James.galbraith

Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance accused Vice President Kamala Harris of causing egg prices to spike to $4 per dozen—despite making his accusation in front of a sign advertising eggs for as low as $2.99 per dozen.

“Eggs, when Kamala Harris took office, were short of a $1.50 a dozen. Now a dozen eggs will cost you around $4 thanks to Kamala Harris’ inflationary policies,” Vance claimed during a media availability at a Pennsylvania supermarket on Saturday.

Just over Vance’s right shoulder it can clearly be seen that eggs were available at the supermarket for $2.99.

The Trump campaign posted the video of Vance’s specious claim on its official “War Room” X account, amplifying the allegation to the account’s 2.1 million followers.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, egg prices are down from the spike in prices that occurred in January 2023, when the average cost for a dozen eggs was $4.82. The current average, as of August, is $3.20.

The rise in egg prices is not connected to policies from the Biden-Harris administration, either.

In 2022, there was an outbreak of avian influenza. The outbreak, which was the largest in U.S. history, resulted in the deaths of at least 52.7 million animals. That led to a shortage of chickens to produce eggs, and when the supply was reduced, the price went up.

The virus had a resurgence in November 2023, which has caused current price increases. The animal death toll is now over 100 million.

Overall inflation is down. According to data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Sept. 11, the Consumer Price Index—which measures price changes for commonly purchased goods—increased 2.5% in August (year over year), the lowest annual increase since February 2021.

The positive economic news comes in the wake of the Inflation Reduction Act, which was signed into law by President Joe Biden in August 2022. The legislation faced unified Republican opposition in Congress and advanced with only Democratic votes. Harris cast the deciding vote in the Senate that allowed the legislation to eventually become law.

The law locked in price reductions for many medicines covered by Medicare and allowed the agency to negotiate on drug prices for the first time ever, with the intent to cut costs for consumers in response to inflation.

The Inflation Reduction Act also sought to direct federal investment in job creation by providing tax credits for domestic green jobs. According to an analysis by the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the law is projected to create 9 million jobs over the next decade.

Trump and Republicans have called for the law to either be repealed or severely curtailed, which could cause a spike in drug prices and cut back on job creation—which is vital to economic growth.

We need your help if we’re going to defeat Trump, Vance, Project 2025, and Republicans up and down the ballot. Click here to volunteer to write letters so we can increase voter turnout.

By Darrell Ehrlick for Daily Montanan

When Montanans see an advertisement or hear U.S. Senate candidate and political newcomer Tim Sheehy speak, he’ll likely talk about his experiences as a businessman and pilot who launched an aerial firefighting company in Bozeman. It’s a central part of the campaign and the candidate’s identity.

The Republican who is challenging incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Tester has built that backstory: First he was a U.S. Navy SEAL, combat wounded, and then a businessman who even wrote a book on aerial firefighting. That book was widely seen as a prelude or introduction of Sheehy as a public figure.

The book, “Mudslingers: A True Story of Aerial Firefighting,” was also subtitled, “An American Origins Story.” It’s part history, part travelogue and part autobiography, published in 2023 by Permuted Press and distributed by publishing giant Simon and Schuster.

But, the book which has helped solidify his place as a candidate and authority on aerial firefighting seems to have at least four different passages that were plagiarized—sourced, but not credited in the book, according to an investigation by the Daily Montanan.

The Daily Montanan put Sheehy’s book through commercially available software that scans texts against a massive store of other published and online sources to compare passages. The software is commonly used by publishers, academic institutions and researchers to check for originality, possible copyright or intellectual property violations, or to find the origins of a particular fact or statement.

The Daily Montanan reached out to the Sheehy campaign for further explanation, but heard nothing back from it.

The Daily Montanan also reached out to Permuted Press, the book’s publisher, with a list of questions including some pertaining to the vetting, writing and editing process, but it did not respond either. Though Permuted Press published the work, according to the book’s introductory pages, Sheehy holds the copyright.

It is not the first time the details of Sheehy’s life before politics have come under scrutiny for their truthfulness. Sheehy’s past, including a gunshot wound that may have been sustained in Glacier National Park, claims of parachute training over Glacier, and his business dealings including his aerial firefighting company, Bridger Aerospace, have come under fire. It’s also not the first time that Sheehy has remained silent when confronted with difficult questions. Sheehy has not openly commented or explained a recording of him in which he repeated on different occasions disparaging comments about Native Americans drinking, even after being called upon by Montana’s tribal leaders to disavow, apologize or explain the comments.

Even the book itself has come under scrutiny: It promises that all of the proceeds from telling the story of aerial firefighters will go back to supporting them. However, as other media outlets have reported, including Business Insider, it appears that the proceeds of the book go back to an aerial firefighting lobbying company which Sheehy himself founded, which in turn, works on behalf of his own company, raising questions about whether the money is really being funneled right back to him.

Problems inside the book

According to Sheehy’s own writing, he penned “Mudslingers” in his spare time and then had it published. He described it in the prologue as a way to collect and tell the story of American aerial firefighting, combining the history and practice of aerial firefighting with his own experience as an aerial firefighter.

The book runs 309-pages long and does include a bibliography and source list. One of the four problematic passages discovered by the Daily Montanan was included generally in the list; the other three were not.

One of the things that is different about “Mudslingers” is that it contains no footnotes, no endnotes and no citations, making it difficult to tell how sources listed in the back of the book are worked into the books’ pages. Another challenge is that the book is part autobiography, part history, blurring the lines of Sheehy’s life with those of the others he’s profiling.

For example, the first direct quotation of any length is found on page 25, and is made by John Gould, a chief executive of an air tanker company that flies DC-10s. However, it is unclear by the citation or the source list whether the interview was conducted by Sheehy himself as a researcher, or taken from some other work. The same thing happens about 10 pages later at the next quotation with a man named Jason Robinson.

But, those are not the passages of greater concern that raise questions of plagiarism.

Plagiarism usually occurs when a source takes another’s work and presents it as his own without attribution or citation. Correct attribution and citation usually involves endnotes, footnotes, or quotations that let readers know where the material is coming from, and crediting the original authors for their first-hand work.

The Daily Montanan found four instances where Sheehy’s work is nearly verbatim, if not identical, to an older known source, but is presented as his original work. The Daily Montanan also checked that there was not quotation marks or other annotation that would suggest Sheehy was trying to communicate to readers sourced material.

The first questionable passage in “Mudslingers,” occurs on page 33 where Sheehy apparently needs a definition of smokejumper and inserts a definition found on Wikipedia. It is the shortest in length of the four examples found by the Daily Montanan.

Comparing the passages, Sheehy uses the same 26 words in the same order as the Wikipedia definition, with only one exception, to add the word “often” in the middle of it. The definition is not used with quotation marks or citation. Wikipedia is not cited as a source or in the bibliography.

The second problematic passage appears to be taken from “Wildfire Today,” which is a website showcasing news about wildland fire.

In that portion of the book, Sheehy describes a lawsuit that centers on the environmental impacts of dropping fire-fighting foam and the possible health effects of the chemicals. Four paragraphs, or a large chunk of page 208 in the book, contains large portions of three entire paragraphs from the website that are nearly identical, including three paragraphs of continuous text that don’t appear with citation or attribution. It also appears that Sheehy, who is listed as the sole author of the book, may have added a date or inserted a clause to help orient the reader.

For example, at the beginning of the passage from “Wildfire Today,” the website doesn’t list a date for the lawsuit centering on the firefighting foam. But in the text of Sheehy’s book, he adds, “In the fall of 2022.” Later on in the paragraph, he deleted the verb “has” in an apparent move to coordinate the verb tense for his book. Otherwise, the next 59 words are identical, in identical order. Large blocks of the next three paragraphs show similar results.

The next portion the Daily Montanan examined came from “The Backseat Pilot,” an aviation website that offers resources and education to pilots. Four paragraphs are nearly identical, in identical order. It appears that Sheehy only edited a portion of it at the end to condense some of the technical information he was presenting about how the thrust of propeller-driven engines worked.

“The Backseat Pilot” is the only one of the four passages in “Mudslingers” that is listed in the sources, but within in the text, it is not cited or presented as a quotation.

The possibly plagiarized passage contained on page 237, is four paragraphs and consists of six sentences. The first 75 words are an exact match—same words, same order—as the “Backseat Pilot,” and even after that, it appears that Sheehy may have taken parts of the next two sentences.

The final passage the Daily Montanan looked at was a portion of a paragraph that describes a support operation for the Afghan Air Force, found on page 289, and seemingly taken from a 2022 article from the San Marino Tribune.

Based on this passage, which doesn’t appear with citation, quotation or in the bibliography, “Mudslingers” uses the one-sentence paragraph and changes the position of the verb and inserts a pronoun, but otherwise 31 out of 40 words match. In this particular case, Sheehy appears to have changed the order of the words at the beginning of the sentence which were almost identical to the original, just in a slightly different order.

Problems outside the book

Even before Sheehy’s book was published in December 2023, it had already drawn scrutiny. An Aug. 10, 2023, story by Bryan Metzger of Business Insider summarized the challenge in the headline of his story: “GOP Senate candidate plans to steer book sale money to a group that lobbies for his industry, teeing up potential conflict of interest.”

It details that Sheehy set up a lobbying and industry group in Washington,D.C., United Aerial Firefighters, where the proceeds of the book sales have gone. The Daily Montanan has asked about those proceeds, but has not received a response from the publisher. The lobbyist for the UAF is the same one used by Sheehy’s company, according to the Business Insider article.

The Business Insider article summarizes just a few of the conflicts-of-interest that Sheehy’s campaign has had to face, including self-dealing: “If Sheehy’s campaign chooses to promote the book when it’s released, that would mean using campaign resources to raise money for a lobbying organization that benefits Sheehy’s bottom line.”

The problems with plagiarism

Paul Pope, associate professor of political science at Montana State University-Billings, seems perfectly positioned for a case just like this. Pope is an expert in political science, and especially the use of words and narratives in political campaigns. Some of his training and work involves forensic analysis of candidates’ words and speeches. He teaches full-time so is also familiar with the academic implications of plagiarism, as well as being immersed in the field of politics in Montana.

Previously, Pope has published on the role of narratives and how they changed throughout the reporting and re-telling of the Jan. 6 insurrection.

He said that with most any information being as easy as a click away on the internet, plus the ease of technology which allows students to copy and paste something into a document, plagiarism, citation, and attribution have become even more essential in classrooms and in the world to help clearly define the boundaries of one’s own work.

“It’s ridiculously easy. Technology has made plagiarism so possible,” Pope said.

He said that in his classes, any sentence that is more than 50% sourced from someone else needs citation, “almost universally,” noting that his approach is one that is commonly shared by other professors and academic institutions, not just the political science department at MSU-B.

“If he did what he’s accused of doing here at a university, he’d fail,” Pope said, referring to Sheehy.

He said the academic penalties at colleges and universities can vary, but the penalties for even plagiarizing a paper could lead to getting a zero on the paper, failing the course or even being kicked out of the college. He said as more and more work is scrutinized for plagiarism, some universities and colleges are even rescinding degrees based on plagiarism.

It’s not the first time even recently that a U.S. Senate candidate in Montana has been embroiled in a plagiarism scandal. Former U.S. Sen. John Walsh, a Democrat, appointed by former Gov. Steve Bullock, who served the remainder of former Sen. Max Baucus’ term after Baucus was appointed as U.S. Ambassador to China, had to drop a reelection bid after opposition research by Republicans revealed that Walsh had plagiarized parts of his master’s thesis at the Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, while serving in the military. The War College later rescinded Walsh’s advanced degree.

Pope said most universities and colleges have seen an uptick in the cases of plagiarism because the software detection has become so sophisticated. But, those same institutions, including most in Montana, have adopted academic integrity training and policies, which focus on how to avoid plagiarism as part of their code of conduct or ethics, meaning that students can be dismissed. Moreover, he said even recently at MSU-B, the academic offices have begun to coordinate information to help alert professors and instructors of students who have been found to plagiarize.

“It’s the high performing students who tend to do it,” he said, which can be counterintuitive. “It’s usually someone who is stretched too thin and they’re overloaded.”

Pope also said that there’s different things to look for in plagiarism cases. For example, sometimes, it may be clear that the student or the author just forgot or was careless. Other times, when the word order is slightly changed or verb tenses are altered to fit more smoothly into a paper or presentation, then it’s often a sign of intentional manipulation.

In Sheehy’s “Mudslingers” case, it seems clear to Pope.

“One section? Maybe,” Pope said. “Four? That’s a pattern.”

He said that regardless of the number of words, paragraphs or passages, the reason for students as well as professionals is often the same.

“They think they’ll get away with it,” Pope said. “But plagiarism is lying. It’s just an untrustworthy behavior. And, we generally don’t trust liars.”

However, what the plagiarism might mean to Sheehy’s chances at a seat in the United States Senate, remains something harder to predict.

The most recent polling data shows that Sheehy, the Republican, has taken a larger lead over the incumbent Democrat Tester. One poll had Tester outside the margin-of-error, showing him trailing by 6 percentage points. The Cook Political report recently shifted the race from a toss-up to “leans Republican.”

However, the most recent polling data also was conducted before a torrent of decidedly unfavorable news about Sheehy, including two recordings which were first reported by the Char-Koosta News about him describing Crow Native Americans as “drunk,” something which Montana’s tribal communities have excoriated, and demanded an apology for. So far, Sheehy has remained silent on the issue.

Pope said that because of the deeply divided nature and extreme partisanship that has been present in politics during this cycle, more negative news about Sheehy may not be game-changer, even though it may have been a death sentence to other candidates not so long ago.

Pope said it’s counterintuitive, but the more divided and acrimonious the political climate, the more each side will tend to ignore unfavorable or unflattering news about their favored candidate.

Tribalism, a commonly used phrase in politics, may be at play here, Pope said. That is often summarized as “everyone on the other side is a traitor.”

He also said that Sheehy has something else in his favor: Recent polling shows that among Sheehy’s strongest bloc of support are those who have lesser education, and may not have a college degree. Pope said that because of the demographics, that bloc doesn’t tend to read as many books, so it may discount plagiarism as an academic technicality, or not care about Sheehy’s skill as an author.

However, Pope also said news of plagiarism could still wind up hurting Sheehy because it fits with a narrative that has been developed by news reporting, including of not telling the truth about a gun incident in Glacier Park, or another training which Sheehy talked about but has later been debunked.

“Plagiarism is no different than lying to the public. It’s the same thing,” Pope said. “It’s a pattern of dishonesty.”

He also said that the Sheehy campaign’s apparent strategy of remaining quiet in the face of some of the controversies, including questions about plagiarism, is also part of a political calculus.

“Don’t give it any attention or any oxygen,” Pope said. “The less they talk about it, the less attention it draws. They’re hoping people forget about it because once he starts speaking, he’s on the defensive. It requires great political discipline. Not too many politicians can do it. They get roped into it.”

The unknown variable, Pope said, is always timing.

“It could be a blip,” he said, “Or it could destroy him.”

Donald Trump plans on addressing the disastrous scandal engulfing North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson “in passing," as he campaigns in the Tar Heel state this weekend. The New York Times reports that, while the Trump campaign is still hoping Robinson will withdraw from the race, aides believe Trump “will deliver a version of a comment he has made about countless supporters or former aides: that he hardly knows the guy." 

Quite the stretch for Trump, who told a rally in North Carolina back in March that Robinson was "Martin Luther King on steroids," and "better than Martin Luther King," and “Martin Luther King times two.”

The explosive report detailing Robinson's morally hypocritical, bigoted, and unsavory comments on a porn forum between 2008-2012 came out on Thursday. It was bad, and that’s saying something about someone who has publicly lamented women getting the right to vote and calling the LGBTQ+ community “filth.” It included Robinson identifying himself as a “Black Nazi,” as well as disparaging and offensive statements about the late civil rights leader who Trump so glowingly compared him to. 

Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign released an ad highlighting Trump’s “passing” relationship with Robinson.

The Harris’ campaign social media account added more reminders for people of what relationships of acquaintance seem to mean to Trump.

Trump isn’t alone, of course. The MAGA Republican world is filled with officials who have suddenly developed amnesia around their relationship to Robinson. North Carolina Rep. Virginia Foxx is one such absent-minded politician. Punchbowl News reports Foxx is claiming she “hasn’t really followed him closely.” That’s peculiar—she’s been in the same state doing campaign events with the man since 2020.

Robinson’s perfect cocktail of unabashed misogyny and bigotry helped propel him into right-wing political celebrity status. And that means there are so many more Republicans who will now have to answer for the glowing things they’ve said about the self-proclaimed “perv.”

There’s GOP Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, who lauded Robinson’s testimony on election integrity as “so compelling."

There’s loser Gov. Ron DeSantis (and seemingly the entire Gaston Country, North Carolina Republican Party).

Democratic candidate for North Carolina Attorney General Rep. Jeff Jackson wondered what his Republican opponent Rep. Dan Bishop would say about his various glowing remarks when it came to Robinson. Jackson released a video showing Bishop falling over himself to praise Robinson.

North Carolina State Rep. Erin Paré really thought Robinson was the bees knees.

Of course, there are always the fellow nightmare officials such as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who seems to have made a career of sidling up to all kinds of dreck.

Currently, Robinson is refusing to drop out of the race. Unless that changes, it seems his real come to Jesus moment will arrive at the ballot box.

You can help turn out the vote for the election by simply chatting to your neighbors. This is a cool one! Click here to sign up for Daily Kos/Indivisible’s Neighbor2Neighbor get-out-the-vote program.

The Department of Justice has filed an antitrust lawsuit against Visa, alleging that the financial services firm has an illegal monopoly over debit network markets and has attempted to unlawfully crush competitors, including fintech companies like PayPal and Square. From a report: The lawsuit follows a multiyear investigation of Visa which the company disclosed in 2021. "We allege that Visa has unlawfully amassed the power to extract fees that far exceed what it could charge in a competitive market," Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement. "Merchants and banks pass along those costs to consumers, either by raising prices or reducing quality or service. As a result, Visa's unlawful conduct affects not just the price of one thing -- but the price of nearly everything." Visa makes more than $7 billion a year in payment processing fees alone, and more than 60 percent of debit transactions in the United States run on Visa's network, the complaint claims. The government alleges that Visa's market dominance is partly due to the "web of exclusionary agreements" it imposes on businesses and banks. Visa has also attempted to "smother" competitors -- including smaller debit networks and newer fintech companies -- the complaint alleges. Visa executives allegedly feel particularly threatened by Apple, which the company has described as an "existential threat," the DOJ claims.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In 2022 about 346,000 electric cars were reportedly sold in California. But the same year its greenhouse gas emissions dropped a whopping 9.3 million metric tons — the amount produced by 2.2 million gas-powered cars — lowering emissions 2.4% from the year before. "The biggest drop came from transportation, due largely to the increased use of renewable fuels," according to the state's Air Resources Board, touting a newly-released report. (And electricity sector emissions also fell by 2.6 million metric tons, or 4.1%, "even as electricity usage rose," according to The Hill — "a dichotomy that the regulators attributed to an increase in solar and wind power generation.") So despite a growing economy, "the latest data underscores a continued trend of steady emissions decline..." according to a statement from the Board. "Between 2000 to 2022, emissions fell by 20% while California's gross domestic product increased by 78%, pointing to the effectiveness of the state's climate change and air quality programs." And the amount of carbon dioxide equivalent emitted per unit of economic output ("carbon intensity") has also dropped 55% in the last 20 years: [In 2022] the electricity sector had its lowest carbon intensity since 2000. Wind and solar now represent 30% of generation and in-state solar increased by 15% from 2021, driven by requirements under the state's Cap-and-Trade Program and Renewables Portfolio Standard. Furthermore, California increased its battery storage by 757% from 2019 through 2023, bolstering its renewable energy efforts. The storage capacity is enough to power 6.6 million homes for up to four hours. Industrial emissions declined by 2%, also falling to the lowest level in 22 years. While refinery emissions remained essentially flat, emissions from oil and gas extraction declined, as did emissions from other fuel use, cement manufacturing, and cogeneration facilities. [The Hill says 2022's industrial emissions were 21.7% below year-2000 levels, according to the report.] Livestock emissions, which are responsible for 70% of agriculture's greenhouse gas emissions, peaked in 2012 and once again saw reductions in 2022. The decrease is driven by the use of methane digesters funded by the California Climate Investments and incentivized by the Low Carbon Fuel Standard, which capture emissions at the source and convert them to clean fuel. Landfill methane emissions also continued to decline in 2022. This decline can be attributed in part to the state's efforts to reduce disposal of organic waste, as well as the California Landfill Methane Regulation, which requires landfill operators to monitor and capture emissions escaping from their facilities. One local news site calls the drop in emissions "shocking," but adds that "the trend is expected to continue. In the second quarter of 2024, 118,181 zero-emission vehicles were purchased in the state, good for about one-quarter of all new car sales." California governor Gavin Newsom said his state "is proving that climate action goes hand-in-hand with economic growth. We've slashed carbon pollution by a whopping 20% since the turn of the century all while building the world's fifth largest economy. Cleaner air, more good jobs — that's the California way."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Friday America's Federal Trade Commission brought action against three companies for "anticompetitive and unfair" practices "that have artificially inflated the list price of insulin." For years, many of the millions of Americans who need insulin to survive "have been forced to pay exorbitant prices for a product that's inexpensive to make," writes NPR. "Now, the federal government is targeting one part of the system behind high insulin prices." While out-of-pocket costs have gone down for many people to $35 a month, questions remain on how the drug became so expensive in the first place. In a new lawsuit filed Friday, the Federal Trade Commission said it's going after one link in the chain: pharmacy benefit managers. The FTC brought action against the top pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) — CVS Health's Caremark Rx, Cigna's Express Scripts, and United Health Group's OptumRx — saying the companies created a "perverse drug rebate system" that artificially inflates the cost of insulin. If the suit is successful, it could further drive down costs for patients at the pharmacy counter. PBMs are essentially the middlemen between drug manufacturers and insurance providers. Their job is to reduce drug prices. But the process is complex and opaque, and critics say they're actually driving prices up for patients. The FTC said a big issue is that PBMs' revenue is tied to rebates and fees — which are based on a percentage of a drug's list price. Essentially, in the case of insulin, when the drug costed more, it generated higher rebates and fees for PBMs. "Even when lower list price insulins became available that could have been more affordable for vulnerable patients, the PBMs systemically excluded them in favor of high list price, highly rebated insulin products," the FTC said in a press release on Friday. The three PBMs named in the FTC lawsuit make up about 80% of the market. According to the suit, the PBMs collected billions of dollars in rebates and fees while insulin became increasingly unaffordable. Over the last two decades, the cost of the lifesaving drug shot up 600% — forcing many Americans with diabetes to ration their medication and jeopardize their health. In 2019, one 1 of 4 insulin patients was unable to afford their medication, according to the FTC. Some people have died. The FTC's statement says the companies "have abused their economic power by rigging pharmaceutical supply chain competition in their favor, forcing patients to pay more for life-saving medication... While PBM respondents collected billions in rebates and associated fees according to the complaint, by 2019 one out of every four insulin patients was unable to afford their medication..." "[A]ll drug manufacturers should be on notice that their participation in the type of conduct challenged here raises serious concerns, and that the Bureau of Competition may recommend suing drug manufacturers in any future enforcement actions."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Mark Robinson, the GOP nominee for governor in North Carolina endorsed by former President Donald Trump, was already known to be an extreme right-wing candidate who appeared to be alienating voters in a key battleground state. New revelations about his inflammatory comments on a porn site and his sexual exploits have now shaken even some of his Republican colleagues. 

CNN reported on Thursday that Robinson regularly posted on a porn website’s message board between 2008 and 2012. In those posts, he identified himself as a “black NAZI!”, supported a revival of slavery, described himself as a “perv” for enjoying transgender porn, and admitted to “peeping” on women in public showers as a teenager. The posts were found on the site “Nude Africa.”

Despite now supporting legislation that would ban abortion at around six weeks of pregnancy, he also said on the forum that he would not care if a celebrity had an abortion, though he would “wanna see the sex tape!” And though he would become North Carolina’s first Black governor if elected, he referred to Martin Luther King Jr. as a “commie bastard.”

Robinson’s email has also been connected to an account on Ashley Madison, an online dating website for people seeking to have an affair.

Robinson, North Carolina’s current lieutenant governor, denied writing the posts, and his campaign said he has not made an Ashley Madison account.

Nevertheless, several North Carolina Republicans, including some running in competitive races this fall, subsequently pressured him to drop out of the contest to succeed incumbent Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, who is term-limited. He has opted to stay in the race, in which he is running behind his Democratic rival, North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein, by between 5 and 14 percentage points in polls conducted over the last month.

In doing so, Robinson might drag down not just down-ballot Republicans in a closely divided purple state, but also potentially Trump. 

“We have few examples of reverse coattails where a down-ballot candidate hurts the top of the ticket,” Whit Ayres, a GOP pollster, told Vox. “But if anyone could do it, it’s this character.”

Robinson is extreme even for MAGA

The current scandals don’t mark the first time Robinson has been mired in controversy. 

He has hurled hateful remarks at everyone from Michelle Obama to the survivors of the Parkland school shooting. He’s called the LGBTQ community “filth.” He threatened to use his AR-15 against the government if it “gets too big for its britches,” and he wants to outlaw all abortions as well as return to a time when women couldn’t vote. He’s also ridiculed the Me Too movement, women generally, and climate change.

It seems Robinson is willing to entertain all manner of conspiracy theories, too. He’s a Holocaust denier and has a history of antisemitic remarks. He’s suggested that the 1969 moon landing might have been fake, that 9/11 was an “inside job,” that the music industry is run by Satan, and that billionaire Democratic donor George Soros orchestrated the Boko Haram kidnappings of school girls in 2014.

In spite of all of this, Robinson was not only able to win his party’s nomination for the state’s most powerful position, but he did so by a margin of more than 45 percent over his rivals. The other Republican candidates, trial lawyer Bill Graham and state treasurer Dale Folwell, raised concerns about Robinson’s electability, but ultimately neither could compete with his name recognition nor his MAGA bona fides in a state that twice voted for Trump.

Will Robinson hurt the GOP’s chances this fall in North Carolina?

Robinson might function as an ideal foil for Democrats — not just in the governor’s race, but also in the presidential and down-ballot races. Robinson might struggle to capture the more than 35 percent of GOP voters who opposed him in a contentious primary. Republican leaders certainly seem concerned.

“We knew that [he was extreme], but I still think the revelations over the last 24 hours are stunning,” former Rep. David Price (D-NC) told Vox. “I believe the Republican leaders know that as well. A corner has been turned in terms of Robinson being able to count on even the most faithful Republican supporters.” 

Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC) told the Hill that the reports about Robinson are “not good.” And Rep. Richard Hudson (R-NC), chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said they were “very concerning.” 

“My hope is that [the] lieutenant governor can reassure the people of North Carolina that the allegations aren’t true,” he said. “He said they’re not true. I think he needs to have the opportunity to explain to the people in North Carolina exactly how these allegations aren’t true.”

The fact that even Republicans are distancing themselves from Robinson suggests that the tide may turn further in Democrats’ favor in North Carolina. 

That doesn’t mean, however, that Robinson will deliver Democrats a major victory. Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are practically tied in the state, according to FiveThirtyEight’s polling average. And Republican candidates have won three presidential elections in North Carolina since Barack Obama surprisingly took the state in 2008 — including Trump twice. The state has stayed on the red side of purple, though it does have a tradition of split-ticket voting. That helped power Cooper’s two election wins and has added to the belief that the state may be in reach for Democrats. 

“I don’t think celebration is called for because so much more is at stake than just the governor’s race,” Price said. “We know how tight this is.”

Every day, the sun’s rays send 173,000 terawatts of energy to Earth, 10,000 times the amount used by all of humanity. Which is to say, the potential for solar energy is immense, and we’re nowhere near the limit.

That’s why solar energy is such an appealing prospect, particularly as an alternative to the fossil fuels that cause climate change. And over the past decade, solar energy technology has vastly improved in performance and plummeted in cost. 

As a result, photovoltaic panels have cropped up like dandelions across fields and rooftops at a stunning pace. Yet even the people most plugged-in to the energy industry and most optimistic about solar power continue to underestimate it. In fact, it’s a long-running joke among energy nerds that forecasters keep predicting solar will level off as it continues to rocket up to the sun.

“Solar does continue to surprise us,” said Gregory Nemet, who wrote How Solar Energy Became Cheap, in an email. “It seems like it shouldn’t at this point. It’s been roughly 30 percent growth each year for 30 years. And costs continue to fall so new users — and new uses — continue to emerge.”

In the past year, solar power has experienced Brobdingnagian growth, even by solar standards. According to a new report from Ember, an energy think tank, the world is on track to install 29 percent more solar energy capacity this year — a total of 593 gigawatts — compared to last year, which was already a record year. This is more than one-quarter of the electricity produced by every operating coal plant in the world combined. In 2020, the whole world had installed just 760 GW of solar in total. Yes, this deserves all the italics I’m using. 

That solar power installations are going up as the technology improves and prices come down isn’t too surprising, but the sustained surge is still stunning. 

“When you look at the absolute numbers that we’re on track for this year and that we installed last year, it is completely sort of mind-blowing,” said Euan Graham, lead author of the report and an electricity data analyst at Ember. 

Several factors have aligned to push solar power installations so high in recent years, like better hardware, economies of scale, and new, ripe, energy-hungry markets. Right now, solar still just provides around 5.5 percent of the world’s electricity, so there’s enormous room to expand. But solar energy still poses some technical challenges to the power grid, and the world’s ravenous appetite for electrons means that countries are looking for energy wherever they can get it. 

So if you’re concerned about climate change, it’s not enough that solar wins; greenhouse gasses must lose. 

Why’s everything so sunny for solar? 

Solar energy has a lot going for it, particularly photovoltaic panels. They’re modular and they scale up and down easily — there isn’t much difference between a panel that’s one of a dozen on a suburban rooftop and a panel that’s one of thousands in a megawatt-scale power plant spanning acres. They’re mass-produced in factories using well-established processes, namely semiconductor fabrication. That means tiny improvements in cost and performance in individual panels add up to massive advantages in aggregate. 

And for solar, gains have been anything but tiny: Solar electricity prices have dropped 89 percent since 2010 while silicon solar panels have surged in efficiency from 15 percent to more than 26 percent over the last 40 years.

Solar’s scalability means that curious developers can try it out with less upfront investment before ramping up. Most solar installations use off-the-shelf components, so when a homeowner or a utility does decide to step into the sunlight, they can start making power quickly. “That development time is absolutely minimal compared to something like building a nuclear power station, but also even just a wind farm, which can take five to seven years or so from the initial permitting to first power coming out,” Graham said. 

Even if you don’t care about climate change, solar energy has become one of the cheapest, fastest ways to sate your appetite for electrons. Texas, the biggest oil and gas producer in the country, is also the national leader in adding solar power to its grid, surpassing California.

But what happens when the sun sets?

Solar does have some drawbacks. The sun does sink below the horizon every day, and solar energy’s output varies with weather and the seasons — dipping when it’s cloudy and when the days get shorter. Banking electricity when it’s abundant to use when it’s scarce would resolve this problem, and, well, there’s good news on that front too. 

Energy storage technologies like batteries are also getting way better and cheaper. The price of batteries has tanked 97 percent since 1991. Because of better technology, falling costs, and more markets for saving power,  the US is on track to double its grid energy storage capacity compared to last year. More than 10 gigawatts of solar and storage came online in 2023 across the country and that’s likely to double this year. “Energy storage is at an earlier stage [than solar] but we are likely to see rapid expansion in that segment, especially in regions where solar and wind penetration are high already such as California and Texas,” said Steve Piper, director of energy research at S&P Global Commodity Insights, in an email. 

​Combined solar-plus-storage energy projects are already cheaper than new fossil fuel power plants in many parts of the world, and costs are poised to fall further. 

Good morning with good news: Solar plus storage or wind plus storage are NOW much cheaper than coal or gas generated electricity in most of the world.

By 2027, clean solar or wind PLUS STORAGE are cheaper than dirty fossil fuels in the entire world!https://t.co/ZtyhVOZNFV pic.twitter.com/l9pz28hYhs

— John Raymond Hanger  (@johnrhanger) September 15, 2024

Even knowing all this, energy experts keep underestimating the potential of solar. “Forecasters recognize that with regard to solar PV we are in a phase of rapid expansion and adoption,” Piper said. “In a period like this, being off about the rate of expansion by even a little bit will still result in a large forecast error.”

The details of solar energy’s expansion are even more surprising

Not every country is riding the solar power rocket to the sun just yet. Individual countries have seen peaks and dips in solar installations based on how well their economies are doing and how strong their policy incentives are, like feed-in tariffs, net metering, and tax credits. 

In the past couple of years, the global story has really been about China. Add up every solar panel installed in the US in history and you get how much China installed last year alone, almost 60 percent of all new solar installed in the world. The sheer scale of this deployment broke a lot of forecasters’ models. 

“No research shop necessarily predicted the pace at which China was going to grow their solar capacity over the last year or so,” said Michelle Davis, head of global solar at Wood Mackenzie, an energy market analysis firm. “Everyone’s been revising them upward in order to correct for the data that’s been coming out of China.” 

Photovoltaics are also a key part of China’s export strategy, and last year, China cut wholesale panel prices in half. That in turn has led to a huge surge in exports and knock-on solar power booms in other countries. Pakistan, the fifth-most populous country in the world, imported 13 gigawatts of Chinese solar modules in the first half of this year alone. That’s almost one-third of Pakistan’s total installed electricity to date. 

Davis cautioned that imports of solar panels don’t necessarily mean they’ll all be installed, but it’s definitely a sign that solar is growing and its impact may be greater there than in larger or wealthier countries. While the solar energy additions in developing countries may be smaller in absolute numbers, they’re proportionately a larger share of the grid. 

“Those developing parts of the world are growing at a more rapid rate on a smaller base,” Davis said. “The big Kahunas in the solar world are China, Europe, and the United States. Those markets are maturing, though, and they’re not growing as fast.”

There are some clouds in the sky

This can’t keep going on forever, right? Well, again, solar is still in the single digits in the global electricity supply, and it’s often the cheapest, fastest, and easiest way to generate power. That momentum isn’t going to dissipate anytime soon. In the US, the Federal Reserve’s recent interest rate cut means it will likely be even cheaper to get a loan to finance solar power, giving it another boost.  

Some challenges have also emerged. If you want to add more solar to the US power grid right now, you need to take a number and get in line. There are hardware limits to how much intermittent power you can add to the aging electricity network, and making the necessary upgrades to accommodate it costs money and takes time. Delays are getting longer: In 2015, a typical energy project waited about three years in an interconnection queue. In 2023, that wait time was almost five years. Getting the permits to build more large-scale solar is also a tedious process. Many countries are facing similar hurdles. 

In addition, the US is bolstering its domestic clean energy sector with trade barriers, including tariffs on Chinese solar panels. That may give an advantage to US producers but it raises overall costs and imposes supply chain constraints. The US is also investing $40 million to bring more of the solar energy supply chain within its borders. 

And solar power didn’t just fall out of a coconut tree; it exists in the context of a global economy that’s still 80 percent powered by coal, oil, and natural gas. Overall global energy consumption is growing, and not everyone is discerning about where they get their heat and electricity. As a result, fossil fuel demand is also rising, though it may peak before the end of the decade. To meet international climate change targets of limiting warming to less than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit this century, greenhouse gas emissions have to fall at a much faster clip and effectively zero out by 2050. 

Analysts are anticipating that solar energy will help bend that curve. According to Wood Mackenzie, total global solar capacity is going to almost quadruple in the next decade. It’s not certain whether the world will reach its climate goals, but solar will continue to spread as sure as the sun will rise. 

Though it was hard to believe that Mark Robinson could stoop any lower, the Republican nominee for governor of North Carolina found a way.

A CNN report this afternoon said that Robinson described himself as “a Black Nazi” and said in 2012, “I’d take Hitler over any of the sh*t that’s in Washington right now!” Robinson also posted about his enjoyment of transgender pornography, recounted intrusive voyeurism of women showering while a teenager, and criticized Martin Luther King Jr. He wrote that “slavery is not bad. Some people need to be slaves. I wish they would bring it (slavery) back. I would certainly buy a few.”

The comments were posted on the message board of a pornography site called Nude Africa. Robinson denies having made them and says he will not leave the race.

One sign of just how troubled Robinson’s run for governor already is was the queasy anticipation that coursed through North Carolina and national political circles much of the day in anticipation of the scoop. The Carolina Journal, a conservative publication, reported earlier in the day that CNN was preparing a damaging story and that pressure was mounting on Robinson to drop out.

The same question kept coming up as I tried to figure out what the CNN story might be: How much worse could it possibly be than what’s already known? The answer is worse, but not categorically worse. Robinson has for a long time made shockingly racist and anti-Semitic comments. He has even previously made other disparaging remarks about King, calling him an “ersatz pastor.” If the North Carolina GOP was going to draw a line on this sort of behavior, it should have been drawn years ago.

[David A. Graham: Mark Robinson is testing the bounds of GOP extremism]

Now, according to The Carolina Journal, some North Carolina Republicans have been privately pushing Robinson to withdraw. This is not because they are shocked by the new information, but because they can read the polls. Robinson trails state Attorney General Josh Stein, the Democratic nominee, by substantial margins. His reputation is so bad that the GOP is concerned he could be a drag on both Donald Trump, for whom North Carolina is an important state, and Republicans down the ballot. Today is the final day by which Robinson could withdraw. Even if he did, his name would still be on absentee ballots, which have already been printed.

Robinson said the story was a “high-tech lynching,” and insisted that the posts don’t sound like him. One problem is they sound extremely similar to what he’s said elsewhere. Robinson said in June that “Some folks need killing!” He previously denied the Holocaust and called the comic-book hero Black Panther a ploy by Jews “to pull the shekels out of your Schvartze pockets.” He called Michelle Obama a man and Beyonce’s music satanic.

Robinson has a long trail of offensive Facebook comments, and throughout the campaign, reporters have turned up more damaging information. I reported last month that despite making veterans’ issues a center of his campaign, Robinson has skipped every meeting of the state Military Affairs Commission, one of his few statutory duties as lieutenant governor. His wife’s day-care nonprofit has been subject to both state and federal investigations over its use of funds.

Nor does it stretch credulity that Robinson would have been hanging out on a porn site. Earlier this month, the North Carolina publication The Assembly reported on Robinson’s frequent patronage of porn shops in the 1990s and 2000s. Robinson denied having visited the stores, but employees and fellow customers attested to his frequent presence, and the owner of one provided a photo of himself with Robinson.

Perhaps most embarrassing for the Robinson campaign is how these old comments cut against his campaign message of highly religious social conservatism. That too, has already happened in other instances during this campaign. Robinson is a hard-liner on abortion and said he wants to outlaw it completely, although his wife obtained an abortion early in their marriage. In recently revealed 2022 comments, he said the way to empower women was to “get this under control,” waving his hands over his groin. He has tried to moderate his abortion position on the trail, but privately continues to back a full ban.

Another staple of his campaign has been attacks on transgender people, who he has warned, “If you’re a man on Friday night, and all the sudden Saturday, you feel like a woman, and you want to go in the women’s bathroom in the mall, you will be arrested, or whatever we gotta do to you.”

On Nude Africa, however, Robinson took a different view. Not only did he boast about illegally peeping on women in restrooms, but he wrote about consuming transgender porn. “I like watching tranny on girl porn! That’s f*cking hot! It takes the man out while leaving the man in!” Robinson wrote. “And yeah I’m a ‘perv’ too!”

Politico also reported today that Robinson’s email address was used on Ashley Madison, a site for people to connect for extramarital sex.

The hypocrisy—like the bigotry—is staggering, but it’s hardly new. Republicans now appear to be stuck with Robinson in the gubernatorial race. They can’t say they weren’t warned.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Pocketpair has responded to the lawsuit filed against it by Nintendo and The Pokemon Company. The studio that developed Palworld, the game at the heart of the suit, issued a statement early this morning saying it doesn't know what patents it violated. "At this moment, we are unaware of the specific patents we are accused of infringing upon, and we have not been notified of such details," the statement read. According to Nintendo's press release, the reason for the lawsuit has to do with Pocketpair allegedly infringing on multiple as yet undisclosed patents. The details of the lawsuit have not yet been made public, so we do not yet know which patents, and according to Pocketpair's statement, it doesn't know, either.

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Melania Trump’s book promotions keep getting stranger. First, she opined on the July 13 assassination attempt on her husband to sell books. Then she waxed poetic about the Fourth Amendment. Now she’s comparing her nude photo shoots to classical art.

After remaining largely out of sight during the 2024 campaign, she’s reemerged with the publication of a memoir that her team deems an “intimate portrait” of the former first lady. And it is quite that, with Trump now addressing her past nude photo shoots, which resurfaced during the 2016 campaign.

“Why do I stand proudly behind my nude modeling work?” she said in a video posted Wednesday on X. “The more pressing question is, why has the media chosen to scrutinize my celebration of the human form in a fashion photo shoot?” 

In the video, she goes on to compare herself to famous pieces of art, with an image of Michelangelo’s “David” appearing on screen.

Since leaving office, Trump’s husband has been convicted of 34 felonies related to paying off a porn star Stormy Daniels to hide his affair, which reportedly happened shortly after Melania gave birth to their son, Barron. He has also been found liable for sexual abuse against writer E. Jean Carroll. 

On their 19th wedding anniversary, he raged on social media about Carroll, with apparently no posts dedicated to his wife. And she has remained oddly elusive since her husband exited the White House in January 2021. 

A July press release describes her new memoir, “Melania,” as a “powerful and inspiring story of a woman who has carved her own path, overcome adversity and defined personal excellence.” 

That’s fine. Most people would agree that nudity done artfully and tastefully is of value and to be appreciated. Except let’s not pretend this was that kind of art. 

If women want to reclaim their agency and turn the male gaze on its head by posing nude, go for it. But it’s hypocritical to do that and help lead the political party that is policing women’s bodies, shaming women for not having children, and overturning Roe v. Wade. 

Let’s also not ignore that her husband’s MAGA-fied Republican Party has been adamantly against sexual liberation, opposing LGBTQ+ rights, positioning itself as the party of “family values,” and implementing book bans across the country. The Trump campaign’s slogan of “Make America Great Again” is an ode to what white Americans deem a rosy past of the nuclear family, white picket fence, and a smiling—and silent—housewife. The irony is rich.

It’s quite the stark comparison with the Democratic Party. Second gentleman Doug Emhoff is vocal about how much he adores his wife, Vice President Kamala Harris. Meanwhile, on the campaign trail, Gwen Walz (the wife of Harris running mate Tim Walz), Emhoff, and even Emhoff’s ex-wife have been pulling their weight, showing up for the Harris-Walz ticket across the country. Recently, Gwen Walz and Emhoff have made stops in key swing states, like Arizona and Georgia. 

Yet Melania has mostly been nowhere to be found. Outside of Wednesday’s video, she popped up during the final night of the Republican National Convention, sharing an extremely awkward embrace with her husband after his speech—and that’s about it.

It’s all cringe, hypocritical, and just … weird.

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The International Brotherhood of Teamsters, one of the US’s largest and best-known labor unions, has declined to endorse a candidate for president, citing major political divides among its membership, as well as dissatisfaction with each major candidate’s stances on key union priorities. 

In a tight presidential race where the vast majority of labor unions have endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, the Teamsters’ decision not to do so could be seen as a high-profile rebuke, especially since Harris is part of a Democratic administration that has, for the most part, been highly supportive of labor union rights. Whether the decision actively hurts her, however, remains to be seen.

The Teamsters represent more than a million workers from many industries, including UPS drivers and workers in construction, healthcare, and sanitation. Their members are located throughout the United States. But Teamsters have a particularly strong base in the Midwest and in swing states that could be decisive in November.

Ahead of the decision, the Teamsters polled members on their presidential preferences. In a September telephone poll, 58 percent of Teamsters members supported Republican candidate Donald Trump, and 31 percent said they’d like the union to endorse Harris. In straw polls conducted at town halls prior to President Joe Biden’s decision to exit the race in July, 44 percent of members supported Biden, versus 36 percent for Trump. 

While the poll results suggest a general preference for Trump, a number of Teamsters local unions and subgroups have vocally come out in support for Harris. The Teamsters National Black Caucus endorsed Harris in August, not waiting for the national organization’s decision. In the wake of Wednesday’s announcement, local unions in battlegrounds like Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania — among others — also endorsed Harris. 

Now both camps are claiming to have the Teamsters behind them, Trump because of the poll results, and Harris because of the local endorsements.  

Will the Teamsters’ political decision carry weight in November?

The lack of endorsement may not ultimately matter much when it comes to how Teamsters will vote. The polls and local endorsements so far have made it clear that most Teamsters have a set preference this election cycle, and it’s not clear that an endorsement from the national union would have done much to change that. 

Peverill Squire, a political science professor at the University of Missouri, told Vox that where union endorsement really matters is on the ground, campaigning.

“Union endorsements are valuable because they usually come with access to resources, particularly volunteers to knock on doors and work phone banks,” Squire said. “Leadership may be able to persuade some members to vote the way they would like, but the real value is in campaign assistance.”

Besides the setback of having fewer volunteers, there’s also some possibility that the non-endorsement could sway non-union voters sympathetic to labor issues. 

“There’s the broad symbolism” of the lack of endorsement, Vanderbilt University professor of sociology and political economy Larry Isaac told Vox. 

Teamsters national president Sean O’Brien said, “We sought commitments from both Trump and Harris not to interfere in critical union campaigns or core Teamsters industries — and to honor our members’ right to strike — but were unable to secure those pledges.” That statement, along with the larger choice not to issue an endorsement, makes an explicit argument that neither candidate would look out for organized labor.  

Prior to Wednesday’s announcement, there were indications that the union might not endorse at all, in a break with other major unions — which wasn’t a total shock given that the Teamsters have often been out of step politically with the rest of the US labor union movement, Isaac said. The United Auto Workers, the American Federation of Teachers, the AFL-CIO, and many smaller unions across industries and across the country have endorsed Harris. 

Still, the Teamsters’ announcement may be enough to influence some voters. Americans support unions at higher levels than they have in decades — and some data suggests voters were more likely to support candidates they perceived as being pro-union in the 2022 elections.

Through her connection to Biden, Harris does have a good record on labor; Biden stood at the picket line with UAW workers when they were striking last summer, and has generally supported the right to strike and sought to undermine corporate power. But the administration also forced Teamsters members back to work under what union leadership said was a less-than-ideal contract ahead of a railroad strike in 2022.

But Harris’s own policies and values distinct from Biden’s aren’t all that well known, though she has supported the Protect the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, which would strengthen protections around workers’ right to organize and bargain collectively. But Teamsters leadership was reportedly unimpressed with what they heard during a meeting with Harris earlier this week. 

Trump, on the other hand, appointed labor antagonists to the National Labor Review Board and approved legislation that restricted workers’ right to organize and strengthened workplaces’ ability to break up a union during his presidency. Rather than focusing on pro-labor policy, Trump has spent the 2024 campaign courting the working class with his populist message. Still, Trump too, apparently did not impress Teamsters in his roundtable meeting with members.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: The State Department announced Wednesday that its online renewal system is now fully operational, after testing in pilot programs, and available to adult passport holders whose passport has expired within the past five years or will expire in the coming year. It is not available for the renewal of children's passports, for first-time passport applicants for renewal applicants who live outside the United States or for expedited applications. "By offering this online alternative to the traditional paper application process, the Department is embracing digital transformation to offer the most efficient and convenient passport renewal experience possible," Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement. The department said it estimated that about 5 million Americans would be able to use this service a year. In 2023, it processed 24 million passports, about 40% of which were renewals. Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs Rena Bitter, whose bureau oversees passport processing said the department hoped to expand the program in the coming years to possibly include Americans living abroad, those seeking to renew a second passport and children's passports. "This is not going to be the last thing that we do," she told reporters. "We want to see how this goes and then we'll start looking at ways to continue to make this service available to more American citizens in the coming months and years." You can renew your passport at www.Travel.State.Gov/renewonline.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Federal Trade Commission said on Thursday it found that several social media and streaming services engaged in a "vast surveillance" of consumers, including minors, collecting and sharing more personal information than most users realized. From a report: The findings come from a study of how nine companies -- including Meta, YouTube and TikTok -- collected and used consumer data. The sites, which mostly offer free services, profited off the data by feeding it into advertising that targets specific users by demographics, according to the report. The companies also failed to protect users, especially children and teens. The F.T.C. said it began its study nearly four years ago to offer the first holistic look into the opaque business practices of some of the biggest online platforms that have created multibillion-dollar ad businesses using consumer data. The agency said the report showed the need for federal privacy legislation and restrictions on how companies collect and use data. "Surveillance practices can endanger people's privacy, threaten their freedoms, and expose them to a host of harms, from identify theft to stalking," said Lina Kahn, the F.T.C.'s chair, in a statement.

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The House Energy and Commerce Committee has approved the AM for Every Vehicle Act, which mandates that automakers include AM radio in new vehicles without additional charges. The Verge reports: The bill passed the committee on a roll-call vote of 45-2 and now heads to the full House for final approval. The bill, titled the AM for Every Vehicle Act, would direct the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to issue a rule that "requires automakers to maintain AM broadcast radio in their vehicles without a separate or additional payment, fee, or surcharge." Supporters say they are pushing the bill out of a concern that the slow demise of AM radio could make it more difficult to broadcast emergency information during a natural disaster or other related events. Conservatives are also worried about losing a lucrative platform for right-wing news and media. [...] Automakers generally see AM radio as an obsolete technology, arguing that there are other, better technologies, such as internet streaming, HD radio delivered on FM bands, or some apps that provide AM content that will make up for the absence of AM radio in vehicles. Critics say the bill could also add to the costs of producing EVs at a time when many manufacturers are struggling to rein in their costs. "With a new mandate, [EV companies] will have to go through a significant powertrain redesign, vehicle redesign," Albert Gore, executive director of the Zero Emission Transportation Association, said in an interview earlier this year, "because of the degree to which electric motor generates this [electromagnetic] interference."

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Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign released a new ad featuring reproductive rights activist Hadley Duvall. Duvall was impregnated by her stepfather when she was 12, after years of abuse. “I've never slept a full night in my entire life,” she says in the ad. 

Duvall recounts her story of abuse, while we watch her go about her daily activities at home. Featuring music by popular singer-songwriter Billie Eilish, who publicly endorsed the Harris-Walz campaign on Tuesday, the ad is a powerful reminder of how reproductive rights are human rights.

“I didn't know what to do. I was a child. I didn't know what it meant to be pregnant at all. But I had options,” she explains.

“Because Donald Trump overturned Roe v. Wade, girls and women all over the country have lost the right to choose, even for rape or incest,” Duvall continues. “Donald Trump did this. He took away our freedom.”

Duvall came to national attention after she appeared in an ad for Kentucky Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear’s successful reelection campaign, recounting her story of survival. She has since become a powerful activist for reproductive rights, working alongside people like first lady Dr. Jill Biden, and speaking at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago this past summer.  

You can help register new voters right now from the comfort of your home. Call, text, or share on social media to empower voters and get them to the ballot box this November.

For nearly 10 years, Donald Trump has built and maintained his cult-like following using dog whistles and incendiary language. He’s called for the death of five Black teenagers in the 1980s as a private citizen, used unusually provocative language at his MAGA rallies, and spread repeated lies about immigrants. While there is no place for political violence in this country, Trump cannot cry wolf, or blame the Democrats for the mess he has made.

Here are seven times the Republican nominee’s rhetoric has supported or led to political violence and unrest. 

1. He has repeatedly lied about Haitian immigrants.

This month, Trump has repeatedly claimed the racist lie that Haitian immigrants are eating pets in an Ohio city. “They’re eating the dogs. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets,” he shouted during the Sept. 10 presidential debate. Officials in Springfield, Ohio, had to evacuate its schools and go on lockdown after multiple bomb threats were made. These lies continue to disrupt and impact the community.

2. He mocked the attack on Paul Pelosi.

In 2022, Paul Pelosi, husband of then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, was attacked with a hammer in their San Francisco home by far-right conspiracy theorist David DePape, who was documented as embracing QAnon, racism, antisemitism, and Trump’s false claim that he won the 2020 election. Trump mocked the attack and stoked far-right conspiracy theories.

3. He encouraged the attack on Jan. 6 and did little to stop it.

On Jan. 6, 2020, Trump held a rally and erroneously stated that President Joe Biden had lost the election. “We’re going to the Capitol,” he said. “We’re going to try and give [Republicans] the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country.” 

Directly after that, a mob of pro-Trump protesters marched to the Capitol, broke into the chamber floor chanting “Hang Mike Pence,” and members of Congress had to be escorted out in fear for their safety. After intense scrutiny by officials and members of Congress, Trump took an hour and a half to tweet “stay peaceful,” but did not ask them to leave the Capitol. 

Four Trump supporters died during the riot—as well as a Capitol Police officer the next day. Trump continues to celebrate those that stormed the Capitol and has said he would pardon those convicted of criminal charges if elected. 

4. He has repeatedly villainized Mexicans.

In 2019, minutes before the El Paso, Texas, shooting at a Walmart that killed 23 people and injured 22 others, shooter Patrick Crusius posted a racist, xenophobic 2,300-word manifesto that warned of a “hispanic invasion of Texas.”

Trump repeatedly villainized Mexicans and the immigrant population during his first campaign and while president. In 2015, while announcing his candidacy in New York, he said, "They're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime. They're rapists and some, I assume, are good people, but I speak to border guards and they're telling us what we're getting." He then called for a wall to be built on the U.S.-Mexico border.

5. He felt there were “very fine people, on both sides” of the “Unite the Right” rally and its aftermath.

In 2017, A “Unite the Right” rally was held in Charlottesville, Virginia. In a span of 48 hours, white supremacists, KKK members, and neo-Nazis yielding tiki torches chanted “Jews will not replace us” as the event descended into violence. A car drove into a crowd of counterprotesters, injuring dozens and killing a woman named Heather Heyer. 

At a press conference, when a reporter asked his response to if there were neo-Nazis in the crowd, he—now infamously—said, “You had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides.” 

6. He has repeatedly called for violence against counterprotesters at his ralllies.

After a Black Lives Matter protester at one of Trump’s 2015 rallies was kicked and punched by MAGA supporters, Trump responded to the attack several days later on Fox News. “The man that was—I don’t know, you say ‘roughed up’—he was so obnoxious and so loud, he was screaming,” he said. “He should have been, maybe he should have been roughed up.” 

Just a few months later, in February 2016, encouraged his crowd to “knock the crap out of” another protester, even offering to pay any associated legal costs.

At another MAGA rally just a month later, Trump supporter John McCraw beat up a protester. He was later arrested and charged with assault and disorderly conduct. In response to that incident, Hope Hicks, a spokeswoman for Trump, told NBC News "we are not involved." 

But at rally shortly after in Las Vegas, another altercation transpired and a man was led out on a stretcher. Trump responded to the counterprotester saying, “I’d like to punch him in the face.”

7. He took an ad out calling for the death penalty for the Central Park Five.

In 1989, Trump famously took out a full-page ad in several national newspapers demanding the death penalty for the Central Park Five, five Black teenaged boys that were wrongfully charged and imprisoned for the brutal assault of a female jogger in Central Park. After serving between five and 13 years in prison, each was exonerated in 2002 by DNA evidence proving their innocence. Trump did not apologize for the ad, and continued to repeat claims that they were at fault for the attack.

There is no place for political violence in America, be it perpetrated against a Democrat or Republican. Yet for the last decade—since Trump has barged into the American political consciousness—it’s been on the rise. Trump is a master manipulator, but he cannot lie his way out of what has really transpired.

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Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance knew that stories about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, stealing and eating domestic pets were untrue before he and his running mate Donald Trump repeatedly amplified the claims, new reporting from The Wall Street Journal has revealed.

Springfield City Manager Bryan Heck told the Journal that a staffer for the Ohio senator reached out to him on Sept. 9 and asked if there was any truth to the stories.

“I told him no,” Heck said. “There was no verifiable evidence or reports to show this was true. I told them these claims were baseless.”

Despite this, Vance did not delete or correct a social media post from that same day stating, “Months ago, I raised the issue of Haitian illegal immigrants draining social services and generally causing chaos all over Springfield, Ohio. Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn't be in this country. Where is our border czar?”

Haitian immigrants qualifying for Temporary Protected Status have been moving to Springfield to escape the ongoing political violence in their home country. The rumors that they were stealing pets began to take hold on the right in June after anonymous posters in local Facebook groups first brought up the allegations. These stories were then promoted by white supremacists, including the neo-Nazi group Blood Tribe. A member of the group later bragged that it had “power” thanks to Trump’s parroting of the lie.

Elon Musk promoted the story on his social media platform X on Sept. 8 with a post that read, “Apparently, people’s pet cats are being eaten.”

On Sept. 10, the parents of Aiden Clark, an 11-year-old who died after a school bus accident caused by a Haitian immigrant in Springfield, spoke before the city council. They called on Trump and Vance to stop using their son’s death to attack immigrants.

Later that night, during his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump integrated the pet-eating hoax in an attack on the Biden-Harris administration’s immigration policy.

“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating—the pets of the people that live there and this is what’s happening in our country,” Trump said.

Debate moderator David Muir debunked Trump’s claim and informed him—and the 67 million people watching—that local officials said the story was untrue. Trump refused to accept the statement and insisted he had seen “people on television” verifying the story.

Immediately following the debate, Vance told CNN that he had “heard from a number of constituents” on the issue and that they had “both first-hand and second-hand reports saying this stuff is happening.”

After the story became national and international news with help from Trump and Vance, the city received at least 33 bomb threats, according to Gov. Mike DeWine. Springfield schools have been evacuated and threats were made against city officials.

An unrepentant Vance defended his actions in a Sept. 15 interview on CNN.

“The American media totally ignored this stuff until Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes. If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do,” Vance told anchor Dana Bash.

In a Sept. 17 statement, the Trump campaign claimed that the threats reported by DeWine were “total hoaxes made by ‘overseas’ actors.”

Even if this unverified claim is true, Haitian residents of the town have reported harassment and threats due to the actions and rhetoric of Trump and Vance. Additionally, the Haitian Times, a New York-based publication, has reported harassment following its reporting on the hoax.

The Trump campaign was still standing by the bigoted claim on Tuesday, when it gave The Wall Street Journal a police report from a Springfield resident alleging that her cat had been taken by Haitian neighbors. Reporters from the Journal reached out to the woman that very same day, and she told the outlet that her missing cat had returned a few days after the report was filed, and was found safe and sound in her basement.

On Tuesday, Vance told rallygoers in Wisconsin that the media “has a responsibility to fact-check stories” and that it was not his duty to do so.

Vice President Kamala Harris condemned Trump and Vance for promoting the story in her interview with the National Association of Black Journalists on Tuesday. Harris decried the falsehoods as “hateful” and said it was disqualifying for Trump to amplify them.

“We’ve got to say that you cannot be entrusted with standing behind the seal of the president of the United States of America, engaging in that hateful rhetoric that—as usual—is designed to divide us as a country,” Harris said.

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The Federal Reserve cut its benchmark interest rate by half a percentage point [non-paywalled source] on Wednesday and signalled more reductions would follow, launching its first easing cycle since the onset of the pandemic. Financial Times: The US central bank's first cut in more than four years leaves the federal funds rate at a range of 4.75 per cent. Michelle Bowman, a governor on the Federal Open Market Committee, voted against the decision, favouring a quarter-point reduction. The half-point cut is larger than the Fed's more customary quarter-point pace and suggests the US central bank is concerned about the prospects of a weakening economy after more than a year of holding rates at a 23-year high.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It’s become a standard feature of election season: Donald Trump uses an artist’s song without permission, as he’s wildly tone-deaf about the values of the artist, the content of the lyrics, or both. The artist then tweets about it or sends a cease-and-desist letter, and then the cycle begins anew. 

Trump keeps doing it in part because he’s cretinous and loves goading liberal musicians into having to explain, yet again, that no, they do not support Trump. However, he also keeps doing it because there have been little to no monetary consequences for his (mis)use of songs. 

That’s why it was so pleasing to see Eddy Grant notch a win in court last week over the campaign’s unauthorized use of “Electric Avenue” in 2020. And it only took four years of legal wrangling! But it’s likely this outcome was only because this was on video rather than at a rally. Not to mention it’s probably only a path forward for musicians with deep pockets.

Time for a moment of digression about copyright. Think of copyright protection as a bundle of sticks—a set of rights that can be separated from one another. Some musicians keep as much of that bundle as possible, but the complex scheme by which we deal with music performance in America means many artists will have licensed away some of those rights. Most relevant here is that most musicians license their music to companies like ASCAP and BMI, which then manage the performance rights and royalties. 

For the artist, this is much simpler than managing their rights and trying to collect piecemeal from anyone who plays their song in public. For a business, it’s great, as they can just contract with ASCAP and BMI and play literally millions of songs at their hair salon or grocery store or political campaign. But that doesn’t give the business the right to record that performance—or to add it to a video.

Which brings it back to Eddy Grant. 

In August 2020, Trump’s social media director, Dan Scavino, posted a typically unfunny video on Trump’s social platform X account. Here’s how Grant’s complaint describes it: “The Infringing Video contains a visual depiction of a high-speed red train bearing the words ‘Trump Pence KAG 2020’ in stark contrast to a slow moving handcar bearing the words ‘Biden President: Your Hair Smells Terrific’ being powered by an animated likeness of Former Vice President Biden while out-of-context excerpts of Former Vice President Biden's speeches and interviews are played over Plaintiffs' Recording.” 

Grant’s representatives asked the campaign to take it down, but the campaign didn’t, so Grant sued in September 2020. Grant could sue because the campaign used the song in a video versus playing it at a rally, so the use wasn’t covered by the campaign getting a performance license. After a four-year slog, Judge John Koeltl rejected the Trump campaign’s claim that its playing of the song was fair use. 

Time for more copyright digression. Sometimes, it is fine to use a copyrighted work without licensing it. Courts will evaluate how much of the copyrighted song is used, the purpose of the use, and whether the unlicensed use of the song has an effect on the market for the copyrighted song. If the use of the song is relatively minimal, or used in a nonprofit or noncommercial setting, or the song is transformed—altered in some meaningful way, like a parody—a court may determine the use was fair and reject a copyright claim.

That’s what the Trump campaign tried here, arguing that slapping 55 seconds of “Electric Avenue” alongside a crappy video was a “transformative” use of the song. The court rejected that, saying the video was a “wholesale copying of music to accompany a political campaign ad” and that the video’s creator did nothing to edit Grant’s song. 

Further, the court noted that the campaign wasn’t using Grant’s song to poke fun at Grant or the song, nor was Grant’s song core to the video's message. Grant had originally asked for $300,000 in damages and has asked for attorney fees; that claim may go to a jury to determine the amount. The case was in litigation for four years, so an attorney fee award could be delightfully steep. 

It’s because this case has been actively litigated by the campaign for the past four years that the recent unauthorized use of The White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army” is so galling. The campaign was already aware that just attaching a recording to a political campaign video would not fly as a fair use defense because the court in the Grant case had already explained that reasoning back in 2021 when it refused to dismiss the case.

Nonetheless, on Aug. 29, the campaign posted a video on X of Trump boarding a plane with the “Seven Nation Army” riff playing in the background. The White Stripes contacted the campaign, but when it failed to answer, the group sued. As with Grant, it’s because the song made its way into a video that makes this type of copyright infringement lawsuit possible. 

For those musicians who only have their songs blasted out at rallies, they can be largely out of luck. The Foo Fighters complained about Trump’s use of “My Hero” to introduce Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (yeesh!) but had to back off when the campaign noted they had a license to play the song. Both ASCAP and BMI allow artists to exclude specific songs from license to a particular political campaign, but the Trump campaign has ignored those exclusions in the past, merrily continuing to play Rolling Stones songs despite the exclusion.

There is a way around this, which is to just ask. That’s what the Democrats do. Vice President Kamala Harris got permission from Beyonce to use “Freedom” for her 2024 run and Gov. Tim Walz got permission from Neil Young to use “Rockin’ in the Free World” when he took the stage at the Democratic National Convention. 

Trump used “Freedom” in a video nearly immediately after Harris did, stopping only when Beyonce sent a cease-and-desist letter. Trump spokesman Steven Cheung bragged to CNN that this was part of a larger strategy: “The purpose of the post just proved the point that Democrats are all about banning things, including freedom. They fell for it hook, line, and sinker.” 

Cheung’s statement highlights the problem here: Trump delights in using the music of people who hate him, in being told not to do so, and in doing it anyway. It’s why the statement of the campaign’s lawyer, in response to the campaign being enjoined from using “Hold On, I’m Coming” after being sued by the estate of Isaac Hayes, rings so hollow: “[T]he campaign has no interest in annoying or hurting anyone. And if the Hayes family feels it hurts or annoys them, that’s fine, we’re not going to force the issue.” 

If that were true, the campaign wouldn’t have litigated against Grant for four years. If that were true, the campaign wouldn’t have used “Hold On, I’m Coming” 134 times after being asked to stop. Unless one of these lawsuits manages to take a really significant financial bite out of Trump, the only way this will ever stop is if Trump stops running.

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Editor’s note, September 20, 10:30 am: The Supreme Court denied the Green Party’s request to be placed back on the Nevada ballot. No justice publicly announced their dissent, and the Court did not explain why it ruled the way it did. The original story, published September 18, follows.

Earlier this month, Nevada’s Supreme Court ruled that the Green Party must be removed from that state’s 2024 ballot because of a paperwork error. 

Nevada law requires people who collect petition signatures seeking to place a “minor party” on the ballot to “verify that they believe each person signing the petition is a registered voter in the county of his or her residence.” The Greens did not comply with this requirement, so a majority of the state supreme court ruled that they cannot appear on the ballot this year.

There is, however, a slight complication.

When the Green Party originally submitted documents to the Nevada secretary of state’s office announcing its intention to start gathering signatures, they were given improper instructions. An employee of the Secretary of State responded to this submission, and said the party should use a specific form to gather signatures. Unfortunately, this employee attached the wrong signature collection form to that email — the attached form was the form that is used to collect signatures for a ballot initiative (that is, a vote to change Nevada law), not to collect signatures to place a minor party on the ballot.

And so the Green Party is now in the US Supreme Court, claiming that their constitutional rights were violated because they complied with this employee’s instructions, and were later removed from the ballot because they did so. The case in the Supreme Court is known as Nevada Green Party v. Aguilar. 

Notably, the Greens are represented in the Supreme Court by Jay Sekulow, a former lawyer to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Sekulow is one of the better lawyers in Trump’s orbit — he’s argued a dozen cases in the Supreme Court, mostly on behalf of Christian Right causes — and his presence on this case suggests that Republicans are eager to put the Greens back on the ballot in a key swing state.

And why wouldn’t they be? The Green Party is largely a vehicle for leftier-than-thou candidates who rarely garner even one percent of the popular vote. To the extent that the Green Party matters at all, it’s because they might attract enough voters who would otherwise support Democrats to swing a very close election. (And the race in Nevada is expected to be very close: Polling averages currently have the presidential candidates separated by less than a percentage point.)

For this reason, it probably won’t surprise anyone to learn that the plaintiff in the lawsuit that kicked the Greens off the Nevada ballot was the state’s Democratic Party. Both major parties are quite aware of the potential that a Green Party presidential candidate could act as a spoiler in this November’s election. The Republicans want to help make that happen; the Democrats want to avoid it at all costs.

But what does the law actually say about the Green Party’s bid to appear on Nevada’s ballot?

The short answer is that, if there were no procedural obstacles to the Supreme Court ruling in the Greens’ favor, then they would have a plausible — but not, exactly, airtight — case. In his brief to the justices, Sekulow cites some precedents which are helpful to the Green Party, but that hardly compel the conclusion that the party has a right to appear on Nevada ballot.

That said, there are many procedural obstacles in this case that could prove fatal to the Green Party’s claims. Among other things, Nevada is racing to meet a September 21 deadline to mail ballots to overseas military personnel — a deadline that is set by federal law. If the Supreme Court orders Nevada to change those ballots so close to this deadline, it will probably be impossible for the state to meet it.

Still, it’s always dangerous to bet that this Supreme Court, with its 6-3 Republican supermajority, will rule against the interests of Donald Trump. This is, after all, the same Court that recently said that Trump has sweeping immunity from prosecution for crimes he committed using the official powers of the president — a form of immunity that has no basis in the Constitution.

What are the legal issues in Nevada Green Party?

Sekulow’s strongest argument is that the Green Party cannot be removed from the ballot for complying with a state employee’s instructions. In an email to the Green Party, Sekulow claims, a state employee told them to “Please use the documents attached to begin collecting signatures.” The Green Party then used the attached document to collect signatures, only to discover later that they’d used the wrong form.

This argument has some superficial appeal — it does, at the very least, seem unfair to punish a party that complied with a government employee’s instructions. Many of the Supreme Court’s past decisions, however, cut against Sekulow’s argument. As the Court said in Heckler v. Community Health Services (1984), “those who deal with the Government are expected to know the law, and may not rely on the conduct of Government agents contrary to law.”

Sekulow does cite two cases that suggest that someone cannot be charged with a crime if they acted consistently with the government’s instructions. But the Green Party is not accused of criminal activity. The only issue in this case is whether it may appear on the 2024 ballot in Nevada.

At best, in other words, Sekulow is asking the Supreme Court to extend these two criminal cases to a new context, and hold that the Constitution also protects political parties that comply with a government employee’s instructions regarding ballot access from being kicked off the ballot. But there are several very good reasons why the Court should not extend those precedents in this case.

One is that, while the state did provide the Green Party with the wrong form, it should have been obvious to the party that it was sent this form by mistake. The correct form requires petition circulators to certify that they believe each signatory is a registered voter in the county where they live. The form that the Green Party actually used, by contrast, was the correct form to collect signatures for ballot initiatives and referendums. It requires circulators to attest that signatories “had an opportunity before signing to read the full text of the act or resolution on which the initiative or referendum is demanded.”

It appears, in other words, that the Green Party’s petition circulators all attested, under penalty of perjury, that their petition signatories had an opportunity to read the full text of a ballot initiative that doesn’t actually exist.

Additionally, there are procedural reasons why the Green Party’s request to be put back on Nevada’s ballot should fail. One is the Supreme Court’s conclusion in Purcell v. Gonzalez (2006) that federal courts should be cautious about altering a state’s election rules as the election draws close, out of concern that late-breaking changes to those rules could foster confusion about how the election should be conducted.

This Court has not always applied Purcell consistently — frankly, it has historically applied it much more aggressively when lower court decisions benefit Democrats than it has when they benefit Republicans — but it’s hard to imagine a more compelling case for invoking Purcell than the Nevada Green Party case. 

Nevada is trying to make a Saturday deadline, set by federal law, to deliver ballots to overseas military personnel. It’s now Wednesday. If the Supreme Court gets involved now, it will almost certainly be impossible for Nevada to meet its obligation under federal law.

Indeed, according to Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar, at least one Nevada county has already mailed out military ballots that do not include the Green Party.

There’s also another, closely related reason why the Supreme Court should rule against the Green Party. The Court has long held that a party forfeits certain relief, even if it otherwise would be entitled to it, if it shows a “lack of diligence” in asserting its rights, such as by waiting so long to assert a legal claim that the delay itself harms the opposing party. Yet the Green Party waited an entire week from the Nevada Supreme Court’s September 6 order removing it from the ballot to file its case in the US Supreme Court, rather than doing so immediately. 

Thus, one of the reasons why it would likely be impossible for Nevada to comply with both the federal deadline governing military ballots, and a US Supreme Court order requiring it to place the Green Party on the ballot, is that the Green Party ran out the clock before seeking relief from the justices.

All of which is a long way of saying that, while the Nevada employee’s misleading instructions to the Green Party should raise some eyebrows, a Supreme Court order putting the Green Party on the ballot would be inappropriate.

This week, there’s been yet another wave of extreme weather around the globe. North Carolina was hit with a historic amount of rain. Central and Eastern Europe have experienced some of their worst flooding in decades. And Nigeria has faced unprecedented floods following multiple days of torrential precipitation.

Individually, the disasters have been damaging; together, their severity and proximity to each other are a sobering reminder of how climate change is already impacting people around the world. Such developments are part of a broader increase in extreme weather of all kinds — droughts, extreme heat, tropical storms, and wildfires — that’s poised to continue, and escalate, in the coming years. 

According to a study released this week by the Center for International Climate Research in Norway, extreme weather changes could affect as much as 70 percent of the Earth’s population in the next two decades if greater efforts aren’t taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and limit global temperature increases to 1.5 degrees Celsius — or about 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit. 

70 percent of the world’s population can expect strong changes in extreme temperatures and rainfall the next 20 years. New study in @Nature Geosci led by Dr. Carley Iles, CICERO https://t.co/awP9UJdGzh

— CICERO (@CICERO_klima) September 10, 2024

In the case of this week’s floods, there’s likely a clear link to climate change. While there are unique factors that fueled storms, and floods, in each of these places, higher temperatures mean the atmosphere can hold more water, which means it can also “dump” more of it, too, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council. As a result, as the Earth gets warmer, the heaviest rainfall events tend to be even more severe than they otherwise would be. 

“I’m pretty comfortable making that claim that these events were at least 10 to 15 percent more intense than they would have been in terms of the amount of rain that fell in them as a result of this fairly basic effect,” UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain told Vox, regarding rainfall in Europe and North Carolina. 

Climate change is fueling more extreme weather

While every individual storm has its own idiosyncrasies, extreme flooding events are exactly what scientists expect to see with worsening global warming: According to research by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a body of experts convened by the United Nations, currents models reflect high confidence that the frequency and magnitude of floods are projected to increase at a global scale, with some of the most extreme changes in Asia, Central Africa, Europe, and eastern North America.  

“An increase in the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events” is one of the most “visible consequences” of global warming, notes the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions. That appeared evident this week, when North Carolina, Nigeria, and Central and Eastern Europe, all thousands of miles apart, were deluged with massive amounts of rainfall in a short period of time. 

One section of Carolina Beach saw 18 inches of rain in the span of 12 hours, a phenomenon the National Weather Service described as a once in a 1,000-year rainfall event.” In Vienna, Austria; Bratislava, Slovakia; and Prague, in the Czech Republic, a recent storm deposited “months worth of rain” in roughly three days, CNN reported. At least 17 people have died in Central Europe from the resulting flooding, according to the New York Times, with the death toll expected to rise further in coming days. 

In Nigeria, a dam burst in the northern city of Maiduguri following multiple days of historic rains, which fueled floods that submerged 40 percent of the city and displaced hundreds of thousands of people. That event added to weeks of flooding across West and Central Africa, where more than a thousand people have died.

Although flooding is dependent on existing environmental conditions in a particular region, heavy rainfall can contribute to it, or precipitate it. And as the atmosphere gets warmer due to climate change, it can hold up to 7 percent more moisture for every 1 degree Celsius increase in temperature. That can make the rainfall from an already-intense storm even more so. 

“The strongest evidence is that the warming atmosphere increases the ceiling on precipitation intensity,” said Swain. Individual variables in each of these places — including the presence of a weather event known as an “atmospheric block” in Europe — helped spur these outsize storms, but a warmer atmosphere, and its ability to produce rain, likely amplified their effects. 

The flooding events of this week illustrate a phenomenon that’s poised to become more common as the world traverses a projected path of further warming. There is a window of opportunity to avoid the most catastrophic impacts of climate change if countries around the world are able to zero out greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, the goal set in the 2015 Paris climate accords. This week’s spate of extreme floods is a reminder of the global need to develop infrastructure that can be responsive to intensifying weather events, and to focus on curbing the greenhouse gas emissions contributing to climate change in the first place. 

“When we see these kinds of record-breaking extreme precipitation events, that is actually a very clear and representative example of a type of event that we very much do expect to continue to increase with further warming,” Swain said.

Republican Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana attacked a witness at a hearing on hate crimes using a line of racist questioning so vile that it could serve as a handbook for why hate crime legislation is necessary. In a string of sneering statements, Kennedy accused Maya Berry—the executive director of the Arab American Institute—of supporting terrorists, then refused to allow her to respond, then ignored what she said as he continued the attack.

The hearing was meant to look at the rise in hate speech and reported hate crimes across the nation, including those directed at both Jewish and Muslim communities amid the latest war between Israel and Hamas. And Kennedy turned it into a live demonstration of how to increase the hate.

In a series of questions, the senator asked Berry if she supported Hamas. When she said she did not support Hamas and made it clear the question was offensive, Kennedy talked over her and went on as if she hadn’t provided a response. He then repeated this act with the militant group Hezbollah. And then Iran. Then with a United Nations program that Kennedy unfairly painted as supporting terrorists.

Kennedy began his time pointing out that Berry was a long-time Democratic Party activist and a member of the Democratic National Committee in 2016, which he seemed to think was a crime all on its own. Then he moved directly into the attack in a way that clearly shocked Berry.

Kennedy: You support Hamas, do you not?

Berry: I— Senator, oddly enough I’m going to say thank you for that question because it demonstrates the purpose for our hearing today. It—

Kennedy: Let’s start first with a yes or no.

Berry: Hamas is a foreign terrorist organization that I do not support. But you asking the executive director of the Arab American Institute that question very much puts the focus on the issue of hate in our country.

Kennedy: I got your answer, and I appreciate it. What is the, uh— You support Hezbollah too, don’t you?

While Berry responded to Kennedy’s disgusting remarks with the kind of steely grace that so many civil rights leaders have been forced to display over the decades, her treatment in the Senate chamber was shocking. That was especially true in Kennedy’s final moments.

Kennedy: Let me ask you one more time. You support Hamas, don’t you? You support UNRWA and Hamas, don’t you? 

Berry: Sir, I think it’s exceptionally disappointing that you’re looking at an Arab American witness before you and saying, “You support Hamas.”

Kennedy: You know what’s disappointing to me—

Berry: I do not support Hamas. I do not support Hamas or any—

Kennedy: You can’t bring yourself to say you don’t support UNRWA, you don’t support support Hamas, you don’t support Hezbollah—

Berry: I was very clear in my support for UNRWA. I—

Kennedy: —and you don’t support Iran. You should hide your head in a bag.

UNRWA is the United Nations’ relief agency for Palestinian refugees. It’s in the middle of a vaccine drive after polio has made a reappearance among displaced Palestinians, and it has the primary responsibility for health care and food distribution in refugee camps. Berry has made clear she supports the efforts of UNRWA. Kennedy targeted the organization because Israel’s U.N. ambassador has claimed that UNRWA has ties to Hamas, which is widely disputed.

The full hearing can be found here.

Even though the purpose of the hearing, which Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin opened by giving examples of how hate crimes of all kinds were on the rise, several Republicans showed disdain for the hearing—and specifically for the idea that it should include concerns over hate speech against Arab Americans or Muslims. That included Sen. Lindsay Graham of South Carolina complaining that the hearing should be about only antisemitism and not “lumping” that problem in with any other.

But while others demonstrated the flippancy and contempt Republicans have repeatedly shown when discussing hate crimes, Kennedy’s performance went above and beyond in its shocking treatment of a witness and its reinforcement of exactly why hate is on the rise.

Despite appearances, Kennedy is not an idiot. His accent is heavily exaggerated. His cornpone manner is an act. His whole dumber-than-a-box-of-rocks schtick is the creation of an Oxford-educated multimillionaire who reinvented himself as an aw-shucks man of the people. He acts this way not because he’s a fool but because that’s what he thinks of his constituents.

Kennedy knew exactly what he was doing in that hearing. Which makes it infinitely worse.

Kennedy’s statement that Berry should “hide [her] head in a bag” came the same week that the Taliban began enforcing new draconian laws in Afghanistan requiring women to cover their faces in public. It sounds as if Kennedy would fit in much better there than in the United States Senate.