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White House looks to salvage Biden's domestic agenda

The White House is hoping to salvage what it can of President Biden’s agenda after Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) all but struck a fatal blow to talks on climate and tax provisions.

Rather than publicly sparring with Manchin or going back to the drawing board for a reworked deal, the White House is hoping to take any wins it can get in the short time between summer and the midterms, when Republicans appear to have a good chance at retaking both chambers of Congress.

White House officials and their allies believe passing a slimmed down reconciliation bill that addresses prescription drug pricing and health care subsidies — when combined with the bipartisan infrastructure law, the American Rescue Plan and the recently passed bipartisan gun safety bill — would still make for a strong record given the narrow majorities Democrats have in each chamber of Congress.

“Don’t sleep on the health care pieces that will get done. If they get over the finish line, they will be significant wins,” said Eric Schultz, a former spokesperson in the Obama White House. “If you add that to the rest of the victories from the past two years, we’ll have an impressive story to tell.”

Biden, in a statement last Friday, urged Congress to pass a bill before the August recess that would “give Medicare the power to negotiate lower drug prices and to prevent an increase in health insurance premiums for millions of families.”

Jared Bernstein, a member of the Council of Economic Advisers, told reporters Monday that a bill addressing prescription drug pricing and health care premiums “would be an absolutely huge win for reconciliation.”

“Whatever paths are open to us, we will take,” Bernstein said. “When those paths are closed, we’re going to find other paths. That’s how important this agenda is.”

Biden came into office with ambitious plans for an expansive spending package that would invest in housing, clean energy, health care, child care and other areas while paying for the package largely by reforming the tax code and increasing taxes on the wealthiest corporations and individuals.

A framework proposed in October by the White House included $500 billion in climate provisions, with $320 billion for clean energy tax credits to apply to transmission, storage, manufacturing, residential homes, passenger vehicles and commercial vehicles.

The framework also called for a 15 percent minimum tax for corporations, a 1 percent surcharge on stock buybacks and international tax changes that are in line with an agreement reached by more than 100 countries earlier this month. It would also include a surtax on the incomes of multimillionaires and billionaires and investment in IRS enforcement.

But the cost of gas, food, shelter and various goods has been on the rise since Biden released that framework nine months ago. Then there’s Manchin, who can single-handedly upend Democratic plans to pass legislation in a 50-50 Senate, repeatedly citing inflation concerns as a reason not to pass additional spending.

Manchin again dealt a blow to the Biden agenda last week when he said the latest inflation data meant it was “not prudent” to make the investments in climate change or raise taxes on the wealthy at this time.

While Manchin’s comments sparked fury among some Democrats and activists, the White House has publicly maintained an even-keeled position, instead focusing on what Manchin has said he would accept.

“What we’re on the cusp of doing with the reconciliation bill is going to impact tens of millions of Americans’ lives. And that matters as we’re looking at health care,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters.

Biden is expected to take executive action to address some climate change provisions left on the cutting room floor, though the extent and effectiveness is unlikely to be as impactful as congressional action.

House Democratic leaders, asked Tuesday about some of the failures surrounding Biden’s agenda, acknowledged their frustration that more hasn’t been done, particularly since they’ve been successful in passing much of the president’s ambitious agenda through the lower chamber while it languishes in the Senate.

“We should be frustrated at times if what we want to enact is more than what gets enacted,” said Rep. Pete Aguilar (Calif.), vice chair of the House Democratic Caucus. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”

But party leaders were also quick to note that, in a divided country with a closely split Senate, it was unrealistic to think Democrats were ever going to get everything they wanted. Instead, they say they’re simply fighting for as much of the agenda as they can, with designs to return later to any unfinished business.

“We’re trying to do the most good for the most amount of people possible. But if that isn’t ultimately what becomes law, but it passes the ‘meaningfulness standard’ — it helps us save lives, help our communities, drive down prescription drug costs, drive down the cost of the Affordable Care Act — those are things that all of us are going to hold hands and support,” Aguilar said.

Mike Lillis contributed.

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White House says it won’t declare climate emergency this week

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Tuesday that President Biden won’t declare a climate emergency this week, but that doesn’t mean he won’t do it eventually. 

“He’s going to take, as I said, additional climate actions in that vein tomorrow and he’s going to continue, he’s not going to just stop with the actions of tomorrow, but I would not plan [an] announcement this week on [a] national climate emergency,” Jean-Pierre told reporters during a press briefing.

“Everything’s on the table, it’s just not going to be this week on that decision,” she added. 

Jean-Pierre added that if the administration does declare the emergency, it would unlock a certain “pot of funding,” but didn’t give many specifics. 

“Declaring a public health emergency is very different from declaring a climate emergency. Each unlocks a different set of priorities and a different pot of funding,” she said, contrasting the potential for an abortion emergency. 

Discussions of declaring a climate emergency have ramped up since Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) walked away from congressional climate talks last week. 

Meanwhile, there has also been chatter about the potential for a public health emergency on abortion access after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

Sources had previously told The Hill that the Biden administration was weighing the climate emergency. 

President Biden is expected to discuss climate change during a Wednesday trip to Massachusetts, where he may unveil some of the “additional actions” that Jean-Pierre referenced.

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Improving maternal health care in America

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that Black women experience maternal mortality two to three times higher than that of white women. The estimated national maternal mortality rate in the United States is about 17 per 100,000 live births –– but it is about 43 per 100,000 live births for Black women.   

We both are advocates and supporters of proposals that address public health disparities in America, particularly with respect to inequities concerning the maternal mortality rates of Black women. As we bring awareness this week to Black Maternal Mental Health Week, we shine a light on an issue that should transcend partisan divisions and the racial divide that unfortunately persists across the nation.  

As a Republican and as a Democrat we have made a conscious decision to work closely together on this issue in our respective home states of Louisiana and North Carolina. Yet, we also know that disparities in maternal health and mortality are national problems that warrant effective and timely congressional, statewide, and local responses and remedies. 

The two of us have been actively involved in addressing various social inequities for decades from the formidable days of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s to today, in our communities and in our nation’s capital. In addition, our two families have had a positive history in the medical, health care, and environmental fields.  

But what really served as a catalyst that enabled us to initiate a public bipartisan unity and resolve to work together going forward to address the issues of maternal mortality and other matters that impact the quality of life of all Americans was simply our mutual impatience with the current widening, unproductive partisan divide in Washington, D.C., and throughout nearly all the state legislatures. 

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr once prophetically affirmed, “We must be impatient with injustice.”  We are impatient with the injustice of nonproductive political polarization in America. We also believe that beyond the labels and aisles of our different political parties, there is both an opportunity and a responsibility to work together to address the systemic injustices and disparities of our nation. 

Fortunately, there are some recent successful bipartisan actions by the U.S. Congress that each of us have personally supported and endorsed.  The John Lewis National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD) Research Endowment Revitalization Act is now law. This new law provides funds to Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) to conduct research into and to address minority health disparities. 

Also, the Maternal Health Quality Improvement (MHQI) Act enacted by the U.S. Congress is now law. The MHQI Act looks specifically at reducing maternal mortality among Black women and other minority women and creates racial and ethnic bias training programs for health care providers while studying best practices to reduce and prevent discrimination in the American health care system. 

But there is much more that needs to be done to ensure equality and equity in how our nation provides the highest quality health care to all. Today the U.S. Congress should also pass the Connected Maternal Online Monitoring Services (MOM) Act that will allow Medicaid to cover remotely monitoring pregnant women from their homes who are at a higher risk of complications. Imagine a woman in her third trimester of a high-risk pregnancy having to take public transportation to the doctor’s every two weeks for a check-up. Instead, with the passage of the MOM Act, the doctor can remotely monitor the mother’s vital signs and basic labs. If a problem arises, home health care providers or an ambulance can be sent. 

Lastly, there is also a bipartisan bill, the Telemental Health Care Access Act, that Congress should pass. That bill would reduce barriers to telemedicine and make health care more accessible to Medicare patients. We witnessed the success of telehealth services during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.   

We call on all Americans to be united to address maternal mortality. Let’s eliminate racial disparity in all health outcomes but especially among those about to give birth or who have just given birth. Let’s pass the other proposed health care reforms and support the research to make our nation’s health care more system effective, fair, equitable, and just.  

Senator William “Bill” Cassidy (Republican) is an American physician and politician serving as the senior United States Senator from Louisiana, a seat he has held since 2015. He served in the Louisiana State Senate from 2006 to 2009 and in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2009 to 2015. Cassidy sponsored the John Lewis National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD) Research Endowment Revitalization Act; the Maternal Health Quality Improvement (MHQI) Act; the Connected Maternal Online Monitoring Services (MOM) Act; and the Telemental Health Care Access Act. Senator Cassidy can be reached at Cassidy.senate.gov.  

Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis, Jr, (Democrat), worked as the North Carolina Youth Coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) under the leadership of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr; civil rights icon and former Executive Director and CEO of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP); chemist and first to coin the term “environmental racism,” and is currently president and CEO of the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA) and executive producer/host of The Chavis Chronicles on PBS TV stations across the nation, and can be reached at dr.bchavis@nnpa.org  

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Secret Service arrests individual for entering road near Jill Biden's motorcade

The Secret Service arrested an individual on Monday evening for allegedly entering a restricted roadway near first lady Jill Biden’s motorcade and attempting to evade officers.

The Secret Service said in a statement that uniformed division officers ordered the individual to stop at approximately 5:02 p.m. on Monday, but that they attempted to flee from the officers. The agency said the motorcade’s movement was unaffected.

“The individual was detained after attempting to flee from officers, two of whom were transported to an area hospital for evaluation following a minor physical altercation,” the Secret Service said.

The suspect also was transported for evaluation after requesting medical attention, according to the statement.

They were charged with assault on a police office, failure to obey, crossing a police line and resisting arrest.

The Secret Service did not say where the incident took place.

The first lady was scheduled to deliver remarks at the Military Child Education Coalition Global Summit at 6:30 p.m. on Monday, roughly 90 minutes after the alleged altercation. That event took place at the Renaissance Hotel in downtown D.C., located just under a mile from the White House. 

The Hill has reached out to first lady’s office for comment.

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DOJ pitches Senate on use of anti-mafia laws to seize Russian assets

The Department of Justice (DOJ) asked Congress for permission on Tuesday to use a sweeping set of laws originally designed to break up the mafia as part of their efforts to pursue the assets of the Russian elite following the country’s war in Ukraine.

The DOJ wants to include violations of sanctions and export controls in its definition of racketeering under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO Act, which allowed federal prosecutors in the 1980s and 1990s to go after organized crime rings on charges of extortion and murder for hire.

Under current law, the DOJ can only freeze assets that are deemed to be illicit, which means it can only prosecute people for transacting with them. The proposed rule changes would allow authorities to actually take control of certain Russian assets, extending what it describes as a “powerful forfeiture tool against racketeering enterprises engaged in sanctions evasion.”

The DOJ’s request at a Senate Judiciary Committee won immediate support from some senators — including Sen. Chuck Grassley (Iowa), the top Republican on the panel, who said beefing up the RICO statute would help prosecutors secure convictions.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), who along with Grassley and other senators introduced anti-money laundering legislation earlier this year, said the proposed extensions were properly focused and were in line with the U.S. Constitution.

“What we’re trying to craft here is something that is quite narrow and I believe is consistent with the due process concerns of the United States Constitution,” he said.

But some senators on Tuesday wondered how far laws originally built to piece together vast criminal conspiracies from smaller bits of evidence could be extended in the international realm.

“You talked a little bit about RICO with Sen. Grassley and the enhancements you’re doing there with money laundering,” Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) said to DOJ official Andrew Adams, director of the interagency KleptoCapture task force, set up in March to pursue Russian assets in response to the war in Ukraine.

“So these proposals that would aid in the prosecution and the asset forfeitures for Russia — is that going to extend to other high-level, cash-rich criminals like the cartels or the Chinese Communist Party?”

Defense lawyers characterize the RICO laws as somewhat malleable and say they’ve been used to go after different sorts of networks and organizations considered criminal by the U.S. government.

“RICO was designed for a particular purpose, which was to go after the mafia and in particular the mafia’s corruption of labor unions and other organizations like that,” defense attorney Noam Biale of law firm Sher Tremonte said in an interview. “It’s been criticized in other contexts, for example, [for being used against] loosely affiliated groups of young people in housing projects who sell drugs together. There have been lots of prosecutions of those kinds of groups as RICO enterprises even though they may not be particularly well organized.” 

“But the courts have been quite open to prosecutors using RICO in expansive ways to charge different kinds of organizations,” he added. “For all the criticisms, I don’t see the courts being likely to move in a different direction on this if the government is going to use this statute against Russian oligarchs.”

Martin Sabelli, president of the board of directors of the National Association of Criminal Defense lawyers, said that RICO laws are now mostly used to bust up gangs.

“RICO laws were designed to tell the full story on organized crime, but for the last 40 or 50 years, they’ve been much more commonly used against gangs,” he said in an interview.

“They’re used against Black and brown people, economically challenged people. Rather than organizations with significant money from organized crime, the prosecutions are often against Bloods, Crips, Latin Kings, MS-13,” he said, referring to various gangs.

Sabelli also said RICO cases can rely disproportionately on expert testimony and can effectively become what he called “trials by opinion.”

“There’s even something called a conspiracy to commit RICO, which means you’ve made an agreement to make an agreement, which is something I find conceptually quite difficult,” he added

The application of RICO laws to sanctions and export control violations could add a layer of complexity — or potentially remove one — for investigators who already have to navigate the U.S.’s labyrinthine financial code, which even Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has said enables money laundering on a global scale.

“The degree of creativity” when it comes to hiding assets “is vast,” the DOJ’s Adams said during the Judiciary Committee hearing. “There are a number of different typologies for laundering and for hiding. You very often see, as Sen. Whitehouse pointed out earlier, layer upon layer of opaque shell companies, sham corporations, et cetera, essentially skipping from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.”

Despite all the secrecy, the Justice Department has had some success uncovering illicit assets from behind the veil of U.S. laws that allows the wealthy to hide their money from public view.

In June, the Treasury froze the assets of Russian government official Suleiman Kerimov, who it accused of keeping more than a billion dollars stashed away in Delaware despite being sanctioned back in 2018.

Yachts, aircraft and other high-valued goods belonging to members of the Russian elite have also been seized.

But efforts to punish Russia economically for its invasion of Ukraine seem to have brought the war — now approaching its sixth month — no closer to an end.

The war has displaced around a third of the Ukrainian population, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. The U.N.’s human rights monitoring mission has verified more than 11,800 civilian casualties of the war, including more than 5,100 people killed, nearly 350 of which have been children. The real total may be significantly higher.

“The U.N. is extremely concerned about the growing number of reports of indiscriminate attacks affecting civilians. The parties to the conflict must comply with their obligations under international humanitarian law to protect civilians and civilian infrastructure in Ukraine,” Farhan Haq, deputy spokesman for the U.N. secretary-general, said during a briefing on Tuesday.

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Thunderstorms drench NYC area, flash floods hit streets and subways 

A downpour Monday afternoon drenched the Big Apple in over four inches of rain forcing traffic above and below ground to temporarily stop.  

The series of thunderstorms dropped heavy rain on the tri-state area causing some roads north of the city to close.  

Heavy rainfall caused extensive delays on at least a handful of subway lines Monday as Metropolitan Transportation Authority crews worked to remove water from subway stations and tracks.  

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Cellphone footage shows water bursting through the roof of the Dyckman Street subway station and falling on the tracks and seeping on the ticket area floor.  

Photos of the street above the station show severe flooding with water nearly covering the windows of parked cars.  

“One clogged drain can back up an entire street. When the streets above look like this, storm water inevitably makes its way to our tracks,” NYCTSubway tweeted. “That’s why coordination between the MTA and partner agencies is vital to keep trains moving.” 

But the most striking image from Monday’s flash floods is that of a sinkhole that appeared in the Bronx, which consumed an entire van.  

The sinkhole measured roughly 58 feet long, 15 feet wide and 20 feet deep and cut service to 70 homes in Morris Park after it damaged a water main, according to The New York Times.  

“The investigation into the root cause of the roadway collapse is ongoing,” said Edward Timbers, a spokesman with the city’s environmental protection department, to The New York Times. “The weather certainly could have played a part of it.” 

Monday’s flash flooding and the ensuing damage is the most recent example of how New York City’s infrastructure is not prepared to withstand the effects of climate change, experts say.  

The vulnerability of the city’s infrastructure came to light on a national level when the remnants of Hurricane Ida knocked out power to over 150,000 homes in the tristate area and resulted in the deaths of at least 43 people, most of whom died after their basement homes were flooded.  

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As US faces climate setbacks, Australia plows ahead on reform

With President Biden’s climate agenda largely on ice amid Senate opposition, the focus has shifted to what other global leaders are doing to combat climate change.

Australia, which leads the world in per-capita emissions from coal power, is vowing aggressive action to reduce emissions and curb global warming.

Tanya Plibersek, Australia’s minister for the environment and water, pledged Tuesday to push for “a fundamental reform” of the country’s environmental laws.

And at a time when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has seen its powers recently limited by the Supreme Court, Australia’s leaders are pushing to bolster their own environmental regulator.

“Without structural change we’ll be resigning ourselves to another decade of failure, without the tools we need to arrest our decline,” Plibersek said at the National Press Club of Australia.

She spoke following the release of the country’s 2021 State of the Environment report, which details major effects of climate change on the continent and its species.

Australian leaders unveiled their latest report at a time when the global push to address climate change has faced hurdles amid major setbacks in the U.S.

Just last week, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) said he would not back the inclusion of climate legislation in Biden’s broader economic package, infuriating many Democrats.

Earlier this month, the Supreme Court also restricted the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to limit power plant emissions.

And while sources indicated that Biden could move to declare a climate emergency as soon as Wednesday, the president’s agenda is still largely held up amid a lack of support in the Senate.

In Australia, by comparison, the country’s environmental minister has signaled a strong appetite for climate reforms, including “empowering a new environmental protection agency.”

Since center-left Labor Party leader Anthony Albanese replaced conservative Scott Morrison as prime minister in May, the country has already taken several steps to shift its climate policies.

Albanese recently pledged to decrease greenhouse gas emissions by 43 percent below 2005 levels by the end of the decade, departing from his predecessor’s commitment of 26-28 percent.

Plibersek accused the previous administration of keeping the new environmental report hidden for the past six months, stressing that its findings push Australians to “take a good, hard look at ourselves.”

Responding to her criticism, opposition lawmaker Jonathon Duniam told CNN that Plibersek was using the report as a tool to attack the Morrison administration, which he said spent billions of dollars on green initiatives.

“While it’s a confronting read, Australians deserve the truth,” Plibersek maintained of the new report. “We deserve to know that Australia has lost more mammal species to extinction than any other continent.”

Not only has Australia lost the most mammal species, but it also has one of the highest rates of species decline among members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, according to the report.

Among the report’s other findings were indications that “the trend of the environment of Australia are poor and deteriorating” due to increased pressures from climate change.

The report also revealed that the number of threatened species in the country has increased by an average of 8 percent across all taxonomic groups over the past five years.

Marine heat waves have led to mass coral bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef, while the country’s coasts are experiencing “a plague of marine plastics,” Plibersek said.

“Individually, every one of these revelations is dreadful, but it’s only when you think about the cumulative impact that you begin to get the full picture of environmental decline,” she said.

Plibersek pledged to develop new environmental legislation for 2023 and “consult thoroughly on environmental audits.”

The environmental minister also announced that her office would be setting a goal of protecting 30 percent of Australia’s land and 30 percent of its oceans by 2030.

This commitment is similar to a pledge made by the Biden administration last year and is in line with the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity’s global biodiversity framework, which calls for conserving 30 percent of global land and sea areas by 2030.

“We need to protect our environment and heritage for the future. We need to restore environments that have already been damaged,” Plibersek said.

“And we need to actively manage our landscapes, oceans and waterways and the critical places that we’re bound to protect so they don’t become rundown through neglect,” she added.

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Can we beat the heat — or is this the beginning of the end?

Heat kills. It debilitates. It slows our brain and reduces our cognitive functions. During the day, it makes outdoor work difficult to impossible. At night it makes it harder to sleep, which in turn contributes to poor health and cognitive fatigue. As temperatures rise, heat and lost sleep along with carbon dioxide levels together could cut our strategic decision-making skills in half by the end of the century.

There’s a limit to how much humans can tolerate — a combination of heat and humidity beyond which our bodies can’t survive. While it is sometimes difficult to diagnose heat deaths, we know that the European heat wave of 2003 caused 70,000 premature deaths beyond those expected in normal times and temperatures.

Acclimatization may allow some to adapt to higher temperatures. But the rapid increase in heat extremes in regions with no prior history of them will test our collective ability to adapt, especially as global warming shifts climates out of the range that nurtured the development of human civilization. No one will be able to adjust to the coming heat if we don’t stop the climate pollution that is already killing far too many people, usually the young, old and vulnerable — including the poor who live and die so commonly in the hottest part of a building that these are known as “top floor deaths.”

Heat and drought and other climate impacts also hammer our crops and even kill cattle, as recently seen in Kansas. This is already pushing up the price of food and contributing to our current inflation, through “heatflation.”

We now see the future of climate change more clearly because it’s already here. Punishing heatwaves are roaming the planet, from the U.S., to India and South Asia, to China and Europe: global warming is making them more frequent, more severe and longer lasting. 

But if the climate impacts are clearer and more certain, so are the climate solutions.

A recent paper we co-authored with others in the “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences” confirms that the best — and so far the only known — way to slow warming in the next decade or two, is to cut methane and the other short-lived super climate pollutants: hydrofluorocarbon refrigerants (HFCs), black carbon (soot) and ground-level ozone (smog).

It is also essential to decarbonize the energy system as fast as possible to cut emissions of carbon dioxide by shifting to clean energy. However, this strategy alone is not able to slow warming until 2050 and then only by a modest 0.1 degrees Celsius. By contrast, cutting the super climate pollutant methane can avoid nearly 0.3 degrees Celsius by the 2040s.

Slashing all the super pollutants can reduce global warming four times as much by 2050 as aggressive decarbonization, slowing the rate of warming by half worldwide and two-thirds in the Arctic.

We need to win two races to defeat the heat: a sprint to cut the super pollutants in the next decade, and a marathon to decarbonize by 2050 or sooner. That would give us a chance to slow self-reinforcing feedbacks that are causing the planet to start warming itself beyond the heat humans are adding. Failure means breaching the internationally accepted 1.5 degrees Celsius guardrail within a decade and facing a series of irreversible tipping points with potentially catastrophic impacts.

Other actions can help keep us safer during heatwaves. Shade trees can cut peak temperatures by several degrees Celsius, helping to offset the extra heating that occurs in cities. New white roofs can be up to 36 degrees Celsius (50 to 65 degrees Fahrenheit) cooler in the afternoon sun than a dark one. Researchers found that adding street trees and painting roofs lighter colors in Los Angeles would save one in four lives otherwise lost to extreme heat events. Reflective concrete rather than blacktop asphalt also helps.

Then there is air conditioning (AC), which can keep us cool so our bodies and brains function at their normal capacity and prevent vulnerable populations from dying in an intense heatwave. Keeping classrooms in the U.S. cool so kids can learn without sweltering is expected to cost an added $1.5 billion each year.  Some argue that access to AC is a human right, while prisoners in Texas argued that lack of it constituted “cruel and unusual” punishment.

But AC is a double-edged sword.  It uses a tremendous amount of energy — half or more of all electricity during a heat wave — mostly still generated by fossil fuels. So, it feeds a vicious cycle of warming from both its voracious electricity demand and the super climate polluting HFC refrigerants it uses.  

As the demand for AC surges, it is essential to ensure that only the most efficient units, using only climate-friendly refrigerants, are sold. Low-efficiency ones using super climate pollutant refrigerants are energy vampires that suck electricity from the grid, contributing to brownouts and blackouts when demand soars. Electricity use in Texas is expected to break records again this week, stressing the grid and putting at risk those depending on AC to survive.

The August 2020 Californian heatwave caused an electricity shortfall of two gigawatts and rolling blackouts, with the California Energy Commission estimating that cooling devices — primarily air conditioning — accounted for about 45 percent of the total strain on the grid. We estimate that replacing AC systems older than 15 years in California with energy-efficient ones would save four gigawatts of peak electricity, double the 2020 shortfall. And replacing ACs with efficient heat pumps would not only conserve electricity but could save U.S. households over $13 billion on heating bills annually.

Inefficient ACs are marketed to the poor as low-cost, but the added energy it takes to run them makes that a lie.  They also are being dumped in Africa and other developing countries, stealing energy that should be deployed to development.

Meanwhile, extreme heat is shattering records across the planet with triple digit highs in London and unusually hot early season extremes in India and Pakistan and the American Southwest.  We’re about to find out if we’re like the frog put in a pot of water that warms slowly and thus is lulled unto its death, or one dropped into the already too hot pot that quickly jumps out.  If we wait any longer, a little more warming — thank you Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) who just squashed climate action in the Senate — and a little more impairment of our strategic decision-making skills may even make us forget that we once had a chance to jump.

Durwood Zaelke is president of the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development (IGSD) in Washington, D.C. and Paris, as well as an adjunct professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara Bren School of Environmental Science & Management.

Gabrielle Dreyfus, Ph.D., is chief scientist at IGSD and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University. 

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Crew member for 'Law & Order' fatally shot while reserving parking spots near set in NYC

NEW YORK (WPIX) – A man was fatally shot in the face near the set of “Law & Order” in Brooklyn on Tuesday morning, according to New York law enforcement sources.

Authorities found the 31-year-old man with two gunshot wounds to the face inside a red car parked in Brooklyn’s Greenpoint neighborhood around 5:15 a.m., according to police. Three shell casings were found inside the vehicle, sources said.

The victim was taken to a nearby hospital, where he was pronounced dead, police said.

The man had worked for Broadway Stage Company and was reserving parking spots near the film set location of a new episode of a “Law & Order” series, an NYPD spokesperson told Nexstar’s WPIX.

A witness who was sleeping in his car across the street said he heard the gunshots on Tuesday morning, and awoke to see an unidentified man leaving the scene of the shooting.

Police said no arrests had been made as of Tuesday afternoon. The investigation is ongoing.

“The name of the deceased is being withheld pending family notification,” a representative for the NYPD said.

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White House: Russia planning to annex more Ukrainian territory

The United States has “ample evidence” that Russia plans to annex additional Ukrainian territory, White House national security spokesman John Kirby told reporters on Tuesday.  

Kirby, speaking from the White House briefing room, said that U.S. intelligence shows Russian plans to install “illegitimate” proxy officials in Ukraine and arrange “sham referendums” on becoming part of Russia. Russia is preparing to focus its efforts on Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, and all of Donetsk and Luhansk, he said. 

Kirby likened the “annexation playbook” to Russia’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea Peninsula, which triggered a wave of international sanctions.  

Kirby said the timeline of Russia’s annexation plans is unclear but that Moscow could put them in motion later this year, timed with regional elections. Russia’s war in Ukraine is about to enter its sixth month. 

The Biden administration has periodically declassified and released intelligence information about Russian plans in Ukraine, in efforts to disrupt or deter those operations. It has withheld details on the source of the intelligence so as not to compromise sources or methods.

Developing

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