financial disclosure, LaMalfa owns partial stakes worth between $1.1 million and $5.25 million in a rice farm and a rice drying facility, LaMalfa Farms, Inc. Rice farms that are intermittently flooded can produce huge amounts of greenhouse gas nitrous oxide, while continuously flooded rice farms emit methane, another greenhouse gas.

As of December 2017, LaMalfa was the “highest earner of farm subsidies in Congress,” according to the Chico Enterprise-Recorder, a Chico, California, local paper. His spokesperson told the outlet that LaMalfa had “voted to end direct farm subsidy payments in the very first farm bill he worked on.”

“Science has proven that our changing climate is the driver behind forest fire regularity and intensity, and no one knows that better than California’s First Congressional District,” said Denney. “We must take a bold and aggressive approach to combating the effects of climate change.”

Will Trump Shut Down The Government Again-- Or Rescue Himself By Stealing Money From California And Puerto Rico?

UPDATE: Trump caves again-- won't shut down the government. Earlier this morning, beaten like a dog, Trump was reported by CNN to be preparing to sign the bill to keep the government open without any money for his foolish vanity-wall. The deal falls far short of all his demands but he's knows he's been beaten and has no choice, despite the rantings and ravings of Ann Coulter. CNN also reported that "Even as lawmakers haggled over details of their agreement, the White House had been planning behind the scenes to secure the funds for the wall unilaterally. The White House says Trump is continuing to weigh his options to fund a border wall, which still include taking executive action to secure funding for a wall. It's not clear which combination of actions the President might use, and the topic has been under debate for weeks."

Audrey Denney, a progressive congressional candidate in northeast California (CA-01) made a video Trump ought to watch before he goes on spouting his ignorance about Climate Change and before he tries stealing money Congress allocated for hurricane disaster relief in Puerto Rico and wild fire relief in California to build his vanity-wall. When Trump started threatening to take away the crucial money, the Republican rubber stamp who represents the most burned part of the state, Doug LaMalfa, Audrey's opponent, said he trusts Trump to do the right thing. Audrey doesn't and she was incensed by Trump's comments which she said "make it clear that he does not have a grasp on the science of climate change, the complexities of forest ecosystems, or the basics of fire prevention. Last November we were experiencing weather patterns and dryness levels that mirrored peak fire season (July). High winds and these extraordinarily dry conditions led to a creating the most devastating fire in California’s history. Our changing climate will continue to threaten lives and property in Northern California and across our country. Many of California’s forests are overgrown and need to be restored to healthy forested ecosystems. It is complex and important work that must be done. However, nearly 60% of the forests in California are under federal control-- it is the federal government who has chosen to divert resources away from forest management-- not California. As we look ahead to increased risks for people who live in urban-wildland interface areas, we need to devote resources to proper community planning, emergency preparedness, and innovative solutions for minimizing risks. We need leaders that understand the complexity, nuance, and science surrounding these issues." (Trump's idea of climate change has to do with deriding people who talk about Global Warming by pointing out heavy snows.)

On Monday, writing for Politico, Nancy Cook and Eliana Johnson reported that the Regime is firming up plans to shift federal dollars allocated by Congress for unrelated purposes build his wall. Clearly attorneys working on this unconstitutional endeavor should be disbarred down the road. For now, though, this planned executive order, which Mulvaney referred to on Meet The Press last Sunday, will be Trump's response to the bipartisan compromise Congress offered him to solve the impasse. "The emerging consensus among acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and top budget officials," according to Politico "is to shift money from two Army Corps of Engineers’ flood control projects in Northern California, as well as from disaster relief funds intended for California and Puerto Rico. The plan will also tap unspent Department of Defense funds for military construction, like family housing or infrastructure for military bases, according to three sources familiar with the negotiations."

Part of Ted Lieu's district, Malibu, also suffered severe wild fire damage. His reaction to Trump's threats was very much in line with what all the California Democrats had to say. "'Let's hurt military families and disaster victims,' said no one ever. Trump's latest scheme to raid federal funds designated for military construction projects and disaster relief in order to pay for his pointless border wall is not just irresponsible, but likely unconstitutional. Congress has the power of the purse and decides how federal dollars are spent. While it is true the executive often has a fair amount of discretion in how federal money is allocated, the President does not have the power to simply ignore the will of Congress and redirect funding as he sees fit. So to summarize, Trump is planning to steal from military families and disaster victims in order to pay for a pointless wall that he promised Mexico would pay for-- it's not the dumbest idea I've ever heard, but it is pretty darn close."

Mark DeSaulnier's congressional district (especially Antioch, Pittsburg and Bay Point) is immediately to the south of some of the hardest hit areas of the fire zone. Earlier today he told me that "Investing in disaster prevention and recovery is proven to be effective in the long run, both at reducing damage to life and property from disasters and economically. On the opposite end of the spectrum, there is no analysis that suggests that President Trump’s border wall would be worth a single penny we invest in it. We should go where the facts lead us, not the President’s political biases."

Alan Grayson, whose old district in the Orlando Metro has one of the largest Puerto Rican populations of any on the mainland. "Trump," he told me this morning "seems to think that highly absorbent paper towels are the best form of hurricane recovery. But honestly, the Democrats deserve some of the blame, because they could have prevented it. There have been something like 20 appropriations bills passed since Trump took office. How hard would it have been to offer an amendment in at least one of them, saying no diversion of funds for a wall?"

But the strategy is far from a cure-all for a president with no good options, and it has already sparked debate within the White House. Moving funds by executive order is virtually certain to draw instant court challenges, with opponents, including some powerful members of Congress, arguing the president is encroaching on the legislative branch’s constitutional power to appropriate funds.

Some Trump officials, including those aligned with senior adviser Stephen Miller, have argued internally that the gambit might be even more vulnerable to court challenges than a national emergency declaration. And in a sign of the political fallout, the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee has argued that tapping military construction money would hurt the armed forces’ potential readiness.

Until now, Trump officials had focused on the drawbacks of a possible national emergency declaration. But as the alternative option of moving money by executive order has come into clearer relief ahead of a Feb. 15 deadline for a spending deal with Congress that could avert a new government shutdown, so have the risks of that alternative option.

“It will create a firestorm, once you start taking money that congressmen think is in their districts,” said Jim Dyer, a former staff director for the House Appropriations Committee. “You will cause yourself a problem if that money was directed away from any type of project or activity because I guarantee it has some constituency on Capitol Hill.”

Inside the White House, the president’s lawyers have for weeks grappled with the question of how to defend Trump should he choose to assert broad executive powers to build the wall. While the phrase “national emergency” has an extreme ring, some administration attorneys note that it is a well-established power under a 1976 law that has been invoked 58 times by past presidents. They call it uncontroversial that presidents have broad discretion to declare a national emergencies and similarly broad authority to deal with them.

“President is on sound legal ground to declare a National Emergency... this is hardly unprecedented,” Trump tweeted on Sunday, quoting comments by Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA)

Like LaMalfa, McClintock is taking his political life in his hands by backing Trump on this. His region will also be a loser and independent voters in Truckee, Auburn, Placerville, Lincoln, Roseville and in the suburbs north of Sacramento. McClintock's district also includes Yosemite, the Stanislaus National Forest, the John Muir Wilderness, the Sierra National Forest and the Ansel Adams Wilderness. Trump won the R+10 district with 54% of the vote and last year McClintock under-performed his previous wins, beating under-funded Democrat Jessica Morse 184,401 (54.1%) to 156,253 (45.9%), with very close margins in the 2 biggest counties, Placer and El Dorado. In another wave election-- which looks likely-- Trump on the top of the ticket will be deadly for both LaMalfa and McClintock.

This morning, Audrey Denney told us that her "home county was ravaged by the most deadly and destructive wildfire in California’s history. We are still reeling from the effects of the fire. Around 30,000 people have been displaced. Many residents have moved away permanently because there is no available housing to accommodate them. We are mourning the loss of 85 of our community members.  Residents are grappling every day with how to piece their lives back together when everything they had was taken away traumatically and instantly. Homeowners are grappling with whether or not to rebuild, where to live in the coming years, and wondering how they will ever get fire insurance again. Renters across our county, myself included, are having to move in with friends because there are no rentals available and the pre-fire housing crisis in Butte County is exponentially worse now." She continued, passionately:

Three weeks after the fire I had the privilege of leading a delegation of Camp Fire survivors to D.C. to lobby for the federal aid we need to help our broken communities recover. I got to watch as the heroic nurses from Feather River hospital told their story of evacuating the most vulnerable to safety before being trapped in the flames and nearly perishing. The representatives and senators who heard the testimonies of those heroes were moved with empathy for the loss and struggle in our county. My question is this: Where is our President’s empathy?  How can his conscience allow him to use the citizens of Butte County as pawns in his political war? The lives and livelihoods of Americans must come before his partisan political games. Recovering from this disaster is going to take billions of dollars and many years-- we need help-- and we need leaders who will fight for us.

The recovery of our communities is entirely dependent on receiving this Federal disaster funding. This is not the time for the President to cause more uncertainty while we try and move forward. This is not the time for our Congressman Doug LaMalfa to be content to stand by idly while his constituents are further harmed and traumatized by these political games.

Blue America has an ActBlue page specifically designed to send contributions, directly, to progressive Democrats running in the Golden State. Last year, conservative establishment-oriented Democrats with big money connections moved in rapidly to make headway in crowded California primaries. The Democrats flipped 7 seats, but-- and it's a big but-- only one, Mike Levin, is showing any kind of consistent support for the progressive values they all ran on. Levin has signed on as a co-sponsor of Medicare-For-All and the Green New Deal resolution. He's the only California freshman who has. Meanwhile Gil Cisneros-- who never stopped vowing he was a progressive-- joined the Wall Street-owned New Dems, as did Harley Rouda, Josh Harder and Katie Hill. Worse yet, many who pledged over and over and over to chew PAC money-- watch Cisneros here-- are now scooping up the slimiest sewer money in DC hand-over-first, counting on their constituents being to stupid or preoccupied to notice. That's why it's so important to back-- and back early-- dedicated across-the-board, working class progressives like Audrey Denney. Please consider tapping on the thermometer on the right and chipping in what you can. $20.20 would be nice, for example. But $5 and $10 contributions are what power these grassroots campaigns.

Meanwhile, in crazy-land Trump's base hates the compromise. Coukter called it the "Yellow New Deal" and Hannity called it "garbage" and threatened Republicans who back it.