Today’s comic by Mark Fiore is Friend or foe:
• What’s coming up on Sunday Kos …
- A final ode to Cliff Huxtable: Burying the past in order to deal with the present, by Kelly Macias
- Right-wing ‘news’ sites distract from nightmare Trumpcare with scary fairy tales of freedom lost, by Ian Reifowitz
- The Democratic Party does not need a civil war, now or later, by Egberto Willies
- Hot enough for you? It’s likely to get worse. Much worse, by Sher Watts Spooner
- Senator Portman: 220,000 Ohioans with substance abuse coverage will lose it under repeal, by David Akadjian
- Step, Tap, Stomp: The power of dance rhythms, by Denise Oliver Velez
- The consequences of voting against you best interests, by Mark E Andersen
• Gabe Pressman, pioneering New York broadcast reporter dead at 93.
• Sierra Club’s Michael Brune weighs in on delisting Yellowstone grizzly bears:
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service removed grizzly bears in the Greater Yellowstone region on Thursday from the Endangered Species List. The decision comes despite serious concerns in the scientific community about a declining, isolated population with diminishing food resources and record-high mortalities, as well as strong opposition from an unprecedented number of Tribal Nations.
The Trump administration turned a deaf ear to repeated calls for consultation from dozens of Tribal Nations. States have already made it clear that without endangered species protections, immediate steps will be taken to reduce the number of bears in the area, including through trophy hunting—a move that will reverse grizzly bear recovery in the region.
• California’s Senate president pro-term Kevin de León is at the center of West Coast resistance to Donald Trump.
• EPA Inspector General will evaluate agency’s methane measurements:
The Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Inspector General will investigate how the agency estimates methane emissions from the oil and gas sector after an environmental group alleged that its emission estimates and regulations are based, in part, on faulty studies.
The evaluation, announced Wednesday, will focus on a pair of studies conducted jointly by the University of Texas–Austin and the Environmental Defense Fund in 2013-2014 that found methane emissions to be lower than EPA estimates. The studies, which were done in cooperation with a number of oil and gas companies, were subsequently challenged for allegedly using faulty equipment and underestimating emissions.
• House committee pursues founding of military “space corps”:
Congress took formal steps on Thursday toward requiring the US military to establish a dedicated "Space Corps," as concern mounts over the vulnerability of American space assets and their central role in modern war-fighting. [...]
"We are convinced that the Department of Defense is unable to take the measures necessary to address these challenges effectively and decisively, or even recognize the nature and scale of its problems," said Rep. Mike Rogers (R-AL), who chairs the House Armed Services Subcommittee for Strategic Forces, and Rep. Jim Cooper (D-TN), the subcommittee's ranking member, in a joint statement. "Thus, Congress has to step in."
• Study: White Christians have a blind spot in detecting racial inequality:
One of the most notable markers of difference in how people perceive prejudice in America turns out to be faith identity. The American Values Atlas by the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute reveals marked discrepancies in how members of different faith traditions perceive prejudice against African Americans, immigrants, and members of the LGBTQ community. The biggest divide? As Dr. Robert Jones, PRRI’s CEO and author of The End of White Christian America, told Vox, it’s between “white Christian groups — and everybody else."
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: The weekend’s here, so let’s get ready for Trump to go nuts. His Bayrock buddies are back in the news. How history dealt with leaders who lose it. Another Qatar backgrounder. Trump’s getting richer off the presidency. And is getting big tax refunds, too?
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