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Either Way, Kamala Harris Can Help Beat Trump
Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters. Vice President Kamala Harris does not enjoy being compared to Barack Obama. It was an easy association to make fifteen years ago, when both were promising upstarts relatively new to the national stage. She supported and stumped for him early on during his first run for president, and their biographies are broadly adjacent; they’re biracial Democratic politicians with megawatt smiles who came of age in the post-civil rights era. But that’s where any useful comparisons end, primarily for one reason: Harris hates giving flowery speeches.
Oregon Suit Blaming Oil Firms for 2021 “Heat Dome” Disaster May Have a Shot
This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Northwest Oregon had never seen anything like it. Over the course of three days in June 2021, Multnomah County—the Emerald State’s most populous county, which rests in the swayback along Oregon’s northern border—recorded highs of 108, 112, and 116 degrees Fahrenheit.
How AI’s Insatiable Energy Demands Jeopardize Big Tech’s Climate Goals
This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The artificial intelligence boom has driven Big Tech share prices to fresh highs, but at the cost of the sector’s climate aspirations. Google admitted on Tuesday that the technology is...
Plastics Makers Tout “a World Without Waste.” But what Does That Mean?
This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. In the time it takes you to read this sentence—say, four seconds—the world produces nearly 60 metric tons of plastic, almost entirely out of fossil fuels. That’s about 53,000 metric tons an hour, 1.3 million metric tons a day, or 460 million metric tons a year. Those numbers are fueling widespread and growing contamination of Earth’s oceans, rivers, and the terrestrial environment with plastic trash.
Minnesota Rep. Angie Craig Calls for Biden to Drop Out
Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters. More than a week after a disastrous debate, President Joe Biden sat down with George Stephanopoulos of ABC News to answer some of the tough questions his performance raised about his ability to run for office. Biden repeated many of the claims his team had already made since last Thursday: he was sick, he was exhausted, and yes, he had a bad night, but it wasn’t an “indication of any serious condition.”
Local Radio Host Says Biden Team Sent Pre-Planned Questions
Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters. President Joe Biden tried to recover from a disastrous first debate performance and reassure American voters that he’s not too old or cognitively impaired to run the country by sitting down for a primetime interview with ABC’s George Stephenopolous on Friday. Yet it’s his interviews with local radio hosts that are now drawing scrutiny because of the seemingly outsized level of planning on the president’s behalf.
Trump’s Bizarre Culture War Rhetoric Is Eroding Public Support for Clean Energy
This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. When Donald Trump embarked upon a lengthy complaint at a recent rally about how long it takes to wash his “beautiful luxuriant hair” due to his shower’s low water pressure, he highlighted the expanding assault he and Republicans are launching against even the most obscure environmental policies—a push that’s starting to influence voters.
Western States Brace for a Scorching and Dangerous Fourth
This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. A brutal and long-lasting heatwave is threatening to wreak havoc across the US west this week, as sweltering conditions, power shutoffs and a severe uptick in wildfire risks coincide with Fourth of July celebrations.
Republicans Are Already Running Against Kamala Harris
Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters. Despite insistence from the White House that President Biden has no plans to drop out of the general election after his disastrous debate performance last week, Republicans seem to be already running against Vice President Kamala Harris.
Joe Biden or Kamala Harris: Which Risk Is the Better Risk?
Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters. By now, anyone who follows presidential politics has an opinion on what President Joe Biden should do following his debate meltdown that raised questions, concerns, and fears about his mental acuity. So far, a small number of Democrats have urged him to withdraw from the 2024 race. A larger number of pundits have done the same. Major funders are fretting. And the White House and his campaign have insisted Biden is up to the job and can carry on. On social media, his diehard supporters have raged against the commentariat and the apostate Democrats, asserting that Donald Trump, his lies and multiple liabilities, and the threat he poses to American democracy ought to be more the focus than Biden’s age.
Will the Regulation Shielding Workers From Heat Be Finalized Before the Election?
This story was originally published by the Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. In the summer of 2011, Victor Ramirez was working in a Walmart warehouse in Mira Loma, California, when he suddenly fainted. When he came to, he was lying on the floor, confused about what had just happened, with his head aching terribly. While he didn’t receive any medical attention—his boss only told him to go home if he didn’t feel well enough to keep working—he knew that this sudden bout of unconsciousness must have been triggered by the relentless heat in the warehouse.
Abortion Bans Are Also Terrible for Babies
Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters. In many ways, the end of Roe v Wade didn’t happen when the US Supreme Court issued its decision to overrule Roe in the Dobbs case in June 2022. Rather, it came nine months earlier, on September 1, 2021, when the Texas Heartbeat Act, also known as SB8, took effect. The law banned abortion after embryonic cardiac activity became detectable, around six weeks of pregnancy, with no exceptions for fetal abnormalities. The job of enforcement was outsourced to private citizens (also known as “bounty hunters”), thereby making the law much harder to challenge in court. Since then, as wave after wave of post-Dobbs abortion restrictions have been enacted in deep-red states, reproductive rights advocates and journalists have—rightly—focused their attention on the effects of those draconian laws on the health and autonomy of women.
Has the Supreme Court Just Set the Stage for More Political Violence?
Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters. On Monday, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that former President Donald Trump has broad immunity from prosecution for crimes he allegedly committed while in office. The majority decision provoked furious dissent from the court’s three liberal justices. “The President is now a King above the law,” wrote Justice Sonia Sotomayor, concluding, “With fear for our democracy, I dissent.”
How a Young Thug “Meme Page” Helped Expose Georgia’s Broken Court System
Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters. It’s the morning of November 28, 2023, and a lawyer gives an opening statement to the jury. He tells a story of a 9-year-old boy who sees his older brother Bennie collapsed on the ground after being shot in the chest. Someone calls 911, but when the police finally arrive, they don’t rush to help him, instead handcuffing the boy’s mother, who is screaming and hysterical, and pushing her to the ground. When the cops finally go over to Bennie, they put a sheet over his face. But Bennie’s chest is still going up and down—he’s still breathing.
The Democrats Going Public With Their Concerns Over Biden
Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters. Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) on Tuesday became the first Democrat in office to call for President Biden to drop out of the general election in the wake of his disastrous debate performance last week.
As Hurricane Beryl Makes Landfall, Caribbean Leader Calls Out Climate Hypocrisy
This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The prime minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG) has decried a lack of political will in Western Europe and the US to tackle the global climate crisis as Hurricane Beryl has made landfall as an “extremely dangerous” category 4 storm.
How RFK Jr. Falsely Denied His Connection to a Deadly Measles Outbreak in Samoa
Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters. Appearing in Shot in the Arm, a 2023 documentary about vaccine opposition, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was asked about the deadly measles outbreak that occurred in Samoa in 2019 and claimed the lives of 83 people, mostly children. Kennedy, a leading antivaxxer who had visited the Pacific island nation a few months before the outbreak, replied, “I’m aware there was a measles outbreak…I had nothing to do with people not vaccinating in Samoa. I never told anybody not to vaccinate. I didn’t go there with any reason to do with that.”
How the War in Gaza Makes Life Nearly Impossible for Disabled People
Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters. Last December, UNICEF reported that two and a half months into Israel’s offensive in Gaza, at least a thousand children lost one or both of their legs. As more Palestinians become disabled, their risks expand. A United Nations committee warned in May of “the disproportionate impacts on people with disabilities due to the destruction of hospitals, the cut-off of essential services, restrictions, [and] non-existing access to humanitarian assistance” amid the war waged in response to Hamas’s attack on October 7th.
Plastic Manufacturers May Have Broken US Laws
This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Companies have spent decades obstructing efforts to take on the plastics crisis and may have breached a host of US laws, a new report argues. The research from the Center for...
Steve Bannon Swaps His Podcast Studio for a Prison Cell
Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters. It was a Tuesday morning in May and the mood on War Room, Steve Bannon’s twice-daily talk show, was characteristically grim. “The pre-kinetic part of the Third World War is happening,” the thrice-indicted former Trump advisor declared, alleging that the Chinese Communist Party, Qatar, and George Soros were secretly conspiring to seed unrest on college campuses.
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