Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, Chitown Kev, eeff, Magnifico, annetteboardman, Besame, jck, and JeremyBloom. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) Interceptor 7, Man Oh Man, wader, Neon Vincent, palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse (RIP), ek hornbeck (RIP), rfall, ScottyUrb, Doctor RJ, BentLiberal, Oke (RIP) and jlms qkw.
OND is a regular community feature on Daily Kos, consisting of news stories from around the world, sometimes coupled with a daily theme, original research or commentary. Editors of OND impart their own presentation styles and content choices, typically publishing each day near 12:00 AM Eastern Time.
Trick or Treat! Hope you (and/or your kids) aren’t completely debilitated by the gigantic volumes of sugar coursing through your bloodstream…
...The vote was something of a surprise: Tlaib, a staunch liberal who’s been harshly critical of Israel, has few fans in the GOP when it comes to Middle Eastern politics. It’s unclear why several Republicans came to her rescue during Wednesday’s vote.
The censure resolution — sponsored by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) — had accused Tlaib of “leading an insurrection” for her participation in an anti-war protest last month at the Capitol, organized by Jewish groups, which featured scores of arrests.
Pro-Israel Democrats, who might have been inclined to censure Tlaib’s comments, had hammered Greene for her inaccurate characterization of a peace protest — albeit a rowdy one — and for sensationalizing Tlaib’s role in orchestrating it. Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) echoed that sentiment, saying he voted to table the legislation because of the “insurrection” language.
“Rep. Rashida Tlaib has repeatedly made outrageous remarks toward Israel and the Jewish people. Her conduct is unbecoming of a member of Congress and certainly worthy of condemnation – if not censure,” he wrote on X. “However, tonight’s feckless resolution to censure Tlaib was deeply flawed and made legally and factually unverified claims, including the claim of leading an ‘insurrection.’”
The House failed Wednesday night to expel serial fabulist George Santos from Congress, marking just another bump in a career plagued by scandal.
Representatives voted 179-213 against the resolution to remove Santos (with 19 members voting present). Only 24 Republicans joined the majority of Democrats in voting against the freshman congressman, not nearly anywhere close to the two-thirds majority needed to expel him from the House.
...Six freshman Republicans from New York—Representatives Anthony D’Esposito, Nick LaLota, Mike Lawler, Marc Molinaro, Nick Langworthy, and Brandon Williams—co-sponsored the resolution to expel Santos. The six lawmakers were some of the first Republicans to call publicly for Santos to resign once his lies were revealed. All of them except Langworthy won in districts that voted for Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election, making them more vulnerable to being voted out in 2024.
Many Republicans have resisted calling on Santos to resign due to their narrow majority in the House. With just a nine-seat GOP majority, Santos is a necessary vote. Several Republicans had called to hold off on the expulsion vote until after the House Ethics Committee finished an investigation into Santos. The committee opened the probe in March and announced Tuesday that it would complete its investigation on or before November 17.
Republican senators pushed to confirm more than 60 military nominees Wednesday evening in a direct challenge to fellow GOP member Tommy Tuberville and his blockade on promotions — but the Alabama senator is refusing to budge.
The move led by Sen. Dan Sullivan of Alaska marks the most significant confrontation to Tuberville so far within the GOP as more Republicans turn against the former college football coach and show they’re ready to resist him publicly.
… “We have a really dangerous world, a really dangerous world right now,” Sullivan said. “And to say, ‘Oh, don’t worry, this isn’t impacting readiness,’ with all due respect to my colleague, that’s just wrong. It’s not even a close call.”
Toyota is raising the wages of its factory workers — all of them non-unionized — after the UAW strikes at General Motors, Ford and Stellantis culminated in pay hikes for unionized employees.
Why it matters: After reaching tentative deals with the Detroit Three, the UAW is setting its sights on organizing non-unionized automotive plants in the U.S. — with Toyota a possible target.
Driving the news: Toyota spokesman Scott Vazin confirmed Tuesday in an email to Axios that the automaker "did provide wage increases today" for workers at all of its U.S. plants.
Details: Pro-union publication Labor Notes reported Tuesday that Toyota workers got pay increases of $2.94 to a maximum of $34.80 per hour for production workers and $3.70 to a maximum of $43.20 per hour for skilled trades employees.
This past season has been called “Hot Labor Summer” — a nod to the unprecedented amount of worker uprisings, and the fact that it’s the hottest summer in the history of humanity.
Labor and climate justice have historically been framed in opposition, but the exploitation of our environment and the exploitation of workers are inextricably linked by the extractive practices of the same companies. Hollywood is not only facing down studios — we’re facing down a system that prioritizes profit over people. We’re all fighting the same bad guy: corporate greed.
As a WGA member and climate activist, I’ve learned these roles are not separate — they inform and fuel each other. I know, we’re tired; it’s been hard, and violence around the world continues to derail and divide us. Let’s take a beat to celebrate our kickass win. And then let’s use the skills we’ve gained over our 148 day strike to keep showing up — for SAG-AFTRA, for our sister unions and for climate actions. We’ve just taken a master class in organizing, picking up skills that will help us stay in the fight to transform our systems
Lives could be put at risk in the UK and parts of the British Isles as Storm Ciarán hits, forecasters have warned.
Powerful winds and rain are already lashing southern England and gusts of up to 95mph (152km/h) are expected to hit the Channel Islands.
The Met Office has warned of travel disruption and damage to buildings, prompting the declaration of a major incident in Hampshire.
Gusts are likely to reach 70-80mph (113-129 km/h) in some coastal areas in southern England, and in a few coastal spots may exceed 85mph (123 km/h). And20-30mm of rain is expected in southern and western areas.
Damage from the global climate crisis has amounted to $391 million per day over the past two decades, a report showed.
Wildfires, heatwaves, droughts and other extreme events attributable to climate change have incurred costs averaging over a hundred billion per year from 2000 to 2019, a recent study published in the journal Nature Communications showed.
“We find that US$143 billion per year of the costs of extreme events is attributable to climatic change. The majority (63%) of this is due to human loss of life,” scientists wrote in the report. The remainder stems from the destruction of property and other assets.
Nearly a week after Hurricane Otis blew up like an atomic bomb and then slammed into Mexico’s iconic Pacific resort city of Acapulco with 165-mile-per-hour winds, grief-stricken residents are still pulling dead bodies from the city’s main harbor.
“It was really horrible,” Luis Alberto Medina, a fisherman, told the Reuters news service. “We’ve already found the bodies of others.” But six other people that Medina knew or worked with on the waterfront are still lost, as authorities now concede the toll of the dead or missing on the Mexican coast is nearing 100 and could go higher, as thousands continue to suffer without power or provisions.
...In normal times, such death and destruction in a North American city that’s long been a hugely popular tourist destination for U.S. citizens would be a Page 1, top-of-the-hour story. But in a crazy, mixed-up world from Maine to the Middle East to Capitol Hill, Hurricane Otis barely dented American news media. And that’s a shame — not only because of the human tragedy getting ignored, but because the massive storm may have been nature’s most powerful warning yet that climate change has quickly shifted from a scientific theory to a five-alarm emergency.
Less than a day out, weather forecasters were describing Otis as a tropical storm that might bring heavy rain to Acapulco, but little more. But in the course of 12 hours over the overheated Pacific waters — in what some meteorologists are calling the most extreme example of “rapid intensification” they’ve ever seen — Otis gained an astonishing 115 mph in wind speed to become a major hurricane, in what National Hurricane Center forecaster Eric Blake called “a nightmare scenario.”
Saleemul Huq, a pioneering climate scientist from Bangladesh who pushed to get the world to understand, pay for and adapt to worsening warming impacts on poorer nations, died of cardiac arrest Saturday. He was 71.
“Saleem always focused on the poor and marginalized, making sure that climate change was about people, their lives, health and livelihoods,” said University of Washington climate and health scientist Kristie Ebi, a friend of Huq’s.
Huq, who died in Dhaka, directed and helped found the International Centre for Climate Change and Development there. He was also a senior associate and program founder at the International Institute for Environment and Development in London and taught at universities in England and Bangladesh. He was an early force for community-based efforts to adapt to what climate change did to poor nations.
...From the early days of her career, Sainte-Marie has claimed to be a Cree woman, born in Canada. She has also allowed herself to be celebrated as an Indigenous icon and success story.
In 2022, CBC broadcast a concert that was held in her honour at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, where Anishinabe musician ShoShona Kish told the audience: “Buffy Sainte-Marie has led the way for Indigenous music on this beautiful land since her first album.”
...Late last year, CBC received a tip that Sainte-Marie is not of Cree ancestry but, in fact, has European roots. She is the latest high-profile public figure whose ancestry story has been contradicted by genealogical documentation, including her own birth certificate, historical research and personal accounts — the latest chapter in the complex and growing debate around Indigenous identity in Canada.
That story is a HUGE disappointment to me… a fan since I was a kid listening to my dad’s old folk records. It’s hard to know what to believe anymore, what we can hold onto as true and real.
What are YOU holding onto tonight? Tell us about it in the comments.