US Politics

The state official in charge of Oklahoma’s schools is facing calls for impeachment, after he said teachers should tell students that the Tulsa race massacre was not racially motivated.In a public forum on Thursday, Ryan Walters, Oklahoma’s state superintendent of public instruction, said teachers could cover the 1921 massacre, in which white Tulsans murdered an estimated 300 Black people, but teachers should not “say that the skin color determined it”.Walters is a pro-Trump Republican who was elected to oversee Oklahoma education in November. He has consistently indulged in rightwing talking points including “woke ideology” and has said critical race theory should not be taught in classrooms. Republicans have frequently conflated banning critical race theory with banning any discussion of racial history in classrooms.At the forum in Norman, Oklahoma, Walters was asked how the massacre could “not fall” under his broad definition of CRT.“I would never tell a kid that because of your race, because of your color of your skin, or your gender or anything like that, you are less of a person or are inherently racist.“That doesn’t mean you don’t judge the actions of individuals. Oh, you can, absolutely. Historically, you should: ‘This was right. This was wrong. They did this for this reason.’“But to say it was inherent in that … because of their skin is where I say that is critical race theory. You’re saying that race defines a person. I reject that.“So I would say you be judgmental of the issue, of the action, of the content, of the character of the individual, absolutely. But let’s not tie it to the skin color and say that the skin color determined it.”The Frontier, an Oklahoma-based investigative journalism organization, reported Walters’s comments.Speaking to the Guardian, Alicia Andrews, the chair of the Oklahoma Democratic party, described Walters as “ridiculous”.“How are you going to talk about a race massacre as if race isn’t part of the very cause of the incident?” Andrews said.“I would love for him to be impeached, because he’s forgotten that his job is superintendent of public instruction. Most of his actions have been with his direct intent of destroying public education in favor of shoring up private and charter schools on public tax dollars. To me that’s a clear dereliction.”According to the Oklahoma Historical Society, a state-run agency, the massacre is “believed to be the single worst incident of racial violence in American history”.The massacre saw white mobs burn down the Black neighborhood of Greenwood, in Tulsa, and kill hundreds of Black people.About 10,000 Black residents lived in Greenwood, which had a thriving business district, known as Black Wall Street, and was one of the most affluent Black neighborhoods in the US.After a 19-year-old Black man was falsely accused of sexual assault, white people, some conscripted by the state, launched an offensive on Greenwood, destroying homes and businesses across 35 city blocks.A Red Cross investigation found that more than 1,000 homes were burned during the massacre.“Thirty-five city blocks were looted systematically, then burned to a cinder,” the report said. “And the 12,000 population there scattered like chaff before the wind.”In a text, Walters, who has previously pushed a conspiracy theory that schools had installed litter boxes in classrooms to accommodate children who identified as cats, said “the media is twisting” his remarks.He provided two audio files which, upon review, confirmed what he said at the forum on Thursday.Walters said: “[The media] misrepresented my statements about the Tulsa race massacre in an attempt to create a fake controversy.“Let me be crystal clear that history should be accurately taught.“1. The Tulsa race massacre is a terrible mark on our history. The events on that day were racist, evil, and it is inexcusable. Individuals are responsible for their actions and should be held accountable.“2. Kids should never be made to feel bad or told they are inferior based on the color of their skin.”Kevin Stitt, the Republican governor of Oklahoma, did not respond to questions regarding Walters’s position.Andrews said Walters was “intentionally watering down history”.“As a Black woman, as a Black woman who lives in Tulsa, those remarks hit particularly hard and close to home,” Andrews said.“The Tulsa race massacre was absolutely motivated by race. Absolutely, 100%, motivated by race.“And I don’t even I don’t know how you pretend to talk about it without mentioning its motivation. How are you going to talk about a race massacre as if race isn’t part of the very cause of the incident?”She added: “We must learn from our history in order to not repeat it.” More

Joe Biden intends to nominate Elliott Abrams, a former Trump appointee on Venezuela and Iran who was famously convicted for lying to Congress over the Iran-Contra affair, to the bipartisan US Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy.The announcement came wrapped in a list of eight Republican picks for bipartisan boards and commissions released in a White House statement on Monday.“It’s definitely a way to reach out to neoconservatives, and to throw them a bone,” said the historian and journalist Eric Alterman, who has written about Abrams since the 1980s. “It’s a risky move on Biden’s part.”Abrams, 75, has held senior positions in three Republican administrations, rising to prominence during a controversial run as assistant secretary of state under Ronald Reagan.During Reagan’s second term, a congressional investigation found that senior administration officials secretly facilitated the sale of arms to the Iranian government and used the money to support the Contras, a rightwing rebel group in Nicaragua – the Iran-Contra affair.Abrams, who was assistant secretary of inter-American affairs from 1985 to early 1989, later pleaded guilty to two charges of illegally withholding information from Congress – including his role in soliciting $10m from Brunei – during two October 1986 hearings, one before the Senate foreign relations committee and a second before the House intelligence committee.Biden, then a Delaware senator, was a member of the Senate foreign relations committee at the time.Abrams has drawn backlash for his support for the El Salvadoran government, whose army in 1981 massacred nearly 1,000 civilians in the village of El Mozote during its civil war against a coalition of Soviet-backed leftwing groups.A 1992 Human Rights Watch report said Abrams, as assistant secretary of state for human rights, “distorted” information to discredit public accounts of genocide. Abrams also backed US aid to the Guatemalan military dictator Efraín Ríos Montt, who was later convicted for genocide and crimes against humanity, during the Guatemalan civil war.“We only have, really, this example of legally defined genocide where the United States was complicit – and Elliott Abrams was the person who made that policy,” said Alterman, referring to US support for the Guatemalan government under Ríos Montt.Congressional Republicans likely pushed Biden to tap Abrams to the commission, said Brett Bruen, the president of media company the Global Situation Room and a former US diplomat.“It would be seen as interference should Biden not accede to those recommendations,” he said.A White House official said: “It’s standard for Republican leadership to put nominees forward for these boards and commissions, along with President Biden’s own nominees.”.There are seven seats on the diplomacy panel, four of which were vacant as of March, according to a state department notice. It is housed within the Office of the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, a post that sat empty until Biden nominated Elizabeth Allen to lead the office in January. She began in June.Bruen said: “The vacancies on the commission underline a major missing piece in Biden’s early pledge to restore America’s image on the international stage.”Nick Cull, a public diplomacy professor at the University of Southern California, said Biden was not alone in neglecting key posts, citing a report by former executive director of the commission Matthew Armstrong that found the under-secretary job has been vacant for nearly half the time since it was created in 1999.Most recently, Abrams was appointed by Trump to serve as a special envoy for Venezuela as the state department ramped up its efforts to force out Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro. Trump also appointed Abrams as special envoy to Iran in 2020.Abrams was reportedly in the running to be Trump’s deputy secretary of state before being cut from the list of contenders over his criticism of Trump during the campaign trail.He also served in senior national security roles during George Bush’s administration, and is currently a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Washington-based thinktank Council on Foreign Relations.Once nominated, Biden’s appointees must be confirmed by the Senate. But recent picks have languished. A floor vote to confirm Julie Su, the acting secretary of Labor, to the official cabinet post has been delayed for months. More

From 3h agoKahl says there are two primary reasons behind the decision to include cluster munitions in this latest weapons aid package to Ukraine.One is the “urgency of the moment”, he says. Ukraine is in the midst of its counteroffensive which has been difficult because the Russians had six months to dig into defensive belts in the east and the south.
We want to make sure that the Ukrainians have sufficient artillery to keep them in the fight in the context of the current counter offensive, and because things are going a little slower than some had hoped.
Here is the video of Pentagon official Colin Kahl speaking earlier today on the Biden administration’s decision to sent cluster bombs to Ukraine:Kahl told reporters that the “urgency of the moment” demanded it, but also said: “We want to make sure that the Ukrainians have sufficient artillery to keep them in the fight in the context of the current counteroffensive, and because things are going a little slower than some had hoped.”Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr has joined the growing list of lawmakers and human rights groups condemning the Biden administration for its decision to send cluster munitions to Ukraine.
“Cluster bombs are munitions so horrific for civilians that more than a hundred nations have signed an international treaty banning them. Now the Biden administration is preparing to send them to Ukraine,” Kennedy Jr tweeted on Friday.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has hailed the new US defense package which includes cluster munitions.In a tweet on Friday, Zelenskiy said:
“A timely, broad and much-needed defense aid package from the United States. We are grateful to the American people and President Joseph Biden @POTUS for decisive steps that bring Ukraine closer to victory over the enemy, and democracy to victory over dictatorship.
The expansion of Ukraine’s defense capabilities will provide new tools for the de-occupation of our land and bringing peace closer.”
In an interview with CNN host Fareed Zakaria on Friday, president Joe Biden said that his decision to provide Ukraine with cluster munitions was a “difficult decision.”
“It was a very difficult decision on my part. And by the way, I discussed this with our allies, I discussed this with our friends up on the Hill,” Biden said, adding, “The Ukrainians are running out of ammunition.”
“This is a war relating to munitions. And they’re running out of that ammunition, and we’re low on it and so, what I finally did, I took the recommendation of the Defense Department to – not permanently – but to allow for this transition period, while we get more 155 weapons, these shells, for the Ukrainians.”
Despite over 100 countries having outlawed the munitions under the Convention on Cluster Munitions, the US and Ukraine are not signatories.
“They’re trying to get through those trenches and stop those tanks from rolling. But it was not an easy decision,” Biden said, adding, “We’re not signatories to that agreement, but it took me a while to be convinced to do it.”
“But the main thing is they either have the weapons to stop the Russians now – keep them from stopping the Ukrainian offensive through these areas – or they don’t. And I think they needed them.”
Here is an animation on how cluster bombs work:As the Guardian’s Léonie Chao-Fung reports in her explainer piece on the weapon, “Cluster bombs, like landmines, pose a risk to civilians long after their use. Unexploded ordinance from cluster bombs can kill and maim people years or even decades after the munitions were fired.”For the full explainer, click here:Minnesota’s Democratic representative Ilhan Omar has issued a condemnation of the Biden administration’s decision to send cluster bombs to Ukraine, saying, “Instead of dealing cluster munitions, we should be doing everything in our power to end their use.”The statement continued:
“Cluster munitions are illegal under international law. A total of 123 countries have ratified the convention to ban their use under all circumstances—including nearly all our allies.
“It’s not hard to understand why. Because cluster bombs scatter multiple small bombs over a large area, they kill civilians both during an attack and after. I was recently in Vietnam where I heard firsthand how innocent civilians continue to be killed by US cluster munitions a full fifty years after the conflict ended. Tens of thousands of explosives are found every year there.
“We have to be clear: if the US is going to be a leader on international human rights, we must not participate in human rights abuses. We can support the people of Ukraine in their freedom struggle, while also opposing violations of international law. (In fact, the innocent victims of the cluster munitions will almost exclusively be Ukrainian civilians).”
Here’s a recap of today’s developments:
The US will send cluster munitions to Ukraine as part of a new $800 military aid package, the Pentagon has confirmed. The package will include Dual-Purpose Improved Conventional Munitions (DPICMs), also known as cluster munitions, armored vehicles and air defense missiles. Ukraine has been asking for cluster munitions for months, but US officials have been hesitant as the weapons can kill indiscriminately over a wide area, threatening civilians.
The White House said it had postponed the decision over whether to send the controversial weapons “for as long as we could” because of the risk of civilian harm from unexploded ordnance. National security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters that American cluster munitions had a “dud” rate of below 2.5%, which he described as far below Russia’s cluster munition dud rate.
Human rights groups have condemned Joe Biden’s approval to send cluster munitions to Ukraine. At least 149 civilians were killed or injured worldwide by the weapon in 2021, according to the Cluster Munition Monitor. Biden also faced a backlash from within his own Democratic party.
Ukraine’s counteroffensive is “slower than we hoped”, the US undersecretary of defense for policy, Colin H Kahl, said. He said one of the primary reasons behind the decision to send cluster munitions was because of the “urgency of the moment”, adding that the weapons would be delivered “in a timeframe that is relevant for the counteroffensive”.
The US added 209,000 new jobs in June as hiring slowed amid signs that the economy is cooling. The rise was the weakest gain since December 2020, but the increase was also the 30th consecutive month of jobs gains, and the unemployment rate ticked down to the historically low rate of 3.6%.
Treasury secretary Janet Yellen has arrived in Beijing on a four-day trip that aims to tame spiralling tensions between the world’s two largest economies, particularly over trade and the hi-tech chip industry. She will meet senior Chinese officials including the premier, Li Qiang, and former vice-premier and economics tsar Liu He, who is seen as close to China’s president, Xi Jinping, in her first day of talks on Friday.
The team led by special counsel Jack Smith has indicated a continued interest in a chaotic meeting that took place in the Oval Office in the final days of the Trump administration, according to a CNN report. Investigators have reportedly questioned several witnesses before the grand jury and during interviews about the meeting, which took place about six weeks after Donald Trump lost the 2020 election.
James Comer, chair of the house oversight committee, requested a Secret Service briefing after cocaine was found at the White House over the weekend. In a letter to Secret Service director, Kimberly Cheatle, the Kentucky Republican said his committee is “investigating the details surrounding the discovery of cocaine in the White House”.
Florida governor Ron DeSantis said he plans to participate in the first Republican presidential debate in August, whether or not Donald Trump attends. “I’ll be there, regardless,” DeSantis said. Trump, who continues to be frontrunner in the GOP race, has not officially said whether he will skip the debate.
The Biden administration’s approval of the transfer of cluster munitions to Ukraine has sparked concern from human rights groups and some congressional lawmakers over the weapon’s ability to harm civilians, especially children, long after their use.At least 38 human rights organizations have publicly opposed the transfer of cluster munitions to Ukraine, according to the Hill.Sarah Yager, the Washington director at Human Rights Watch, said cluster bombs were already “all over” Ukraine and it is “not a good enough excuse for the United States to be sending more”. She added:
Legislators, policymakers and the Biden administration will probably think twice when the pictures start coming back of children who have been harmed by American-made cluster munitions.
Eric Eikenberry, the government relations director at Win Without War, said the adminstration’s argument that cluster munitions could help Ukraine advance and stop the Russian bombings was “speculative”.He dismissed “the idea that these are going to be a huge boon, the counteroffensive is going to jet forward and we’re going to save lives in the aggregate because these are going to be the wonder weapons that flip the battlefield in our favor and takes Russian artillery out of commission.”Here’s a clip of Joe Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, who laid out the case for providing cluster munitions to Ukraine ahead of the Pentagon’s announcement.Kahl says it is too early to judge how the Ukrainian counter offensive is going “because we are at the beginning of the middle”.The counteroffensive is “slower than we had hoped” but the Ukrainians have a lot of combat power left, Kahl says.He says the majority of the Ukrainian combat power “has not been brought to bear”.
What you’re seeing across the east and the south is the Ukrainians deliberately probing for weak spots.
The real test will be when they identify weak spots or create weak spots and generate a breach, how rapidly they’re able to exploit that with the combat power that they have in reserve, and how rapidly the Russians will be able to respond.
He says he believes the Ukrainians are doing their best but that the Russians “were more successful in digging in more deeply that perhaps was fully appreciated”.Kahl does not specify how many rounds of cluster munitions that will be transferred to Ukraine.He says the US has “hundreds of thousands that are available at this dud rate”, and that it believes that it has the ability to flow them into Ukraine to “keep them in the current fight” and to “build this bridge”. Providing cluster munitions to Ukraine “gives them an extra arrow in their quiver”, Kahl says.He says it is important for the Ukrainians to have a mix of capabilities, and that there is no one silver bullet.On the subject of a timeline, he says he is going to be “a little circumspect” for operational security reasons, and that the US has been “pretty cautious about talking about specific timelines”. He adds:
The one thing I will say is they will deliver in a timeframe that is relevant for the counter offensive.
Secondly, Kahl says the US has substantially increased the production of 155m rounds, and that allies have also invested in their defense industrial base.But the reality is that “we’re going to need to build a bridge to the point at which that capacity is sufficient, on a month to month basis, to keep the Ukrainians in the artillery fight”, he says.He says he is “as concerned about the humanitarian circumstance” as anybody” but that the “worst thing for civilians and Ukraine is for Russia to win the war”.Kahl says there are two primary reasons behind the decision to include cluster munitions in this latest weapons aid package to Ukraine.One is the “urgency of the moment”, he says. Ukraine is in the midst of its counteroffensive which has been difficult because the Russians had six months to dig into defensive belts in the east and the south.
We want to make sure that the Ukrainians have sufficient artillery to keep them in the fight in the context of the current counter offensive, and because things are going a little slower than some had hoped.
The Ukrainian government has assured the US of the “responsible use” of DPICM, including that it will not use the rounds in civilian-populated urban environments, Kahl says.Ukraine has also committed to post-conflict mining “to mitigate any potential harm to civilians”, he says.He says Washington will work with Kyiv to “minimize the risks associated with the decision” to supply cluster munitions.Kahl says Russian forces have been using cluster munitions “indiscriminately” since the start of its war in Ukraine. By contrast, Ukraine is seeking DPICM rounds “in order to defend its own sovereign territory”.The US will be sending Ukraine its “most modern” dual-purpose improved conventional munition (DPICM) cluster munitions with “dud” rates to be under 2.35%, Kahl says.He compares that to the cluster munitions used by Russia across Ukraine, which he says has dud rates of between 30% and 40%.The undersecretary of defense for policy, Colin H Kahl, is speaking at a press briefing at the Pentagon.The US will send a new weapons aid package worth about $800m, that will include 155m artillery rounds, including Dual-Purpose Improved Conventional Munitions, and 105mm artillery rounds.Also included in the new package are additional munitions for Patriot air defence systems and ammunition for High Mobility Artillery Rocket systems, additional Stryker armoured personnel carriers, precision aerial munitions, demolition munitions and systems for obstacle clearing and various spare parts and operational sustainment equipment. More

It isn’t much fun, or indeed very productive, being a Democrat in Florida these days. Outnumbered by a Republican supermajority in the state legislature, the party was forced to sit back and watch extremist governor Ron DeSantis sign law after law riding roughshod over the rights of Black voters, immigrants and the LGBTQ+ community.The humiliation in Tallahassee was the culmination of a years-long decline in Democratic fortunes, predating even the ousting of long-serving US senator Bill Nelson in 2018.Dismal performances from mediocre candidates in successive elections turned what used to be the nation’s largest swing state firmly red, and for the first time since Reconstruction, the Florida Democratic party has no statewide elected official to its name.Worse, registered Republican voters, in a minority only three years ago, now outnumber Democrats by half a million. And, this year, the state party faced outright elimination from a bill filed by a Republican state senator.The only way is up.The fightback – part revival, part revolution – is in the hands of an aggressive, and progressive, new leadership team that is promising to restore the Florida Democratic party’s lost pride, and equilibrium to the state’s lopsided politics that DeSantis has, in the eyes of some, dragged into fascism.“The only way democracy works is when you have two strong parties that can bring people together to make sure we’re working on policies that impact the entire state of Florida,” said Nikki Fried, who was elected state party chair in February, and acknowledges the “enormous task” before her.“Understanding the gravity of this moment is why people are stepping up, wanting to help, and wanting us to be successful. Even Republicans want us to be successful, because they’re frustrated at the one-man show under Ron DeSantis, and frustrated they’re forced, by pressure and threats, to follow him.”Of course, planning a comeback, and it coming to fruition, are two separate things. But Fried, in a wide-ranging interview with the Guardian, said she does not accept that DeSantis, despite his landslide re-election in November, is anywhere near as popular as he thinks he is.“He didn’t win by 19 points. The Democrats lost by 19 points,” she said.“His victory is on us because we hadn’t been putting in the resources on the ground, hadn’t been mobilizing our base, hadn’t been talking about the issues that are important to the people of our state.“It’s been an accumulation of missteps, for decades, from the lack of expansion of our coalition, to coordination between our elected and the party apparatus, to messaging, to structural changes that needed to happen inside the party, including voter registration.“We just have not been showing electoral success because the Democratic party has not been organized. That changed when I took the gavel.”In November, she said, DeSantis was well placed to take advantage.“He took that 19 points and made it into a mandate, even though little more than 4.5 million people voted for him in a 22 million-person state,” she continued.“He took that win and went even further, taking this last session so extreme that the pendulum is going to come back faster, and more fierce. People in our state are not happy with a six-week abortion ban, with permit-less carry, with the attacks on our education systems, and they’re going to fight back.”As evidence, Fried points to the election in May of Democrat Donna Deegan as the first female mayor of Jacksonville, Florida’s most populous city. Her upset of DeSantis-endorsed Republican Daniel Davis was, she said, a reflection of “the overall energy across our state”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionCandidates such as Deegan are what Fried believes the party needs to make itself appealing again to voters, vocal politicians unafraid to take off the gloves, scrap it out with Republicans and call out their policies.Progressive Maxwell Frost, 26, the first member of Gen Z elected to Congress, and state representative Anna Eskamani, 33, are two examples of rising young Democrats carrying the banner for the next generation.Fried, 45, who as state agriculture commissioner was a thorn in DeSantis’s side as part of his four-person cabinet, also considers herself part of the active resistance. In April, she and Lauren Book, the state senate minority leader, were arrested in Tallahassee protesting DeSantis’s abortion law. Trespass charges were subsequently dropped.“There are no regrets when you’re standing up for justice, standing up for a woman’s right to choose,” she said. “Sometimes, you know, good trouble is necessary trouble.”The first real test of Fried’s leadership won’t come until next year, when the Senate seat of Republican former governor Rick Scott, who narrowly defeated Nelson in 2018, comes up for reelection.Fried won’t be running herself. “I have a job at hand to rebuild the Democratic party and the faith of the people in our state in the party,” she said, adding that Scott can expect a “formidable” challenge.“We are going to have a dynamic, strong, outspoken female who’s going to run for the Senate race, somebody who’s going to be able to carry the values and the morals that we all share,” she said.Before then, Fried will concentrate on trying to rebuild the state party’s once envied ground operation, that carried the state for Barack Obama twice.“We’re just at the start of it,” she said. “Every registered voter, every elected official, every volunteer, needs to start taking ownership and ask what they can do for the Democratic party, not what the Democratic party can do for them.“When we start changing the mentality of how everybody has a part to play here, we can start working together. It’s one team, one dream, and we all need to be getting into the same boat and rowing in the same direction.” More

Record-breaking temperatures. Millions under heat alerts. Hikers dying on hot trails.As large swaths of the US bake under sweltering heat, some advocates and officials say the Biden administration should consider appointing a “heat tsar” to manage a response.The Earth saw its two hottest days in recorded history this week as parts of the south-west roasted, and as a stretch of the south endured a brutal heat dome that was parked over Texas for weeks.Heat kills more Americans than any other form of extreme weather. The threat is increasing amid the climate crisis and will accelerate, especially if the world doesn’t urgently stop burning fossil fuels.In response, Phoenix, Arizona; Los Angeles, California; and Miami-Dade county, Florida have all appointed chief heat officers – or “heat tsars” – over the past three years, as have at least six global cities.“It’s been very valuable for us in the city to have a permanent office dedicated to heat,” Kate Gallego, the mayor of Phoenix, whose administration created the nation’s first-ever office of heat response and mitigation in 2021, helmed by chief heat officer David Hondula. “Before, it wasn’t always clear who was in charge.”Rising temperatures have been brutal in Phoenix, the hottest city in America. Last year, Maricopa county reported 425 heat-associated deaths, a 25% increase from the previous year.It’s a trend affecting regions across the US, leaving governments scrambling to prepare. A federal body could help them share best practices, said Gallego.“We have probably 30 ideas about how to respond to heat,” she said. “If New Orleans already knows 25 of them but they benefit from five new ones, that could be incredible. It’s the same for mayors in Texas, who have lost too many lives already.”Gallego says that such a federal body could be helpful for historically temperate regions like the Pacific north-west, where hundreds died in a record-breaking 2021 heat dome.She recalled rare floods in Phoenix in 2014, her first year in office.“We didn’t have huge expertise in responding to flooding, but the federal government does, and they were able to provide consulting through Fema that helped me understand where to get an emergency supply of sandbags, for instance, or what tools are available if your fire station gets flooded,” she said.Traditionally hot regions also sorely need more federal support, said Jane Gilbert, who has served as Miami-Dade county’s first chief heat officer since May 2021. That support is needed with collecting data on deaths and injuries to capture the true toll of heat waves.“Heat could be the cause of … cardiac arrest, of a worker falling off a ladder, a psychotic break in a homeless person, of kidney failure in an outdoor worker, but it’s not necessarily coded as heat-related, so we don’t have good data on emergency department visits, hospitalizations, and deaths,” she said, adding that federal officials could help compile research and convene experts to navigate the problem.The Biden administration has taken steps to improve heat preparedness. Last summer, it unveiled Heat.gov, an interagency heat-focused website. The site, which tools such as heat index guides, a heat and health tracker, and a climate and health forecast, has improved communication between federal agencies and local officials, Gilbert said.While the National Weather Service has traditionally based heat alerts on how often certain thresholds are crossed in certain areas, for instance, it is beginning to consider health impacts of heat, thanks to input from the CDC, she said. To kick off these efforts, it’s piloting a program this summer in Miami-Dade county that lowers heat alert thresholds. Heat advisories will be issued at 105F (40.5C) instead of the previous level of 108F, and excessive heat warnings will be issued at 110F (43C) instead of 113F (45C) – changes Gilbert said could help keep people safe.But Juley Fulcher, health and safety advocate at consumer advocacy non-profit Public Citizen, said while Heat.gov has produced useful tools, it has not led to policy changes or increased material support.“Interagency actions in Washington, have a history of not functioning as well as we might like them,” she said. “If there is that kind of concerted effort, there has to be some concerted funding put toward it [and] you can’t just take somebody who has a job that takes up 100% of their time and say, ‘here’s 20% more work to do.’”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionA heat-focused office could see ongoing policies through to completion, she said. For years, Fulcher has pushed for a federal rule to protect workers from heat, which her organization found could save hundreds of lives each year. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration began creating the rules in 2021, but the process could take “a couple of years” to finish, she said. A heat office could ensure the rule’s completion is a priority, and could go even further to protect workers, distributing more educational materials to employers and conducting more research on risks.Federal officials could help boost preparedness in other ways too, said Gallego, the Phoenix mayor. Currently, she is pressuring the Federal Emergency Management Agency to make heat eligible for the same relief available after other disasters like hurricanes – something a heat tsar could also see through.Without those formal structures, said Gilbert, officials’ responses may be less sophisticated. Until her role was created, Miami-Dade’s response to extreme heat mirrored plans for extreme cold.“With the unsheltered population, it was about getting people into shelters overnight when it’s coldest, but with heat, the biggest time of day that we need to worry about is from noon to 7pm,” she said. Now, responders are focused on getting people into daytime cooling centers, and are being trained to distribute cold packs and cooling towels.In another example, Cecilia Sorensen, director of the Global Consortium on Climate and Health Education at Columbia University, said that amid the Pacific north-west’s unprecedentedly deadly 2021 heat dome, the region had no disaster protocol plan for heat.“They activated their only disaster protocol, which was related to earthquakes,” she said. “That got all the right people on the phone to be able to coordinate, but that’s an example of … unpreparedness.”Sorensen agreed that municipalities need help responding, but added that a new office or “tsar” might not be the answer.“Each geographic area is is very unique,” she said. “And so much of the work to really prepare communities to be resilient involves engagement of community members and other stakeholders, and I don’t think the federal government can really convene at that level.”Instead, she suggests that officials focus on boosting existing bodies that can support municipalities. In 2021, the Biden administration established the Office of Climate Change and Health Equity within the US Department of Health and Human Services. But a lack of congressional funding and authorization has left it without full-time staff or funding, she said.“We should fund the office that’s supposed to be doing this work, rather than creating a whole new system in the executive branch,” she said.But Gallego said heat is an urgent enough threat to warrant its own office.“It’s time that the federal government had a new tool to address heat. Our entire planet is experiencing climate change and we need to adapt to that fact,” she said. “If the federal government created a one stop location for heat, they could save so many lives.” More

The chair of the Senate judiciary committee has launched a new attack on the chief justice of the US supreme court, promising a vote on ethics reform legislation after a term beset by scandal over relationships between rightwing justices and wealthy donors and featuring a string of controversial rulings.“The highest court in the land should not have the lowest ethical standards,” Democrat Dick Durbin said.In a Thursday statement, Durbin added: “‘God save the United States and this honourable court!’ These are the words spoken by the marshal when she gavels the supreme court into session. But many questions remain at the end of the court’s latest term regarding its reputation, credibility, and ‘honourable’ status.”“I’m sorry to see Chief Justice [John] Roberts end the term without taking action on the ethical issues plaguing the court – all while the court handed down decisions that dismantled longstanding precedents and the progress our country has made over generations.”Roberts has refused to testify in Congress regarding reports of alleged ethics breaches concerning justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch.Thomas’s relationship with the conservative donor Harlan Crow, including gifts, luxury travel, real-estate purchases and school fee payments, has been reported by ProPublica.ProPublica also reported on Alito’s relationship with Paul Singer, a conservative billionaire.And Politico reported a property sale involving Gorsuch and the chief executive of a prominent law firm.All three justices failed to declare such gifts or transactions. All deny wrongdoing. The donors and the chief executive denied discussing politics with justices or seeking to influence business before the court.The scandals have fueled calls for reform or, particularly in the case of Thomas, more drastic measures that might also restore some form of ideological balance to a court that was tilted right, with a 6-3 conservative supermajority, under the presidency of Donald Trump.But Thomas’s removal, whether by resignation or impeachment, remains a political non-starter in Washington.Three momentous rulings late in the now-concluded term – those which Durbin said “dismantled longstanding precedents and … progress” – have helped turn up the political heat from Democrats and the left.Rightwing justices used their majority to strike down race-conscious affirmative action in higher education; rule that LGBTQ+ Americans could be discriminated against by some business owners on grounds of religious belief; and ruled Joe Biden’s student loan relief plan unconstitutional.Durbin said: “The highest court in the land should not have the lowest ethical standards.” He has pledged ethics reform legislation and said: “An announcement on the timing of this vote will be made early next week.”In May, Roberts turned down an invitation to testify to the committee regarding ethics reform and, although supreme court justices are notionally subject to the same ethics rules as other federal justices, in practice they govern themselves.The court’s public trust and approval ratings have reached historic lows.Durbin said on Thursday: “Since the chief justice has refused to act, the judiciary committee must.” More

As the dust settled on last week’s judgments from the conservative-led bench, progressives voiced their anger at what they see as a lack of determination from the Biden administration to counteract the supreme court and its most extreme decisions.
This week, Jonathan Freedland speaks to the Guardian US columnist Moira Donegan about what progressives want Joe Biden to do now

How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know More

From 6h agoDonald Trump’s valet Walt Nauta has pleaded not guilty to federal charges related to hiding secret government documents at the former president’s south Florida resort, Reuters reports.Donald Trump’s aide Walt Nauta appeared in Miami federal court for a brief hearing where he pleaded not guilty to six charges related to concealing secret government documents at Mar-a-Lago. Neither Trump nor Nauta’s cases are expected to be resolved anytime soon, but a new survey found most Americans would like the former president’s trial to conclude before the 2024 election, if not the Republican primaries. Meanwhile, the investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election continues, with a former top Republican lawmaker in Arizona confirming he spoke to the FBI.Here’s what else happened today:
Newly unsealed portions of the affidavit used to justify federal agents’ search of Mar-a-Lago last year revealed some fresh details of the investigation.
A top Senate Democrat vowed to move forward with legislation to impose a code of ethics on the supreme court after a term marked by controversies.
Marjorie Taylor Greene had a rough day, with Joe Biden zinging her in a speech and a group of fellow rightwing Republicans booting her out of their caucus.
Cocaine in the White House: not as uncommon as you might think.
For as long as we live, and as long as our children live, and our children’s children, and their children, and their children, and their children, and their children, and for generations to come, school funding in Wisconsin will increase.
On the campaign trail, former vice-president Mike Pence defended his actions on January 6, when he rejected Donald Trump’s request that he meddle in Congress’s certification of Joe Biden’s election victory.The moment came during a meeting with voters in Iowa, and saw Pence elaborate on statements he made when announcing his campaign for the Republican nomination last month:Polls indicate Trump remains far and away the favorite for the Republican presidential nomination next year.Senate Democrats will move forward with legislation imposing a court of ethics on the supreme court, after a term in which the conservative-led bench struck down affirmative action and Joe Biden’s student loan relief plan while dealing with a swirl of ethics controversies.Dick Durbin, the Democratic chair of the Senate judiciary committee, says the body will take up the legislation when lawmakers return from the current Independence Day break:
‘God save the United States and this Honorable Court!’ These are the words spoken by the Marshal when she gavels the Supreme Court into session. But many questions remain at the end of the Court’s latest term regarding its reputation, credibility, and ‘honorable’ status. I’m sorry to see Chief Justice Roberts end the term without taking action on the ethical issues plaguing the Court—all while the Court handed down decisions that dismantled longstanding precedents and the progress our country has made over generations.
The highest court in the land should not have the lowest ethical standards. That’s why, as I previously announced, the Senate Judiciary Committee will mark up Supreme Court ethics reform legislation when the Senate returns after the July 4th recess. An announcement on the timing of this vote will be made early next week.
Since the Chief Justice has refused to act, the Judiciary Committee must.
In a May hearing on the supreme court’s ethics following revelations of ties between conservative justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch and parties with interests in its decisions, Republicans made clear they were opposed to any ethics legislation, potentially derailing chances of any bill getting through Congress.Congress is on recess and lawmakers are dispersed across the country, taking time off, meeting with constituents, and, if you are Missouri’s Republican senator Josh Hawley, getting called out by their local newspaper for a loose relationship with the truth. The Guardian’s Ed Pilkington tells the tale:Josh Hawley has become the poster boy for blurring fact and fiction in the era of Donald Trump: the Republican senator from Missouri will forever be remembered as having raised a manly fist in solidarity with January 6 protesters at the US Capitol then, hours later, having been caught on security camera fleeing the rioting mob he helped to incite.But even for a public figure known for his use of trolling imagery to foment culture wars, Hawley’s current record is impressive. His local Missouri newspaper, the Kansas City Star, has had to call him out twice in almost as many weeks for his egregious distortion of the facts.Earlier this week, Hawley reframed Independence Day on Twitter as a great Christian event, quoting the founding father Patrick “Give me liberty, or give me death!” Henry as saying that America was founded “not on religions but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ. For this very reason, peoples of other faiths have been afforded asylum, prosperity, and freedom of worship here.”In addition to getting voted out of her rightwing House caucus, Marjorie Taylor Greene was today turned into a laugh line by Joe Biden.Speaking in South Carolina about his efforts to boost domestic manufacturing, he said he would attend the groundbreaking of a factory in the rightwing lawmaker’s district:The president has lately taken to singling out Republicans who voted against the bipartisan infrastructure law he signed in 2021, but then applauded the fact their districts or states were set to benefit from its billions of dollars in funds.For what it’s worth, Politico reports that Marjorie Taylor Greene has been kicked out of the House Freedom Caucus.Greene is one of the most prominent far-right lawmakers in Congress, and known for all sorts of stunts and incidents. The Freedom Caucus is a grouping of rightwing Republican lawmakers in the House of Representatives, many of whom supported the effort to stop Kevin McCarthy from becoming speaker for days in January, until he acceded to their demands.You would think they would get along, but as Politico reports, they apparently do not. The disagreement, which culminated in the group voting to expel Greene, appears to center on her support for McCarthy and his agenda, including his deal with Joe Biden to raise the debt ceiling:The Biden administration is expected to announce a new Ukraine weapons aid package on Friday – and it will include cluster munitions, two US officials have told Reuters.The weapons, which were first used during the second world war, typically release large numbers of smaller bomblets and are notorious for killing civilians.They do not always explode, posing a future risk to civilians, and were banned by most of the world under a 2008 treaty called the Convention on Cluster Munitions, which the US, Russia and Ukraine did not sign.You can read the latest updates from the Russia-Ukraine war in our live blog:Joe Biden has spoken of his economic plans – or “Bidenomics” at a manufacturing plant in South Carolina.The US president told the audience that he had created more jobs than any other US president in the first two years of an administration. He said inflation is down, job satisfaction up and more working-age Americans are in jobs.CNN has a clip of his remarks:Donald Trump’s aide Walt Nauta appeared in Miami federal court for a brief hearing where he pleaded not guilty to six charges related to concealing secret government documents at Mar-a-Lago. Neither Trump nor Nauta’s cases are expected to be resolved anytime soon, but a new survey found most Americans would like the former president’s trial to conclude before the 2024 election, if not the Republican primaries. Meanwhile, the investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election continues, with a former top Republican lawmaker in Arizona confirming he spoke to the FBI.Here’s what else has happened today:
Newly unsealed portions of the affidavit used to justify federal agents’ search of Mar-a-Lago last year revealed some fresh details of the investigation.
Cocaine in the White House: not as uncommon as you might think.
For as long as we live, and as long as our children live, and our children’s children, and their children, and their children, and their children, and their children, and for generations to come, school funding in Wisconsin will increase.
Meanwhile, answers remain elusive in the cocaine discovered in the White House over the weekend (though Donald Trump didn’t fail to mention it in yesterday’s Truth social tirade). But as the Guardian’s Wilfred Chan reports, the presence of drugs in the executive mansion should not come as a surprise:Cocaine in the White House? Chances are it’s not the first time – and the drug could well have been used by at least one past president, according to a leading presidential historian.Lab tests confirmed that a white substance found inside the building on Sunday was indeed cocaine, the Secret Service told reporters. The discovery, on the floor near an entrance to the West Wing that’s commonly used by tour groups, led to a security alert and a brief evacuation of the executive mansion. Authorities are working to figure out who brought the drug into the building. (At the time, Joe Biden and his family were at Camp David in Maryland.)Still, there’s good reason to think that coke has entered the US presidential office on past occasions – and that its most famous user may have been Franklin D Roosevelt.Rusty Bowers, the former Republican speaker of Arizona’s House of Representatives, told CNN that he had spoken to FBI agents looking into the campaign by Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election result:Last year, Bowers told the January 6 committee that Trump had pressured him to send Congress a fake slate of electors. The then-president and his allies made the request of lawmakers and officials in several states critical to Joe Biden’s election win.Bowers was later ousted from his post by a Trump-endorsed primary challenger.Donald Trump’s valet Walt Nauta has left the courthouse in Miami, Reuters reports, after he pleaded not guilty to six federal charges related to hiding classified government documents at Mar-a-Lago.He did not respond to reporters’ questions as he left the building. Legal proceedings for both Nauta and Trump are expected to take months.A post by Donald Trump on his Truth social account kicked off a chain of events that led to an armed man being arrested near Barack Obama’s house, the Associated Press reports.Trump uses the social network, which he owns, as his main platform ever since being booted off Twitter after the January 6 insurrection (his account there has since been reactivated by owner Elon Musk, but remains dormant).According to the AP, the former president posted what he said was the address for Obama’s home on Truth, a soon after, an armed man was arrested nearby. Here’s more from their report:
Former President Donald Trump posted on his social media platform what he claimed was the home address of former President Barack Obama on the same day that a man with guns in his van was arrested near the property, federal prosecutors said Wednesday in revealing new details about the case.
Taylor Taranto, 37, who prosecutors say participated in the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol, kept two firearms and hundreds of rounds of ammunition inside a van he had driven cross-country and had been living in, according to a Justice Department motion that seeks to keep him behind bars.
On the day of his June 29 arrest, prosecutors said, Taranto reposted a Truth Social post from Trump containing what Trump claimed was Obama’s home address. In a post on Telegram, Taranto wrote: “We got these losers surrounded! See you in hell, Podesta’s and Obama’s.” That’s a reference to John Podesta, the former chair of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Democratic presidential campaign.
Taranto also told followers on his YouTube live stream that he was looking to get a “good angle on a shot,” prosecutors said.
A federal defender representing Taranto did not immediately return a phone message seeking comment. But in a motion seeking to have him released pending trial, the lawyer wrote that Taranto was not a flight risk, had a family in Washington state and had served in Iraq before being honorably discharged from the U.S. Navy.
“Mr. Taranto has been available and in plain sight for the last two and a half years,” wrote the lawyer, Kathryn D’Adamo Guevara.
Newly released portions of an affidavit have revealed more about what prompted federal agents to search Mar-a-Lago last August. Here’s more on that, from the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell:Federal prosecutors used surveillance footage to determine within weeks of collecting subpoenaed classified documents from Donald Trump last year that there might be more national security materials at Mar-a-Lago, according to newly unsealed descriptions in the FBI search warrant application.Much of the justification for executing a search warrant on Trump’s residence in Florida was detailed in the sprawling indictment charging him with retention of national defense information and obstruction of justice.But the parts of the affidavit released on Thursday – filed by the justice department after the federal magistrate judge in the Trump documents case ordered the release – provided a clearer explanation of the probable cause used to justify the FBI search.Reuters reports that Walt Nauta’s arraignment lasted just a few minutes, with the aide to Donald Trump heading into a conference room afterwards and not answering questions from reporters.Attorney Stanley Woodward entered Nauta’s plea in the hearing that was also attended by Sasha Dadan, the lawyer he hired to represent him in Florida. More