News Of Western Pennsylvania And The World
After a day of rising tensions, which saw a far-right march in Jerusalem and incendiary balloons launched from Gaza, Israel’s new coalition government ordered airstrikes against Hamas.
Source: Israeli Planes Bomb Gaza Just Days Into New Government – The New York Times
A head-turning cartoon in the Raleigh News & Observer pictures President Biden in the Oval Office with a big inbox marked “Voter Rights, Immigration and Broadband Expansion.” Next to it is a sign that says: “The Bucks Stops with Kamala.”
One television network sent its anchor to cover Vice President Harris’s trip last week to Central America, The Economist wrote that she “already looks like her party’s prospective nominee.”
Only a short while earlier, there was Washington buzz of an “invisible” vice president. Some Republicans and right-wing cable bloviators were in a tizzy because she hadn’t visited the U.S.-Mexican border.
Any future political success for the California Democrat depends chiefly on the success of the Biden administration. Whether in 2024 or 2028 she can ride a wave of success, or — if the administration is seen as failing — it’ll drag her down. It further depends on her ability to grow, both in policy and political ways.
As captivating as the Kevin Siers cartoon may be, more important than any designated assignments is filling the “Mondale model” for the vice presidency. Crafted by the late Walter Mondale, vice president to Jimmy Carter, this entails a genuine partnership between the president and his number two. This is why we see Harris involved in every major decision and in the room for every important meeting.
Even given the inevitable spin, it appears the Biden-Harris relationship is going well in the first 20 weeks. With the COVID-19 travel limitations, they’ve probably spent more time together than usual. Her staff, headed by a veteran operative and Clintonite, Tina Flournoy, is said to be in sync with the president’s. Any residual resentments from a 2019 debate clash they had over school busing has been smoothed over. She’s cautious, giving interviews mainly to friendly journalists.
In voting rights and migration on the southern border, Harris has two exceedingly difficult charges. They are so big that — whatever role Harris plays — ultimately the buck will stop with Biden.
Source: Time will tell: Kamala Harris’s presidential prospects | TheHill
Jerusalem (CNN)
Naftali Bennett was sworn in as Israel’s new prime minister on Sunday, after winning a confidence vote with the narrowest of margins, just 60 votes to 59. His victory ends a 12-year grip on power by former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the country’s longest-serving leader.
After four elections in two years, Bennett’s incoming government breaks a long political deadlock and ushers in the most diverse coalition Israel has ever seen, including the first Arab party to serve in the government. In his speech before the Knesset confidence vote, Bennett celebrated the diversity and warned of polarization within the country.“Twice in history, we have lost our national home precisely because the leaders of the generation were not able to sit with one and another and compromise. Each was right, yet with all their being right, they burnt the house down on top of us,” Bennett said. “I am proud of the ability to sit together with people with very different views from my own.”Bennett became the premier as the leader of Yamina, a right-wing party with only seven seats in Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, making him the only prime minister in the country’s history with such a small faction. By contrast, Netanyahu’s Likud party won 30 seats in March’s election. Once again, however, Netanyahu could not cobble together a governing coalition with a majority of the 120 members of Knesset.
Environmentalists emboldened by this week’s defeat of Keystone XL are pressuring President Joe Biden to revoke permits for other oil and gas pipelines, warning their votes depend on the administration blocking fossil fuel infrastructure.
“If you need and want us — as I know the Biden team does — to come out in stronger numbers for 2022, then you have to do right by our community,” Jane Kleeb, the president of Bold Alliance, who spent more than a decade battling TC Energy Corp.’s Keystone XL, said in a call with reporters Friday. “You have to stand up to these big oil and fracked-gas pipelines and say ‘no more.’”
Pipelines have been a focal point in the fight against climate change, putting leaders such as Biden and Canada’s Justin Trudeau in a tough spot as they pledge to help cut global carbon dioxide emissions at a Group of Seven summit in the U.K. The U.S. is the world’s biggest producer and consumer of oil, and it’s still unclear how plans to wean Americans off gasoline will pan out. Canada holds the world’s third-largest crude reserves and its economy benefits enormously from their development.
Source: Keystone XL-Quashing Activists Demand Biden Block Other Pipelines – Bloomberg
PITTSBURGH —Marlin Woods gathered with supporters at the Highland Park Reservoir, not far from his East Liberty home, to announce Thursday he’s jumping into the race for mayor of Pittsburgh as an Independent candidate. Before the event, he spoke with Pittsburgh’s Action News 4 about why he wants the job and what he believes he can bring to the office.
“This is the responsibility that falls upon my shoulders with the burden of solution through service. And service is merely defined as raising the quality of life for another,” Woods said
Woods is a motivational speaker and business consultant who’s also worked as a minister.”
My product is leadership. That is what I am here to implement into this region — to make an impartation of leadership. That I can raise the quality of life for each resident and the small business community of this great city,” Woods said.
Source: New candidate for Pittsburgh mayor: Marlin Woods enters race as an Independent
‘The Five’ criticizes the president’s remarks that global warming is America’s number one threat ahead of the G-7 summit.
President Biden is throwing the “American first” agenda out the windowing his comments ahead of the G-7 summit, claiming the biggest threat to America is global warming, Greg Gutfeld said Thursday on “The Five.”
The Five co-host Dana Perino added that the president’s comments were “offensive” considering the U.S. has been suffering through the coronavirus pandemic as well as facing a “second Cold War” with China.“If China is building a coal-fired power plant a week, then if the global climate change issue is a global issue… you’re [pissing in the wind],” she said. “That’s basically what you’re doing.”
HANNITY: ROOT CAUSE OF MASS ILLEGAL MIGRATION IS JOE BIDEN AND KAMALA HARRIS
“If you just have the EU and the United States and Canada and Australia trying to reduce emissions and they’re increasing emissions, then it doesn’t matter.”
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) —
The owner of three coal-fired power plants in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Ohio said Thursday that it will shut them down.
Houston-based GenOn Holdings LLC said it will shut down a generating unit at both Avon Lake station on Lake Erie near Cleveland and Cheswick station on the Allegheny River outside Pittsburgh by Sept. 15.
It said it will shut down two generating units at the much larger Morgantown station on Maryland’s Cobb Neck peninsula by next June 1.Combined, the four coal-fired units can provide up to 2,421 megawatts.
In a statement, GenOn blamed “unfavorable economic conditions, higher costs including those associated with environmental compliance, an inability to compete with other generation types and evolving market rules that promote subsidized resources.
”Coal power has fallen out of favor in the climate change era amid a push for cleaner power sources that produce less pollution and greenhouse gases. U.S. coal production has been in steady decline, down by about one-third over the past decade.
Coal also has been buffeted by a flood of cheaper natural gas from shale formations, including the vast Marcellus Shale reservoir underneath Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio.
Shutdown of the units is subject to a 90-day reliability review period by the regional electric grid operator PJM, GenOn said.
Source: Coal plants in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Ohio to shut down
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told Democrats time is running out because a death could cause them to lose the party’s Senate majority.
- Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told Democrats time is running out because a death could cause them to lose the party’s Senate majority
- ‘During the Obama admin, folks thought we’d have a 60 Dem majority for a while. It lasted 4 months,’ the New York Democrat tweeted
- She was talking about how Sen. Ted Kennedy August 2009 death cost the Democrats a filibuster-proof majority in early 2010
- Republican Sen. Scott Brown was elected in a January special election to fill the Massachusetts Democrat’s seat
- ‘McConnell’s plan is to run out the clock. It’s a hustle. We need to move now,’ AOC said
- A number of House-passed bills have gotten stuck in the Senate, while infrastructure bill negotiations have also hit hurdles
An ambitious Republican proposal to revamp Pennsylvania election law was unveiled Thursday, a 149-page bill that would change deadlines, adopt new rules for early voting, alter mail-in ballot procedures and mandate IDs for all in-person voters.
Source: Pennsylvania House GOP Unveils Ambitious Proposal To Revamp Election Law
Harrison stepped aside from his role in February after defending a contestant who was shown in past photos attending an antebellum plantation-themed party.
Chris Harrison is permanently exiting ABC’s reality dating series “The Bachelor” after coming under fire earlier this year for defending a contestant’s past racist behavior.
“Chris Harrison is stepping aside as host of The Bachelor franchise. We are thankful for his many contributions over the past 20 years and wish him all the best on his new journey,” Warner Horizon and ABC Entertainment said in a statement sent to NBC News on Tuesday.
Source: Chris Harrison exits ‘The Bachelor’ franchise after racism controversy
The agreement commits to combatting cyberthreats and climate change and to bringing the pandemic to an end.
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson signed a new Atlantic Charter on Thursday, modeled after the 1941 agreement, that outlines eight key areas on which the U.S. and the United Kingdom plan to collaborate.
The revamped charter, which comes during Biden’s first trip abroad as president, says it builds “on the commitments and aspirations set out eighty years ago, affirms our ongoing commitment to sustaining our enduring values and defending them against new and old challenges.”
Source: Biden, Johnson sign new Atlantic Charter on trade, defense amid Covid recovery
Biden administration budget chief Shalanda Young refused to say that Joe Biden would stop funding gain of function research at the Wuhan, China research lab. For clarity, the term gain of function is used to describe any field of medical research that alters an organism or disease in a way that increases transmissibility or pathogenesis.
This comes as mounting evidence shows Chinese scientists manipulated bat coronaviruses while increasing their ability to infect humans. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and a Pentagon sub-agency were recently found to be giving money for those risky experiments. This is something Dr. Fauci had previously denied he was aware of regarding the lab in Wuhan.
“And the funds made available by the agency which Fauci heads, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, to the tune of $600,000 went to this Wuhan Institute of Virology,” stated Alan Jones, host of Sky News Australia. “This is a lab involved in gain of function research that is creating more dangerous pathogens.
”House Republicans said the remarks by Biden’s budget chief suggest this administration will continue to give taxpayer money to the Chinese lab that evidence increasingly suggests may have played a key role in the emergence of COVID-19 and a pandemic the rocked the entire world.
Source: Biden’s budget chief won’t commit to ending Wuhan lab funding | One America News Network
Parents across the country are standing up and speaking out against critical race theory in schools. From Loudoun County, Virginia, to Carmel, New York, school board meetings have become must-see TV. But what happens when the cameras turn off? How can parents turn their outrage into meaningful change?
“We are asking people to go into the arena in a situation where they are going to be called a racist,” said Russ Vought, president of the Center for Renewing America and former director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Trump. “They’re not, they’ve got the moral high ground, but no one wants to be called that.”
AOC, BLM SILENT IN WAKE OF TRAGIC SHOOTING THAT KILLED 10-YEAR-OLD QUEENS BOY
In documents obtained exclusively by Fox News, Citizens for Renewing America (the advocacy arm of Vought’s conservative think tank) has created an “A to Z guide” for stopping critical race theory.
Vought said the 33-page handbook is a crash course in CRT, a “one-stop shopping” for parents trying to hold their school board members accountable.
(CNN)The first six-ish months of Kamala Harris’ time as vice president have, generally speaking, gone according to her plan. She’s been a consistent messenger for President Joe Biden while learning the possibilities (and limitations) that come with being second-in-command.
That smooth ride ended this week, thanks to a confluence of events — some within her control, others not.* The White House made a big deal out of Harris’ two-day trip to Central America earlier this week. And Harris’ main goal was simple: To send a message to Central Americans to stop coming to the US southern border. Which she did, to the consternation of liberals but the satisfaction of Biden. But the visit wound up being overshadowed by her seemingly flippant answer to a question from NBC’s Lester Holt about why she hadn’t yet visited the southern border. (Biden has tasked Harris with leading the administration’s response to stemming the flow of migration from Central America.)“At some point, you know, we are going to the border,” Harris said in the interview. “We’ve been to the border. So this whole, this whole, this whole thing about the border. We’ve been to the border. We’ve been to the border.”Holt responded: “You haven’t been to the border.”“I, and I haven’t been to Europe,” Harris replied to Holt, with a laugh. “And I mean, I don’t — I don’t understand the point that you’re making.” Which, not great. As CNN reported on Tuesday: “Several sources say there was a real hope inside the White House that Harris’ first trip abroad would be a success, and worry that what looked like ill-prepared answers to that inevitable question would overshadow it.”
Source: Kamala Harris is having a bad week (and it’s only Wednesday!) – CNNPolitics
The embattled project to carry oil from Canada to Nebraska had been on life support since President Biden’s first day in office and stalled by legal battles for years before that.
The Canadian pipeline company that had long sought to build the Keystone XL pipeline announced Wednesday that it had terminated the embattled project, which would have carried petroleum from Canadian tar sands to Nebraska.
The announcement was the death knell for a project that had been on life support since President Biden’s first day in office and had been stalled by legal battles for years before that, despite support from the Trump administration.
On the day he was inaugurated, Mr. Biden, who has vowed to make tackling climate change a centerpiece of his administration, rescinded the construction permit for the pipeline, which developers had sought to build for over a decade. That same day, TC Energy, the company behind the project, said it was suspending work on the line.
On Wednesday, the company wrote in a statement that it “will continue to coordinate with regulators, stakeholders and Indigenous groups to meet its environmental and regulatory commitments and ensure a safe termination of and exit from the project.”
Source: Keystone XL Pipeline Project Is Canceled – The New York Times
Kamala Harris is playing a historic role in 2021: the nation’s first black, Asian, female vice president to serve as a sacrificial lamb.
Like many other women before her, Harris has been tasked with coming in late to clean up a mess made by her boss. Joe Biden probably wouldn’t do too well in a “Jeopardy!” contest, or even on a circle-a-word puzzle, but he’s smart enough to know that when you’ve got a problem you can’t solve, you should grandly announce a plan to deal with it by … fobbing it off on someone else.
Alas, unlike Barack Obama’s plan to cure cancer by announcing that Joe Biden would cure cancer (yes, that really happened), Biden’s buck-passing set up Harris for a spectacularly visible failure.
When friendly questioner Lester Holt pointed out to Harris that she hadn’t visited the border once, she pulled her trademark move (whenever she gets busted) of breaking into that famously weird dismissive laugh and replied, “And I haven’t been to Europe,” as though an equivalent problem is coming out of Europe. Hordes of damp Irishmen desperately washing up on the shores of Maine, perhaps.
The Biden administration created the border crisis with a “Yay, illegal immigrants” rhetorical style that was received in Latin America like an embossed invitation: “President Joe cordially invites you to El Norte.”
During the presidential campaign, Biden generously offered to suspend deportations and end family separations. In 2019, both Biden and Harris vowed to give health care to illegal immigrants, and two years before that, she insisted that “an undocumented immigrant is not a criminal.”
Biden was so intent on reversing everything President Donald Trump did that he moronically reversed one of Trump’s biggest successes: the “Remain in Mexico” program that required asylum-seekers to stay south of the border while their claims were being heard. Unsurprisingly, there was a record-setting run on the border, and suddenly there was a serious human cost to all of the knee-jerk anti-Trumpism.
Source: Biden throws his clueless vice president under the bus
Users on Twitter roasted Vice President Harris for passing out cookies made in her likeness to reporters on a plane while traveling to meet with the president of Guatemala.
The vice president traveled to the Central American country on Sunday to meet with the Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei in her first trip after being appointed by President Biden to lead diplomatic efforts in the region amid the border crisis.
In the tail section of Air Force 2, though, Harris handed out cookies in her likeness, made in the style of her official White House portrait.
USA Today politics reporter Courtney Subramanian shared a picture of the cookies online, which sparked backlash from users on Twitter.
GOP Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel took a chop at Harris, saying the cookies were the “modern-day equivalent” of French Queen Marie Antoinette’s famous quote.
“Handing out cookies with her face on them as the border crisis rages…,” McDaniel wrote. “The modern-day equivalent of ‘let them eat cake.’”
Rep. Guy Reschenthaler, R-Pa., lambasted Harris for passing out the cookies, saying that while she was doing that the cartel was making millions.
Source: Twitter mocks Kamala Harris for passing out cookies of her faceless head to reporters | Fox News
Vice President Kamala Harris addressed Guatemalan migrants at a Monday news conference, saying: “Do not come.”
- Kamala Harris told Guatemalans on Monday that they should not try to cross the US border.
- “You will be turned back,” Harris told a news conference in Guatemala City, in her first overseas trip.
- Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said this was “disappointing to see.”
Source: AOC Slams Kamala Harris for Telling Guatemalan Migrants ‘Do Not Come’
Results from 14 Westmoreland County primaries were amended Monday to include additional winners after a weekend review of write-in votes identified discrepancies in how final totals were reported.
“Out of an abundance of caution, we wanted to review them,” said Election Bureau Director JoAnn Sebastiani.
Election officials said no additional votes were added to the results. A computer program that identified winners failed to include a handful of races where write-in candidates received enough votes to qualify for the November election.
Sebastiani said the glitch involved races where vacancies outnumbered candidates on the ballot.
Source: Computer glitch excludes Westmoreland write-in winners; other results certified | TribLIVE.com
Vice President Kamala Harris was greeted Monday by protesters in Guatemala telling her “Trump won” and “go home” — as the country’s president blamed President Biden for this year’s migrant crisis.
The rally was visible to Harris’ motorcade as she arrived to meet with Guatemala President Alejandro Giammattei one day after he blamed the US for luring his constituents north.
“Kamala, Trump won,” read a large sign near the Central American country’s presidential palace.
“Kamala, Mind Your Own Business,” another sign said, according to a pool report.
Images posted to Twitter show other signs, including one that tells Biden’s migration czar: “Kamala, Go Home.”
Another large sign set up by activists features a doctored photo of a pregnant Harris.
The poster read, “Guatemala is pro-life #momalahelpme.” Harris does not have biological children.
Source: Guatemala protesters tell Kamala Harris ‘Trump won’
The vice president was about 30 minutes into her flight to Guatemala City when the plane was forced to return to Maryland.
- Vice President Kamala Harris’ flight was grounded 30 minutes after takeoff
- Harris was headed to Guatemala City to discuss the causes of migration
- Harris’ flight was delayed two hours
Source: Technical issue turns Kamala Harris’ plane around just after takeoff for Guatemala
The Department of Justice said it will not seek information identifying the readers of a USA TODAY story from earlier this year, according to a Friday court filing, but only after the FBI captured the alleged criminal it was seeking through other means.
Gannett, which publishes USA TODAY, filed a motion to quash the subpoena, initially issued in April, last week. It was resisting an effort by the FBI to obtain the IP addresses of people who read a story about a shooting of two FBI agents on Feb. 2. The subpoena sought only information on who read the story during a 30-minute time period later that night.“A government demand for records that would identify specific individuals who read specific expressive materials … invades the First Amendment rights of both publisher and reader, and must be quashed accordingly,” Gannett’s lawyers wrote in a May 28 filing.
USA TODAY Publisher Maribel Perez Wadsworth also slammed the FBI for the effort.
Source: Biden DOJ backtracks on subpoena for USA TODAY readers’ IP addresses | Fox News
LONDON (AP) — The Group of Seven wealthy democracies agreed Saturday to support a global minimum corporate tax rate of at least 15% in order to deter multinational companies from avoiding taxes by stashing profits in low-rate countries.
G-7 finance ministers meeting in London also endorsed proposals to make the world’s biggest companies — including U.S. based tech giants — pay tax in countries where they have lots of sales but no physical headquarters.
Britain’s Treasury chief Rishi Sunak, the meeting’s host, said the deal would “reform the global tax system to make it fit for the global digital age and crucially to make sure that it’s fair, so that the right companies pay the right tax in the right places.”
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who attended the London meetings, said the agreement “provides tremendous momentum” towards reaching a global deal that “would end the race-to-the-bottom in corporate taxation, and ensure fairness for the middle class and working people in the U.S. and around the world.”
The meeting of finance ministers came ahead of an annual summit of G-7 leaders scheduled for June 11-13 in Carbis Bay, Cornwall. The U.K. is hosting both sets of meetings because it holds the group’s rotating presidency.
Source: G-7 Officials Agree To Make Big Tech Pay Fair Taxes : NPR
Jill Biden has become the first sitting first lady in modern US history to reach her 70th birthday.
The Bidens celebrated the event on Thursday by going to their beach house in Rehoboth, Delaware, which they bought in 2017. It’s their first visit to the house since Joe Biden became president.
The first lady was born on 3 June 1951, around eight and a half years after Joe Biden, 78, was born on 20 November 1942. They married in 1977.
How old were other first ladies?
Jill Biden was the oldest first lady to enter the office in January at 69 years old. Bess Truman, Nancy Reagan and Barbara Bush were all 67 as their husbands left the office. Anna Harrison, wife of William Henry Harrison, was the second oldest first lady to enter the office at 65, only lasting a month between March and April 1841 before her husband passed away. Mr Harrison became the first president to die in office and remains the most short-lived president, dying on the 32nd day of his tenure.
Source: Jill Biden becomes oldest first lady in US history | The Independent
Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez argued Thursday that authorities should stop building prisons and instead focus on underlying public health issues as New York City seeks to address a recent surge in violent crime.
New York Democrats, including Ocasio-Cortez, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Rep. Jamaal Bowman, called on Congress to earmark $400,000 toward a program called “Stand Up To Violence,” which seeks to address gun violence through counseling and community outreach. Ocasio-Cortez said it was “not acceptable” to use jails as “garbage bins.””
If we want to reduce violent crime, if we want to reduce the number of people in our jails, the answer is to stop building more of them,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “The answer is to make sure that we actually build more hospitals, we pay organizers, we get people mental health care and overall health care, employment, etc. It’s to support communities, not throw them away.”
Source: AOC says answer to violent crime is to stop building more jails | Fox News
The intense political backlash over the academic approach of examining U.S. institutions through the lens of race is shaping up to be a major cultural battle ahead of next year’s midterm elections.
Last month, Republican lawmakers decried critical race theory, an academic approach that examines how race and racism function in American institutions.
“Folks, we’re in a cultural warfare today,” Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., said at a news conference alongside six other members of the all-Republican House Freedom Caucus. “Critical race theory asserts that people with white skin are inherently racist, not because of their actions, words or what they actually believe in their heart — but by virtue of the color of their skin.”
Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., added: “Democrats want to teach our children to hate each other.”
Republicans, who are fighting the teaching of critical race theory in schools, contend it divides Americans. Democrats and their allies maintain that progress is unlikely without examining the root causes of disparity in the country. The issue is shaping up to be a major cultural battle ahead of next year’s midterm elections.
Academics, particularly legal scholars, have studied critical race theory for decades. But its main entry into the partisan fray came in 2020, when former President Donald Trump signed an executive order banning federal contractors from conducting certain racial sensitivity trainings. It was challenged in court, and President Biden rescinded the order the day he took office.
Source: The Brewing Political Battle Over Critical Race Theory : NPR
White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci had little patience for claims his messages in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic were being restricted by the Trump administration, a tranche of newly public emails shows.
The more than 3,200 pages of emails, obtained by BuzzFeed News and covering a period between January and June 2020, are dotted with messages to Fauci from public health experts and ordinary Americans alike asking variations of the same question: “Have you been muzzled?”
That’s the subject line of a March 1, 2020, email to Fauci from a man named Thomas Murray, who describes himself as a “nuclear/aerospace engineer who subsequently obtained an MPH [Master of Public Health degree] at the University of Washington.”
“The news media is reporting that the White House has muzzled you. Is that true?” asked Murray, who further asked Fauci to “let me know if I should stay silent or become noisy.”
As COVID-19 started becoming a threat last year, Dr. Anthony Fauci started receiving emails from people asking if he was being censored by the Trump administration. He denied the assertions.
Source: Fauci denied being ‘muzzled’ by Trump early in pandemic, emails show
By The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The Biden administration on Tuesday suspended oil and gas leases in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, reversing a drilling program approved by the Trump administration and reviving a political fight over a remote region that is home to polar bears and other wildlife — and a rich reserve of oil.
The Interior Department order follows a temporary moratorium on oil and gas lease activities imposed by President Joe Biden on his first day in office. Biden’s Jan. 20 executive order suggested a new environmental review was needed to address possible legal flaws in a drilling program approved by the Trump administration under a 2017 law enacted by Congress.
After conducting a required review, Interior said it “identified defects in the underlying record of decision supporting the leases, including the lack of analysis of a reasonable range of alternatives” required under the National Environmental Policy Act, a bedrock environmental law.
The remote, 19.6 million-acre refuge is home to polar bears, caribou, snowy owls and other wildlife, including migrating birds from six continents. Republicans and the oil industry have long been trying to open up the oil-rich refuge, which is considered sacred by the Indigenous Gwich’in, for drilling. Democrats, environmental groups and some Alaska Native tribes have been trying to block it.
Source: Biden suspends oil-drilling leases in Alaska’s Arctic refuge
Pennsylvania’s democratic lieutenant governor John Fetterman is outraged that he has to follow the rules and not push his agenda.
Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor lashed out in anger Tuesday after his attempt to violate state law ended up with the LGBT flag he draped over a balcony being taken down.
Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, who is also a Democratic candidate for the 2022 race for the U.S. Senate, has a history of putting up flags even though a 2018 law banned flying any banners on state property unless those have been approved by Pennsylvania lawmakers.
Source: Lt Governor Furious After His Attempt to Break Law by Flying LGBT Flag at Capitol Is Thwarted
(CNN)In the weeks since the President asked her to take charge of immigration from Central America, Vice President Kamala Harris and her staff have sought to make one thing clear: She does not manage the southern border.
Two White House officials familiar with the dynamic said Harris and her aides have emphasized internally that they want to focus on conditions in Central America that push migrants to the US southern border, as President Joe Biden tasked her to do. A record number of unaccompanied children crossed into the US this spring, and the throngs of desperate minors present a heart-rending problem as well as a political one.Biden announced Harris’ new assignment on March 24 ahead of an immigration meeting in the White House State Dining Room, telling reporters that he had asked the vice president “because she’s the most qualified person to do it, to lead our efforts with Mexico and the Northern Triangle, and the countries that can help, need help in stemming the movement of so many folks, stemming the migration to our southern border.”After the announcement, Harris’ aides appeared to “panic,” according to one of the officials, out of concern that her assignment was being mischaracterized and could be politically damaging if she were linked to the border, which at the time was facing a growing number of arrivals. But another White House official pushed back on the sentiment, saying the vice president’s team wasn’t panicked.
Source: Kamala Harris’ team tries to distance her from fraught situation at the border – CNNPolitics
