What’s coming up on Sunday Kos:
- The president of the United States is not above the law, by Mark E Andersen
- The war against black Democratic voters, by Denise Oliver Velez
- Trump is daring Democrats to impeach. We must make sure he loses in the long run, by Sher Watts Spooner
- To 'democratic socialism' or not to 'democratic socialism': that is the question, by Egberto Willies
- We need new methods and strategies to fight the international anti-diversity hate movement, by Frank Vyan Walton
- How the press keeps sugar coating Trump’s unlawful defiance of Congress, by Eric Boehlert
- By Trump's own (birther) standards, there is 'something' on those tax returns 'he doesn't like,' by Ian Reifowitz
• Trump undermined the efforts of Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Tara Sweeney: With his latest “Pocahontas” sneer-tweet attacking Elizabeth Warren and reaffirming by his call for dumping two pro-tribal bills, Trump proved once again—in case there was any doubt—that he doesn’t have Native peoples’ interests at heart.
• After Joe Biden encountered a shower of criticism for what Reuters reported would be his “middle ground” platform on climate change, his campaign said the news organization got it wrong, and his plan for addressing the crisis will be bold: There are more than a few skeptics. Bill McKibben author and activist and found of the grassroots 350.org wrote an op-ed column on the subject for The Guardian in which he says Biden is stuck in the past.
Biden has called climate change an “existential” threat. And during a campaign speech in Iowa earlier this month, he noted that he was “one of the first guys to introduce a climate change bill, way, way back in ’87.” PolitiFact looked into the claim and found it to be true.
Yet, in a speech last month, the former vice president parroted a familiar oil and gas industry line, declaring, “North American energy makes us independent.” And, according to Reuters, he picked Heather Zichal as a climate adviser. Zichal, 42, who advised in the Obama administration, served on the board of liquified natural gas giant Cheniere Energy Partners from 2014 until last year.
“There may have been a chance for modest, ‘all of the above,’ ‘middle ground’ climate strategies 20 years ago but we’ve passed that point now,” said Peter Gleick, a climate scientist and co-founder of California’s Pacific Institute. He added that “many politicians still fail to understand or accept the severity of the climate crisis or the speed with which we now have to act.”
MIDDAY TWEET
• GM sale of its Lordstown auto plant seems doubtful: The Lordstown, Ohio, plant, which operated for more than a half-century, most recently making the Cruze, was shuttered by GM in March after a steady slow-down with first one shift and then another being ended. This has cost thousands of jobs. The United Auto Workers union says that about 700 of those workers have found positions in other GM factories. The company has been in purchase negotiations with tiny Workhorse, a 98-employee company that makes a small number of electric vehicles each year. It warned earlier this year that it might not have enough money to keep the doors open much longer. It has no experience in mass production, and though its CEO has said they would use union labor at Lordstown, Workhorse’s current operation is non-union. If it did manage to begin electric vehicle production there, the AP reports that it would probably hire just a few hundred workers, leaving in the lurch most of the 4,500 people GM employed at the factory just two years ago. Donald Trump nevertheless tweeted a hurrah this week about the possible sale.
• Iowa Democrats warn against new Hillary-Bernie wars: “There is no tolerance whatsoever for the bullshit this time,” said Polk County Chair Sean Bagniewski:
The ghosts of Hillary Clinton’s razor-thin victory over Bernie Sanders are still so vivid, and the vitriol of their Iowa battle is still so fresh, state and local Democratic Party leaders are going to extraordinary lengths to ensure the 2020 caucuses are as peaceful and bloodless as possible.
They’re shutting down the conspiracy theorists at local meetings who continue to insist the 2016 caucus outcome was rigged for Clinton. They’re holding back on candidate endorsements in the hopes of avoiding conflict. They’re even encouraging the individual candidates to save the aggression for the general election,while going so far as to hold social events to help rival Democratic campaign staffers build a rapport.
• Trump tweet-claims he won the 2016 election “partially based on no Tax Returns while I am under audit (which I still am).”