US Politics

No Republican senator supported a climate plan – where is the party on the issue?The party has largely abandoned its past climate denialism, but experts and activists say the ideas Republicans have proposed are insufficient or misguided When Joe Manchin announced an abrupt end to Senate negotiations over major climate legislation last week, activists and even fellow Democrats expressed outrage against the West Virginia lawmaker. Manchin was attacked as a “modern-day villain” who had delivered “nothing short of a death sentence” to a rapidly heating planet.Some Democratic leaders, however, including Joe Biden, have since attempted to redirect that anger toward congressional Republicans instead.“Not a single Republican in Congress stepped up to support my climate plan. Not one,” Biden said, speaking at a coal turned wind power plant in Massachusetts on Wednesday. “So let me be clear: climate change is an emergency.”Although congressional Republicans have refused to embrace Biden’s policy ideas, the party has largely abandoned its past climate denialism. But climate experts and activists say the ideas Republicans have proposed are insufficient or misguided and fail to address the magnitude and urgency of this crisis.Republicans have not generally been viewed as champions when it comes to combating the climate crisis at the federal level. Donald Trump famously withdrew the US from the Paris climate agreement, and his administration rolled back nearly 100 environmental rules during his presidency, eliminating important regulations for the fossil fuel industry.More recently, the conservative-dominated supreme court handed down a decision, in West Virginia v the Environmental Protection Agency, that will severely hamper that government agency’s ability to curtail greenhouse gas emissions.There have, however, been some modest signs of change among Republicans when it comes to climate policy. While it was once quite common to hear Republican lawmakers reject the very idea of climate change, many members of the party are now at least willing to discuss the issue.“I think there’s been a really significant narrative shift over the last five years,” said Quill Robinson, vice-president of government affairs for the American Conservation Coalition, a right-leaning environmental advocacy group. “A lot of elected Republicans and also the broader conservative movement is a lot more comfortable, willing and honestly interested in engaging on this issue of climate change.”Signs of that change are visible in Congress. Last year, Republican congressman John Curtis announced the formation of the Conservative Climate Caucus, which counts more than 70 Republicans as members.The House Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy, has released his own climate platform. The proposal, unveiled last month, outlines how Republicans would work to address environmental and energy issues if they regain control of the House, as they are expected to do after the midterm elections this November.Critics say McCarthy’s platform is a perfect example of Republicans’ failure to grasp the enormity of the climate crisis. The plan calls for increasing domestic fossil fuel production and boosting exports of US natural gas. In the past several months, Republicans’ demands to boost US oil production have grown louder, as the war in Ukraine drives gas prices to record highs.Environmental experts have said that global reliance on fossil fuels needs to be drastically reduced in order to substantially cut greenhouse gas emissions and avoid disastrous climate breakdown. Republicans’ proposals threaten to accelerate this looming calamity, Democrats argue.“This House Republican proposal simply recycles old, bad ideas that amount to little more than handouts to oil companies,” Democrat Frank Pallone, chair of the House energy and commerce committee, said last month. “It is a stunning display of insincerity to admit climate change is a problem but to propose policies that make it worse.”Republicans have also called for taking additional steps to protect American wildlife, but climate activists have again criticized those proposals as too incremental to meet the moment. In contrast, the Biden administration has set a goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 and achieving net zero emissions by 2050.Kidus Girma, a spokesperson for the youth-led climate group Sunrise Movement, said even Biden’s policy objectives fall far short of the changes necessary to help protect the planet.“We fundamentally don’t have that timeline,” Girma said of Republicans’ incremental approach. “Emissions cut by 2030 is incrementalism in itself. So I don’t know how much more incremental we could get.”Robinson argued that Democrats’ failure to pass Build Back Better and the supreme court’s decision to limit the EPA’s regulatory power demonstrate the urgent need for bipartisan compromise on this issue – even if the end product falls short of what climate activists have demanded.“You can’t rely on nine justices of the supreme court, one man in the White House, and one single party in Congress to pass durable, lasting climate policy,” Robinson said. “This has to be done on a bipartisan basis in Congress.”TopicsRepublicansClimate crisisUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

House panel says Trump ‘chose not to act’ during attack on US CapitolThe committee investigating the January 6 riots shared testimony showing that the ex-president rejected pleas from even his family07:50Donald Trump refused for hours to call off the deadly attack perpetrated by a group of his supporters at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, the House select committee investigating the insurrection declared in its primetime hearing on Thursday.The committee shared testimony from former White House aides indicating that Trump repeatedly rejected pleas from his senior advisers and even his own family members – including his eldest daughter and adviser, Ivanka Trump – to immediately issue a statement calling off the mob swarming the Capitol.Pence Secret Service detail feared for their lives during Capitol riotRead moreAs Trump watched news coverage of the Capitol attack from the comfort of the White House dining room, the mob carried out violence that ultimately left several people dead, the committee said.“In the end, this is not, as it may appear, a story of inaction in a time of crisis, but instead it was the final action of Donald Trump’s own plan to usurp the will of the American people and remain in power,” said Democrat Elaine Luria, who co-led the Thursday hearing with Republican and fellow committee member Adam Kinzinger.More than three hours passed between the end of Trump’s speech to supporters at the Ellipse near the White House and his tweet telling insurrectionists to “go home”.In that time, a group of Trump’s supporters violently attacked law enforcement officers tasked to protect the Capitol and vandalized the building. Members of Congress, who had gathered at the Capitol to certify Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election, hid from the rioters and feared for their lives as the president stood by.“President Trump did not fail to act during the 187 minutes between leaving the Ellipse and telling the mob to go home. He chose not to act,” Kinzinger said. More

The January 6 panel put on a gripping ‘finale’ full of damning details about TrumpWhereas the first seven hearings set out unforgivingly what Trump had done, this one told a gripping story about what he did not do They did it. They pulled it off. Anyone who feared that the January 6 committee’s season finale would turn into an anti-climax – more Game of Thrones than M*A*S*H – need not have worried. There were shocks, horrors and even laughs.The eight “episodes” have exceeded all expectations with their crisp narrative and sharp editing, a far cry from the usual dry proceedings on Capitol Hill. Each has recapped what came before, teased what is to come and compellingly joined the dots against Donald Trump.Much of the credit must go to James Goldston, the former president of ABC News, who was brought in to help produce the hearings like a true crime series. Give that man an Emmy (if only to infuriate Trump, a TV obsessive).Some viewers might have been disappointed on Thursday by the absence of chairman Bennie Thompson due to coronavirus (though he did join to open and close the hearing via video link). Yet with Liz Cheney in the chair and Goldston in the editing suite, a Grand Guignol was guaranteed.There were chilling details of a US vice-president’s staff calling their families because they feared death as the rioters closed in, having breached the Capitol that January 6 afternoon; there were damning stories about Trump watching an insurrection for hours on live TV and resisting pressure from senior staff to intervene; there were comical glimpses of a rightwing senator fleeing the mob he had emboldened.And from outtakes on 7 January there was the defining image of Trump struggling to read a teleprompter, stumbling over simple words such as “yesterday”, and especially those that acknowledged he was a loser, and banging the presidential lectern like a frustrated child. “This election is now over. Congress has certified the results – I don’t want to say the election’s over.”02:07To be in the Cannon Caucus Room as it all unfolded was to feel electricity in the air. It buzzed with the anticipation of reporters, photographers, TV camera operators, police officers, congressional aides and spectators. Once proceedings were under way beneath two giant chandeliers and the high, ornately-carved ceiling, Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal – who had been trapped in the House balcony on January 6 – could be seen fighting back tears as the scenes of carnage were replayed on a big screen.Whereas the first seven hearings set out unforgivingly what Trump had done, this one told a gripping story about what he did not do, for 187 minutes on 6 January 2021. As his enraged supporters stormed the US Capitol, the president did not call them off or contact senior law enforcement or military officials who could have curbed the violence as the US Capitol Police and city police were vastly outnumbered.What he did do was watch TV in his dining room next to the Oval Office, phone senators in a bid to make them delay the certification of his election defeat byJoe Biden, and call his unhinged lawyer and fellow coup-plotter Rudy Giuliani. It was not so much Nero fiddling while Rome burns as Nero dancing maniacally in the flames.The details were set out with the committee’s now customary slick and pacy presentation, cutting seamlessly from video deposition to 3D graphic, from archive footage to document excerpt, from Trump tweet to live witness.Thompson and Cheney delivered pithy statements about Trump’s dereliction of duty. Adam Kinzinger, a Republican member of the panel, summed up: “President Trump did not fail to act during the 187 minutes between leaving the Ellipse and telling the mob to go home. He chose not to act.”Congresswoman Elaine Luria noted that Trump was told that the Capitol was under attack within 15 minutes of leaving the stage at the Ellipse near the White House. He had just held a rally, demanding that heavily-armed supporters, who later marched to the Capitol, be allowed in. A photo of Trump in the Oval Office had the caption: “Minute 11.”Luria said: “At 1.25pm President Trump went to the private dining room off the Oval Office. From 1.25 until 4:00 the president stayed in his dining room … There was no official record of what President Trump did while in the dining room.”The dining room TV, she added, “was tuned to Fox News all afternoon” in perhaps the least surprising revelation of the hearings so far.Indeed, 3D computer graphics showed the Oval Office and dining room, which had a TV above its fireplace, showing Fox News as it was on January 6 – a neat touch. Then there was a display of call logs and the presidential diary from that afternoon, both blank. And the presidential photographer was told “no photographs”.Then came another pivot to video of a deposition by Pat Cipollone, the former White House counsel. He was asked if he was aware of Trump calling the defence secretary, or the homeland security secretary, or the attorney general. He was not.The drama continued to build. There was more footage from the riot at the Capitol, which never diminishes in power, and a reminder of how the mob was just feet away from Mike Pence. A member of the crowd said: ““Mike Pence has screwed us!”There was video testimony from an unnamed and unseen White House security official whose voice, borrowing more TV grammar, had been distorted to protect his identity: “The members of the VP [Secret Service] detail at this time were starting to fear for their own lives… There were calls to say goodbye to family members… For whatever reason on the ground the VP detail thought this was about to get very ugly.”Did Trump call his devoutly righthand man to check if he was OK? He did not. At 2.24pm, Trump tweeted that Pence “didn’t have the courage” to overturn the election in his favour. Everyone agreed it was appalling timing.Could Trump have addressed the nation? Again, the hearing was a model of clarity. A graphic showed how close he was to the White House briefing room. Sarah Matthews, a former deputy White House press secretary, testified in person: “It would take probably less than 60 seconds to get from the Oval Office dining room to the press briefing room. There’s a camera that is on in there at all times. If the president wanted to address people, he could have done so.”Then, something extraordinary happened. A burst of laughter echoing in the cavernous caucus room. How could it be? The answer was Republican Senator Josh Hawley. The big screen showed a photo of him with fist raised in support of the insurrectionists earlier on January 6 – haughty, preening, self-satisfied – and cut to a video of Hawley running for his life from the rioters as if auditioning for Chariots of Fire. Priceless.01:08Cheney remained po-faced on the dais, maintaining gravitas on this solemn occasion. Was she roaring with laughter inside? We shall never know. But it was another brilliant piece of choreography, guaranteed to provide fodder to late-night TV hosts and go viral on social media.Kinzinger and Luria, both military veterans, formed an effective double act. Kinzinger delivered a barnstorming ending. “Donald Trump’s conduct on January 6 was a supreme violation of his oath of office and a complete dereliction of his duty to our nation. It is a stain on our history. It is a dishonour to all those who have sacrificed and died in the service of our democracy.”Luria concluded: “President Trump did not then and does not now have the character or courage to say to the American people what his own people know to be true. He is responsible for the attack on the Capitol on Jan 6.”And yet the door was left open for more. Thompson and Cheney announced that more evidence is being gathered and hearings will resume in September. Will this be a sequel that lives up to expectations, like The Godfather Part II, Toy Story 2 or Top Gun: Maverick? Or will it be Jaws 2? One way to settle the matter would be get Pence here to testify.American politics has been a gruelling horror show for at least seven years now. The House committee hearings have shone an unforgiving light into every crevice with some master storytelling. The substance always matters but, for the power of persuasion, they have shown that style matters too.TopicsUS newsThe US politics sketchDonald TrumpHouse of RepresentativesUS politicsUS Capitol attackanalysisReuse this content More

The committee into the January 6 US Capitol riot showed Josh Hawley, the rightwing senator of Missouri, raising his fist in solidarity with the crowds massed before later playing security footage of him fleeing as rioters breached the Capitol

Jan 6 hearing: Trump said ‘I don’t want to say the election is over’ in speech outtake one day after riot
Republican Josh Hawley fled January 6 rioters – and Twitter ran with it More

Trump, modern Nero, watched the Capitol sacked from a White House dining roomLloyd GreenTrump never reached out to the FBI or the national guard to protect Congress. He rebuffed entreaties from his aides – including his own daughter – to end the crisis. That’s because he liked what he saw Thursday night’s congressional hearing on the 6 January 2021 attack on the US Capitol lived up to its billing as a season finale. A modern-day Nero, Trump watched reports of the invasion of the Capitol on Fox News from the comfort of his private White House dining room. The commander-in-chief ignored repeated calls to end the mayhem.“The mob was his people.” Trump never reached out to the military, the FBI, the defense department or the national guard to intervene. He rebuffed entreaties from Ivanka Trump, Mark Meadows and Pat Cipollone to end the downwardly spiraling situation.Trump never walked to the press briefing room to say “enough”. He liked what he saw. His minions had taken matters into their own hands and brought Congress to a halt.Trump struggled to record a message to disperse to his fans. He “loved” them; they were “special.” We heard this before. There were “good people on both sides” in Charlottesville.Chillingly, the security detail assigned to the vice-president began to say “good-bye” to their families. If Mike Pence came to hang from makeshift gallows that was his problem. Trump thought he deserved it. Pence was his vice-president, he believed – with loyalty to him, not the US constitution. He was expendable.The vice-president “folded,” he “screwed us,” according to the rioters. Trump’s tweet at 2.24pm blamed no one but his hapless running mate.Sarah Matthews, Trump’s deputy press secretary, testified that her boss had given the rioters a “green light”. He “poured gasoline on a fire,” to use her words. “Rioters heard the president’s message”, to quote Rep Adam Kinzinger. In turn, they acted accordingly.Senator Josh Hawley fled the Senate that day after earlier riling up the crowd with his outstretched arm and clenched fist. Cosplay can be dangerous to your health. Hawley reportedly harbors ambition for 2024.The tumult of 6 January was not spontaneous. Trump knew that that the crowd was armed, but sought to accompany them to the Capitol. He wanted to obstruct the certification of the election with a phalanx behind him.Carnage and destruction were OK. The ends justified all means.Here, past was prelude. In 2016, Trump signaled that he might not accept the election’s results if they did not meet his expectations. As Covid descended in the spring of 2020, he began to refer to November’s upcoming ballot as rigged, months before a single vote had been cast. The events of 6 January horrify and shock, but they cannot be characterized as a surprise.A recording of Steve Bannon evidenced that Trump’s reaction was premeditated. The prosecution has rested in his criminal case; he will not be taking the stand.Trump’s standing slowly erodes, even as Trumpism retains its firm grip on Republicans. Hours before the committee’s eighth public hearing, Representative Dan Crenshaw, a Texas Republican, announced that it would “suck” to nominate a presidential candidate who labored under criminal indictment. A poll of Michigan Republicans released earlier this week places Ron DeSantis, Florida’s governor, in a foot-race with the 45th president.Still, the Republicans are no longer the party of Abraham Lincoln. On Tuesday, Maryland Republicans selected a novitiate of QAnon to be their gubernatorial candidate and a neo-confederate secessionist as their pick for state attorney general. Even as Trump loses altitude, the “Big Lie” – the false claim that he actually won the last presidential election – retains its vitality.Also on Tuesday, Arizona Republicans censured Rusty Bowers, a Republican and leader in the state’s legislature, after he had testified last month before the committee and denied that Trump won Arizona. Fealty to “Dear Leader” remains a tribal litmus test.Trump’s dream remains alive. That nightmare is now woven into America’s political tapestry. Our “very stable genius” continues to demand that state legislators undo the results of 2020 – as if they possess that power. This month, Robin Vos, speaker of Wisconsin’s state assembly, told of Trump recently asking him to do just that.Beyond boosting DeSantis’s ambitions, the latest hearing won’t do anything to improve Republican chances of retaking the Senate. Despite inflation, rising crime and Joe Biden’s record-shattering unpopularity, Democrats are mild favorites to retain the upper chamber.Trump’s antics exact a price. This was not the committee’s final hearing. After Labor Day, broadcasts will resume. The midterms will be less than two months away. By then, the justice department will likely be immersed in weighing whether to prosecute Donald J Trump.
Lloyd Green is a regular contributor and served in the Department of Justice from 1990 to 1992
TopicsUS politicsOpinionJanuary 6 hearingsDonald TrumpUS Capitol attackRepublicansDemocratscommentReuse this content More

Adam Kinzinger, one of two Republican lawmakers on the January 6 committee and an Air Force veteran, said Donald Trump ‘did not fail to act during the 187 minutes between leaving the Ellipse and telling the mob to go home. He chose not to act’. Kinzinger added Trump violated his oath of office during the attack on the US Capitol 

Jan 6 hearing live updates More

Good afternoon, US politics blog readers. In a few hours, the January 6 committee will hold its final scheduled hearing, in which House lawmakers will make the case that former president Donald Trump may have violated the law by not stopping the assault on the Capitol. As if that wasn’t a packed news agenda by itself, president Joe Biden announced earlier today he had tested positive for Covid-19 – joining his vice president Kamala Harris, much of Congress’s Democratic leadership and yes, Trump, in contracting the virus.Here’s what else has happened today:
The House of Representatives passed a bill to guarantee access to contraception after supreme court justice Clarence Thomas mulled revisiting a decades-old ruling concerning the right. All Democrats voted for it, along with eight Republicans.
Much of America is facing extreme heat. Some Democrats have called on Biden to declare a climate emergency, but he has yet to do so.
Biden’s Covid-19 diagnosis has delayed the announcement of a plan to fight crime.
Democratic senators have introduced a bill to legalize cannabis nationwide. More

Big Oil V the World review – how can these climate crisis deniers sleep at night?This shocking documentary series reveals the lies oil lobbyists told to undercut democracy, prevent action against global heating – and bring our planet to the brink Al Gore described it as “in many ways the most serious crime of the post-world war two era, whose consequences are almost unimaginable”. Can you guess which one the former vice-president meant? Genocide in the former Yugoslavia? Genocide in Rwanda? The attack on the twin towers? The oxymoronic “war on terror” that produced – rather than eliminated – terrorism? The nuclear arms race? The invasion of Ukraine? The crimes of Stalin, Mao, or Pol Pot? Or other ones I haven’t the space to cite?Gore is in fact referring to a very specific moment that occurred on 25 July 1997. That day, the US Senate voted by 95-0 for the Byrd-Hagel Resolution, ruling that the US should not sign a climate treaty that would become known as the Kyoto protocol – despite the Clinton administration’s desire for the US to be a world leader in the fight to cut greenhouse gas emissions. It meant that Clinton would only be allowed to take action when developing countries – particularly India and China – were bound by the same strictures.‘What we now know … they lied’: how big oil companies betrayed us allRead moreThe worry, touted by purported experts (many of whom were briefed and funded by US oil companies), was that Kyoto would be a disaster for the US. Imposing strict emission controls on the US – while industrialising nations such as India and China were not similarly constrained – would cost the US upwards of 5,000 jobs, put more than 50 cents on a tank of gas, whack up electricity bills 25% to 50% and put the struggling US economy at a competitive disadvantage in international markets. Or so it was claimed.Jane McMullen’s excellent and shocking first instalment of a three-part series, Big Oil V The World (BBC Two) reveals another reason for senators Robert Byrd and Chuck Hagel’s resolution. For many years, the big oil lobby had poured scorn on the growing scientific orthodoxy that humanity is hurtling towards a climate catastrophe and that the leading reason is the rise in emissions of greenhouse gases.What I didn’t know, and this documentary helpfully explains, is that the US’s largest oil company, Exxon, had labs filled with researchers who had produced detailed reports showing the reality of the climate crisis. That research, though, was suppressed.The bitter irony, clinched by one of the company’s former climate scientists, Ed Garvey, was that Exxon could have been part of the solution rather than the problem. Garvey worked on Exxon’s carbon dioxide research programme from 1978 to 1983, when it was closed because falling gas prices made it seem an expendable luxury.Garvey also recalls that there were scientists at Exxon developing alternatives to fossil fuels such as solar power and lithium batteries. But their work was shelved. The future of the planet, Garvey suggests, was deemed less important than Exxon’s short-term profit.Although the Clinton administration in which Gore served had from the outset committed itself to reducing greenhouse gas emissions to their 1990 levels by 2000, and leaders of industrial nations such as the British prime minister, John Major, called for even deeper cuts, the Senate resolution effectively destroyed the president and his vice-president’s hopes of the US leading the world. Instead, the US, through its inaction, helped hasten the climate catastrophe we now live in.To clinch this rhetorical point, the programme repeatedly cuts from talking heads to scenes more hellish than those imagined by Dante or Milton. Floods in China, a fiery hellscape in California, storms lashing Louisiana and, in one shot, battering an Exxon gas station.After seeing such images, I wonder how Hagel, who sponsored that 1997 Senate resolution and went on to become defence secretary, sleeps at night. He was among the climate crisis deniers this documentary catches up with to hear them repent. Off-screen, the excellent interviewer asks Hagel if he feels he was misled, given that Exxon, whose execs lobbied him before the Senate vote, was making a concerted effort throughout the 1990s to cast doubt on the reality of the climate emergency and the role of human activity in increasing global temperatures – even though their own scientists were telling them that the science was sound.“We now know about some of these large oil companies … they lied,” says Hagel. “Yes I was misled. Others were misled. When they had evidence in their own institutions that countered what they were saying publicly – they lied.” If the truth had been told to Hagel and other climate crisis-denying senators, would the situation be different? “Oh absolutely,” says Hagel. “I think it would have changed the average citizen’s appreciation of climate change and mine. It would have put the United States and the world on a different track. It has cost this country and it’s cost the world.”Last August, the UN secretary general António Guterres said the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) working group’s report confirming the link between human activity and rising greenhouse emissions is “a code red for humanity”. That Senate resolution, McMullen’s film argues, contributed to our climate emergency.No one in this programme explores the hideous political ramifications of this terrible state of affairs, namely that the virus of capitalism (in the form of big oil) undercut democracy through a sustained campaign of disinformation. How easy it proved for corporations to sucker politicians such as Hagel to subvert not just the will of the people but the wellbeing of the planet. If McMullen’s film has a moral, it’s that democracy must be healthy enough to resist commercial lobbying, so that we don’t get fooled again. In 2022, that seems an unlikely scenario.TopicsTelevision & radioTV reviewTelevisionDocumentaryClimate crisisFactual TVOilOil and gas companiesreviewsReuse this content More