30 June 20
Norman Solomon, Reader Supported News
Solomon writes: "One of the few encouraging surprises in the lead-up to the 2020 Democratic National Convention is that co-chairs of California's huge delegation will include Representatives Ro Khanna and Barbara Lee."
Progressive activism made it possible – winning caucus races to elect strong Bernie Sanders delegates in early June and then organizing a grassroots campaign for Khanna to become chair of the state’s entire delegation.
Now, for Khanna and Lee – two of the most eloquent and effective members of Congress on matters of war and peace – the upcoming convention offers an opportunity to directly challenge the Democratic Party’s default embrace of what Martin Luther King Jr. called “the madness of militarism.”
Mainline media outlets have recognized the symbolism, if not the potential, of what just occurred. Reporting has explained that progressive clout prevented Gov. Gavin Newsom from becoming the chair of the delegation, with the result that co-chair positions went to Khanna, Lee, and former U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis.
“For the past two weeks,” the San Francisco Chronicle reported, “Sanders supporters have argued that his March 3 primary win in California meant a progressive like Khanna – an early endorser of the Vermont senator and a national co-chair of his presidential campaign – should be the face of the state’s delegation.”
The newspaper added: “The agreement is a definite win for California progressives, who got Khanna and Lee. While Lee backed California Sen. Kamala Harris in the primary, she’s an icon on the left for her history as an antiwar activist and her support for most of Sanders’ platform…. Progressives managed to block Newsom, who endorsed Biden in May, from a leading role. While Democratic governors typically lead their state’s delegation to their party’s convention, Newsom is persona non grata for California progressives.”
On Monday, Politico summed up: “Bernie Sanders may not be the Democratic nominee, but his followers are flexing their muscle in California.”
Politico pointed out that “the grassroots decision to sidestep Newsom was a clear departure from tradition – and a signal that progressives who backed Sanders don’t intend to be sidelined.” Along the way, “the vote underscored Khanna’s rise as a progressive wing leader to watch – and cements his role as the captain of the Bernie movement in California…. He has galvanized progressive support with his active legislative record to curb the president’s war powers and end U.S. involvement in the Saudi-led war in Yemen, among other issues.”
Now, Khanna and Lee have a tremendous – indeed, historic – opportunity. Their full-throated voices for peace and justice should be widely heard in the context of the upcoming national convention.
This is a heavy burden of expectation to place on two members of Congress who are not in top “leadership” positions. Meanwhile, the burden should also be swiftly taken up by activists throughout the country.
Much is possible in a short time. As one of more than a hundred Sanders delegates elected in California a few weeks ago, I was inspired to see what we could achieve by working together to replace traditional power brokerage with genuine progressive leadership.
Warped budget priorities that have bloated the Pentagon’s spending are thefts from desperately needed funds for health care and a huge array of social programs – just as militarized police forces and bloated law-enforcement costs are continuing to drain the funds of local governments. In the midst of the pandemic, the need is vast and urgent for a massive redirection of funding, away from militarism and toward long-term measures to save lives.
Humanistic values insist that corporate Democrats must accommodate to progressive agendas, not the other way around. This certainly means disentangling the party from the military-industrial complex and multibillion-dollar health care profiteers.
While Dr. King condemned militarism’s madness, he also denounced the cruelty of inequities in funding that undermine health. “Of all the forms of inequality,” he said, “injustice in health is the most shocking and the most inhuman because it often results in physical death.”
Moral positions on these profound issues are in sync with public opinion. Over the last decade, one poll after another after another after another has reflected substantial support for reductions in military spending. Exit polls during this year’s primary elections consistently showed overwhelming support for Medicare for All.
Understood broadly and deeply, the madness of militarism is not only the normalized frenzy of preparing for war and waging it. The madness extends to ongoing financial, social, and psychological investments in routine institutionalized violence – from militarizing police to glorifying suppression of civil unrest to devoting humongous resources to further military endeavors at the expense of vital social programs – methodically taking lives instead of saving them.
Such destructive patterns can’t be effectively challenged while deferring to hidebound party leaders. As co-chairs of the Democratic National Convention’s largest delegation, Ro Khanna and Barbara Lee will only have a chance to change history for the better if they’re willing to clearly and forcefully speak essential truths that powerful Democrats don’t want the public to hear.
Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and the author of many books, including War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. He is a Bernie Sanders delegate from California to the 2020 Democratic National Convention.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
Senator Elizabeth Warren. (photo: AP)
Sen. Elizabeth Warren Introduces Nationwide Eviction Moratorium Bill
Jen Kirby, Vox
Kirby writes: "Desiree Kane, an organizer with Colorado Rent Strike and Eviction Defense, says her neighbors are fearful. Many have lost jobs or wages, and bills are piling up."
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Jen Kirby, Vox
Kirby writes: "Desiree Kane, an organizer with Colorado Rent Strike and Eviction Defense, says her neighbors are fearful. Many have lost jobs or wages, and bills are piling up."
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The McCloskeys. (photo: Twitter)
ALSO SEE: St. Louis Couple Point Guns at Peaceful Crowd of Protesters Calling for Mayor to Resign
The Missouri Gun-Toting Lawyers Are Screwed
Jim Swift, The Bulwark
Swift writes: "Yesterday, a protest in Saint Louis resulted in a moment that gave birth to a million memes, when a couple living on the path of the protest came out of their house brandishing firearms, even pointing them at protesters."
Jim Swift, The Bulwark
Swift writes: "Yesterday, a protest in Saint Louis resulted in a moment that gave birth to a million memes, when a couple living on the path of the protest came out of their house brandishing firearms, even pointing them at protesters."
The protesters were going to the home of Mayor Lyda Krewson—a house in a series of private communities in the Central West End neighborhood of Saint Louis. It’s where all the rich people in the actual city limits live, adjacent to Washington University and the expansive Forest Park. The streets are blocked off with gates and there are nondescript entrances for your car and a lot of confusing alleyways. It’s an old-school couple of HOAs with enormous mansions. One of my old business school professors lived just a few houses down Westminster Place from the house of now-Mayor Krewson.
Before we talk about the incident, two bits of Westminster Place trivia.
First, the Saint Louis University TKE house (my college fraternity) was on Westminster before the chapter lost it as a result of the things fraternities do to lose their house. Shocker, the guys who brought The Grateful Dead to homecoming in 1971 were a wild bunch. (I even have a Westminster Pl. street sign in my home office, which I acquired after somebody hit the sign with a car in the early aughts.)
Second, an equally culturally elevated bit of trivia: T.S. Eliot once lived at 4446 Westminster Place as a teenager.
So that’s where the mayor lives. This is a different street from where the McCloskeys, the gun-toting personal injury lawyers, live. It’s about two blocks away. The McCloskeys live on Portland Place, which is even richer. They don’t even like people walking down their street. The mayor’s street? You can walk on the sidewalks. Portland Place? Not so much.
I know because I lived two blocks away for two years during college. And sometimes when I wandered home from a social event nearby, I’d take that route. They have off-duty police there and one night I got stopped with a fraternity brother of mine who is not white. I showed the police officer my driver’s license and made the point that I’d be a really dumb criminal to case joints for a robbery two blocks from where I live.
We were let go with a warning and were told that we could have been arrested for trespassing.
With that out of the way, a brief background leading up to yesterday’s incident:
- In recent days a number of protesters submitted letters to St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson requesting that she reform the city’s police department.
- On Friday Mayor Krewson read aloud—on a public broadcast—the names and addresses of some constituents who had sent her those letters.
- This led some people in the city to argue that she should resign, since she was all but inviting retaliation against people who had engaged city government in good faith.
- On Sunday, a group of people marched around Mayor Krewson’s home in protest of her broadcasting the home addresses of people requesting police reform.
- These protesters marched past the home of Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the wealthy personal injury attorneys who live on Portland Place.
- The McCloskeys came out of their house and pointed guns at the assembled protesters.
You really have to see the video, if only for the amazing display of muzzle discipline.
And just like that, the McCloskeys became internet famous.
But while everyone is retreating to their corners, let’s dig a little deeper into what’s really going on here.
Did the McCloskeys commit a crime?
That’s up to Missouri’s judicial system to decide, but as the law is written, it appears they may have. Section 571.030(4) of the Revised Statutes of Missouri states that anyone who “exhibits, in the presence of one or more persons, any weapon readily capable of lethal use in an angry or threatening manner” has “commit[ed] the offense of unlawful use of weapons.”
Mr. McCloskey is wielding a variant of the AR-15 rifle, and Mrs. McCloskey has what appears to be a Walther pistol.
As for the first part of the statute: Were these guns loaded? No one other than the McCloskeys knows. It is possible that if they are charged, the McCloskeys could argue that the guns were unloaded and that they were thus not “readily capable of lethal use.” After all, these are clever trial lawyers!
But as to the second part, a reasonable person could conclude that the weapons were being brandished in an angry or threatening manner.
Look closely and you’ll see that Mrs. McCloskey’s finger is on the trigger and she’s pointing her weapon at protesters. (Basic gun-safety protocols say that you don’t point a gun at anything or anyone you don’t intend to shoot and you don’t put your finger on the trigger until you’re ready to fire.) I know that photos can be misleading, and the Black Lives Bad / Orange Man Good contingent might doubt it, so let’s zoom out. You can see she’s pointing her weapon at a guy with a microphone.
Is this private property?
Yes, this is a private community. Mr. McCloskey tells KSDK that “There is nothing public in Portland Place. Being inside that gate is like being in my living room.” Except that’s not true at all. Members of that community are not empowered to enforce trespass laws by pointing guns at unarmed people. This is why you call the police.
Did the McCloskeys call the police? (Editor’s note: Yes, though it’s unclear when they called the police and what the circumstances were when they did so.)
Crimes committed on private property are not exempted from legal scrutiny. Brandishing a weapon in a threatening manner on private property is not like an exemption for a farm vehicle in the Missouri countryside. There are exemptions, and then there are crimes.
However, because they are—again—clever trial lawyers, the McCloskeys have already begun their legal defense, suggesting that they were in fear for their safety.
Mr. McCloskey told local TV station KMOV:
A mob of at least 100 smashed through the historic wrought iron gates of Portland Place, destroying them, rushed towards my home where my family was having dinner outside, and put us in fear of our lives.”
This is what the gate normally looks like. Residents can unlock it with a key, or easily hop over the middle part if they so choose. (Not that I’d know.)
This is what the gate looked like when it was first opened.
And this is what it looked like at the end of the incident. “Smashed” and “destroyed” seems to be an exaggeration and further, and although the gate is clearly damaged, it is unclear whether the damage occurred before or after the McCloskeys pointed guns. But that’s neither here nor there. Even if the gate was bent before the gun theatrics, that still doesn’t put the McCloskeys clear of the statute.
Had the McCloskeys not been lawyers, the worst-case scenario they could be facing would be the potential for a potential Class D felony—which would mean that if they were charged and convicted, they’d probably lose their guns. In all likelihood, they would not go to jail since they can afford good counsel and are, let’s be honest, white AF.
But the McCloskeys are lawyers. And Mrs. McCloskey is “a member of the Missouri Bar Association ethical review panel.” In Missouri, lawyers go before the Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel when they screw up. And if that body offers a judgment that the lawyer doesn’t accept, it goes to the Missouri Supreme Court.
And despite Mr. McCloskey’s comments to KMOV, the couple has hired a lawyer and changed their story in an . . . interesting way:
So they are staunch Black Lives Matters supporters who were happy to have peaceful protesters on the private road and only brought out firearms and started pointing them when they noticed some protesters who were committing “violence and threatening acts of aggression” and were absolutely, super-duper white.
What a twist!
But it gets better! As Mr. McCloskey tells KSDK, his wife “doesn’t know anything about guns!” That’s what legal experts might call arbitrage, but it’s what gun owners might say is bad discipline. When taking neophytes shooting, it is incumbent on all gun owners to make sure that those with them are practicing proper gun safety.
By the way, you should definitely read their lawyer’s bio because it is wild. Albert Watkins may have better instincts than the McCloskeys, but not by much:
Albert S. Watkins, the founding member and senior counsel with the firm is, quite candidly, beyond description. . . .Opposing counsel in the infamous The North Face Apparel Co. v. The South Butt case described the most dangerous place in the world as being the space “between Al Watkins and a microphone.” . . .Self-centered, egotistical, and a self-proclaimed expert in all matters, Watkins is unabashed about bringing to the public eye the irreconcilable nature of a position taken by an adversary in a case. . . .In Hammon v. Harris, Watkins garnered the first verdict of its kind against a young female who falsely accused a policeman of engaging in sexual relations and snorting cocaine with a female patron of a restaurant at which the policeman was working a security shift. When the defendant would not appear for her deposition, Watkins procured an order mandating the woman be brought into custody and held in jail pending her deposition. During the ensuing video deposition, Watkins swiftly got the woman to confess and admit the allegations were false. The video deposition swiftly became an internet sensation. A six-figure judgment was entered in favor of the policeman. The woman committed suicide thereafter.
Please understand, this is not an indictment of Watkins. It’s from the guy’s own brag-book.
Anyway, the McCloskeys’ best hope now is that they won’t be charged with either a felony or a lesser charge. That would keep their law firm in business, assuming that the potential client base they once served still finds them acceptable potential counsels and competing firms don’t paint them as rich white folks who point guns at brown people who aren’t giving them a percentage of their personal injury awards.
At worst, they could be charged with—and potentially found guilty of—a felony. Which could be lights-out for the McCloskey firm.
Last week Yascha Mounk made the definitive argument against the insanity of modern cancel culture, which is now approaching Reign of Terror levels of moral panic. But that’s not what’s going on here. The McCloskeys aren’t like an innocent van driver who got photographed making the “OK” sign. They’re officers of the court who went out on their front porch and recklessly pointed firearms at people who did not pose them the kind of clear and immediate threat that would justify their actions.
It is absolutely fitting that the McCloskeys face scrutiny for their actions.
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Mark Zuckerberg. (photo: B&T)
Alex Hern, Guardian UK
Hern writes: "Almost a third of advertisers are considering joining a month-long boycott of Facebook as the social network struggles to convince advertisers that it is doing enough to fight hate speech on its platform."
‘Stop Hate for Profit’ campaign gathers momentum as ad boycott spreads outside US
The unprecedented corporate snub has been revealed in survey by the World Federation of Advertisers, whose big-spending members control nearly $100bn (£81bn) in spending.
The survey showed that a third of the top 58 advertisers will, or are likely to, suspend advertising, while a further 40% are also considering doing so.
On Monday, Ford and Adidas announced their intention to halt all advertising on the platform, joining corporations including Honda, Verizon, Diageo and Unilever.
Others, including Starbucks and Coca-Cola, have paused all advertising on social media but stopped short of officially announcing support for the “Stop Hate for Profit” campaign, which is coordinating the Facebook boycott.
The boycott is also spreading outside the US. On Tuesday, Britvic, the owner of drinks brands including Fruit Shoot and Robinsons, said it was suspending all advertising on Facebook platforms next month, and called on the social media platform “to take stronger actions against harmful content and misinformation on its platform”.
VW said it was also joining the boycott, along with Honda Europe and Ford Europe. The French state-owned utility EDF, which owns EDF Energy and is the company behind the construction of the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant, has also vetoed Facebook advertising.
A Ford spokesman said: “We are pausing all US and European social media advertising for the next 30 days to re-evaluate our presence on these platforms. The existence of content that includes hate speech, violence and racial injustice on social platforms needs to be eradicated.”
A Honda Europe spokesman added that the decision was “in alignment with our company’s values, which are grounded in human respect”.
Stephan Loerke, chief executive of the World Federation of Advertisers, told the Financial Times the advertising industry was starting to request big changes from social media platforms. “In all candour,” he said, “ it feels like a turning point.”
In an internal post on Monday reported by Axios, Microsoft revealed it had suspended all US spending on Facebook platforms in May, and had since expanded the move globally.
Like Starbucks, Microsoft has not publicly endorsed the wider campaign; in the internal messaging, its chief marketing officer, Chris Capossela, told colleagues: “Our experience tells us that the most impactful means to effect genuine, long-term change is through direct dialogue and meaningful action with our media partners, including the suspension of real marketing dollars.”
The “Stop Hate for Profit” boycott is promoted by a coalition of US-based non-profits and calls for companies to suspend their spending on the platform for the month of July.
However, many companies, including Microsoft, had already dropped their ad spend, while some, such as Unilever, have announced their intention to continue the boycott well past the end of July, until after the US election in November or beyond.
Some advertisers are additionally motivated by a desire to preserve “brand safety”, objecting to their promotional material appearing next to inappropriate content. Capossela of Microsoft, for instance, cited “hate speech, pornography, terrorist content, etc”, as examples that concerned his company.
Oil group BP told the Guardian it was also halting Facebook advertising in support of the Stop Hate for Profit campaign. A spokesperson said: “We believe it is critically important for all social media platforms to deploy improved controls to eliminate the distribution of content that is untrue, discriminatory, or intended to incite, raise fear, or fan hate.”
Last week, the Guardian revealed how Facebook’s own policies against the organised conspiracy movement QAnon were not being enforced.
More than 3 million users of some of the largest groups and pages are followers of the conspiracy, which spreads the gospel of the pseudonymous “Q”, who claims knowledge of a secret cabal of powerful paedophiles and sex traffickers conspiring to bring down the US president, Donald Trump.
In an interview on the BBC’s Today programme on Tuesday, Facebook’s UK head, Steve Hatch, was questioned about the fact that, on the day protests over the killing of George Floyd began, the top post in the US called racially motivated policing a “myth”.
“We have no tolerance on our platform for hate speech. Of course, it’s incredibly hard and upsetting to read that,” Hatch said, “but equally, whether it is directed at creating hate, and real world harm in particular … The way that we define real-world harm is if it’s going to create imminent risk to people.”
Pressed on whether nationwide race riots qualified as “real-world harm”, Hatch said: “The debates that we see around all of these topics are extremely challenging and can be very very wide-ranging.”
Hatch appeared on the programme to promote Facebook’s latest effort to tackle platform safety: a campaign running across Europe, the Middle East and Africa that encourages users to help “stamp out false news”.
Facebook users should consider three questions when reading news on the platform, the company says: “Where’s it from?”, “What’s missing?” And “How did you feel?”. The intention is to promote reliable sources that tell the whole story, without skewing the narrative to encourage a heated emotional response.
The campaign has already sparked further criticism for pushing the work of keeping Facebook safe on to users. “This campaign urges users of Facebook to ‘stop, think and check’,” said Nick Robinson on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “Why should Facebook’s users do something which a $500bn corporation refuses to do?”
Despite some of the world’s biggest advertisers signing on to support the boycott, Facebook’s overall revenue is unlikely to have taken a significant hit. The company generates most of its income from the so-called “long tail” – smaller advertisers who make up in number what they lack in individual spending.
A game between the Atlanta Hawks and Houston Rockets earlier this year before the pandemic ended the NBA season. The Hawks have announced plans to use their arena as an early voting site for upcoming elections. (photo: Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images)
Atlanta Hawks Arena to Host Voting Site; Team Challenges Rest of NBA to Follow
Stephen Fowler, NPR
Fowler writes: "The Atlanta Hawks have committed their arena as an early voting site for Georgia's upcoming elections. The basketball team has also challenged other NBA franchises to become civically involved ahead of the November election."
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Stephen Fowler, NPR
Fowler writes: "The Atlanta Hawks have committed their arena as an early voting site for Georgia's upcoming elections. The basketball team has also challenged other NBA franchises to become civically involved ahead of the November election."
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Brazilians protesting racism. (photo: AFP)
Brazil: Record-Breaking Figures Show Preference for Democracy
teleSUR
Excerpt: "The support of Brazilians for democracy reached an unprecedented 75 percent amid the political crisis unleashed by Jair Bolsonaro's government, as revealed by a survey from the research institute Datafolha on Monday."
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teleSUR
Excerpt: "The support of Brazilians for democracy reached an unprecedented 75 percent amid the political crisis unleashed by Jair Bolsonaro's government, as revealed by a survey from the research institute Datafolha on Monday."
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Rep. Kathy Castor, chair of the House's Select Committee on the Climate Crisis. (photo: Greg Nash/Getty Images)
House Democrats' Climate Plan Is Finally Here, Doesn't Totally Suck
Dharna Noor, Gizmodo
Noor writes: "Democrats unveiled a 500-page plan to address the climate crisis on Tuesday morning. Its goals include reaching 100% electric vehicles by 2035, net-zero carbon emissions in the electricity sector by 2040, and in all sectors by 2050."
Dharna Noor, Gizmodo
Noor writes: "Democrats unveiled a 500-page plan to address the climate crisis on Tuesday morning. Its goals include reaching 100% electric vehicles by 2035, net-zero carbon emissions in the electricity sector by 2040, and in all sectors by 2050."
The plan was written by Democratic majority of the House’s Select Committee on the Climate Crisis. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi created the committee last year as a watered down version of a proposal by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Its introduction comes more than a year after AOC put forth her resolution on a Green New Deal, which Pelosi infamously dismissed as the “Green Dream or whatever.”
With that backstory in mind, the plan is surprisingly thorough. It draws clear inspiration from many aspects of the Green New Deal championed by the climate movement, including reaching net-zero carbon emissions within 30 years, the creation of “millions of good-paying, high-quality jobs,” and a focus on building equitable transit, housing, and power grids.
“In the past two years since launching the Green New Deal, young people have brought the clarity and urgency of the crisis to Congress, and we are happy to see the Select Committee’s Action Plan reflect much of the vision for a Green New Deal,” Lauren Maunus, Sunrise’s legislative director, told Earther. “That’s a real sign that young people are changing politics in this country and the establishment is scrambling to catch up.”
It also picks up policy ideas from the plan Washington Governor Jay Inslee put forth in his presidential primary run and the roadmap his former staffers laid out as Evergreen Action. Among the Inslee planks are federal incentives to drive state and local building codes toward mandating new zero-emission buildings by 2030, the creation of a Green Bank to finance sustainable projects, and the creation of an equity-based solar initiative in the Department of Energy to promote energy democracy and community-led investment.
“We’ve been working with the Select Committee since days after the Inslee campaign ended,” Jared Leopold, a former senior communications advisor for Inslee and member of Evergreen Action, told Earther in an email. “This is definitely a step in the right direction on strong targets.”
The plan’s focus on eliminating emissions from the three largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions–electricity, transit, and buildings—would also be a big step up for the U.S. if implemented. The proposal aims to reach 100% clean electricity by 2040, 100% zero-emissions car sales by 2035, and 100% renewable-powered new buildings by 2030. Leah Stokes, assistant professor of political science at the University of California, Santa Barbara, told Earther in an email that on these three fronts, “the plan is more ambitious than we have tended to see from Congress. Together, these three sectors account for about 70% of the carbon emissions, so they must be central.”
But though it’s a start, the plan could be even more ambitious, particularly in regard to regulating fossil fuel production. The plan includes regulations and incentives to reduce methane leakage 90% by 2030, which Stokes said “may not be as ambitious as is necessary.” It also aims to eliminate tax breaks for “large” oil and gas companies, but many corporations that frack oil and gas in the U.S. are small. And it calls for the elimination of “unfair and expensive government subsidies for oil and gas drilling on public lands,” but all fossil fuel subsidies should be eliminated to really address the crisis. And the plan does not directly set an end date for oil and gas expansion, which is a problem since the oil and gas projects already in the pipeline globally spell disaster for the climate.
The plan’s targets for phasing out emissions could also be far stronger. It’s true that the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s top climate body, has shown that global net carbon emissions must reach net-zero by around 2050 to keep heating to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit). But UN has also said that since the U.S. is the largest historical emitter of greenhouse and current second biggest carbon polluter, the country should bear a particularly heavy burden. As writer and meteorologist Eric Holthaus pointed out on Twitter, to pull its fair share, the U.S. would have to cut its emissions by 72% by the end of the decade.
“The slower we go, the greater the damage,” Peter Kalmus, a climate scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory told Earther in an email, speaking on his own behalf. “I think there will be a growing consensus over the next few years, as climate-related disasters continue to increase in frequency and intensity, that ‘2050 thinking’ isn’t big enough.”
Of course, the plan—let alone anything even stronger—is unlikely to win majority support in the Republican-controlled Senate. The select committee itself is bipartisan, but the report is only from the Democrats on the committee. Polls show that Democratic voters strongly support urgent action on the climate crisis, and climate action plans could be a good way to drum up support for the party to retake the Senate and White House.
“This plan is more ambitious than anything we have seen from Democratic leadership so far, but it still needs to go further to match the full scale of the crisis,” said Sunrise’s Maunus. “There’s nothing to lose by going bigger. Taking action at the scale of the crisis will help lift our economy out of recession and put millions of people back to work building a more just and resilient society.”
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