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      Green investment boom and electric car sales: six key things about Biden’s climate bill

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      The US’ first serious legislative attempt to tackle the climate crisis, the Inflation Reduction Act, is hitting its first anniversary both lauded for turbocharging a seismic shift to clean energy while also weathering serious attack from Republicans.Joe Biden hailed the bill, which despite its name is at heart a major shove towards a future dominated by renewable energy and electric vehicles, as “one of the most significant laws in our history” when signing it on 16 August last year.And the White House is trying to use the first year marker to extol it as a pivotal moment in tackling the climate emergency.“It’s the largest investment in clean energy in American history, and I would argue in world history, to tackle the climate crisis,” John Podesta, Biden’s chief clean energy advisor, told the Guardian. “With any legislation it takes time to get traction, but this is performing above expectations.”Podesta said there has been an “enormous response” in take-up for the tax credits that festoon the $369bn bill, directed at zero-carbon energy projects such as solar, wind and nuclear, grants for bring renewables manufacturing to the US and consumer incentives to purchase electric cars, heat pumps and electric stoves.Here are the key points to know about the impact of the act so far as it approaches its anniversary on August 16:1A boom in clean energy investmentThere has been around $278bn in new clean energy investments, creating more than 170,000 jobs, across the US in the first year of the Inflation Reduction Act, according to an estimate by the advocacy group Climate Power. The White House claims that there will be twice as much wind, solar and battery storage deployment over the next seven years than if the bill was never enacted, with companies already spending twice as much on new manufacturing facilities as they were pre-IRA.“It’s been more impactful than I or other observers would’ve thought,” said James Stock, a climate economist at Harvard University.Stock said that while the Inflation Reduction Act won’t by itself eliminate planet-heating emissions in the US, it is the “first substantive step” towards doing so and should help propagate the next generation of hoped-for clean fuels, such as hydrogen, in its 10-year lifespan. “As the tax credits are uncapped, too, we will see a lot more invested than we expected,” he said. “We could easily see $800bn to $1.2tn.”2More people are buying electric vehiclesThe Inflation Reduction Act includes rebates of up to $7,500 for buying an electric vehicle, and this incentive appears to be paying off – EV sales are set to top 1m in the US for the first time this year. Moreover, over half of US drivers are considering an EV for their next purchase, polling has shown.This transition isn’t without its hurdles, however – there has been a shortage of key parts in the EV supply chain, many models still remain prohibitively expensive and unions have been unhappy at the lack of worker protections for many of the new plants that are popping up. Climate advocates, meanwhile, have questioned why similarly strong support hasn’t been given to public transit or e-bikes to help get people out of cars altogether.3It will slash US emissions, but not by enoughThe US is the world’s second largest emitter of greenhouse gases and the Inflation Reduction Act is widely forecast to slash these emissions, by as much as 48% by 2035, from 2005 levels, according to one analysis.These forecasts have a relatively wide range of estimates due to uncertainties such as economic growth but even in the most optimistic scenario the US will require further measures if it is to get to net zero emissions by 2050, as scientists have said is imperative if the world is to avoid catastrophic climate impacts.“Even though we passed the IRA you ain’t seen nothing yet,” said Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate leader, in promising a fresh climate bill recently. But given the riven nature of US politics, the prospects of such legislation is remote in the near term.A more likely way to bridge the emissions gap will be a raft of regulatory actions by the Environmental Protection Agency, such as new standards to cut pollution from cars, trucks and power plants, as well as progress by individual states. “We basically need everything to go right,” said John Larsen, a partner at Rhodium group, an energy analysis organization4The IRA has so far escaped Republican cuts – but Biden is fighting to get creditThe legislation was a breakthrough moment following decades of obfuscation and delay by Congress despite increasingly frantic warnings by climate scientists over global heating, with the bill itself borne from months of torturous, comprise-laden negotiations with Joe Manchin, the coal baron senator from West Virginia who held a swing vote for its passage.But the legislation has already faced the threat of repeal from Republicans, who universally voted against it, with the GOP’s first bill after gaining control of the House of Representatives this year gutting key elements of the Inflation Reduction Act. This is despite the majority of clean energy investments flowing to Republican-led districts.Biden has also faced the ire of climate progressives for somewhat undercutting his landmark moment with an aggressive giveaway of oil and gas drilling leases on public land, including the controversial Willow oil project in Alaska, and for incentivizing the use of technologies such as carbon capture that have been criticized as an unproven distraction at a time when the world is baking under record heatwaves.“Biden has an atrocious track record on fossil fuels, and that needs to change,” said Jean Su, an attorney and climate campaigner at the Center for Biological Diversity who called on Biden to declare a climate emergency. There needs to be a “sea-change in this administration’s approach” on the climate crisis, according to Jeff Merkley, a Democratic senator. “No more green lighting fossil gas projects. No more stalling on a climate emergency. Now is the time for us to live up to the full promise of the Inflation Reduction Act.”Polling shows the majority of American voters disapprove of Biden’s handling of the climate crisis and only three in 10 have heard that much about the Inflation Reduction Act at all. Such perceptions will need to be turned around if the US president is to help secure the legacy of the bill in next year’s election.“We are going at a record clip to try to address this climate crisis,” said White House adviser Podesta. “I know people want us to hurry up and I wish we could produce a net zero economy immediately but this is a global transition that’s never occurred in human history. We need to get this job done.”The IRA act has not pleased leaders in the EU who have attacked it for being “protectionist” though some have argued they should instead be investing along similar lines.Clean energy investment has gone to red statesNo Republican voted for the Inflation Reduction Act but most of the investment that has been triggered by the bill has been funneled into projects in GOP-held Congressional districts. An emerging ‘battery belt’ is forming in the US south, with battery and electric vehicle plants popping up in states such as Georgia, Tennessee and Texas.“The IRA has been absolutely critical for us in terms of giving market certainties to go bold and big in our investment,” said a spokeswoman for QCells, a solar manufacturer that has embarked upon a major expansion in Georgia.5Renewables are booming – but there’s a transmission bottleneckIf the future wasn’t renewables before the IRA, it certainly is now – more than 80% of new electricity capacity this year will come from wind, solar and battery storage, according to federal government forecasts. The framers of the legislation hoped it will create a sort of virtuous circle whereby more renewable capacity will push down the cost of already cheap clean energy sources, seeding yet further renewable deployment.Solar panels may be dotting California and wind turbines sprouting off the east coast, but without the unglamorous build-out of transmission lines much of the benefits of the Inflation Reduction Act may be lost.Not only is there a lack of physical poles and wires to shift clean energy from one part of the country to another, many clean energy projects are facing interminable waits, lasting several years, to be connected to the grid at all. There is more than 1,250 gigawatts of solar and wind capacity actively seeking grid connection, which is about equal to the entire existing US power plant fleet.“Something’s going to have to change to get this deployment online,” said Larsen. “Beyond that it will be about building stuff at scale, very, very quickly.” More

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      Devastating Hawaii fires made ‘much more dangerous’ by climate change

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      The devastating fires in Hawaii, where at least 53 people have died after a conflagration that engulfed the historic town of Lahaina, were worsened by a number of factors including climate change, scientists have said.Rising global temperatures and drought have helped turn parts of Hawaii into a tinderbox ahead of one of the deadliest fires in modern US history, with these conditions worsened by strong winds from a nearby cyclone.Katharine Hayhoe, the chief scientist at the Nature Conservancy, said that global heating is causing vegetation to dry out, priming it as fuel for an outbreak of fire. “Climate change doesn’t usually start the fires; but it intensifies them, increasing the area they burn and making them much more dangerous,” Hayhoe tweeted.Nearly a fifth of Maui, the Hawaiian island where the fires have occurred, is in severe drought, according to the US Drought Monitor. The island has experienced other serious fires in recent years, with blazes in 2018 and 2021 razing hundreds of homes and causing the evacuation of thousands of residents and tourists.Experts say that wildfires in Hawaii are now burning through four times the amount of area than in previous decades, in part due to the proliferation of more flammable non-native grasses but also rising global temperatures.“We can say there are conditions that are consistent with wildfire, wildfire size and expansion that are changing as climate changes,” Erica Fleishman, a climate scientist at Oregon State University told CNN. “And some of the things that we’re seeing with this wildfire in Maui are consistent with some of the trends that are known and projected as climate changes.”Hawaii is experiencing increasingly dry conditions, with scientists calculating that 90% of the state is getting less rainfall than it did a century ago, with the period since 2008 particularly dry.The growing susceptibility of Hawaii to major fires was highlighted by a 2015 study that found that rainfall has been 31% lower in the wet season since 1990, in selected monitoring sites on the islands. The state, known for its volcanoes and lush forests, is in parts drying out as global heating continues to escalate.The flames that tore through Lahaina, meanwhile, were fanned by winds from the passing Hurricane Dora and the climate crisis is causing an overall increase in strong cyclones in the central Pacific. The influence of the cyclone upon the fires surprised scientists, given that Dora was churning around 500 miles away from Maui.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Hurricane Dora is very far away from Hawaii, but you still have this fire occurrence here,” said Pao-Shin Chu, Hawaii’s state climatologist. “So this is something we didn’t expect to see.”Those concerned about the climate crisis, meanwhile, called for further efforts to combat global heating from Joe Biden, who has declared a federal disaster in Hawaii. “We need to take action immediately or else it will get even worse,” said Jeff Merkley, a Democratic senator.“The extreme wildfires in Lahania, in this summer of climate disasters, are yet more proof that we are in a climate emergency and this crisis is killing us,” said Kaniela Ing, a climate activist and indigenous leader in Hawaii. More

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      Private jets are awful for the climate. It’s time to tax the rich who fly in them | Edward J Markey

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      The climate crisis is not in transit, it’s arrived at the gate. It’s in our skies, our water, and our land – with record-shattering heat waves, increasingly severe wildfires and flooding from superstorms and rising seas.We have no time for delays. Tackling this crisis and protecting frontline environmental justice communities will take all of us. And the tax-dodging ultra-wealthy need to stop fueling the problem and start supporting first-class solutions.That’s why, this July, I introduced the Fueling Alternative Transportation with a Carbon Aviation Tax (Fatcat) Act with Congresswoman Nydia Velázquez.Private air travel is the most energy-intensive form of transportation. For each passenger, private jets pollute as much as 14 times more than commercial flights and 50 times more than trains. Despite their sky-high emissions, private air travel is taxed considerably less than commercial air travel.My legislation changes that. Because the 1% should not get a free ride while destroying our environment.At the moment, billionaires and the ultra-wealthy are getting a bargain, paying less in taxes each year to fly private and contribute more pollution than millions of drivers combined on the roads below. Just one hour of flying private negates the climate benefits of driving an electric car for an entire year. That is unfair and it is unacceptable.For the sake of our environment, it is time to ground these fat cats and make them pay their fair share, so that we can invest in building the energy-efficient and clean public transportation that our economy and communities across the country desperately need. We cannot continue to ask frontline communities – disproportionately low-income, rural, immigrant, Black and brown Americans who are bearing the weight of the climate crisis – to subsidize billionaires jet-setting the globe.Our legislation would increase fuel taxes for private jet travel from the current $0.22 to nearly $2 a gallon – the equivalent of an estimated $200 a metric ton of a private jet’s CO2 emissions – and remove existing fuel tax exemptions for private flight activities that worsen the climate crisis, like oil or gas exploration.The revenue generated by the Fatcat Act would be transferred to the Airport and Airway Trust Fund and a newly created federal Clean Communities Trust Fund to support air monitoring for environmental justice communities and long-term investments in clean, affordable public transportation across the country – including passenger rail and bus routes near commercial airports.To fully tackle the climate crisis at the scale that is required, we need to ensure that those who are fueling this problem are held accountable for contributing to the solution. It is, of course, the same logic that should, but sadly does not, apply to our tax code.If Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and countless Wall Street hedge fund managers want to fly private jets, the least they can do is pay their fair share in taxes to compensate for the damage to our environment and the wear on our infrastructure. It’s unconscionable that they be allowed to continue to pay pennies on the dollar to pollute our environment as Americans suffer through the hottest days in an estimated 125,000 years. Everyday Americans should not have to pay for their excess.And let’s be clear: this is an issue of economic and environmental justice. The wealthiest 1% globally are responsible for more than twice as much carbon dioxide pollution as the bottom 50%. But the burden of that pollution gets passed along to people already struggling.A billionaire who takes to the skies in a private jet isn’t going to feel the hardship of paying a sky-high air conditioning or electric bill. The ultra-wealthy who own their own airplanes aren’t going to feel the hardship of breathing dirty air.We are approaching a dangerous tipping point in our battle against the climate crisis. This summer’s brutal weather is just a preview of what is to come. We all need to step up to do our part to address this crisis. Especially jet-setting billionaires.
      Edward J Markey is a US senator from Massachusetts More

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      Big business lobbies against heat protections for workers as US boils

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      Big-business lobbyists, including big agricultural and construction groups, are pushing to water down or stymie efforts at the federal and state levels to implement workplace heat protection standards.This summer, millions in the US have been exposed to some of the hottest days on record, inciting renewed urgency for federal protections from heat exposure for US workers. The Biden administration has proposed federal heat protections for workers. But those rules face stiff opposition and could take several years to be finalized under current rule-making processes and laws. They could even be scrapped depending on the outcome of 2024’s election.Business groups and lobbyists have aggressively opposed efforts at state and federal levels to enact heat protection standards for workers, claiming employers already practice what a standard would mandate, expressing concerns about the burden on employers, and claiming the efforts take a “wrong approach”.Between 2011 to 2021, 436 workers died from heat exposure according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, but that is most likely an undercount because heat-related deaths are often attributed to other accidents or health conditions.At present, no federal law protects workers specifically from extreme heat. Farm workers and advocacy groups are also pushing to include heat protections for farm workers in the 2023 farm bill currently being considered by Congress. But with Republicans in control of Congress, such a measure is unlikely to pass.In September 2021, the Biden administration announced the launch of a rule-making effort at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Osha) to develop heat exposure standards to protect outdoor and indoor workers.The powerful American Farm Bureau Federation has objected to the proposal. “Considering the variances in agricultural work and climate, AFBF questions whether the department can develop additional heat illness regulations without imposing new, onerous burdens on farmers and ranchers that will lead to economic losses,” it said in its comments on the rule.The group has a long history of denying science around the climate crisis and has teamed up with fossil fuel interests in fights over climate policies.The Construction Industry Safety Coalition (CISC) said while it “appreciates Osha’s rule-making in this area”, its members have “significant concerns with any regulatory approach that imposes complicated requirements on contractors and requirements that are triggered by threshold temperatures that are common in wide swaths of the country for much of the year”.The National Demolition Association, a construction business group, said in its opposition “issues of heat exposure and the means to address it on the variety of construction worksites across the country are extremely complex”. The proposed rule “essentially dictates how and what should be included in an Osha standard for heat exposure, [and] does not account for the complexities of the issue”.A handful of states, California, Colorado, Washington, Oregon and Minnesota, have issued their own heat exposure standards. Oregon is the only state also to protect indoor workers from heat exposure. Business groups have responded with lawsuits in Oregon and industry groups have already questioned the feasibility of a federal heat illness standard.Meanwhile, the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, has rescinded city ordinances that mandated heat protections for workers. The move was applauded by business groups.Last week Biden announced new measures to tackle the heat crisis, including hazard alerts for workplaces such as farms and construction sites. Experts described the announcement as positive but modest. In the meantime, his efforts to implement federal heat protections are making slow progress.The Osha rule-making process comprises seven stages. On average it takes Osha over seven years to develop and issue safety and health standards, according to a report by the Government Accountability Office. And it can take significantly longer. An Osha standard on silica exposure finalized in 2016 took 45 years to implement. The agency estimated it would have prevented 1,600 new cases of silicosis annually and saved more than 600 lives a year.“It’s going to be many, many years before we see a final standard, because there’s so many steps the agency has to go through, and they have to collect so much data and so much information more than other agencies when they do something similar,” said Debbie Berkowitz, who served as chief of staff and senior policy adviser at Osha during the Obama administration.“It’s not rocket science to protect workers from heat. Many employers do it but many employers don’t. It’s not that expensive,” Berkowitz said. “But it’s good to have a standard, a standard will really save lives.”Berkowitz said that protection standards for workers should include water, rest breaks, access to shade, acclimatization for workers exposed to excessive heat on the job, and training for workers and managers on heat protections and the symptoms of heat illnesses. While at Osha, she noted, several investigations into heat-related worker deaths involved workers who had just started working in intense heat on the job. For example, in July 2022, 24-year-old Kaylen Gehrke died on the job from heat stroke in Louisiana on her first day conducting archaeological surveys outdoors while the area was under a heat advisory warning.“The workers most impacted are the ones who bring us our food, build our buildings, it seems to me a no-brainer to give Osha the authority to move quickly to require these basics, that employers require water, that they educate workers on the early symptoms of heat stress that if not attended to can lead to fatalities quickly,” Berkowitz added. “I think most farm workers and other workers that go and toil in the sun every day deserve our gratitude and our thanks and deserve this protection.”At least two Florida farm workers have died this year due to heat exposure, 29-year-old Efraín López García died on 5 July and another unnamed farm worker died in Parkland in January on their first day on the job. The state legislature declined to consider a bill to enact heat exposure protections for workers, though the protections would not have been enforceable. Miami-Dade county recently introduced a bill in the county commission to enact heat standards locally.Dr Nezahualcoyotl Xiuhtecutli, general coordinator of the Farmworker Association of Florida, explained farm workers are even more susceptible to heat exposure due to the piece rate system, where workers are paid based upon the number of units of crops they pick.“The piece rate system makes it even more difficult because they feel pressure to work harder and pick more so they can actually increase their salary, but this disincentivizes them from taking breaks and paying attention to their body because they’re thinking about how it’s going to affect their income,” said Xiuhtecutli.He expressed disappointment that the Florida legislature didn’t consider a bill to implement heat protections for workers and argued the onus shouldn’t be on workers themselves to protect themselves from excessive heat.“These deaths are preventable,” he said. “We have guidelines for how to prevent them. Neglecting to take care of them just really speaks volumes about our priorities as a society and as a state, because we can’t even take care of the lives of our most vulnerable workers.”With recent extreme heatwaves, anticipation of a new normal of record-setting temperatures due to the climate crisis, and ongoing reported cases of workers dying on the job due to heat exposure, worker advocacy groups, unions and elected officials are increasing pressure for heat exposure standards to be implemented at local, state and federal level.On 25 July, Congressman Greg Casar of Texas began a thirst strike at the US Capitol with the labor activist Dolores Huerta, calling on Osha to implement federal heat standards to protect workers, including water breaks. Some 112 members of Congress signed a letter on 24 July calling on Osha to implement heat protection standards for workers, basing standards on a proposed congressional bill, the Asuncion Valdivia Heat Illness and Fatalities Prevention Act, named after a farm worker who died from heat exposure in 2004.The bill was reintroduced to Congress on 26 July. Congress has previously passed legislation ordering Osha to expedite safety standards, such as the Needlestick Safety and Prevention Act passed in 2020 that mandated Osha update worker safety standards on blood-borne pathogens.“It’s a commonsense piece of legislation that will require employers to provide workers with what are quite frankly, humane work conditions in the face of extreme heat,” said Dr Rachel Licker, a principal climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists and co-author of a 2021 report on the threat climate change poses to workers. “We know that there’s already extreme heat happening around the world at levels that are dangerous for outdoor workers and the story is just going to get worse as the world warms because of climate change and emissions from fossil fuels, so it’s clearer than ever that we need to be better prepared because workers are getting injured and dying on the job because of this hazard.”In a statement, Osha’s assistant secretary, Doug Parker, said that as the agency is working on issuing a final rule on heat illness prevention, it is ramping up enforcement compliance efforts and outreach efforts.“Many workers are at increased risk, sometimes because of the jobs they do, but also because of factors like the color of their skin, their ethnicity, or the fact that English is not their first language,” said Parker. “Every worker is entitled to a safe and healthy workplace, and we will continue to use all the tools in our toolbox to ensure all workers have the health and safety protections they need and deserve in every workplace.” More

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      We bailed out the banks but we’re not prepared to bail out the planet

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      Like many other politicians, Joe Biden talks a good game about the need to tackle global heating. Climate change is an “existential threat”, the US president said last week, as America sizzled amid record-breaking temperatures.Biden had to do something in response to what António Guterres, the UN secretary general, described as the boiling of the planet. The White House announced a series of measures – such as improved access to drinking water and planting more trees – in response to what has been the hottest month on record.To Biden’s critics, this is fiddling while Rome burns. They say he should be declaring a climate emergency, which would allow him to block new fossil fuel projects without congressional approval. As it is, Biden has showed a marked reluctance to take this step. There are clearly limits to what the US government is prepared to do to counter this “existential threat”.It is a similar picture in the UK, where the Conservative party’s surprise victory in the Uxbridge and South Ruislip byelection was in large part due to the plans by London’s Labour mayor, Sadiq Khan, to expand the ultra-low emission zone (Ulez) to the capital’s outer boroughs.Put simply, the Ulez seeks to improve London’s air quality by placing a charge on the use of older petrol and diesel vehicles, which tend to be not just the most polluting but also the most likely to be owned by poorer households already struggling with Britain’s cost of living crisis.The byelection defeat clearly rattled the Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer. “We are doing something very wrong if policies put forward by the Labour party end up on each and every Tory leaflet,” he said. “We’ve got to face up to that and learn the lessons.”In their different ways, recent events in the US and the UK show just how difficult it will be to put the global economy on a saner and more sustainable course.Problem number one is that politicians struggle to think beyond the next election. Biden is running for re-election next year, and Starmer wants to end a run of four successive defeats for Labour. The temptation to put off tough decisions to another day is powerful.That’s because of problem number two: the lack of consensus about what needs to be done and over what time period change needs to happen. What’s needed is for Democrats and Republicans in the US and Labour and the Conservatives in the UK to announce that they are jointly signed up to a course of action that will extend well beyond one presidential or parliamentary term. The failure to forge a bi-partisan approach provides an incentive for parties to look for short-term political gain, even when doing so risks longer-term harm.There’s a reason for that, namely that some of the policies required have upfront costs that make them unpopular for those that find them hard to bear. Telling a key worker who can only afford an ageing diesel car that they will have to pay £12.50 a day to drive to their job is never going to be easy, especially in a period when living standards are being squeezed. There is no getting away from the fact that the Ulez expansion is a regressive tax and, as Khan has found, changes that make hard-up people even worse off breed anger, and that anger will inevitably find a political outlet.So problem number three is that there are a lot of poor people in the UK and the US. And problem number four is that not nearly enough is being done to help these people make the green transition. For that to happen, there would need not just to be a recognition of the link between global heating and grotesque levels of inequality, but a willingness to do something about it.In the developed west, this means using the financial firepower of the state to reduce the number of losers from the green transition. In developing countries, it means transfers of both money and technical knowhow, so that countries that need growth as part of their anti-poverty programmes minimise the use of fossil fuels. Meeting the “existential” threat that Biden talks about requires action not just in the UK or the US but in China, India and other emerging countries, too. Climate action on a global scale will be costly.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThat brings us to problem number five. The change from one economic paradigm to another – the creative destruction that the political economist Joseph Schumpeter talked about – is hard because it requires those who have invested in existing industries to recognise that the game is up. This transition can be prolonged if those wedded to the status quo have invested huge sums and wield enormous power, as is the case with the fossil fuel industry.The solution to these problems lies ultimately in the hands of politicians such as Biden, because they alone have the power to remove barriers to change.As the rapid responses to the global financial crisis of 2007-09 and the Covid pandemic proved, governments can act speedily, collectively and decisively if the crisis is deemed big enough. When the banks were facing their existential crisis in 2008, money was created to bail them out and prevent a second Great Depression. In 2020, economies were effectively put on a war footing.Should the same approach be adopted in the fight against climate change? Yes. Is there any sign of this happening? Not on the scale required. Effectively, this is like the 1930s, when there was resistance to meeting the threat of fascism. Then, as now, what was needed was rapid rearmament. Then, as now, what we’re getting is a failure to do what needs to be done. More

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      Trump says lawyers were given no indication of looming indictment from DoJ – live

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      From 4h agoDonald Trump said his attorneys had a “productive” meeting with the Department of Justice this morning, and that “no indication of notice” was given during the meeting.Posting on Truth Social, Trump wrote:
      My attorneys had a productive meeting with the DOJ this morning, explaining in detail that I did nothing wrong, was advised by many lawyers, and that an Indictment of me would only further destroy our Country. No indication of notice was given during the meeting — Do not trust the Fake News on anything!
      It was reported earlier today that Trump’s lawyers were seen entering the offices of special counsel Jack Smith, a week after the former president said he had received a target letter from Smith. According to NBC, Trump’s attorneys were told to expect an indictment against him.The grand jury conducting special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss has left the federal courthouse in Washington.Just before 3pm EST, a deputy clerk at the courthouse told journalists that no indictments had been returned on Thursday and that none were expected by the end of the day.According to a Politico report, anticipation was palpable at the courthouse throughout the day.
      Throngs of journalists crowded hallways and looked for signs of movement in the vicinity of the courthouse’s sealed grand jury spaces. Trump’s announcement that his lawyers had met with Smith’s team earlier in the day further fueled speculation that an indictment was imminent.
      The media encampment outside the D.C. courthouse continued to grow through the day Thursday, despite the sweltering heat.
      Vice-President Kamala Harris expressed deep concern over the attempted army coup in Niger during a call with Nigeria’s president, Bola Tinubu, the White House said in a statement.The statement reads:
      The vice president strongly condemned any efforts to seize power by force in Niger, and emphasized that our substantial cooperation with the government of Niger is contingent on Niger’s continued commitment to democratic standards.
      Harris and Tinubu committed to “defending democracy” in west Africa and the Sahel, it said.Niger’s president, Mohamed Bazoum, remained held in the presidential palace this afternoon and it was unclear who had taken charge of the country, after a group of soldiers declared a military coup on Wednesday evening.Rightwingers have long cried foul over Hunter Biden’s treatment by federal authorities.The pardon power is established in article 2 of the US constitution, which says the president “shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offences against the United States, except in cases of impeachment”.The use of the pardon power has become increasingly controversial; presidents including Bill Clinton and Donald Trump having bestowed pardons and acts of clemency on donors and supporters.Trump was widely reported to have considered whether he could pardon himself, on issues including alleged collusion with Russian interference in the 2016 election.Trump also reportedly explored the idea of giving preemptive pardons to family members, another step he did not ultimately take.Joe Biden will not pardon his son Hunter on tax- and gun-related charges, the White House said on Thursday.At a briefing, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was asked: “From a presidential perspective, is there any possibility that the president would end up pardoning his son?”“No,” Jean-Pierre replied. Pressed, she said:
      I just said no. I answered.
      In court in Wilmington, Delaware, on Wednesday, Hunter Biden pleaded not guilty to two tax charges, both misdemeanours. He had been expected to plead guilty as part of a deal with federal prosecutors that also included a pre-trial diversion program on the guns charge, a felony.Donald Trump confirmed earlier today that his lawyers met with officials at the office of special prosecutor Jack Smith in Washington DC.Trump’s attorneys attended the meeting not to argue the facts of the case against indicting the former president, but instead with a broader appeal that indicting him would only cause more turmoil in the country’s political environment, CNN is reporting, citing two sources.In other justice department news, the Guardian’s Erum Salam reports that it will investigate Memphis’s police department after the beating death of Tyre Nichols at the hands of officers earlier this year:The US Department of Justice has announced an investigation into the city of Memphis and the Memphis police department over its policing practices to examine if they are discriminatory.The civil pattern or practice investigation will determine if Memphis police violated federal laws or the US constitution. The announcement comes after the police department came under scrutiny for its use of force, stops, searches and arrests that often targeted people of color.One of these instances involved Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man who died on 10 January, three days after an encounter with Memphis police during a traffic stop in which he was violently beaten.Republican senator Ted Cruz gave a taste of how Donald Trump’s defenders could react if special counsel Jack Smith indicts the former president over his involvement in the January 6 insurrection:Here are his comments to the conservative Newsmax network:In the House, Republicans vowed that today would be the day they vote to hold Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in contempt, but then changed their mind. The Guardian’s Mary Yang reports on why:Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta, is no stranger to Capitol Hill, where he has sparred with Republicans and Democrats over how he runs his platforms. A Republican-led panel was set to vote on Thursday on a resolution to hold him in contempt of Congress, for allegedly failing to turn over internal documents on content moderation.However, House judiciary committee chair Jim Jordan, a Republican of Ohio, temporarily suspended the vote.Jordan announced on Twitter that the committee “decided to hold contempt in abeyance. For now” and posted a series of tweets of alleged internal communications among Meta executives hours ahead of the hearing.A day after Hunter Biden’s agreement with prosecutors to resolve federal charges was upended by a judge, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Joe Biden would not consider pardoning his son, CNN reports:Yesterday, federal judge Maryellen Noreika unexpectedly rejected a deal that would have seen Hunter Biden plead guilty to charges related to failure to pay taxes, and enter a diversion program to resolve lying in a background check to purchase a firearm. Prosecutors and Biden’s attorneys are now expected to negotiate a new agreement that will address concerns Noreika raised about the orgininal’s scope, and present it to the judge within 30 days.Republicans have for years seized on Biden’s history of addiction and troubled business dealings to argue that both he and his father are corrupt, though they have struggled to find proof of their allegations.The wait to find out whether Donald Trump will be charged over the January 6 insurrection continues, as Politico reports that the federal court in Washington DC says no indictments are expected to be filed today: More

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      Biden announces new measures to protect Americans from extreme heat

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      Joe Biden announced new steps on Thursday to help Americans face the “existential threat of climate change” and extreme heat.“We want the American people to know help is here, and we’re gonna make it available to anyone who needs it,” the president said, speaking in a summer of record-breaking temperatures in the US and globally.The new measures will shield workers from high temperatures, improve weather forecasting, strengthen access to drinking water and otherwise improve heat resilience, Biden said.Experts described the measures as positive but modest, and the president stopped short of declaring a climate emergency or directly addressing the need to phase out planet-heating fossil fuels.Biden directed the Department of Labor to issue a hazard alert for workplaces such as farms and construction sites, where workers face a higher risk amid high temperatures. Heat has killed 436 workers since 2011, according to federal statistics.Sectors including agriculture and construction also frequently see heat-related safety violations, so the labor department will also increase its inspections of high-risk workplaces, Biden said. He also took a veiled swipe at Greg Abbott, the Texas governor, who this year banned his state’s municipalities from requiring workers be offered water breaks.“We should be protecting workers from hazardous conditions and we will, and those states where they do not, I’m going to be calling them out,” Biden said, later adding that when he played football as a young man, coaches would be fired for refusing players water breaks.The president also said the US Forest Service will award more than $1bn in grants to help cities and towns plant trees, “so families have a place to go to cool off”. Tree coverage can help lower temperatures in urban areas by more than 15 degrees fahrenheit.Biden added that the Department of Housing and Urban Development had set aside billions to help communities make their buildings more energy efficient and to open cooling centers. And he said the Department of Interior was boosting funding to “expand water storage capacity in the western states”, referring to the earmarking of $152m for water storage and pipelines for the drought-stricken western states, according to the White House.Biden also highlighted $7m in funding from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act which the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will use to improve weather forecasts, thereby improving preparedness for extreme weather like heatwaves.The press conference, held from a White House auditorium, came as nearly 40% of Americans face heat advisories, according to the National Weather Service.The president was joined virtually by mayors of Phoenix, Arizona and San Antonio, Texas, which have both roasted under scorching temperatures this summer.Phoenix has experienced 27 consecutive days where temperatures crossed 110F (43C), while San Antonio saw temperatures cross 100F (38C) on at least 15 straight days.“We feel like we are very much on the frontlines of climate change,” said Phoenix’s mayor, Kate Gallego.Gallego has been pushing Congress to pass a bill adding extreme heat to the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s list of major disaster qualifying events, which would allow states to be reimbursed opening cooling centers, distributing water and otherwise tackling high temperatures.“We would love it if Congress would give you the ability to declare heat a disaster,” she said on Thursday.San Antonio’s mayor, Ron Nirenberg, touted the steps his city is taking to promote climate action, including boosting public transit and solar energy production.“Thankfully, sustainability and green energy are no longer four-letter words in the state of Texas,” he said.The nation’s capital is experiencing its own heat crisis, with officials warning that temperatures this week could exceed 100F (37.8C) for the first time in seven years. Oppressive heat is expected to spread into the midwest and north-east in the coming days.Heat is the “number one weather-related killer” in the US, Biden said.“Six hundred people die annually from its effects – more than from floods, hurricanes and tornadoes in America combined,” he said.Thursday’s announcement followed other heat-related measures from the White House. Last year, federal officials launched the interagency heat-focused website Heat.gov. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Osha) also announced it was developing a heat standard for workers, but it could take years to finalize.Juley Fulcher, a health and safety advocate at the non-profit Public Citizen, said that while Thursday’s heat hazard alert reaffirmed existing federal heat-related protections, the new rule is crucial to expanding those measures.“Without a rule, Osha is in a very difficult position trying to hold employers accountable,” she said. “It must be a priority.”Industry interests are attempting to stall the rule’s completion, she said. On Wednesday, legislators introduced a bill which would require Osha to issue an interim rule.Climate activist Jamie Henn, who founded Fossil Free Media and previously co-founded 350.org, said Thursday’s announcements were insufficient. He noted that the president had failed to declare a federal climate emergency, which could allow him to speed the energy transition and block fossil fuel projects without congressional approval.“Addressing extreme heat will require us to stop pouring fuel on the flames,” said Henn.On Thursday, federal officials are expected to greenlight the expansion of a gas liquefaction and export terminal in Port Arthur, Texas, enabling the equivalent of 698bn cubic feet of the planet-heating fuel to be exported each year for three decades.“Stop approving and subsidizing projects which will increase climate-changing carbon in our atmosphere that’s fueling this extreme weather,” said John Beard, the chief executive of Port Arthur Community Action Network. More

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      We warned you about this climate emergency. Now it’s here | Peter Kalmus

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      We’ve passed into a ferocious new phase of global heating with much worse to come. Biden must declare a climate emergency.I’m terrified by what’s being done to our planet. I’m also fighting to stop it. You, too, should be afraid while also taking the strongest action you can take. There has never been a summer like this in recorded history: shocking ocean heat, deadly land heat, unprecedented fires and smoke, sea ice melting faster than we’ve ever seen or thought possible. I’ve dreaded this depth of Earth breakdown for almost two decades, and, like many of my colleagues, I’ve been trying to warn you. As hard as I could. Now it’s here.And mark my words: it’s all still just getting started. So long as we burn fossil fuels, far, far worse is on the way; and I take zero satisfaction in knowing that this will be proven right, too, with a certainty as non-negotiable and merciless as the physics behind fossil-fueled global heating. Instead, I only feel fury at those in power, and bottomless grief for all that I love. We are losing Earth on our watch. The Amazon rainforest may already be past its tipping point. Coral reefs as we know them will be gone from our planet by mid-century, and possibly much earlier given this surge in sea-surface temperatures. These are cosmic losses. And as a father, I grieve for my children.Fossil fuels are causing this damage. Therefore, the only way out of this heat nightmare is to end them. No amount of tree planting, recycling, carbon offsetting, or wishful carbon-capture thinking will ever change this. The longer we allow the fossil fuel industry to exist, the more irreversible damage to Earth the people who profit from it will continue to knowingly cause. We are careening toward fossil-fueled heatwaves that will kill over a million people in single events. And it will not plateau there: more fossil fuels, more heat, more death. The only way out is to end fossil fuels.Biden’s refusal to declare a climate emergency and his eagerness to push new pipelines and new drilling – at an even faster pace than Trump – goes against science, goes against common sense, goes against life on Earth. In the world of politics-as-usual, with its short-term goals and calculus of “safer to follow than to lead”, I suppose there are reasons and rationalizations for this planet-destroying choice. But speaking as a scientist, it seems ignorant and short-sighted. It’s certainly a form of climate denial. And I have no doubt that fossil fuel executives and lobbyists – and those who chose to stand with them – will, in the future, be considered criminals.Because the stakes could not be greater. Every speck of fossil fuel sold and burnt combusts into carbon dioxide, forcing the planet to heat. Carbon dioxide resides in the atmosphere for a very long time, making the excess heat and other climate impacts basically irreversible on human-relevant timescales. Every bit of extra heat makes climate disasters more frequent, widespread and intense.Each minute the fossil fuel industry exists, each drilling permit, airplane flight, gallon of gas, fossil fuel ad, lobbyist’s email, takes us further into irreversible heat catastrophe, socially and physically. These floods and fires and heatwaves and crop failures will keep pushing harder against the systems of our society – insurance, real estate, infrastructure, food, water, energy, geopolitics, everything – until at some point, inevitably, the systems will break. Nowhere is safe.Using executive orders and federal agency rules, and without needing to involve this failure of a Congress, Biden could end new drilling leases on federal lands and waters, block new pipelines and effectively ban fracking. He could unleash a historic education program to counter fossil fuel industry disinformation, using the bully pulpit to build awareness and support. He could prohibit government financing of overseas fossil fuel infrastructure, end energy department fossil-fuel financing programs, ban new fossil-fuel vehicle sales by 2030, prosecute violations by fossil fuel polluters, commit to veto laws granting immunity to such criminals, and more.Declaring a climate emergency would unleash additional powers such as banning oil exports and further accelerating renewable energy buildout on a scale not seen since the mobilization for the second world war. It would send an unmistakable signal to investors still living in the past, to universities that have been shamefully slow to divest, to media outlets that have failed to connect the dots, to all the dangerously lagging institutions of our society. And it would be a desperately needed win for climate activists.Biden had the last opportunity of any president to keep the world under 1.5C of heating. Tragically, this opportunity has now almost certainly been squandered. However, Biden could still choose to pivot and prevent, instead of cause, even greater damage. But will he choose to do so? Or will he continue to champion oil executives and their pipelines?The planet is desperate for visionary leadership. The planet is desperate for policy that creates an equitable transition away from fossil fuels, and into climate emergency mode as a society.I have not given up, and I never will. I owe that to my children, to all the good people who don’t deserve this, and to all the life on this gift of a planet. No matter how much we’ve lost, it will never be too late to fight. But the hour is late. It is time to set aside differences and fight together, as creatively and courageously as we can, to save all we still can. Soon, all but the greatest fools among us will realize that nothing was more important.
      Peter Kalmus is a climate scientist and author of Being the Change: Live Well and Spark a Climate Revolution More