Tag Archives : Build House

Energy & Environment — Colorado River talks stalled out ahead of deadline

The federal government seems poised to step in on Colorado River water cuts, President Biden will sign major climate legislation Tuesday and climate change is upping the odds of a “megaflood” on the West Coast. 

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.

Official: ‘Nothing’ accomplished in water-sharing talks

Water-sharing negotiations among the seven states in the Colorado River basin have failed to produce results, a Nevada water official said in a letter obtained by The Hill, on the eve of a Tuesday deadline when the federal government will step in. 

How we got here: The division of water from the river is divided among Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming under a century-old compact based on water levels that no longer exist. As a result, more water is allocated than actually flows through the river. 

Earlier this year, the federal government gave the states an Aug. 15 deadline to reach a deal for 15 percent cuts to water usage or the federal government would impose the cuts unilaterally.  

But now: In a letter to Interior Department and Bureau of Reclamation officials, John Entsminger, the general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, wrote that the last three months of talks have “produced exactly nothing in terms of meaningful collective action to help forestall the looming crisis.”  

Entsminger’s letter excoriated what he called “the drought profiteering” of agricultural districts in their demands, as well as generally “unreasonable expectations” by shareholders in the talks.  

“Through our collective inaction, the federal government, the basin states and every water user on the Colorado River is complicit in allowing the situation to reach this point,” he wrote. 

Entsminger made a number of policy recommendations to federal officials if and when they step in, including investments in water reuse, recycling and desalination programs, new managing criteria for facilities and reservoirs and the elimination of watering for nonfunctional turf by city governments.

He also recommended that federal drought mitigation funding be prioritized for “those projects that provide meaningful long-term and permanent reductions in use.”  

The pending cuts come as the Western U.S. faces its worst drought since the year 800 A.D., plunging Lake Mead and Lake Powell to historic lows. 

Read more about the situation here. 

Biden to sign health and climate bill on Tuesday 

President Biden will sign into law the sweeping climate, health care and tax legislation that has been Democrats’ priority for more than a year during a ceremony at the White House on Tuesday.   

• The signing will represent a major milestone for Biden and his domestic economic agenda. The prospects of his climate proposal appeared hopeless a month ago but were dramatically revived in an agreement between Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) at the end of July.   
• Biden, fresh off a family vacation in South Carolina, will sign the legislation and deliver a speech in the State Dining Room on Tuesday, according to a White House advisory. With Congress currently on recess, Biden is expected to host a larger celebratory event in September.   

“This historic bill will lower the cost of energy, prescription drugs, and other health care for American families, combat the climate crisis, reduce the deficit, and make the largest corporations pay their fair share of taxes,” the White House advisory said. 

A reminder of what’s in it: The legislation contains provisions to lower prescription drug costs, offer clean energy tax credits to Americans and companies, and establish a 15 percent corporate minimum tax and a 1 percent excise tax on stock buybacks.   

Biden administration officials are preparing to traverse the country to promote the bill in the coming weeks, making the case to voters that Democrats can deliver on their promises in the critical three months before the November midterm elections. 

Read more from The Hill’s Morgan Chalfant.

CLIMATE CHANGE DOUBLES LIKELIHOOD OF CALIF. ‘MEGAFLOOD’: STUDY

The likelihood of a “megaflood” occurring in California has doubled due to climate change, according to a new study published on Friday.

• The study, published in the Science Advances journal, found an increased likelihood of runoff water occurring from harsher storms, creating the threat of debris flows and landslides later, according to a press release from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). 
• With every degree the Earth gets warmer, the risk for a “megaflood” increases, the study found. 

Researchers looked at two different scenarios using present climate models and high-resolution weather modeling:

• One scenario involved a long series of storms taking place during what scientists predicted climate conditions would be like between 2081 and 2100.
• The other scenario predicted what it would be like if those storms took place in the current climate, according to the release.  

In the Sierra Nevada, storms that took place toward the end of the century would see between 200 percent and 400 percent more runoff because of higher precipitation. 

“There are localized spots that get over 100 liquid-equivalent inches of water in the month,” UCLA climate scientist and co-author of the research Daniel Swain said in a statement regarding the end-of-the-century scenario. 

Read more from The Hill’s Caroline Vakil. 

WHAT WE’RE READING

• Florida official attacks journalists over Big Sugar story, claims they were paid by Sierra Club (The Orlando Sentinel) 
• Infrared Video Shows Widespread Oil and Gas Leaks in Los Angeles (Capital and Main) 
• Why scientists have pumped a potent greenhouse gas into streams on public lands (NPR) 
• Workers report feeling unsafe at Nevada’s largest gold-mining corporation (The Nevada Independent and High Country News) 
• Calif. governor gives lifeline to state’s last nuclear plant (E&E News) 

🦛  Lighter click: Meet Fritz!

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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2 ex-cops charged in George Floyd killing reject plea deals

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Two former Minneapolis police officers charged in George Floyd’s killing told a judge Monday that they have rejected plea deals that would have resulted in three-year sentences, setting the stage for trial in October.

Tou Thao and J. Alexander Kueng are charged with aiding and abetting both second-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter in Floyd’s death. They and Thomas Lane were working with Derek Chauvin when he pinned Floyd’s neck with his knee for more than nine minutes as the 46-year-old Black man said he couldn’t breathe and eventually grew still.

The killing, captured on bystander video, sparked protests worldwide and a reckoning on racial injustice. Chauvin, who is white, was convicted of second-degree murder last year and sentenced to 22 1/2 years on the state charge.

Hennepin County Judge Peter Cahill had set a limited window for accepting a plea deal ahead of trial, and Monday’s brief hearing served to formalize the two ex-officers’ rejections of the state’s offers.

“It would be lying for me to accept any plea offer,” said Thou, who held back concerned bystanders as Chauvin pinned Floyd. Kueng did not give his reasons for rejecting the state’s offer.

Thao, Kueng and Lane were convicted in federal court in February of violating Floyd’s civil rights. Lane, who is white, held Floyd’s legs and twice asked if he should be turned on his side, and was sentenced to 2 1/2 years. Thao, who is Hmong American, was sentenced to 3 1/2 years. Kueng, who is Black, pinned Floyd’s back, and was sentenced to 3 years. Thao and Kueng are appealing their federal convictions.

In rejecting the plea agreements, Thao and Keung are risking state sentences that could be significantly longer than their federal sentences if they’re convicted on both counts. Assistant Attorney General Matt Frank pointed out in the hearing that the state’s sentencing guidelines recommend sentences of 12 1/2 years on the murder count and 4 years on the manslaughter count, but that prosecutors have already said they’ll seek longer sentences if they get convictions.

In Minnesota, assuming good behavior, defendants typically serve two-thirds of their sentences in prison and one-third on parole.

Frank said plea negotiations began in earnest in May and continued into June. The offers would have dropped the most serious charge of aiding and abetting murder, and the officers’ state time would have run concurrently with the federal sentences. Both defendants confirmed that they understood that the state has now withdrawn its offers.

“It’s a standard best practice to make a record in court when the State offers a plea agreement, in order to ensure the defendant’s decision is freely and knowingly made,” Attorney General Keith Ellison said in a statement afterward. “The defendants have a right to decline the offer and proceed to trial. The State is ready for trial.”

During the hearing, Kueng’s attorney, Thomas Plunkett, said that Ellison at one, unspecified point in the negotiations, offered Kueng a deal that would have resulted in 2 years in prison. Kueng confirmed that Plunkett had told him about the offer, and that they rejected it. Frank did not comment about the purported offer.

Thao’s attorney, Robert Paule, said that they, at an unspecified point, proposed a deal for 2 years, but that the state rejected it. Frank said that wasn’t how he recalled the discussions, and that his recollection was that Thao’s offer had included dropping the charges. Neither side elaborated on the discrepancies.

The trial is scheduled to begin Oct. 24, with opening statements Nov. 7.

Lane avoided a state trial by pleading guilty in May to aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter in a deal that calls for a three-year sentence. His sentencing is Sept. 21.

Chauvin was sentenced to 21 years on the federal civil rights charge. He remains in the state’s maximum security prison at Oak Park Heights pending his transfer to federal prison. The other three remain free on bail.

Associated Press writer Amy Forliti contributed to this story.

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On The Money — Housing market shows signs of weakness

Homebuilder sentiment continues to decline as demand for houses is hurt by high prices and interest rates. We’ll also look at Biden’s upcoming signing of the Inflation Reduction Act, more gas price predictions and the partisan battle over additional IRS funding.

But first, learn more about the spike in FBI threats following the Trump raid.

Welcome to On The Money, your nightly guide to everything affecting your bills, bank account and bottom line. For The Hill, we’re Aris Folley and Karl Evers-Hillstrom. Subscribe here.

Homebuilder confidence dips for 8th straight month

Record home prices and elevated interest rates caused homebuilder confidence to fall for the eighth straight month in August, according to a new survey. 

The housing market index calculated by the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) and Wells Fargo dipped six points this month and turned negative for the first time since May 2020. The eight-month streak of declines marks the worst stretch since the 2007 housing market crash.  

• Nearly 7 in 10 home builders surveyed said that higher interest rates are the driving force behind weaker demand for houses.
• One in five said they had to reduce prices over the past month to boost sales or prevent cancellations.  

“Tighter monetary policy from the Federal Reserve and persistently elevated construction costs have brought on a housing recession,” NAHB chief economist Robert Dietz said in a statement.  

Karl has more here. 

SIGNING SOON 

Biden to sign Democrats’ signature economic bill into law this week 

President Biden will sign into law the sweeping climate, health care and tax legislation that has been Democrats’ priority for more than a year during a ceremony at the White House on Tuesday.

The signing will represent a major milestone for Biden and his domestic economic agenda. The prospects of his climate proposal appeared hopeless a month ago but were dramatically revived in an agreement between Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) at the end of July.   

• The legislation, called the Inflation Reduction Act, passed the House in a party-line vote Friday, about a week after passing the Senate with only Democratic votes through a process known as budget reconciliation. Vice President Harris cast the tie-breaking vote.
• The legislation contains provisions to lower prescription drug costs, offer clean energy tax credits to Americans and companies, and establish a 15 percent corporate minimum tax and a 1 percent excise tax on stock buybacks.
• Biden administration officials are preparing to traverse the country to promote the bill in the coming weeks, making the case to voters that Democrats can deliver on their promises in the critical three months before the November midterm elections. 

The Hill’s Morgan Chalfant has the details here. 

Energy secretary expects gas prices to fall further 

Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm on Sunday projected an ongoing decline in gas prices to continue but expressed uncertainty given potential changes in global events that would impact supply levels.

In an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Granholm cited a recent short-term outlook from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) predicting the average price for a gallon of gasoline to dip to $3.78 in the fourth quarter.  

“We hope that that’s true,” she said. “But, again, it can be impacted by what’s happening globally. The president has done more than any president in history to make sure that the price, insofar as he’s got control, continues to decline, and has included asking for increased production both domestically and overseas.”

TAX TUSSLE

GOP under fire for rhetoric over IRS 

Republicans are coming under fire for their rhetoric over $80 billion in funding for the IRS included in a massive climate, tax and health care bill that Democrats in Congress are sending to the White House.    

The funding, over 10 years, is intended to help the IRS enforce various provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act. Of the $80 billion, more than half would go to increased enforcement, like audits.    

• Republicans have been arguing it amounts to creating a new army of IRS agents to go after taxpayers.
• But the IRS, Democrats and outside experts all say the new enforcement money will mostly allow the IRS to focus on audits of the wealthy. 

Tobias Burns explains here. 

Good to Know

Coal country is still reeling from Sen. Joe Manchin’s (D-W.Va.) decision to back a sweeping climate and energy package that will accelerate the nation’s transition away from coal.

In the Mountain State, the once-burgeoning coal industry says it feels betrayed, displaced coal workers are celebrating the bill’s black lung benefits and Republicans seeking Manchin’s seat in 2024 are licking their chops.

Here’s what else we have our eye on: 

• China announced on Monday it was once again organizing military drills in the waters and airspace around Taiwan after a five-member U.S. delegation landed on the island.
• Recent U.S. sanctions against cryptocurrency mixer Tornado Cash have sparked a debate within the crypto community on whether the ban compromises users’ ability to operate anonymously.
• North Dakota voters will decide this fall whether to legalize recreational marijuana, following the official certification of a ballot measure. 

That’s it for today. Thanks for reading and check out The Hill’s Finance page for the latest news and coverage. We’ll see you tomorrow. 

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Setting the record straight on the Inflation Reduction Act

This past week, when I left California to go to Washington and vote for the Inflation Reduction Act, I gave both of my young kids a big hug, filled with more hope than ever in my adult lifetime about the future of our country and the planet we are going to leave behind for future generations.

I’m hopeful because the Inflation Reduction Act is going to improve the lives of countless families in the communities I represent and tackle some of the biggest challenges facing our country.

This landmark legislation is going to lower the costs of prescription drugs and health care, fight climate change, lower energy costs, and reduce the deficit without raising taxes on families making less than $400,000. The bill does that by ensuring massive corporations pay their fair share by implementing a 15 percent minimum tax on the largest 150 companies that make more than $1 billion in profits.

Unfortunately, many Republicans are spreading misinformation about this bill out of political expediency, and I believe it’s essential to set the record straight. It’s especially important because the vast majority of the American people support the policies in this bill.

Much of the misinformation has been disproven by independent, nonpartisan fact checkers, but let’s go through it.

First and foremost, this bill does not raise taxes on any families making less than $400,000. As the Associated Press confirmed in a fact check, “nothing in the bill raises taxes on people earning less than $400,000.”

What Republicans are really talking about is the 15 percent minimum tax on the largest corporations. These companies bring in billions of dollars every year and then exploit tax loopholes to avoid paying their fair share. Many line the pockets of my colleagues with huge political contributions. (As an aside, I’m proud to be among the 50 or so members of Congress who don’t take corporate PAC money.)

The source for much of the GOP misinformation comes from a report commissioned by Senate Republicans that only looked at the indirect effects of corporate taxes on shareholders. However, the Republicans’ analysis conveniently ignored all of the benefits that middle-class families and others will receive from tax credits for everything from health care premiums to clean energy upgrades. When you look at the full picture, middle- and low-income families are going to be far better off thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act, and they certainly aren’t going to see higher rates when they go to do their taxes next April.

Second, we’ve heard outlandish theories that the Internal Revenue Service is going to send tens of thousands of armed agents across the country to target middle-class families and small businesses. That’s patently false. The IRS has lost about 50,000 employees over recent years and suffered budget cuts that have made it easier than ever for the massive corporations and the ultra wealthy to evade paying the taxes they owe.

The funding in this bill is going to replace some of those lost employees, upgrade technology, improve customer service, and ensure the very wealthy are paying their taxes — not to mention that if you’re owed a refund, hopefully you’ll now get it in a more timely manner. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen even directed the IRS commissioner specifically not to increase audits of households making under $400,000 per year. And if that’s not enough, the IRS commissioner — a Republican appointed by former President Trump — said this funding is “absolutely not about increasing audit scrutiny on small businesses or middle-income Americans.”

You pay your taxes. Shouldn’t we do everything possible to ensure billionaires and big corporations pay their taxes as well?

Third, I’ve even heard some refer to the provisions lowering prescription drug costs as “price controls” that will stop the development of new drugs. The reality is that the top pharmaceutical companies spend billions of dollars more on stock buybacks and dividends than they do on research and development. They will still have plenty of money to invest in developing new drugs. It’s long past time to give regular Americans a fair price for the medicines they need.

That’s why the Inflation Reduction Act empowers Medicare to negotiate prices for about 100 of the most expensive drugs, which will save more than $100 billion over 10 years. Nobody I talk to is opposed to cheaper prescriptions.

Finally, some have suggested that the clean energy investments in this bill will help China. Clearly, those making that argument didn’t read the bill or even an objective summary, because it explicitly prevents investments that would support China. For example, to qualify for a clean vehicle tax credit, a car has to be assembled in the United States, and it can’t contain any battery components or critical minerals from adversaries like China and Russia. We specifically wrote the bill to uplift American innovation and manufacturers.

I don’t expect the misinformation around this bill to end any time soon, but it’s important you know the facts. The Inflation Reduction Act is going to lower costs, address the climate crisis, and reduce the deficit without raising taxes on middle-class families, full stop.

Ultimately, you don’t have to take my word for it. Just listen to 126 top economists — including seven Nobel Laureates, two former Treasury secretaries, and two former Fed vice chairs — who said the Inflation Reduction Act “will fight inflation and lower costs for American families while setting the stage for strong, stable, and broadly-shared long-term economic growth.”

That’s the truth about this historic legislation.

Levin represents California’s 49th District, which includes North County San Diego and South Orange County.

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Effort to recall Los Angeles County DA fails to qualify for ballot

An effort to recall Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón was rejected on Monday after organizers failed to submit enough valid petition signatures to get the matter on the ballot. 

The Los Angeles county clerk’s office said that of the nearly 716,000 signatures collected by organizers, just over 520,000 were found to be valid. To qualify the recall for the ballot, organizers needed to submit 566,857 valid signatures, the county clerk’s office said.

Nearly 200,000 signatures were deemed invalid for various reasons. In some cases, the signatures were found to come from people who were not registered to vote or whose signatures didn’t match those on their voter files. Several thousand signatures came from people with addresses outside of L.A. County. 

This is the second failed attempt to recall Gascón, a reform-minded prosecutor who has faced criticism from some residents, law enforcement officials and business leaders amid rising crime in Los Angeles.

An initial recall attempt fizzled out last year, though that effort lacked the funding and organization of the latest attempt. 

The reforms sought by Gascón have included new limits on when juveniles can be tried as adults and a ban on seeking the death penalty. 

The recall’s organizers have sought to portray Gascón as carrying out a “pro-criminal agenda” that has emboldened offenders and caused crime in Los Angeles to surge, even though other cities in California with more traditional top prosecutors have seen similar spikes in crime.

Had the recall petition succeeded, the earliest it could have appeared on the ballot is Nov. 8. 

Gascón isn’t the only California district attorney to face a recall effort. San Francisco residents voted earlier this year to recall Chesa Boudin amid mounting frustrations over crime in the city. 

Boudin, who earned a reputation as one of the most progressive top prosecutors in the country, announced earlier this month that he would not run again for his old job after initially considering another campaign.

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Equilibrium/Sustainability — Going off-grid

South Africa’s wealthy are quietly turning to solar power to avoid blackouts plaguing the coal-dependent country’s ailing grid. 

Private installations of rooftop photovoltaic panels by those with money will bring online as much solar power generation in five months than the government has managed to stand up in a decade, according to Reuters. 

“I cannot be without power. It’s as simple as that. Every minute I’m down costs me money,” financial planner Pierre Moureau told Reuters. 

The situation in South Africa offers a troubling window into the benefits that renewables can offer the wealthy in societies where infrastructure need a substantial investment to keep the lights on for all: secession from the public grid. 

People like Moureau are leaving a system reliant on the nation’s aging fleet of coal plants, run by the state-owned Eskom utility, which is simply no longer able to meet the country’s power demand, as The Associated Press reported in July.

Once they go they are “lost to the energy system forever,” a South African official told Reuters.

The loss of people like Moureau is especially unfortunate because the estimated 2 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity generated this year by private citizens could help meet the country’s chronic 4 to 6 gigawatt power shortage, according Reuters. 

“If you’ve got money, you can do it yourself,” another South African told Reuters. But “the people who are suffering have no money to buy those panels.” 

Welcome to Equilibrium, a newsletter that tracks the growing global battle over the future of sustainability. We’re Saul Elbein and Sharon Udasin. Send us tips and feedback. Subscribe here.

Today we’ll see why the threat of nuclear war goes far beyond explosions and radiation and also look at how U.S.-China tensions could jeopardize global climate action. But first: A new tool to estimate extreme heat risk for homes.

Tool predicts every home’s extreme heat risk in 2053

A new digital tool from the nonprofit First Street Foundation allows anyone to see the risk from extreme heat at any address in the United States by 2053.

• It shows the specific impacts that changing climate and the environment will have on an individual property, The Hill’s Changing America reported.
• It is available as part of Risk Factor, a free tool that also evaluates property-specific flood and wildfire risk by midcentury, as we previously reported.  

The tool allows potential home buyers  — and investors — to foresee what local climatic risks they might encounter by the time they pay off a 30-year mortgage. 

What did they find? Local conditions vary somewhat, but at the national level, the general picture is clear: a country growing hotter for longer each year. 

• The city of Miami, for example, can currently expect an average of seven days above 103 Fahrenheit.
• By 2053 that number will have swelled to 34, according to First Street’s projections. 

Across the country, “your hottest seven days become your hottest month, essentially over the next 30 years,” First Street president Matthew Eby told Equilibrium.  

That means greater strain on infrastructure, power grids and air conditioning — as well as much greater risk to people. 

Heat valley: The model also shows a blood-red band spreading outward from the Mississippi River from Louisiana to Wisconsin by midcentury — what First Street Foundation calls an emerging “Extreme Heat Belt.”  

• Within that zone are more than a 1,000 counties — today home to more than a 100 million people — that by 2053 can expect to see at least occasional days each year with a heat index above 125 Fahrenheit. 
• Today, only 8 million people live under such conditions.  

Predicting an exodus: First Street is trying to build a model that lets their researchers combine risk projections with the impacts of present-day disasters to map the geography of America’s climate change future.  

“So our first phase is to create the model which is what we have done today — to tell you what will happen,” Eby said. 

The second phase focuses on climate migration, according to Eby.  

“After a major heat event or sustained heat — when do we see people move from an area?” he asked. “Where are people moving from and where are they moving to?”

Nuclear war would force billions to starve: study 

More than 5 billion people would die from starvation in the event of a full-scale nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia, new research has found. 

• That’s the worst-case scenario in a Nature Food study published on Monday, which examined the indirect death toll caused as soot from burning cities and forests entered the atmosphere.
• The Rutgers University team arrived at that death toll by estimating how much global food production would suffer as the drifting clouds blocked out the sunlight that feeds plants.  

“The data tell us one thing: We must prevent a nuclear war from ever happening,” coauthor Alan Robock, a climate scientist at Rutgers, said in a statement.  

Sun interrupted: In the event of a U.S.-Russia nuclear war, collapsing harvests in major breadbaskets would lead to breakdowns in food exports, spreading famine across Africa and the Middle East — areas that depend on imported food for survival.

• Under that scenario, three-quarters of people on Earth would starve within two years after the missiles stopped falling.
• By three or four years after the nuclear exchange, global crop, animal and fishing yields would drop by 90 percent. 

Even ‘limited’ war would devastate: Even in the smallest potential nuclear war the team evaluated — a localized shoot-out between India and Pakistan — global food production would drop by 7 percent.  

That number is bigger than any disturbance to world food supplies since the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization started tracking them.

Clear warning: Nuclear war of any size would “obliterate global food systems,” coauthor Alan Robock said in a statement. 

“If nuclear weapons exist, they can be used, and the world has come close to nuclear war several times,” Robock said. “Banning nuclear weapons is the only long-term solution.” 

Cause for concern: Conflict over nuclear resources is  garnering increasing concern after Russian troops who seized the Zaporizhzhia nuclear reactor — Europe’s largest — said they aim to sever the plant from the Ukrainian grid and steal its power, The Wall Street Journal reported.

• Kyiv has accused Russia of using its occupation of the plant as a means of blackmailing Europe, the Journal reported. 
• “Every Russian soldier who either shoots at the plant, or shoots using the plant as cover, must understand that he becomes a special target for our intelligence agents, for our special services, for our army,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an address on Saturday, according to Reuters. 

To read the full story please click here. 

School traffic safety a concern for parents: poll

As U.S. students get ready to return to school, nearly a third of parents surveyed in a nationwide poll said they are worried about their children’s safety in high-traffic drop-off areas.

Dreading back-to-school: More than a quarter of respondents to the poll, released by the University of Michigan’s C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital on Monday, said they believe their kids could get hurt on their way to school. 

• Parents reported a plethora of issues plaguing their school drop-off system that threaten their children’s safety, including driver distraction and speeding.
• “Many parents dread returning to the daily hassle of getting kids to school and one of the top concerns involves children safely walking through car and bus traffic,” poll co-director Sarah Clark, a research scientist at Michigan Medicine, said in a statement.  

Dangers of drop-off: About 56 percent of parents said that their children travel to school by car, while 35 percent take the bus and 9 percent either walk, ride a bike or scooter or come by public transportation.  

Focusing on elementary, middle school: The authors surveyed a randomly selected group of parents who reflected the demographics of the U.S. population — focusing on 923 families with at least one child aged 6-12.  

• The authors said they chose this subset because getting a ride to school is common among elementary and middle school students.
• Elementary school students are also especially vulnerable to traffic-related injuries because they are less skilled at judging when it is safe to cross the street.  

Fears abound: Nearly a third — 31 percent — of parents responded that they worry about their child’s safety going to and from school, while 28 percent said they think it is likely that a child will get hurt near the car or bus drop-off areas, according to the survey.  

To see the rest of the poll’s results, please click here.

CHINA HITS US OVER CLIMATE

A Chinese official called upon the U.S. to fulfill its climate obligations and “stop making excuses for its own mistakes,” in a statement issued this weekend by China’s Embassy in the U.K. 

The statement, delivered by an embassy spokesperson, rejected claims that China’s decision to suspend bilateral climate talks with the U.S. could punish the entire world.  

• China’s Foreign Affairs Ministry had declared on Aug. 5 that the country would stop cooperating with the U.S. on both climate and military matters in response to Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) trip to Taiwan.  

What they’re saying: “China will continue to actively participate in international and multilateral cooperation on climate change,” the embassy spokesperson said.

• The spokesperson referred to his country’s “solemn pledge” to reach a carbon emissions peak by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060.
• He also said that China will participate in global climate negotiations and provide other developing countries with relevant support.  

Turning elsewhere: Zheng Zeguang, China’s ambassador to the U.K., told a Friday industry roundtable that “the suspension of China-US cooperation in certain areas will not affect China’s commitments to the international community on issues such as climate change.” Zheng urged London and Beijing to “greatly strengthen rather than weaken cooperation.”  

State of competition: The outlook for global climate action doesn’t “look bright when the world’s top two carbon emitters, the U.S. and China, can’t cooperate,” economic affairs expert Andy Rowley wrote in an op-ed for the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post.  

• While the U.S. “was basking in the triumphal glow” of last week’s Inflation Reduction Act passage, China was “eschewing cooperation with the U.S. on climate issues,” Rowley stated.
• China, he said, is still outspending the U.S. on climate remediation.  

Not the time to divide and conquer: “The prospect of the world’s two largest economies and carbon dioxide emitters, the U.S. and China, carving up the world between them on climate change is absurd,” Rowley added.

Motor Monday

New York’s MTA struggles to recover from pandemic-related losses, Vietnam considers building a national high-speed railways and a hacker gives farmers the ability to repair their own tractors. 

New Yorkers fear service cuts amid billion-dollar MTA budget deficit  

• New York City commuters are concerned about potential service cuts, after the Metropolitan Transportation Authority announced that it will face a $2.5 billion deficit in 2025, according to The New York Times. The shortfall comes a year sooner than anticipated, mainly due to a plunge in ridership during the pandemic, the Times reported. 

Vietnam weighs $58.7B high-speed railway

• Vietnam, which has become a regional manufacturing hub, is considering building a $57.8 billion high-speed railway to support its rapidly growing economy, Reuters reported. The railway would run 960 miles along the country’s length and would open in part by 2032 and in full by 2045-2050, according to Reuters.  

Jailbreaking John Deere tractors for farmer

• An Australian hacker has published techniques to “jailbreak” the digital controls that tractor maker John Deere & Co. installs on its equipment — allowing farmers or local mechanics to repair their own machinery, Wired reported. “We want farmers to be able to repair their stuff for when things go wrong,” hacker Sick Codes told Wired. 

Please visit The Hill’s Sustainability section online for the web version of this newsletter and more stories. We’ll see you tomorrow.

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FBI locates 121 missing kids, child trafficking victims in nationwide operation

The FBI announced on Monday that it has located up to 121 missing children and child trafficking victims in a nationwide sting operation. 

In a news release, the agency said that its “Operation Cross Country” initiative helped locate more than 200 victims of human trafficking and related crimes during the first two weeks of this month. 

Operation Cross Country is a coordinated effort among the FBI and other federal, state and local agencies to help find or assist victims of human trafficking. 

One hundred and forty-one adult victims were also found through the agency’s initiative, bringing the active total of victims located by authorities this year as part of Cross Country to 391. 

The FBI also said that its local stings in and around Chattanooga, Tenn., and Atlanta resulted in the finding of 19 missing children and the arrest of seven traffickers. 

“The initiative really just takes a concentrated period of time where we’re just focused on the problem of child sex trafficking,” FBI section chief Jose Perez, who oversees the agency’s violent crime investigations, said in a statement. “What we do is we sit down with our local partners and our task forces and identify certain areas where we know sex trafficking is prevalent, and we’ll dedicate resources and efforts to identify and remove victims from those areas.”  

Nearly 200 federal, state and local agencies have partnered with the agency on its Operation Cross Country initiative, adding that the goal of the operation is to gather intelligence, build criminal cases against traffickers and offer assistance to victims. 

The initiative also plans to expand to investigate sex offenders who may be eligible for federal charges and others who try to connect with children online to sexually abuse them.

Source: TEST FEED1

Spike in FBI threats unsettles the right

An uptick in threats to the FBI after it executed a search warrant at former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate is unsettling the political right, with some calling on allies of the former president to tone down their rhetoric.

Barriers have been erected outside the perimeter of the FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C., while the FBI and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reportedly issued a joint bulletin Friday warning about spikes in threats that included a bomb threat at FBI headquarters and calls for “civil war” and “armed rebellion.”

Fox News host Steve Doocy on Monday urged the former president and others to “tamp down the rhetoric against the FBI” in light of the threats, while Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), ranking member on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that Trump’s language was “inflammatory.”

“I don’t want to put any law enforcement in the bull’s-eye of a potential threat,” McCaul said.

The bulletin issued by DHS and the FBI cited an incident in which a man armed with an AR-15-style rifle allegedly fired a nail gun into an FBI office in Cincinnati last week, according to NBC News. He was fatally shot by police after a chase and standoff, according to Ohio State Highway Patrol.

Trump on Monday in an interview with Fox News did say the temperature on the issue needed to come down, adding that he’d told aides to reach out to the Department of Justice to help.

But in the same interview, Trump directed his wrath at the Justice Department and suggested that his supporters’ anger was justified. Trump said that Americans are “not going to stand for another scam,” said that the FBI can “break into a president’s house” in a “sneak attack” and suggested that the FBI “could have planted anything they wanted” during the search.

In another post on Truth Social, his social media platform, he claimed that his passports had been taken during the search. Passports were not included on a list of items mentioned as part of a warrant released on Friday, though some of the descriptions of what was seized were broad in nature.

The president’s account on the platform his own business launched is one of his most direct ways to reach supporters online now, since he lost access to his Twitter and Facebook accounts after his posts the day of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol.

Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), a former FBI agent, told Margaret Brennan of “Face the Nation” on Sunday that he was concerned about the safety of FBI agents.

“Violence is never the answer to anything,” Fitzpatrick said. “We live in a democracy that’s 246 years old, Margaret. That’s not long, that’s just a few generations, and yet we’re the world’s only democracy. And the only way that can come unraveled is if we have disrespect for our institutions that lead to Americans turning on Americans and the whole system becomes unraveled. And a lot of that starts with the words we’re using.”

“I’m also urging all my colleagues to understand the weight of your words and support law enforcement no matter what,” he added.

Republicans have sought to differentiate between Biden appointees and rank-and-file FBI agents when raising concerns about potential politicization of the department.

“I won’t smear the FBI, like the career FBI agents,” Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) said Friday. “But the political appointees running this stuff are very worrisome.”

FBI Director Christopher Wray was appointed by Trump in 2017.

Some Republicans have continued to use incendiary rhetoric to speak to their massive online bases. 

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), using her official congressional account since her personal Twitter was suspended in January over COVID-19 misinformation, told her 1 million followers Monday that “Republicans must force” the “political persecution” to stop. Greene filed articles of impeachment against Attorney General Merrick Garland last week.

Katherine Keneally, a senior analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), said she is most concerned about the potential for extremist groups to capitalize on this moment to mobilize for future membership. 

“Specifically, any accelerationist groups that are seeing an uptick in people being upset at the FBI, a government agency, works very well for recruitment for an organization that wants to collapse the US government. So I think that’s where my concern is, that these even more nefarious groups are going to use this as a catalyst moment for recruitment,” she said. 

According to a report compiled by ISD analysts, social media accounts believed to belong to the alleged Cincinnati gunman, Ricky Shiffer, suggest he was “motivated by a combination of conspiratorial beliefs related to former President Trump and the 2020 election (among others), interest in killing federal law enforcement, and the recent search warrant executed at Mar-a-Lago earlier this week.”

ISD researchers found that Shiffer was likely prepping for the attack for at least two days, based on posts from a since-removed Truth Social account believed to belong to him.

The researchers also found posts and photographs placing Shiffer at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, although it is not confirmed if he was present during the insurrection, and posts on the right-wing video site Rumble that show Shiffer encouraging users to “get in touch with the Proud Boys,” a far-right group. 

Keneally said the Ohio incident hasn’t been mentioned widely by other far-right users of online platforms, likely because it wasn’t successful. But researchers are still seeing general calls for violence targeting the FBI. 

Those monitoring the online vitriol, across mainstream platforms and fringe sites that cater to conservative users, warned that the posts from lawmakers and influencers online could incite their followers to take real-world action.

“It certainly plays a role in the radicalization process,” Keneally said.

“While they might not be directly calling for violence, the conspiratorial allegations certainly play a role in how these people are radicalized, and how they go down that path, regardless of whether it’s an official stating, ‘kill the FBI,’ that’s not what needs to be said to help radicalize. You just accused the FBI of ‘overstepping their boundaries,’ or like ‘taking away your constitutional rights,’ and that’s what that’s what people are mobilizing around,” Keneally said. 

Source: TEST FEED1

Facing extreme weather events, most Americans point to climate change

Story at a glance

• A new survey from The Pew Research Center found that most Americans whose communities have suffered an extreme weather event link it to climate change.  

• Out of the survey’s more than 10,200 respondents, 71 percent said their community had experienced one of five extreme weather events in the past year like flooding, severe storms or drought.  

• While there was some overlap, respondents who identified as Democrats were more likely to blame climate change for the extreme weather.  

Most Americans who have been impacted by an extreme weather event in the last year see a link to climate change, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.  

Over 10,000 adults responded to the survey conducted in May.  

A little over 40 percent of respondents said their community had experienced severe weather like floods, intense storms or unusually hot weather over the past year.  

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A smaller percentage, 31 percent to be exact, said their community had suffered droughts or water shortages; 21 percent said they had experienced a wildfire; and 16 percent reported seeing eroded beaches and shorelines due to rising sea levels.  

Overall, 71 percent of respondents said their community had experienced at least one of these five forms of extreme weather this past year. And out of those respondents who had experienced extreme weather, 80 percent said they believed climate change had contributed “at least a little” to the event, according to the survey.  

How much respondents attributed such events to climate change differed along political lines.  

While majorities in both political parties blamed climate change, those who identified as Democrats were more likely to say that rising global temperatures contributed “a lot” to these events, according to the survey.  

Among respondents who said their community had experienced floods or intense storms, 95 percent of those who identified as Democrats or as Democratic-leaning independents said climate change contributed to the events at least “a little” while only 65 percent of respondents who identified as Republican or GOP leaning independents said the same. 

Meanwhile, 64 percent of Democratic respondents said climate change contributed to their community’s floods or storms “a lot” while just 24 percent of Republican respondents said the same.  

The survey’s findings align with previous reports from the Pew Research Center on political leanings and attitudes toward climate change.  

In a survey conducted last year, researchers found that 49 percent of Americans identifying as Democrats or Democrat-leaning listed addressing climate change as a top personal concern compared to only 10 percent of Republicans.  

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Source: TEST FEED1

North Dakotans to vote on marijuana legalization in November

North Dakota voters will decide this fall whether to legalize recreational marijuana, following the official certification of a ballot measure.

Secretary of State Al Jager said his office determined that 23,368 signatures out of the submitted 25,000 were valid, clearing the ballot qualification threshold of 15,582 required signatures. 

If enacted, the measure will permit adults 21 and older to possess up to one ounce of cannabis and small quantities of cannabis products, such as concentrates and infused products. 

It will also establish a regulatory system for registered cannabis businesses, run by the Department of Health and Human Services or another agency designated by the Legislature.

Regulators would have until October 1, 2023 to develop rules related to security, advertising, labeling, packaging and testing standards.

The ballot measure would prohibit public consumption of marijuana, and allow only 18 state-approved dispensaries and seven manufacturing facilities. In an effort to prevent monopolization of the industry, the measure requires that no individual or entity be permitted to own more than one cultivation facility or four retail locations.

North Dakota voters approved the legalization of medical marijuana in 2016 but rejected a recreational legalization measure.

According to the petition’s sponsors, the language is largely based on legislation that passed the state House, but failed in the Senate.

“There is no public safety benefit from arresting adults for small amounts of marijuana,” Mark Friese, an attorney and former police officer who serves as the campaign’s treasurer, said in a statement. 

“It is a waste of taxpayer resources and a distraction from serious public safety concerns. Cannabis causes far less harm than alcohol. Many people find therapeutic benefits from it. The government shouldn’t be in the business of punishing adults who use cannabis responsibly.”

Source: TEST FEED1