Biden to make Wednesday climate address as dangerous heat grips US and world – as it happened

President Joe Biden plans an address on climate change tomorrow, where he may announce new executive orders to curb US emissions after his attempts to achieve reductions via legislation stalled in Congress. However, he won’t declare a climate emergency, at least not yet.

Here’s what else happened today:

• The January 6 committee will continue with its hearing planned for the Thursday prime-time TV hour despite its chair Bennie Thompson testing positive for Covid-19.
• The second day of Steve Bannon’s trial got underway in Washington.
• The Secret Service has lost for good text messages from 5 and 6 January 2021, when the US Capitol was attacked. The National Archives is demanding an investigation.
• Ukraine’s first lady Olena Zelenska is in Washington for meetings with the Biden administration and an address to Congress on Wednesday.
• Nancy Pelosi’s reported trip to Taiwan has prompted a warning from China.
• There are at least 120 Republicans election deniers running for office, according to an analysis by FiveThirtyEight.
• A small explosion and fire occurred at Hoover Dam, but was quickly contained.

Following today’s revelation that the Secret Service deleted text messages from the January 6 attack and the day before, The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports that National Archives is now demanding an investigation:

The US National Archives has asked the Secret Service to conduct an internal investigation over “erased” text messages from the day before and the day of the Capitol attack, according to a letter sent to the agency’s records management officer on Tuesday.

The request marks the latest escalation of the matter after the watchdog for the Secret Service, the Department of Homeland Security inspector general, notified Congress he had sought the texts only to be told they no longer existed.

In the letter sent to the Secret Service records officer, reviewed by the Guardian, the National Archives requested the agency launch an internal review and report within 30 calendar days if it finds any texts were “improperly deleted”.

Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Mississippi’s only abortion clinic and the subject of the supreme court case that overturned Roe v. Wade last month, has given up its legal battle to continue operating.

Reuters reports that the clinic was making a last-ditch legal effort before the state supreme court to get it to halt Mississippi’s almost total ban on abortions, but threw in the towel after the clinic’s owner sold the building. Its fate seemed sealed earlier this month after a judge rejected the clinic’s petition to halt the ban, which went into effect following last month’s ruling by the US supreme court in the case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

Ukraine’s first lady Olena Zelenska is in Washington for meetings at the White House and an address to Congress. As you can see above, she’s already met Joe and Jill Biden.

Here’s what Zelenska had to say about the visit after meeting with secretary of state Antony Blinken:

Tomorrow, she will address senators and House representatives in the Capitol. In a letter to lawmakers, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, “We hope that all Members will take advantage of this important and timely opportunity to hear directly from First Lady Zelenska, to learn more about the terrible toll of the Russian invasion and to express our gratitude to the people of Ukraine for their fight for Democracy.”

Meanwhile in Washington, a group of House Democrats was arrested in front of the supreme court after staging a demonstration in support of abortion rights.

Last week, the Democratic-led House approved legislation that protected abortion access nationwide, after the supreme court overturned Roe v. Wade and allowed states to ban the procedure. However, there’s no sign the legislation will be able to overcome a Republican filibuster in the Senate.

A small explosion and fire broke out but was quickly extinguished at Hoover Dam, which is at the center of the western United States’s massive drought.

The embankment straddling the Nevada-Arizona border holds back Lake Mead, which has dropped to its lowest level since it was full 20 years ago due to drought and climate change. Reuters reports that the blaze at Hoover Dam had been extinguished before the local fire department arrived.

It is unclear if the lake’s low water level played a role in the explosion, but authorities warn that the reservoir could soon hit “dead pool” levels, when water will no longer be able to flow downstream.

Former New York City mayor Bill de Blasio has ended his bid for the Democratic nomination in the state’s 10th congressional district.

De Blasio, who led America’s largest city for eight years and left office with low approval ratings, was trailing in polls to represent the district that includes part of the city in the U.S. House of Representatives.

The Secret Service will tell Congress it doesn’t have any new texts to give to the House subcommittee investigating the January 6 insurrection, according to Washington Post reporter Carol Leonnig.

The House committee set a deadline for today for the Secret Service to hand over deleted texts that were sent among agents, Donald Trump and Mike Pence on the day before and the day of the riot. Last week, the inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security notified the committee that texts from those days had been deleted. The explanation from the Secret Service for the deletions have shifted several times, from software upgrades to device replacements.

From the Guardian’s senior reporter Nina Lakhani, who reports on climate justice:

As attention focuses on the extreme temperatures scorching large swathes of Europe and the US, its worth drawing attention to other parts of the world where dangerous heat and drought have also been causing misery.

In Monterrey, Mexico’s third largest city where temperatures above 100F are the norm throughout the summer, residents are enduring a second month of water rationing as three dams which supply households are almost dry. Authorities are turning on taps for only six hours per day, though some residents have gone without any running water for long spells, and are forced to spend hours every day lining up at communal taps. The national water authority has declared a state of emergency across the country because of drought.

According to the North American Drought Monitor, 56% of Mexico is experiencing some level of drought with northern states like Nuevo Leon (home to Monterrey), Sonora, Chihuahua, and Coahuila particularly badly due to a combination of La Niña and global heating. Most of the country’s wheat is farmed in this northern belt, which is among three crops (along with maize and rice) that make up almost half the world’s calories. All three grains are vulnerable to extreme heat and drought, in large part because industrialised agriculture favors monocropping over crop diversity.

This was a little reported consequence of the punishing spring extreme heatwave in India and Pakistan, where more than a billion people faced temperatures from 100 to 122F from late March to the end of June, a period of almost 100 days. As a result, wheat yields dropped by about 15%, compounding the shortages caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Livestock died across the subcontinent.

The number of deaths so far attributed directly to the extreme spring heat is surprisingly low, just 90, compared to more than 1100 so far in Spain and Portugal, though this is likely at least partly down to issues with counting and reporting heat deaths. (Recent floods in India and Bangladesh have led to high death tolls, but this could be because such deaths are easier to count.) It’s the monsoon now in India, so temperatures have dropped significantly – it’s only 90F in Delhi today – but the humidity is very high. Humid heat is far more dangerous than dry heat, so the death toll could rise across the Asian subcontinent without anyone paying much attention.

Read more about crop scientists in Mexico developing heat and climate resilient wheat varieties here:

Joe Biden is not going to declare a climate emergency when he delivers an address on climate change in Somerset, Massachusetts tomorrow, according to the Associated Press.

A source told the AP that while Biden is planning to announce steps the White House is taking to address climate change, he will not declare a climate emergency.

Earlier today, the Washington Post reported that Biden was floating the idea of declaring an emergency after senator Joe Manchin effectively blocked a spending package that would have allocated billions toward addressing the climate emergency. Manchin told Democratic leaders last week that he does not support the package, ultimately striking down its chance of passage.

It’s day two of Steve Bannon’s federal trial in Washington DC as he faces charges of contempt for Congress, ignoring subpoenas from the House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection.

A lawyer for Bannon has asked the judge to delay the trial by a month so the defense team can figure out what evidence they could offer. The judge, Carl J Nichols, denied his lawyer’s request, but said he may push back the start of opening arguments a day so both teams can organize themselves.

Bannon’s trial began yesterday with jury selection. Attorneys have narrowed the pool down to 22 prospective, with a final 12 needed, along with two alternatives.

Ohio’s supreme court has struck down the state’s 15 congressional districts, saying they were so distorted in favor of Republicans that they violated the state constitution.

In a 4-3 ruling, the court gave the state legislature 30 days to come up with a new map. If the legislature fails to come up with a new plan, a GOP-controlled commission would then have another 30 days.

Any new map would be in effect for the 2024 elections. After striking down the initial map Republicans passed earlier this year, the Ohio supreme court declined to intervene again ahead of the state’s primary and block a revised map. The map they struck down Tuesday was that revised plan.

The plan creates 10 Republican-leaning districts and five Democratic-leaning districts, the court noted. While all 10 GOP districts are solidly Republican, three of the five Democratic ones are highly competitive, meaning Republicans could win them in a strong year for the party. Projections show Democrats would most likely win four in the state’s congressional delegation, despite winning around 47% of the statewide vote.

That split violates a provision in the state constitution that prohibits maps that “unduly favors or disfavors a political party or its incumbents.” Ohio voters overwhelmingly approved adding that language to the state constitution in 2018.

“Comparative analyses and other metrics show that the March 2 plan allocates voters in ways that unnecessarily favor the Republican Party by packing Democratic voters into a few dense Democratic-leaning districts, thereby increasing the Republican vote share of the remaining districts,” the court’s majority wrote. “As a result, districts that would otherwise be strongly Democratic-leaning are now competitive or Republican-leaning districts.”

The three judges who dissented argued that the majority opinion sought to use a system of proportional representation, which is not required under Ohio’s constitution.

Tuesday’s ruling marks the seventh time the Ohio supreme court has struck down congressional and state legislative maps this cycle. Despite all of those rulings, all of the maps struck down passed by lawmakers will be in place for at least the 2022 elections.

President Joe Biden plans an address on climate change tomorrow, during which he could declare a national climate emergency after his attempts to get legislation lowering America’s carbon emissions through Congress stalled.

Here’s what else has happened so far today:

• The January 6 committee will continue with its hearing planned for the Thursday prime-time TV hour despite its chair Bennie Thompson testing positive for Covid-19.
• The Secret Service will turn over texts to the January 6 committee that were said to have been deleted.
• Nancy Pelosi’s reported trip to Taiwan has prompted a warning from China.
• There are about 120 Republicans election deniers running for office – at least, according to an analysis by FiveThirtyEight.

President Joe Biden will outline his next steps to tackle climate change in an address in Somerset, Massachusetts on Wednesday, the White House announced. “The president will deliver remarks on tackling the climate crisis and seizing the opportunity of a clean energy future to create jobs and lower costs for families,” according to a statement.

The president may use the trip to declare the national climate emergency The Washington Post reports his administration has been mulling. Reuters quotes a White House official as saying, “We are considering all options and no decision has been made.”

120. That’s the number of Republican candidates who deny the results of the 2020 election and will be on the ballot this fall, according to an analysis by FiveThirtyEight, which notes that may not be the full count.

Election denying is most common in House of Representatives and governorship races, and least in secretary of state and Senate contests, according to the analysis. It’s also hard to pin down the degree to which Republican politicians refuse to accept the validity of the results of the last presidential race, since many haven’t made their views known – which FiveThirtyEight concludes means some likely believe baseless theories about the outcome, but are keeping it to themselves.

Finally, the analysis finds that election denying is no surefire path to victory. Candidates who rejected the theory have in fact won 54 percent of races against an election denier, versus 36 percent for the deniers themselves. Here’s what FiveThirtyEight has to say about that dynamic:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;} In other words, questioning the results of the 2020 election might not be a surefire path to the nomination, but it hasn’t proven to be a dealbreaker for Republican voters, either. That speaks volumes as to the overall direction the Republican Party is moving in.