We have met the enemy, and they is us[i].
The headlines scream — Senate shatters record with the longest vote in history as Democrats negotiated the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill. What they don’t tell you is who — beyond the usual cast of Republicans — the Democrats negotiated until the wee hours of the morning to bring the President’s pandemic relief bill to the Senate floor for a vote and passage along party lines.
Senate Republicans did what they could to stall a vote on the relief act. Ron Johnson (R-WI) went so far as to require the entirety…
[A] big-game trophy decision will be announced next week, but I will be very hard-pressed to change my mind that this horror show in any way helps conservation of Elephants or any other animal.
— Donald J. Trump November 19, 2017
Back in the day, in Capital City, you could tell Democrats by their wearing brown shoes with blue suits and Republicans by their (figuratively) eating their own. Things have changed. These days Democrats have a much better fashion sense.
Like presidents before him, Donald Trump used his executive powers to issue pardons to those he felt were unfairly prosecuted…
Exercising my ‘reasoned judgment,’ I have no doubt that the right to a climate system capable of sustaining human life is fundamental to a free and ordered society.
- US District Judge Ann Aiken[i]
More than five years ago, 21 youths ranging in age from 8 to 19 asked a federal court to declare a habitable environment a protected right under the US Constitution. Early on. Juliana v. US was often reported with a wink and a nod giving the impression it was a feel-good human-interest story about kids. Nothing could’ve been further from the truth.
As it survived one…
Introduction
While the Trump administration was fiddling with the auto fuel efficiency standards of the Obama administration, auto manufacturers in the US and around the world were designing, manufacturing, and selling 21st century electrified vehicles (EVs). A fact President Trump and his cabal were content to ignore.
Now that Trump has left the building, the federal government can be expected to work in consort — rather than at cross-purposes — with the US auto industry. There’s much to be done, including building out the infrastructure required for wide-spread deployment, training workers, and shaping markets. It will prove a heavy lift
…
A cry for survival comes from the planet itself.
A cry that can’t be any more desperate or any more clear.
President Joseph R. Biden
· Whether speaking philosophically of the meaning of democracy and what keeps it strong or specifically of what ails the nation, the differences between Joe Biden and Donald Trump are stark. Nowhere are the differences more apparent than when they speak about the causes and consequences of Earth’s warming.
Following the election of Donald Trump, I wrote it was mourning in America. I knew with near certainty that climate policy in the Trump era would…
Climate politics has taken a 180-degree turn in favor of federal action thanks to the voters of Georgia. The Democrats’ surprising double win in the Peach State’s runoff elections has turned the US Senate from red to blue — or more accurately blue-ish.
With both the House and Senate in Democratic hands, it becomes possible for the incoming Biden administration and the Democrats in Congress to move quickly on a wide range of climate-related matters. …
After an election in which the country opted for a reset, not a revolution, moderate Democrats hold the power in the party.
The momentum of the 2018 Congressional midterm elections in which the Democrats gained 42 seats and regained their majority status in the House of Representatives lost steam in 2020. It had been expected that the 2020 elections would build on the 2018 victories and possibly lead to capturing the Senate.
The anticipated blue wave broke badly, never making it onto Congressional shores. It is destined to profoundly impact the abilities of the Biden White House…
Other arms reach out to me
And other eyes will smile tenderly
Still, in peaceful dreams, I see
The road leads back to you
Hoagy Carmichael / Stuart Gorell
We, the people, fired the nation’s chief executive long about a month ago. The order is scheduled to be confirmed by a vote of the Electoral College on December 14, 2020. It will then come due on January 20, 2021, when Joe Biden is sworn in as the 46th President of the United States.
The College’s vote will finalize the election of Joe Biden. It will not, however, bring an end…
Defund the police? Defund my butt. I’m a proud West Virginia Democrat.
We do not have some crazy socialist agenda.
Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV)
Introduction
President-Elect Biden ran as a unifier in a time of deep division. His job as president has been made all the more difficult by voters having denied the Democrats control of Congress.
The last president who entered his first-term without his party in control of Congress was George H. W. Bush in 1989. The last Democrat who suffered the same fate was Grover Cleveland in 1885. …
Introduction
The 2020 elections are almost history. What’s left are the Georgia Senate runoff elections in January, and President Trump running out of brows to beat, and judges willing to indulge his unsubstantiated claims.
Biden’s election means a presidential assault on the nation’s environmental protection framework is coming to an end. The President-Elect has vowed to build it back better than before. To do that, he will need to convince a conflicted government to cooperate with him. It may prove a more daunting task than winning the presidency.
Climate activists thought that 2020 would be the year when voters finally…
Joel B. Stronberg
Stronberg is a senior executive and attorney with over 40 years of experience in federal and state energy, environmental and sustainability issues.
