The Overnight News Digest is a nightly series dedicated to chronicling the eschaton and the decline of the Republic. Please add news, signs of life or hope, or other items in the comments.
Gizmodo
Satellite Images Show Vast Swaths of the Arctic On Fire
Vast stretches of Earth’s northern latitudes are on fire right now. Hot weather has engulfed a huge portion of the Arctic, from Alaska to Greenland to Siberia. That’s helped create conditions ripe for wildfires, including some truly massive ones burning in remote parts of the region that are being seen by satellites.
Pierre Markuse, a satellite imagery processing guru, has documented some of the blazes attacking the forests and peatlands of the Arctic. The imagery reveals the delicate landscapes with braided rivers, towering mountains, and vast swaths of forest, all under a thick blanket of smoke.
In Alaska, those images show some of the damage wrought by wildfires that have burned more than 1.6 million acres of land this year. Huge fires have sent smoke streaming cities earlier this month, riding on the back of Anchorage’s first 90 degree day ever recorded. The image below show some of the more remote fires in Alaska as well as the Swan Lake Fire, which was responsible for the smoke swallowing Anchorage in late June and earlier this month.
Joshua Trees Are Being Wiped Out by Climate Change
Climate change is set to kill off most of our nation’s Joshua trees by the end of the century, according to a recent study. While some Joshua trees will hang on if humans rapidly lower their carbon emissions, if no action is taken to stop climate change we’ll lose nearly all of these iconic spiky trees, which only live in the area near southern California’s Joshua Tree National Park.
Published in the journal Ecosphere in June, the study combines on-the-ground observations with climate models to determine that a worst-case scenario where we continue with business-as-usual emissions would result in just 0.02 percent of the trees’ current range remaining in Joshua Tree National Park between 2070 and 2099. Even if we do all we can to mitigate climate change, only 18.6 percent of the trees’ original habitat would remain, the researchers found. Rising temperatures, worsening drought, and a loss of groundwater spell serious trouble for this tree.
Los Angeles Times
Tensions worsen between LAPD and ICE over Trump immigration raids
Tensions between Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Los Angeles police have ramped up over the last month amid the Trump administration’s loud threats to unleash immigration sweeps.
As word spread about a national ICE operation expected to result in thousands of arrests, local officials tried to reassure immigrants in L.A. LAPD Chief Michel Moore said that ICE would target about 140 people in Southern California.
In a video shared last week, Moore also stood beside Mayor Eric Garcetti as he told residents they did not have to open their doors for an ICE agent who does not have a warrant signed by a judge.
The LAPD chief’s actions have provoked anger among ICE officials.
Rising health insurance deductibles fuel middle-class anger and resentment
Health insurance — never a standard protection in the U.S. as it is in other wealthy countries — has long divided Americans, providing generous benefits to some and slim-to-no protections to others.
But a steep run-up in deductibles, which have more than tripled in the last decade, has worsened inequality, fueling anger and resentment and adding to the country’s unsettled politics, a Los Angeles Times analysis shows.
Many wealthy Americans — already reaping most of the benefits of the last decade’s economic growth — have weathered the dramatic increase in deductibles in recent years in part by putting away money in tax-free Health Savings Accounts.
The Washington Post
Trump spoke repeatedly with Cohen, aides amid scramble to pay Stormy Daniels, court documents show
Newly unsealed court documents show that then-candidate Donald Trump communicated repeatedly with his lawyer Michael Cohen amid the election year scramble to keep quiet allegations that Trump previously had an affair with an adult-film actress.
The documents were released Thursday at the direction of a federal judge in New York, who disclosed a day before that an investigation into suspected campaign finance violations had ended. Trump and those close to him long said they were unaware that Cohen had bought the women’s silence, but phone calls and text messages documented by the FBI suggest they were closely involved.
The new details about the investigation are unlikely to have legal consequences for the president or those close to him because the hush-money investigation has concluded. However, the documents could further erode their credibility.
Trump falsely claims he tried to stop ‘Send her back!’ chants about Rep. Ilhan Omar
At a Trump campaign rally Wednesday, the crowd broke into an extended chant — “Send her back!” — about Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.).
The president had been attacking Omar, a Somali American immigrant and practicing Muslim, with false claims for days. We just gave him Four Pinocchios for claiming she supports al-Qaeda.
Trump said he tried to stop the “Send her back!” chants by quickly resuming his speech. This will be a short fact check, because video of the rally totally debunks his claim.
EPA will not ban use of controversial pesticide linked to children’s health problems
The Environmental Protection Agency rejected a petition by environmental and public health groups Thursday to ban a widely used pesticide that has been linked to neurological damage in children, even though a federal court said last year there was “no justification” for such a decision.
In a notice to the Federal Register on Thursday, the agency wrote that “critical questions remained regarding the significance of the data” that suggests that chlorpyrifos causes neurological damage in young children. The agency said that the Obama administration’s decision to ban the product — used on more than 50 crops, including grapes, broccoli and strawberries — was based on epidemiological studies rather than direct tests on animals, which have historically been used by the EPA to determine a pesticide’s safety. […]
“By allowing chlorpyrifos to stay in our fruits and vegetables, Trump’s EPA is breaking the law and neglecting the overwhelming scientific evidence that this pesticide harms children’s brains,” Patti Goldman, an attorney for the environmental law organization Earthjustice, said in a statement. “It is a tragedy that this administration sides with corporations instead of children’s health.”
Secret locations of U.S. nuclear weapons in Europe accidentally included in report from NATO parliament
A recently released — and subsequently deleted — document published by a NATO-affiliated body has sparked headlines in Europe with an apparent confirmation of a long-held open secret: U.S. nuclear weapons are being stored in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey.
A version of the document, titled “A new era for nuclear deterrence? Modernisation, arms control and allied nuclear forces,” was published in April. Written by a Canadian senator for the Defense and Security Committee of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, the report assessed the future of the organization’s nuclear deterrence policy.
Vox
Senate Republicans are literally avoiding what Trump does and says
Republican senators are hearing what they want to hear when it comes to … Donald Trump. The latest controversy over his fans’ “send her back” chant is no different.
Initially, many Republican senators made an almost unbelievable claim: They told Vox they hadn’t seen coverage of a campaign rally in North Carolina during which the crowd, responding to Trump’s extended rant about US citizen and Somali refugee Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), began to chant “send her back” — a moment that went viral instantly. As part of his remarks, the president suggested Omar was sympathetic to al-Qaeda and that she “has a history of launching vicious anti-Semitic attacks.”
Republican senators tried to plead ignorance. “I told you, I didn’t watch the rally,” Texas Sen. John Cornyn told reporters when asked about the chants Thursday morning. Pressed on whether Trump had a responsibility to speak out upon hearing the chants, Cornyn was silent.
Trump’s racism is part of his larger con
… if you want to really understand American politics in the summer of 2019, it makes sense to tune out the carnival barker’s antics for a moment and consider a plaintive memo issued earlier on Wednesday by Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen, and Katz — one of America’s top business law firms.
The memo made the case to clients that Wachtell’s expertise in regulatory compliance and white-collar defense is still important, even though many buyers of legal services may be inclined to think that rich companies don’t much need lawyers anymore. That’s because under Trump there’s been a “significant drop over the past two years in both the number of white-collar prosecutions and the scale of corporate fines and penalties.”
Earlier this week, the White House formally stated its plan to veto Democrats’ proposed increase in the federal minimum wage. And the New York Times reported that Trump’s newly installed acting secretary of labor is expected to “push through a sweeping anti-union agenda and coordinate his actions with the president’s political team.”
Bloomberg
Democrats Say Trump Economy Report Uses Widely Rejected Theories
Congressional Democrats slammed the Trump administration’s assessment of the economy in a report Thursday, saying the White House’s view is overly rosy and is based on theories far different from those used by mainstream scholars.
The response from Joint Economic Committee Democrats to the White House’s Economic Report of the President, which was issued in March, questioned … Donald Trump’s 3% growth forecast, saying it’s based on “extremely optimistic” and “extremely unrealistic” assumptions. The Democrats’ materials also highlighted issues downplayed or omitted from the Trump administration report including economic inequality, climate change and challenges faced by millennials. […]
One notable difference between the two reports is the Democrats’ extensive section on the impact of climate change on the American economy. Unlike Trump, who has called climate change a hoax, the Democratic response lists a series of studies, including one that shows economic output will slow by about 1.2% for every degree of additional warming. Also included is the costly impact of severe weather events.
The Next Neil Armstrong May Be Chinese as Moon Race Intensifies
Fifty years after Neil Armstrong took his one small step, there’s a renewed race to put human beings back on the moon—and the next one to land there may send greetings back to Earth in Chinese.
China, which didn’t have a space exploration program when Apollo 11 landed in the Sea of Tranquility on July 20, 1969, is planning a series of missions to match that achievement. China could have its own astronauts walking on the moon’s surface and working in a research station at its south pole sometime in the 2030s.
On the way there, they may stop over at a space station scheduled for assembly starting next year.
Scientific American / E&E News
Climate Change Will Strain Federal Finances
The federal government is ill-prepared to shoulder what could be a trillion-dollar fiscal crisis associated with extreme weather, floods, wildfires and other climate disasters through 2100, federal investigators have found.
In the latest of a series of reports, the Government Accountability Office says that costs of disaster assistance to taxpayers since 2005 have swelled to nearly $500 billion—and they keep getting higher.
“The federal budget, however, does not generally account for disaster assistance provided by Congress or the long-term impacts of climate change on existing federal infrastructure and programs,” GAO found in the 16-page report, which was presented as testimony to Congress by Alfredo Gómez, director of the office’s natural resources and environment team.
The New York Times
Heat Waves in the Age of Climate Change: Longer, More Frequent and More Dangerous
Two thirds of the United States is expected to bake under what could be record high temperatures heading into the weekend. As a result, government agencies have issued warnings that can feel ominous.
An “oppressive and dangerous heat,” warned the National Weather Service. “Excessive heat, a ‘silent killer’,” echoed a news release by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “Extreme heat is hazardous,” tweeted the NYC Emergency Management Department.
But people with health issues, older people and young children are especially susceptible to the effects of extreme heat. It’s a threat that grows as climate change continues.
The Atlantic
What Americans Do Now Will Define Us Forever
If multiracial democracy cannot be defended in America, it will not be defended elsewhere.
[…] The consensus that American civic nationalism recognizes all citizens regardless of race, creed, color, or religion was already fragile before Trump took office. That principle has been lauded, with varying degrees of sincerity, by presidents from both parties, and in particular by the first black president, who reveled in reminding audiences that “in no other country in the world is my story even possible.” The nationalism that conservatives say they wish to build in fact already existed, but it was championed by a president whose persona was so deformed by right-wing caricature that they could not perceive it. Instead, they embraced the nationalism that emerged as a backlash to his very existence and all it represented.
Trump’s nationalist innovation is not taking pride in his country, supporting a principled non-interventionism, or even advocating strict enforcement of immigration laws. The only thing new Trump brings to the American nationalism of recent decades is a restoration of its old ethnic-chauvinist tradition. Conservative intellectuals cannot rescue nationalism from Trump, any more than they could rescue Goldwater from Jim Crow, because Trump’s explicit appeals to racial and religious traditionalism, and his authoritarian approach to enforcing those hierarchies, are the things that have bound conservative voters so closely to him. The failure of the conservative intelligentsia to recognize this is why it was caught so off-guard by Trump’s rise to begin with.
The WHO Finally Sounds Its Loudest Alarm Over Ebola in the Congo
Almost a year after the second-worst Ebola outbreak in history began in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the World Health Organization finally declared the crisis a “public health emergency of international concern” (or PHEIC for short)—a label that it has only used four times before. The decision was made at an emergency meeting yesterday, on the recommendations of a panel of independent experts.
More than 2,500 people have become infected since the outbreak was officially declared on August 1, 2018. Almost 1,700 of those have died, while more than 700 have been cured. A few hundred cases are still being investigated, and new ones arise on an almost daily basis. These numbers make the outbreak worse than all of the Congo’s nine past encounters with Ebola put together, although they are still well below the scale of the West African epidemic of 2014 to 2016, which infected 28,000 people and killed 11,000.
USA Today
Prosecutors weighed DOJ policy blocking indictment of a sitting president in closing Trump hush-money probe
Federal prosecutors' decision to end an investigation into hush money payments to women claiming affairs with Donald Trump relied at least in part on long-standing Justice Department policy that a sitting president cannot be charged with a crime, a person familiar with the matter said Thursday.
The Justice Department told a federal judge on Monday that it had "effectively concluded" its investigation into efforts to silence the women in the final months of the 2016 campaign, but did not explain why it had done so. Prosecutors have said the payoffs violated a federal law that restricts campaign donations.
… the Justice Department's opinion that a president cannot be indicted factored into the decision to end the probe, the person said.
The Guardian
Great Barrier Reef authority urges 'fastest possible action' on emissions
The federal agency that manages the Great Barrier Reef has made an unprecedented call for urgent action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, warning only the “strongest and fastest possible action” will reduce the risks to the natural wonder.
The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority has published a climate position statement that says the reef is already damaged from warming oceans and it is “critical” global temperature rises remain within 1.5 degrees.
The Coalition government has been criticised for overseeing four straight years of increases in national emissions and experts say it will not meet the country’s Paris target under current climate policy.
Trump drilling leases could create more climate pollution than EU does in a year
Donald Trump’s leases of public lands and waters for oil and gas drilling could lead to the production of more climate-warming pollution than the entire European Union contributes in a year, according to a new report.
The Wilderness Society estimates heat-trapping emissions from extracting and burning those fossil fuels could range between 854m and 4.7bn metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, depending on how much development companies pursue.
The 28 nations in the European Union produced about 4bn metric tons of CO2 equivalent in 2014, the last year reported.
California: 'resistance' state has donated more to Trump than to most Democrats in 2020 race
Residents of California, the self-fashioned “resistance” state that has sued the Trump administration more than 50 times, has donated more money to the Trump 2020 campaign than to most Democratic candidates in the 2020 race.
Donald Trump raised $3.2m in California since the beginning of this year, according to campaign finance data analyzed by CalMatters, a not-for-profit news organization focused on California issues.
Trump beat out everybody in the field except for Senator Kamala Harris, who raised $7.5m, and Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who raised $5.1m. Harris, who is California’s junior senator, has been leading in donations from the state since launching her campaign in January.
Deutsche Welle
EU interior ministers fail to find compromise on Mediterranean refugee rescue
EU interior ministers meeting in Finland on Thursday failed to strike a stopgap deal to address ongoing disagreements about the bloc's migration policies, particularly issues of who should take responsibility for new arrivals.
There were "very different opinions," French Interior Minister Christophe Castaner said, with some ministers refusing to allow more refugees into their country, others appealing for solidarity, and many expressing concern about enticing more migrants to attempt the journey.
Ahead of the meeting, Germany's conservative interior minister, Horst Seehofer, said he would pursue a "temporary arrangement" for distributing refugees among the member states, but he expressed skepticism that a deal would be reached in one day.
Hawaiians protest giant telescope on holy mountain
Hawaii Governor David Ige on Thursday announced an "emergency proclamation" in response to thousands of protesters blocking a road to the summit of a sacred mountain over the construction of a giant telescope.
"The emergency proclamation gives law enforcement increased flexibility and authority to close more areas and restrict access on Mauna Kea," said Ige. "This will allow law enforcement to improve its management of the site and surrounding areas and ensure public safety."
The Japan News
Dozens die in suspected arson at animation studio in Kyoto
More than two dozen people died when a fire, possibly caused by arson, broke out at a studio managed by animation production company Kyoto Animation Co. in Fushimi Ward, Kyoto, on Thursday morning.
The Kyoto city fire department initially confirmed that one person had died, but dozens were later found in cardiac arrest inside the three-story building. The Kyoto Prefectural Police later confirmed that 25 people had died.
According to the fire department, a nearby resident made an emergency call at about 10:35 a.m., saying they had heard the sound of an explosion.
Officials of the prefectural police rushed to the studio and found a man, 41, on a road near the studio. The man told them, “I sprinkled liquid on the first floor and set it on fire.”
Reuters
Epstein to remain jailed until sex trafficking trial
Jeffrey Epstein will remain behind bars while he awaits trial on charges of sex trafficking dozens of underage girls, a U.S. judge ruled on Thursday.
U.S. District Judge Richard Berman rejected Epstein’s request to pay for armed guards to be under house arrest in his New York mansion valued at $77 million. Epstein has pleaded not guilty…
Prosecutors had argued that Epstein should remain jailed both because he posed a danger to the community and because there was a high risk he would use his vast wealth to flee the United States.
Saudi Arabia defends letter backing China's Xinjiang policy
Saudi Arabia on Thursday defended signing a letter along with 36 other countries in support of China’s policies in its western region of Xinjiang, where the United Nations says at least 1 million ethnic Uighurs and other Muslims have been detained.
China has been widely condemned for setting up detention complexes in remote Xinjiang. It describes them as “education training centers” helping to stamp out extremism and give people new skills.
Ars Technica
DEA tracked every opioid pill sold in the US. The data is out—and it’s horrific
Just three drug makers and six distributors were behind the flood.
Between 2006 and 2012, opioid drug makers and distributors flooded the country with 76 billion pills of oxycodone and hydrocodone—highly addictive opioid pain medications that sparked the epidemic of abuse and overdoses that killed nearly 100,000 people in that time period.
As the epidemic surged over the seven-year period, so did the supply. The companies increased distribution from 8.4 billion in 2006 to 12.6 billion in 2012, a jump of roughly 50%. In all, the deluge of pills was enough to supply every adult and child in the country with around 36 opioid pills per year. Just a 10-day supply can hook 1 in 5 people into being long-term users, researchers have determined.
New archaeological layer discovered at L’Anse aux Meadows
L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland is famed for being a site where Norse travelers set up a colony hundreds of years before Europe at large became aware of North America's existence. The colony was thought to be short-lived, but a new find may extend the length of its occupancy.
While taking sediment cores from a nearby peat bog to help study the ancient environment, archaeologist Paul Ledger and his colleagues discovered a previously unknown chapter in the story of L’Anse aux Meadows. Buried about 35cm (14 inches) beneath the modern surface, they found signs of an ancient occupancy: a layer of trampled mud littered with woodworking debris, charcoal, and the remains of plants and insects.
Based on its depth and the insect species present, the layer looks like similar surfaces from the edges of Viking Age Norse settlements in Greenland and Iceland. But organic material from the layer radiocarbon dated to the late 1100s or early 1200s, long after the Norse were thought to have left Newfoundland for good.