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.
“How the hell do I know what I find incredible? Credibility is an expanding field... Sheer disbelief hardly registers on the face before the head is nodding with all the wisdom of instant hindsight.”
- Tom Stoppard, “Jumpers”
The utterly bizarre madness of He Who Is the New Speaker has been aptly documented elsewhere this evening. So has the madness in the Mideast. So I’ll get straight on with the other news, which starts off surprisingly GOOD:
The UAW announced a tentative labor agreement with Ford Motor Co. late Wednesday, and now the proposed contract faces a membership vote.
UAW President Shawn Fain and UAW Vice President Chuck Browning, who led negotiations with Ford during the union's strike against the Detroit Three automakers, posted a 10-minute video online at 8:27 p.m. to make the news official.
"The Stand Up Strike is working," Fain said in the video, referring to the union's strategy of targeting all three Detroit automakers for strikes simultaneously, which had never been done. By closing down additional plants at Stellantis and GM this week, “Ford knew what was coming for them Wednesday, if we didn’t get a deal. That was checkmate.”
On Tuesday, three major federal financial regulators released joint guidelines on the steps banks must take to prepare for a climatic assault on their balance sheets.
The potential risks are dire, wrote representatives of the Federal Reserve, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
The regulators focused on two ways that a warming climate could lead to financial upheaval. The first was physical damage from floods, fires and storms, while the second involved the “transition risk” related to broad economic changes and slow shifts away from fossil fuels.
In both cases, these “pose an emerging risk to the safety and soundness of financial institutions and the financial stability of the United States,” the agencies wrote.
The three regulators collectively called on bank boards to take concrete steps to “control [their] exposure” to the financial risks of climate change.
The drip, drip, drip of new ethics questions about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas's ethics continued Wednesday. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden, D-Ore., disclosed that documents turned over to the committee indicate that Thomas benefitted by having some or all of a $267,000 loan forgiven in order to purchase a luxury RV.
In August, The New York Times reported that Anthony Welters, a wealthy friend of Thomas's, loaned him $267,000 to buy the RV. The Times reported that Welters, in response to inquiries, said the loan had been "satisfied," but he declined to say whether the loan was repaid. On Wednesday, Sen. Wyden said that after an inquiry in which Welters provided considerable documentary evidence, "the committee has the answer" to that question, though not the full answer.
A Democratic staff memorandum indicates that Thomas made some interest payments on the loan, but there is no indication the actual loan was repaid. Thomas did not include the loan on his ethics disclosure forms, and it is not known whether he disclosed the loan forgiveness to the IRS, as required by law because loan forgiveness is taxable income.
Several hardliners who voted to strip McCarthy of the gavel insist that Johnson represents a fresh start. Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, the main Republican who pushed booting McCarthy, told us that “with Mike Johnson, there is a sincerity to get us to the single-subject bills that was illusory under McCarthy.”
Buying time: Many House conservatives say it’s understandable that Johnson will need to deploy a temporary funding fix next month. That way, they argue, Republicans have time to finish passing a dozen annual spending bills that seek steep cuts and GOP policy changes. Of course, those bills still don’t have a shot of passage in the Democratic-controlled Senate.
“The failures of the previous speaker left this speaker in a tough spot,” said Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.), one of the eight Republicans who voted to oust McCarthy three weeks ago. “There’s a new level of trust with Speaker Johnson that didn’t exist previously.”
Exxon and Chevron are expanding their holdings as European oil and gas majors are more likely to be subject to strict emissions regulations. The U.S. is unlikely to have the political will to force the same kind of stringent regulations on oil and gas companies here.
“One might speculate that Exxon and Chevron are anticipating the European oil majors divesting their global reserves over the next decade due to European policy changes,” Hiatt told CNBC.
“They are also betting domestic politics will not allow the U.S. to take significant new climate policies directed specifically to restrain or limit or ban the level of U.S. oil and gas domestic production,” Amy Myers Jaffe, a research professor at New York University and director of the Energy, Climate Justice and Sustainability Lab at NYU’s School of Professional Studies, told CNBC.
Earth is the only planet we know of that has ever had a fire. While there may be volcanos pushing out hot magma on the surface of Venus, the hottest planet in the Solar System, there has never been a fire there. Nor on Mercury, nor Jupiter, nor any of the other planets surrounding our or any other star.
In fact, for billions of years of the Earth's history, there wasn't any fire either. It took billions of years before the conditions for fire were possible, with the planet's first inhabitants living in a world without fire for longer than it's possible to imagine. While volcanos would have produced "fire fountains" like those likely produced on Io – and there may have been the odd flame from a gassy volcano belch – this is magma being forced up and sprayed out a vent, rather than actual fire.
Around 2.4 billion years ago, the Earth's atmosphere was likely a thick haze of methane, the result of bacterial life emerging on the planet. Then the Great Oxidation Event happened, where ancient cyanobacteria began to produce energy from sunlight, releasing oxygen into the atmosphere. Here molecular oxygen began to accumulate in the atmosphere for the first time, though still not in enough concentration for combustion to take place. The Great Oxidation Event, sometimes known as the Oxygen Catastrophe, likely plunged the Earth into a worldwide deep freeze as this oxygen destabilized methane, clearing it and collapsing its greenhouse effect. The Earth became cold, as well as fireless.
The first fossil record we have of fire comes from the Middle Ordovician period, billions of years later. In terms of fire, there is a sweet spot. Any lower than 13 percent oxygen, and plant matter will not combust. Any higher than 35 percent it will combust so well that forests would not be able to grow and sustain themselves.
What does YOUR house look like tonight? Tell us all about it in the comments...