How To Decarbonize Your Life Right Now
INSIDE: Tanya Chutkan ... Bernie Moreno ... Zelensky
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.
Speeding The Energy Transition
Heatmap has undertaken an ambitious project to recommend practical, effective ways to reduce your individual carbon footprint.
If you, like me, are generally skeptical of anything that deprioritizes collective action to hasten the energy transition, then you’ll find the Heatmap project’s approach reassuring. It explicitly recognizes the limitations of individual action:
Trying to zero out your personal carbon footprint, in other words, is a fool’s errand. What you can do, however, is maximize the degree to which you’re building a new, post-fossil-fuel world.
The six broad category recommendations are:
If you need a car, get an EV
Go zero-carbon power at home
Give your home an energy efficient renovation
Electrify your appliances
Drive less, bike (or walk or scoot) more
Know the big 2 climate food rules
There’s more in the package, but you get this gist. It’s a worthy project from some clear-eyed folks who consistently manage not to be smug or precious about the climate challenges we face.
Jan. 6 Judge Shuts Down Trump’s Latest Delay Tactic
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan has ruled, over objections from Donald Trump, that Special Counsel Jack Smith’s brief on presidential immunity due tomorrow can exceed the page limit set by rule. Smith had asked to be allowed to file a massive brief of no more than 180 pages given the complexity of the legal and factual issues the Supreme Court has tasked Chutkan with evaluating before the case proceeds.
TPM Exclusive
TPM’s Hunter Walker: Newly Exposed Russian Disinfo Sites Echoed GOP’s False Narratives About Non-Citizen Voting
Zelensky Desperate To Avoid A Trump II Presidency
Punchbowl has a good rundown of the tensions in play during Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky’s visit to the United States this week. On the one hand, his country’s existence depends on pro-Russia Donald Trump not winning in November. On the other hand, any critiques of Trump-Vance put the few remaining but essential hawkish Republicans in a bind. It’s a tightrope for Zelensky.
Stick A Fork In Trump’s Nebraska Chicanery
Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen (R) announced he will not call a special legislative session to change how the state allocates its electoral votes.
Bernie Moreno’s Self-Own On Abortion
GOP Senate nominee Bernie Moreno’s incendiary remarks about abortion, women over 50, and women’s concerns being a “little crazy” has thrust abortion rights to the forefront of one of the most closely watched Senate races in the country.
2024 Ephemera
Kamala Harris will give a major speech in Pittsburgh today on her economic policy plans.
NYT: News Outlets Brace for Chaos on Election Night (and Perhaps Beyond)
WSJ: Could Republican Rep. Anthony D’Esposito’s Alleged Affair Affect the Control of Congress?
Trump Assassination Attempt: Florida
The latest developments:
New charges: A newly unsealed five-count federal indictment against alleged golf course gunman Ryan Wesley Routh charges him with the attempted assassination of a major presidential candidate, Donald Trump. Routh is scheduled to be arraigned on Monday.
This didn’t age well: The indictment adds to the original federal weapons charges against Routh that the feds had used to detain him while they prepared a broader set of charges. Trump had falsely claimed Monday that the original weapons charges showed the feds were “mishandling and downplaying” the incident.
History appreciates irony: The attempted assassination case against Routh was randomly assigned to … U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon.
Trump Assassination Attempt: Pennsylvania
The latest developments:
A preliminary Senate report released today documents some of the Secret Service failures in the lead up to the July assassination attempt on Trump in Pennsylvania.
The Senate report expands upon and amplifies many of the previously reported breakdowns in planning, communications, and coordination for securing the Trump campaign rally.
Trump is planning to return next month to the scene of the attempted assassination to hold another campaign rally at the Butler Farm Show fairgrounds.
‘Trump Train’ Civil Trial Ends With Mixed Verdict
Austin American-Statesman: “A Texas jury on Monday found that a San Antonio man violated the Ku Klux Klan Act but cleared five other defendants of liability in a two-week trial over a ‘Trump Train’ convoy in Central Texas that swarmed a Joe Biden-Kamala Harris bus along one of the state’s busiest highways in October 2020.”
Violent Crime Is Down But Right-Wing Media Ignores It
CNN: “The FBI on Monday reported that violent crime dropped across the US last year, registering the steepest annual decline in murders in decades. But the report was almost entirely ignored by right-wing media outlets, which have pushed a false narrative that crime is surging under President Joe Biden.”
Government Shutdown Averted
Both the House and Senate are expected to pass by the end of today legislation to fund the government until late December – then recess and not return to DC until after the election.
Cold War Throwback
“Continuity of government” was one of those Cold War notions that nerdy kids like me obsessed over back in the day (confession: Within the last month, a friend sent me a photo of the Greenbrier Bunker, which was to have housed Congress in the event of a nuclear attack, so my nerd days are not really in the past.) COG was back in the spotlight in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attack and morphed into a meme after Vice President Dick Cheney kept scooting off to a “secure, undisclosed location.” But perhaps the most pressing threat to Congress is more mundane and grim: incidents like the 2017 congressional baseball practice shooting:
Over the past 15 years, members of Congress have survived two near-deadly shootings, a train crash with dozens of them on board, and a Capitol riot that had hundreds of lawmakers fearing for their lives.
Despite those incidents, the institution is wholly unprepared for a catastrophic event that kills or incapacitates multiple members — even if that hypothetical tragedy results in a major power shift: changing which party holds the majority in the House or Senate.
Politico has a closer look at the COG issues with which Congress is still struggling.
Good Read
NY Mag: How Opus Dei Conquered Washington, D.C.
Make America Grope Again
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Two quick points...
Re decarbonizing: it's a global problem (duh) which global leadership, public and private, have far from enough interest in addressing. Actually, practically speaking, said leaders have no interest.
Among the failing states there is of course the US.
So right there, collective action is limited. That makes every individual effort important and valuable. Anything an individual can do they should do. Even down to consuming less and rehoming clothes and objects that would otherwise get trashed.
Just my pitiful examples: I'm getting a consultant in to see about reducing energy usage; driving a PHEV at the moment and expect the next vehicle to be a at least a hybrid; and am donating two computer monitors instead of recycling them. It's at a point where every crumb helps.
As for the PA assassination attempt, it still makes me dizzy how much basic stuff is still unknown including how Donnie's grazed by a bullet (maybe) yet one person is killed while two (or three) were critically injured whose survival or recovery is still ignored in coverage. Bonus for that is how much is because FPOTUS and his people aren't talking. If it was a D FPOTUS, the media would be screaming. But since it's Trump something something we don't need to know. Insane. The media, I mean; Trump and his people and party too.
OMFG, Aileen Cannon, back again, in another high-profile trial! Has a free docket after tossing out the tRump stolen-docs case...at least until the 11th CA rules on it.
How does an inexperienced Federal judge get "randomly assigned" these tRump cases?