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Herbicide chemical linked to cancer found in majority of urine samples in CDC study

A new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study revealed a common herbicide chemical linked to cancer was detected in the majority of urine samples the public health agency reviewed.

The CDC’s National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, a program designed to assess the nutritional health of American adults and children, released data last month showing that more than 80 percent of urine samples tested by the health agency were at or above the detection limit for glyphosate, which is widely considered to be a carcinogenic chemical and is the main ingredient in the weedkiller product Roundup.

About 2,310 urine samples were collected from people aged 6 years and older in 2013 and 2014, with about a third of the samples coming from children. The CDC said it conducted the study to get a clearer picture of how prevalent glyphosate is among the general population.

In a news release on Monday, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) pointed out 87 percent of 650 children tested had detectable levels of glyphosate.

Alexis Temkin, a toxicologist at EWG, said that “glyphosate is the most widely used herbicide in the country, yet until now we had very little data on exposure.”

“Children in the U.S. are regularly exposed to this cancer-causing weedkiller through the food they eat virtually every day,” Temkin said. “The Environmental Protection Agency [EPA] should take concrete regulatory action to dramatically lower the levels of glyphosate in the food supply and protect children’s health.”

Glyphosate is used to kill weeds and grass and is most widely known in Roundup, the popular herbicide created by the company Monsanto.

Bayer, which bought Monsanto in 2018, has faced thousands of lawsuits by plaintiffs accusing Roundup of causing cancer or non-Hodgkin lymphoma, also known as cancer in the lymph nodes.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer labeled glyphosate a “probable” carcinogen in 2015, but the EPA in 2020 sided with pesticide companies, arguing there is not enough evidence to show the chemical is a probable or likely carcinogen.

Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal from Bayer to throw out a lawsuit from a plaintiff accusing Roundup of causing him non-Hodgkin lymphoma, clearing the way for thousands of lawsuits against the pesticide company to proceed.

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Jan. 6 panel to reveal Trump tweet prompted groups to change date of descent on DC: report

The House panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the Capitol plans to reveal it has evidence some pro-Trump groups changed the date they planned to protest in D.C. following a December 19, 2020 tweet by former President Trump that will be at the center of the committee’s hearing on Tuesday.

Axios reported Monday that at least one of the groups amended its rally permit to occur on Jan. 6 instead of in the days following President Biden’s inauguration.

“Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!” Trump wrote in the Tweet, that the committee plans to scrutinize at its next public hearing as well as the role extremist groups played leading up to and on that day.

The committee will also reportedly hear testimony from a riot suspect who accused Biden and Demcrats of “treason” and a former spokesperson for the far-right militia group Oath Keepers. 

The rioter, Stephen Ayres of Warren, Ohio, shared Trump’s tweet on Facebook shortly before heading to D.C. the day before the riot, according to ABC News.

Jason Van Tatenhoven, who once served as a spokesman for the Oath Keepers, is expected to share testimony that helps examine extremist groups’ role in the riots.

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Hispanic journalists' organization responds to Jill Biden: 'We are not tacos'

The National Association of Hispanic Journalists (NAHJ) responded on Monday to a much-criticized comment by first lady Jill Biden calling the Latino community “as unique as the breakfast tacos here in San Antonio,” saying that the remark was culturally inappropriate.

“We are not tacos,” wrote the NAHJ in a statement criticizing Biden.

“NAHJ encourages Dr. Biden and her speech writing team to take the time in the future to better understand the complexities of our people and communities,” the group added.

Biden made the remark earlier Monday at the 2022 UnidosUS Annual Conference held in Texas, where she spoke on the Hispanic “Quest for Equity.”

In her speech, Biden said that “the diversity of this community, as distinct as the bodegas of the Bronx, as beautiful as the blossoms of Miami and as unique as the breakfast tacos here in San Antonio, is your strength.”

The NAHJ responded that “using breakfast tacos to try to demonstrate the uniqueness of Latinos in San Antonio demonstrates a lack of cultural knowledge and sensitivity to the diversity of Latinos in the region.”

The statement continued: “Our heritage as Latinos is shaped by a variety of diasporas, cultures and food traditions, and should not be reduced to a stereotype.”

A number of conservative figures responded to Biden’s comments, criticizing her speech and claiming that reactions to the remarks would have been stronger if she were on the right of the political spectrum.

“Imagine the regime media meltdown if a conservative called Hispanics ‘breakfast tacos’ like Dr. Jill Biden did at the Latinx Luncheon today. Democringe,” wrote Christina Pushaw, press secretary for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R).

“No wonder Hispanics are fleeing the Democratic Party!” wrote Republican Rep. Andy Biggs (Ariz.).

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Democrat Tim Ryan touts Fox News appearances in new Ohio Senate campaign ad

Rep. Tim Ryan (Ohio), a Democrat running for Senate in an increasingly red state, is touting interviews, appearances and mentions on the conservative Fox News channel in a new campaign ad.

Ryan appears throughout the 30-second campaign ad, titled “Fox News Friends,” as several Fox hosts and reporters compliment him in a series of video clips.

In the ad, Fox personality Bret Baier calls Ryan “tough on China” and and reporter Peter Doocy says the congressman has “more moderate ideas” than most Democrats. One clip even shows prime-time host Tucker Carlson talking Ryan up for shutting down other Democrats on border security.

The ad shows Ryan is courting Republican and conservative voters as well as independents and more moderate Democrats in his Ohio race against Trump-endorsed GOP candidate J.D. Vance, a venture capitalist known for his 2016 memoir “Hillbilly Elegy.”

Vance and Ryan are locked in a dead heat for the open U.S. Senate seat in early polls, though Ryan did rake in a whopping $9.1 million in fundraising for the second quarter of the year.

Ryan, who has represented Ohio’s 13th Congressional district since 2002, has often been called a conservative Democrat because of his previous anti-abortion position, which he has since had a change of heart on.

The congressman has also been criticized by progressives for his hardline stance against universal health care plans such as Medicare-for-all.

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Riot suspect who accused Democrats of 'treason' to testify before Jan. 6 committee: report

The House panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection at the Capitol will hear testimony Tuesday from a riot suspect who accused President Biden of “treason” and warned of “civil war” if President Trump did not stay in power.

Stephen Ayres of Warren, Ohio, admitted to illegally entering the Capitol on Jan. 6 to protest the certification of the 2020 presidential election, according to ABC News reporting. 

“Mainstream media, social media, Democrat party, FISA courts, Chief Justice John Roberts, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, etc….all have committed TREASON against a sitting U.S. president!!! All are now put on notice by ‘We The People!'” Ayres reportedly wrote on Facebook shortly before heading to D.C.. 

Ayres also shared on Facebook a Dec. 19, 2021 tweet from then-President Trump that is expected to be a major focus of Tuesday’s hearing.

“Big protest in D.C. on January 6th,” Trump wrote in the Tweet. “Be there, will be wild!”

In another message, Ayres allegedly wrote: “If the [deep state] robs president Trump!!! Civil War will ensue!” 

The commitee will also hear Tuesday from a former spokesperson for the far-right militia group Oath Keepers, Jason Van Tatenhove, as it examines extremist groups’ role in the riots.

Van Tatenhove said in a post on the website of his podcast, the Colorado Switchblade, that his testimony would give the committee “a historical overview of the Oath Keepers and violent militias.”

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Raskin: 'A bad faith actor like Donald Trump can plant booby traps' in the electoral system

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a member of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot, said on Monday that people such as President Trump “can plant booby traps” in the U.S. electoral system to skew the results their way.

Speaking ahead of the Jan. 6 panel’s next public hearing on Tuesday, Raskin said that the Electoral College is “an actual danger to the American people” when someone like Trump is in power and refuses to concede.

“A bad faith actor like Donald Trump can plant booby traps in all of the nooks and crannies,” he told The Baltimore Sun.

Raskin said that the full evidence collected by the committee, which has been holding publicly televising hearings for the past few weeks, will be undeniable even to supporters of the former president.

“I think the cumulative effect of this will be devastating for those who wanted to try to dismiss the meaning of Jan. 6 and sweep it under the rug,” said Raskin, who was also involved in the House’s efforts to impeach Trump in the aftermath of the Capitol breach.

Raskin said that Tuesday’s hearing will deal with a tweet from Trump on Dec. 19, 2020 that read: “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!”

The Maryland representative said he believes that tweet was “the pivotal moment for the mobilizing of the domestic violent extremist groups.”

“People dismiss that it’s just a tweet, but it was a tweet that went to 70 million people, calling on them to come join a wild protest against the government,” said Raskin.

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Pro-Bernie Sanders group launches campaign urging Biden not to run for reelection

A progressive grassroots organization that supported Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) 2016 and 2020 White House bids announced on Monday that it will launch a campaign to oppose President Biden’s reelection in 2024.

RootsAction wrote in a press release that Biden has been “neither bold nor inspiring” since taking office early last year. And because his “prospects for winning re-election appear to be bleak,” it will launch the #DontRunJoe campaign on Nov. 9, one day after the midterm elections.

“In 2024 the United States will face the dual imperatives of preventing a Republican takeover of the White House and advancing a truly progressive agenda. The stakes could not be higher,” RootsAction wrote in the release. “The threat of a neofascist GOP has become all too obvious. Bold and inspiring leadership from the Oval Office will be essential.

“With so much at stake, making [Biden] the Democratic Party’s standard-bearer in 2024 would be a tragic mistake,” the progressive group added.

Since taking office last year, Biden has struggled with a cascading series of crises, from supply chain disruptions and high inflation to a chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Supreme Court overturning the nearly 50-years-old constitutional right to abortion.

The Biden administration has been criticized, especially by the more progressive wing of the Democratic Party, for failing to address the crises with strong action.

The president has also not heeded progressive calls on student loan debt and failed to pass a comprehensive federal voting rights bill into law, while his social spending and climate change package has stalled in Congress.

RootsAction was founded in 2011 to galvanize voters against what they call a rising extremist Republican Party. Members also want to dramatically address social, economic and environmental issues. The liberal group supported Biden as the nominee in 2020 but has since taken issue with the president’s more moderate agenda.

On Monday, the organization said moderate policies “have failed to truly address such pressing concerns as the climate emergency, voting rights, student debt, health care, corporate price-gouging, and bloated military spending in tandem with anemic diplomacy.”

Poll after poll has shown Biden’s job approval ratings remain at abysmally low levels ahead of the midterms. Around 71 percent of Americans do not want Biden to run for reelection, according to a Harvard CAPS-Harris poll.

On Monday, a New York Times-Siena College poll showed 64 percent of Democrats would prefer a Democratic candidate other than Biden in the 2024 race. More than two-thirds of respondents in the poll cited age — Biden is 79 — and job performance, while about 10 percent said he was not progressive enough.

Biden won in 2020 with a historic amount of votes, with more than 81 million Americans supporting him in the election. He has said he will run again in 2024 if his health allows, and Vice President Kamala Harris has affirmed the same.

Popular liberals who have sought the White House, such as Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), have said they will not run against Biden if he chooses to seek reelection.

“Biden triumphed over Donald Trump in 2020 with vital help from extraordinary grassroots efforts in swing states by progressive organizations,” RootsAction wrote on Monday. “A president is not his party’s king, and he has no automatic right to renomination. Joe Biden should not seek it. If he does, he will have a fight on his hands.”

Source: TEST FEED1

US stumbles in monkeypox response

The U.S. has had a faltering response to the monkeypox outbreak, with confirmed cases jumping to 700 in the two months since outbreaks were first detected and clinics across the country struggling to meet the demand for effective vaccines.

Some public health experts and patients say more needs to be done and warn that mistakes made during the COVID-19 pandemic are being repeated. 

The monkeypox virus is less infectious than COVID-19 and is so far mostly affecting one community: men who have sex with men. But the U.S. has learned lessons from the coronavirus pandemic that should still help the nation control monkeypox, experts say. 

Leana Wen, a research professor of health policy and management at George Washington University as well as Baltimore’s former health commissioner, told The Hill that she has felt a sense of déjà vu.

“Probably the most significant one to me is the lack of testing. We saw during COVID that every case that was found was like the canary in the coal mine, that they really were just the tip of the iceberg,” Wen said. “And that was because there was such little testing available. Why haven’t we learned our lesson?”

Last week, one of the largest laboratory testing networks in the U.S., Labcorp, announced it would begin testing for monkeypox using tests from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The company will be able to conduct about 10,000 tests daily.

In its announcement, Labcorp recommended that people contact their health care providers to initiate monkeypox testing and sample collecting, a more cumbersome process compared to COVID-19 tests, especially for people who don’t have a regular health care provider.

Wen said monkeypox testing should not be made into a complex process, noting that performing the test itself is fairly simple: Monkeypox tests involve swabbing the base of the characteristic lesions that form after infection.

More than 760 monkeypox cases have been confirmed in the U.S. as of Monday across almost 40 states, which is almost certainly an undercount as many may be unaware that they are infected or have not yet been tested.

Unlike COVID-19, monkeypox is not a novel virus, it does not spread as easily and is largely transmitted through close, skin-to-skin contact. And although it is currently affecting relatively few people in the U.S., advocates and scientists worry this outbreak may spread out of control.

Jay Varma, an epidemiologist who served as senior health adviser to former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D), said in a recent interview that he feared monkeypox could become entrenched in the U.S.

“If we don’t really get ahead of this, then we are going to fall further behind and it will become a permanent part of our disease landscape,” Varma said.

De Blasio himself urged the federal government to ramp up access to monkeypox vaccines on Twitter Monday. 

New York’s gay community has been particularly hard hit by the outbreak. The state Department of Health said in a tweet on Tuesday that 111 people had tested positive in New York City as of last week, up from 55 a week prior.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) made note of the unmet demand for monkeypox vaccines in a letter he sent to President Biden on Monday. Adams asked that the White House consider a different vaccination schedule that allowed for a longer interval period between the two doses of the preferred smallpox vaccine Jynneos so that more people could be immediately immunized.

In an NBC News report published last week, several gay men who tested positive for monkeypox detailed exasperating experiences in communicating with public health officials when attempting to get tested and share their possible close contacts. One man in New York said it took nearly a week before he was able to get tested and possible contacts’ names.

Clinics in major cities like New York and Washington, D.C., have quickly run out of available vaccine doses. 

New York gave no warning before announcing its own vaccine push late last month, running out of doses within hours with no word on when more shots would be available. On Monday, the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene announced that an additional 1,250 doses would be made available.

Health authorities maintain that monkeypox does not pose a threat to the general public, and the mortality rate for the virus is low.

Eric Toner, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security at the Bloomberg School of Public Health, said that this recent monkeypox outbreak could very well be a sign of an “age of epidemics” that the world is entering.

“As people interact more and more with wild animals — whether it’s in wet markets as food or moving into their habitats because of population growth — we are going to see people get exposed more and more to exotic pathogens,” Toner said.

Overall, Toner said he felt that the response has been adequate considering the limitations, noting the inherent difficulties in measures like contact tracing as well as the swift manner in which the federal government deployed vaccines and placed orders for more.

“I don’t think that they have been slow. I don’t think it’s the case that they haven’t learned lessons from COVID-19,” he said.

Still others say that the response has not been as streamlined as it could be. One senior Biden administration official, speaking anonymously, acknowledged to The New York Times last week that monkeypox testing has not been as fast or convenient as it needs to be. Contributing factors included negotiations with labs, ramping up testing supplies and training personnel, according to the official.

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Energy & Environment — Are the feds closing the door on climate action?

The federal government may be running out of time for meaningful action on climate change, green groups want action on a key EPA enforcement official and Texas’ grid operator advises energy conservation. 

This is Overnight Energy & Environment, your source for the latest news focused on energy, the environment and beyond. For The Hill, we’re Rachel Frazin and Zack Budryk. Subscribe here.

US climate efforts face major hurdles

A 6-3 ruling by the Supreme Court restricting the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) authority to limit power plant emissions is the latest blow to U.S. efforts to fight climate change, contributing to a renewed sense of pessimism that the U.S. political system will address the issue at the federal level.

• While the decision backed by the conservative majority on the court does not negate efforts by state governments to take action for the planet, it puts a new limitation on the EPA.
• It also signals the Supreme Court’s openness to limiting the administration’s authority at the EPA and beyond going forward. The three conservative justices nominated by former President Trump have shifted the court sharply to the right — a change that could shadow the court for decades.   

Republican officeholders also remain resistant to taking action to address climate change and appear poised to win back the House majority this fall and possibly the Senate as well.

And even if Democrats retain the Senate, they have been unable thus far to push through major legislation to address climate change because of opposition from one of their own — Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.).   

What options does the government have? The Biden administration has set a number of ambitious targets related to climate change, including halving the country’s emissions by 2030. President Biden also signed an executive order that would make the federal government carbon neutral by 2050.

But decisions such as the one handed down by the Supreme Court recently as well as gridlock in Congress threaten those targets, as does the prospect of a presidential bid by Trump, who withdrew the U.S. from the Paris climate accord and expressed doubt about science on climate change.

Barry Rabe, a professor of environmental policy in the University of Michigan’s School of Natural Resources and Environment, called the conservative Supreme Court and sharply divided Congress a “serious set of constraints on the executive branch.”

What about states? Democratic-run states can pick up some of the slack on environmental policy. California has enacted the strictest vehicle emissions standards in the nation, and a dozen others have since adopted them, resulting in a patchwork approach across the U.S.  

“Given gridlock in Congress, action at the state level is essential,” said Jason Smerdon, a professor at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.   

Still, experts say that action at the state level cannot supplant that at the federal level.  

“Climate policy is environmental policy, and it’s economic policy, and it’s going to require, most likely, the development of many different policy levers and actions over time to meaningfully address the issue,” said Sasha Mackler, executive director of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s energy program.

Read more about the quandary here.

⛽️ Gas price drop

Gas prices across the country have fallen over the past several weeks, with the national average dropping about 34 cents from nearly $5.02 last month, according to an analysis from The Hill of data from the American Automobile Association.

• Prices in Indiana and Florida have dropped 48 cents per gallon since the middle of last month, followed by 47 cent drops in Ohio and Wisconsin and a 46 cent drop in Texas.
• South Carolina experienced a 43 cent drop, while Michigan and Kentucky saw prices drop by 42 cents, and Delaware, Illinois and Virginia saw prices drop by 41 cents on average. 

The drops in prices at the pump, which experts have linked to factors such as lower oil prices that come with recession fears and reduced demand, haven’t spread uniformly across the country.

Read more here.

Biden weighs options for massive drilling project

The Biden administration is weighing several options for the future of a major proposed drilling project in Alaska that could produce massive quantities of oil and significantly contribute to climate change.

• The administration released an environmental review that said that at its peak, the project could produce more than 180,000 barrels of oil per day and produce a total of 629 million barrels overall over the course of a 30-year duration.
• It found that the project could contribute between 278 million and nearly 287 million metric tons of carbon dioxide to climate change over the same time period. That’s the equivalent of the carbon dioxide contribution of between about 59.9 million and 61.8 million cars that are driven for a year. 

The options: The review contains several “alternatives” for the ultimate decision that the administration may make on the project including blocking it, allowing it to proceed as sponsor ConocoPhillips proposed and shrinking the project.

The document doesn’t list a “preferred” option, and a spokesperson for the department confirmed that all of them would be given equal consideration.

The backstory: The document’s release comes after a court tossed the Trump-era approval of the project, known as the Willow Project, last year. 

A judge argued that the analysis behind that approval was flawed for environmental reasons, including a lack of consideration of climate impacts. The judge ordered the Biden administration, which initially backed the Trump-era decision, to redo it.

Read more about the environmental review here.

Green groups push Senate to confirm EPA official

Environmental groups are pushing for the confirmation of a leader for the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) enforcement team, arguing that filling the vacancy will help mitigate climate change. 

• In a statement issued on Monday, leaders from the Environmental Defense Fund, Earthjustice, the League of Conservation Voters, the National Wildlife Federation and the Natural Resources Defense Council called on the Senate to prioritize the confirmation of David Uhlmann to be the EPA’s enforcement chief. 
• What they’re saying: “As leaders of the largest environmental groups in the United States, we join together to urge the United States Senate to prioritize floor time to confirm David M. Uhlmann to serve as the Assistant Administrator for Enforcement and Compliance Assurance at EPA,” they said. 

The leaders of the groups also invoked climate change, saying that confirming Uhlmann will enable the agency to better enforce existing climate rules after the Supreme Court recently took away a major regulatory tool to prevent power plant emissions.

“His confirmation also will allow EPA to increase its efforts to enforce existing climate regulations, an immediate step that the Senate can take in the aftermath of last week’s Supreme Court decision in West Virginia v. EPA curtailing the Agency’s ability to address climate change,” said the statement, which was first reported by The Washington Post.

Read more about the push here.

Texas grid operator calls on users to conserve power

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which operates the Lone Star State’s self-contained power grid, called on residents to voluntarily conserve power amid a heat wave Monday. 

• In an advisory Sunday, ERCOT appealed to residents and businesses to conserve power between 2 and 8 p.m. Monday.
• The operator warned of shortages in reserve power capacity during the same period, but said it did not expect any system-wide outages.   

ERCOT projected a total of more than 79 gigawatts’ worth of demand over the course of the day, a new record.

Compounding the demand, low winds are likely to place further strain on the grid, with wind power generation at less than 10 percent of capacity. Solar power, meanwhile, is far closer to full capacity, at 81 percent, according to ERCOT.

Meanwhile, parts of the state saw average temperatures of 110 to 114 degrees as much of the southern U.S. has seen the impact of a “heat dome” in recent days.

This has been acutely felt in South Central Texas. The National Weather Service projected “dangerous heat” in the Austin-San Antonio region over the course of the day, appealing to locals to regularly check in on elderly family members and neighbors.

The advisory from ERCOT comes two months after the grid operator called on customers to conserve power over the weekend of May 13-15. Six power plants unexpectedly went down that Friday in the state, causing the loss of some 2.9 megawatts of power.

Read more about the advisory here. 

WHAT WE’RE READING

• Pennsylvania judge blocks governor’s signature play to continue the fight against climate change (PennLive)
• Biggest CCS failure clouds Supreme Court ruling (E&E News) 
• Forever chemicals found in drinking water throughout Illinois (The Chicago Tribune) 
• California cities ban new gas stations in battle to combat climate change (The Los Angeles Times) 

🗳 Lighter click: More civic engagement is always a good thing

That’s it for today, thanks for reading. Check out The Hill’s Energy & Environment page for the latest news and coverage. We’ll see you tomorrow.  

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