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
NPR's Ailsa Chang talks with Gina McCarthy, the former climate policy adviser for President Biden, about whether the IRA has had helped the U.S. properly deal with the threat of climate change.
AILSA CHANG, HOST:
It's been one year since President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law. The legislation is meant to reinvigorate the U.S. economy and help address climate change by moving the country away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy. But a year in, has it really helped the U.S. properly deal with the threat of climate change? Well, earlier today, I spoke with Gina McCarthy. She's the former climate policy adviser for President Biden and helped shape the law. And I asked her if the scale of the act is really achievable, given that there have been concerns over obtaining enough raw materials to transition to more renewable sources, materials like lithium, nickel, cobalt and copper.
GINA MCCARTHY: There's already international discussions - and it started even before the IRA was completed - about, how do we understand all of these supply chains? And really, the Inflation Reduction Act was about, basically, bringing them back home again. And so there are going to be challenges, without question, moving forward. But right now, all we're seeing is remarkable private sector investment. I mean, we are talking about investment that's rebuilding supply chains here in the United States, not just for solar, but for electric vehicles. We're talking about wind now that's being developed in the U.S. And even in New York, we have now wind turbines being constructed. It's just amazing opportunities right now.
One year ago this week, President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) into law, a once-in-a-generation piece of legislation that's already tackling climate change and cutting health care costs.
Yet, despite how popular its programs actually are, polling shows us that too few people know about these benefits or how we gained them—something we desperately need to change. At the same time, bad actors who want to divide the country are spreading conspiracy theories or outright lying about its benefits. Let's start with the facts:
In the past year, the IRA has already started to positively impact communities across the country no matter where people live or their backgrounds. It has already helped families keep money in their pockets and moved us closer to a clean energy future that every American will benefit from—whether Black, brown, or white.
Democratic West Virginia senator calls the Inflation Reduction Act, hailed as ‘biggest step on climate crisis’, a ‘radical agenda’
The Democratic West Virginia senator Joe Manchin marked the first anniversary of a major US climate crisis law he helped pass by saying he would mount an “unrelenting fight against the Biden administration’s efforts to implement the IRA as a radical climate agenda”.
In response, one advocate for climate action accused Manchin, who she called an “oily senator”, of “talk[ing] out of whichever side of his mouth will please the polluting fossil fuel industry”.
The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) was signed into law on 16 August 2022. It addressed other domestic spending priorities too but Joe Biden called it “the biggest step forward on climate ever”, saying it would “allow us to boldly take additional steps toward meeting all of my climate goals”.
The 2023 wildfire season is the most destructive in Canada's recorded history.
More than 230 fires are burning in the Northwest Territories of Canada, scorching over 8,000 miles of forest, and displacing hundreds of Indigenous and First Nations peoples. The population of the Northwest Territories is nearly 50 percent Indigenous.
“It’s all just really terrifying,” said Morgan Tsetta, a member of the Yellowknives Dene First Nation in a TikTok video she released Tuesday. Tsetta lives in Yellowknife, the region’s capital city, which she said was at risk of evacuation and that residents were preparing go bags in case they had to flee.
With the only road leading out of Yellowknife blocked due to the fires, Tsetta said alternate routes could take hours.
This season, wildfires have spread across Canada with greater intensity than ever before with more than 1,000 fires occurring since the start of the year. On June 25, the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre declared that the 2023 wildfire season had burned the largest area in Canada’s recorded history: nearly 52,000 miles. Canadian fires in June sent massive smoke clouds to the East Coast of the United States, endangering the health of millions of residents. The air quality in some areas got as high as 486, nearing the top of the Environmental Protection Agency’s 500-point air quality scale, meaning the air was dangerous to breathe.
By Peter Gleick
In a remarkable decision in a Montana District Court this week, a judge ruled that human-caused climate change is real, happening, and poses a clear and present threat to human health and the health of the environment. The case brought by 16 young people challenged the constitutionality of provisions in Montana’s Environmental Policy Act that forbade the state from considering the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions or climate change in environmental reviews, thus perpetuating a fossil-fuel based future. After hearing testimony from climate, health, and energy experts, from the youths themselves about how climate changes were already harming them, as well as state officials and climate deniers, the judge ruled definitively in favor of the youth, science, and future generations.
I’ve now read the decision in the Montana climate trial and I have some thoughts.
It is a remarkable document, strong and detailed, supporting the science and facts of human-caused climate change as well as the consequences for Montana’s citizens and ecosystem, present and future. It calls the state’s failure to consider the consequences of climate change in environmental reviews an unconstitutional violation of Montana’s Constitutional provision, Article IX, Section 1, which says “[t]he state and each person shall maintain and improve a clean and healthful environment in Montana for present and future generations.”
...“The science is clear that there are catastrophic harms to the natural environment of Montana and Plaintiffs and future generations of the State due to anthropogenic climate change,” judge Kathy Seeley wrote. “The degradation to Montana’s environment, and the resulting harm to Plaintiffs, will worsen if the State continues ignoring GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions and climate change.” The ruling also explicitly acknowledged the reality of climate change and the strength of the science, saying that “[a]nthropogenic climate change is impacting, degrading, and depleting Montana’s environment and natural resources…” and that “[c]limate change impacts result in hardship to every sector of Montana’s economy, including recreation, agriculture, and tourism.”
"Today's decision is a likely first step toward a massive blow to reproductive rights in the United States—and a stark reminder that our courts have been hijacked by Republican extremists," said one abortion rights advocate.
A federal appellate court on Wednesday upheld portions of a ruling restricting access to the abortion pill mifepristone, although the drug will remain available pending the outcome of ongoing litigation.
A three-judge panel of the right-wing 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that mifepristone can remain on the market, while finding that the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) 2016 move to allow the pill to be taken later in pregnancy, mailed directly to patients, and prescribed by healthcare professionals other than doctors was likely illegal.
The ruling—which the Department of Justice (DOJ) said it will appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court—was condemned by abortion rights advocates.
The North Carolina Legislature voted Wednesday to override Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto against three bills that would ban gender-affirming health care for transgender minors, prevent transgender women and girls from competing on female sports teams and limit classroom instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity.
Cooper vetoed all three bills last month, writing in the veto message that “Republicans are serving up a triple threat of political culture wars.”
...The North Carolina House — where Republicans secured a veto-proof majority in April after state Rep. Tricia Cotham (R) switched political parties — voted 74-45 Wednesday to override Cooper’s veto of the bill. Later in the evening, the Senate voted 27-18 to do the same, making North Carolina the 22nd state to pass a law banning gender-affirming health care for transgender young people, and the 19th to do so this year.
...Prior to this year, North Carolina had largely refrained from advancing anti-LGBTQ policies after its 2016 “bathroom bill,” which barred transgender people from using public restrooms consistent with their gender identity, sparked a nationwide protest that threatened to cost the state upward of $3.7 billion in lost business.
The International Chess Federation (FIDE) announced a list of council meeting decisions on Monday (14 August), following the second Fide Council Meeting of the year.
Among the decisions was one to update FIDE’s policy on chess player participation for transgender participants.
The newly approved policy decrees that trans women have “no right” to participate in official FIDE events for women until further decisions are made.
“Such decisions should be based on further analysis and shall be taken by the FIDE council at the earliest possible time, but no longer than within [a two-year] period,” the policy read.
Nate Silver isn’t just the polling guru who famously forecasted the states that would elect—and reelect—Barack Obama as president in 2008 and 2012 with stunning accuracy. (He called each of the 50 states in 2012 and 49 of them four years earlier.) He’s also a founder who sold his media business, only to leave a decade later as more than half of his team got the boot. Now that he’s regrouping for the next challenge, he has some advice to share to founders considering whether to sell their own startups.
What are you fighting for tonight? Share it with us in the comments….