POLITICO NIGHTLY: How Georgia’s voting law could backfire

 

BY RENUKA RAYASAM Presented by PL+US and Paid Leave For All With help from Tyler Weyant NO COKE, PEPSI — African Methodist Episcopal Bishop Reginald T. Jackson and other Georgia faith leaders announced a national boycott today, starting April 7, of Coca-Cola, Home Depot and Delta — three Atlanta-based companies — over the state’s new voting law. The boycott could eventually extend to other companies including UPS, Aflac, Georgia Power and UBS. President Joe Biden has called on Major League Baseball to move the All-Star Game out of Atlanta in response to the law, a move that Georgia’s Republican Gov. Brian Kemp called “ridiculous.” The new law, which limits early voting and requires ID for a mail ballot, is “inhumane,” Jackson told Nightly today. In addition to the boycotts, the AME church joined one of three lawsuits challenging the Georgia voting restrictions in federal courts. Nightly spoke with Jackson today about the boycott and why he believes it’s necessary. This conversation has been edited. Bishop Reginald T. Jackson speaks today in Atlanta. | James Gaymon Delta and Coca-Cola have already condemned the Georgia law, and the state’s legislative session is over, so the law can’t be reversed. What more can these companies do now? The corporate community in Georgia is being irresponsible. Delta Airlines and Coca-Cola both came out publicly in opposition to the bill, which is frustrating because the bill has already passed. They initially praised these bills and said they were much better than they were. My conversations with state leaders is they claim that neither one of these companies spoke out in opposition to anything in the bill. So somebody is not telling the truth. We need them to demonstrate their opposition to these bills. If we did not announce the boycott, I am not sure they would have made a public statement. We said to them there are four things they have to do in order for us not to have the boycott. The first: Hold a press conference and speak in opposition to SB 202. The second thing — you have 361 bills and 47 states which in some way try to suppress the votes of Black and brown people — they have to speak out nationally against these bills in these other states. We expect them to use their lobbies and financial resources to fight these bills. The third thing: They have to publicly come out in support of H.R. 1 and H.R. 4, federal legislation that would counteract and nullify the bill passed in Georgia. Finally, we said to these corporations: You all have to help pay for this litigation. In Martin Luther King’s “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” address, he talks about using boycotts over “Molotov cocktails” to achieve civil rights gains. Why is this strategy an important part of your fight against this Georgia bill? The boycott is not something that I really want to do. In 2019, prior to the pandemic, I must have flown almost 100 times on Delta. I consider Delta my airline. So I really don’t want to boycott Delta. But if Delta can’t support me, there is no need for me to continue to support Delta. I’m going to have to start flying United. When we hold back our money from these corporations, it forces them to act. The Black community puts a ton of money in support of these corporations. I am convinced that if we start putting our dollars at Lowe’s or Pepsi or other airlines they will come around. What are you going to do to get your congregation to the polls next November, given the new law? We are going to make sure that people have the ID they need. We’re going to make sure they have transportation to get to the polls. We’re gonna to see that they know the candidates. We’re starting that now. We’re not waiting. Blacks are a resilient people. One of the worst things you can do is get Black folk mad. If you get ’em mad they’re gonna turn out to vote no matter what. I almost wish that the ’22 election was now. Because Blacks are geared up and ready to vote. Republicans are gonna be stunned when they see how this effort has backfired. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. The perils of having an anniversary on April Fool’s Day. Never sure if I am going to get a nice dinner or a car full of bees. Reach out with news and tips at rrayasam@politico.com, or on Twitter at @renurayasam. A message from PL+US and Paid Leave For All: Over 200 businesses large & small are coming together to urge Congress to pass a national paid leave policy. We can build stronger & more equitable workplaces for families and businesses, securing our nation's economic recovery. More than 8 in 10 Americans support paid leave. And over 75% of businesses agree that paid leave is care infrastructure that can help them weather future public health emergencies and economic crises. See the businesses supporting paid leave.   AROUND THE NATION LEGALIZING IT — New York and New Mexico just legalized weed, and now more than 1 in 3 Americans live in states where marijuana is fully legal. Yet weed remains illegal according to federal law and is still classified as a schedule 1 drug. Natalie Fertig walks us through what you need to know in the latest POLITICO Explains video.   JOIN THE CONVERSATION, SUBSCRIBE TO “THE RECAST” Power dynamics are shifting in Washington, and more people are demanding a seat at the table, insisting that all politics is personal and not all policy is equitable. “The Recast” is a new twice-weekly newsletter that breaks down how race and identity are recasting politics, policy and power in America. Get fresh insights, scoops and dispatches on this crucial intersection from across the country and hear from new voices that challenge business as usual. Don’t miss out on our latest newsletter, SUBSCRIBE NOW. Thank you to our sponsor, Intel.     FIRST IN NIGHTLY THE BLOOMBERG BATTLEFIELD — Former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg had a knack for attracting top-tier staff and commanding loyalty in the City Hall he ran for more than a decade as well as the campaigns he waged to get there. But as those staffers take up positions in opposing camps for this year’s Democratic mayoral primary, the Bloomberg alumni are lobbing grenades at one another, on the trail and online, as the candidates grow more restive by the day — referring to their former trenchmates as tone-deaf, disingenuous and one candidate’s supporters as a “clown car,” Erin Durkin writes. For 12 years Bloomberg dominated city politics — a billionaire three-term mayor who first ran as a Republican but launched a public health push against tobacco and sugary drinks, and was a prominent gun control and environmental advocate. Since 2014, though, Mayor Bill de Blasio has largely repudiated Bloomberg’s legacy and exiled most of his loyalists from City Hall. Bloomberg’s former aides are now back in the mix, shaping the race to choose de Blasio’s successor. Chris Coffey, who spent 12 years in Blomberg’s City Hall and mayoral campaigns, is the co-campaign manager for frontrunner Andrew Yang. The firm he works for, Tusk Strategies, is headed by Bradley Tusk, Bloomberg’s 2009 campaign manager. City Comptroller Scott Stringer’s campaign manager is Micah Lasher — Bloomberg’s director of state legislative affairs. The former mayor’s longtime press secretary Stu Loeser is working on former Wall Street exec Ray McGuire’s campaign, while Menashe Shapiro, who worked on Bloomberg’s mayoral and presidential campaigns, is a consultant to Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams.       WHAT'D I MISS? — McConnell predicts zero GOP support for Biden spending plan: The Senate Republican leader pilloried the $2.5 trillion infrastructure proposal as exacerbating the debt and raising taxes . McConnell said the bill would not get a single Senate GOP vote. — Unions demand Biden cancel student debt for public service workers: Labor unions are making a new push to get the Education Department to use executive action to forgive the student loans of Americans working in public service jobs — the latest pressure from the left for the Biden administration to act more aggressively on student debt relief. — White House knew more than a week ago of J&J contractor vaccine-supply problems: Senior Biden administration health officials, including some within the White House, knew two weeks ago that a Johnson & Johnson contractor’s production problems could delay delivery of a significant number of future vaccine doses, according to three senior administration officials. — DOT halts Texas highway project in test of Biden’s promises on race: Biden’s Department of Transportation is invoking the Civil Rights Act to pause a highway project near Houston, a rare move that offers an early test of the administration’s willingness to wield federal power to address government-driven racial inequities. FROM THE HEALTH DESK FINDING THE SURGE PROTECTOR — We’re on the verge of a fourth Covid surge. And that has health officials freaked out about a nightmare scenario where cases outpace vaccinations, more new variants emerge and things get really bad. Health care reporter Erin Banco reports on the latest in a new POLITICO Dispatch. Listen to the latest POLITICO Dispatch podcast ASK THE AUDIENCE Nightly asks you: We want to hear from people experiencing anxiety about heading into post-pandemic life. Maybe you’re an introvert nervous about returning to the office, or maybe you’re broadly concerned about large social situations. Or maybe you’ve never struggled with social anxiety before and are about to face a new challenge. Tell us what you’re thinking in our form. We’ll share a few responses in our Friday edition.   THE LATEST FROM INSIDE THE WEST WING : A lot happened in the first two months of the Biden presidency. From a growing crisis at the border to increased mass shootings across the country while navigating the pandemic and ongoing economic challenges. Add Transition Playbook to your daily reads to find out what actions are on the table and the internal state of play inside the West Wing and across the administration. Track the people, policies and emerging power centers of the Biden administration. Don’t miss out. Subscribe today.     THE GLOBAL FIGHT WARSAW’S BIG MISTAKE — Poland’s government-run coronavirus vaccination system spiraled into disarray today as it unexpectedly opened jab registrations for everyone over 40 before a minister rushed out to say it was all a mistake, Jan Cienski writes. According to earlier announcements, only those older than 60 — as well as people at heightened medical risk plus selected professions — are currently eligible. The system was due to be opened to those 50 and older step-by-step over April, followed by a broader availability in May. However, the online system started allowing registrations of everyone over 40 this morning. The government’s vaccination site even tweeted: “This is not April Fool’s.” But within a few hours, Michał Dworczyk, the official responsible for the vaccination program, claimed there had been an “error.” The chaotic situation around the vaccination program comes as political pressure rises on the government to show it is in control of the situation. Today saw 621 deaths and a record-high 35,251 new cases, according to the health ministry. NIGHTLY NUMBER One-third The share of mothers who do not plan to get a Covid vaccine for their children, according to a preprint that includes a survey of nearly 2,000 women. (h/t The 19th) PARTING WORDS THE NIGHT BEFORE — Nightly’s Tyler Weyant emails Nightly: These will be the last words you read from me as an unvaccinated person. I get my shot Friday morning. I’ve had a lot of words with myself in the time before that shot comes. Should I lay out my clothes the night before? How early should I get there? Should I post my vaccine card on social media? At least these are lighter than my thoughts at this time last year. My plans, lying in bed wide awake, for what I would do if I got Covid. Which room I would sequester myself in? Who would cover for me at work? Could my dog get Covid? What if I die? What if I die, and people have to go through my possessions, and they can’t have a funeral? These thoughts started a year ago, and have ebbed and flowed for a year through a mind occasionally blocked by fear. I read news and stats and new studies by day, then at night help to craft some fresh new nightmare or scenario out of the day’s ingredients. But on Friday, I’m hoping they stop. I’ll show up at my assigned time, in my best vaccine outfit (baggy T-shirt, good sweatpants), and make sure I repeat my mantras (practice patience, left arm, left arm, left arm). Tonight, maybe I’ll dream of another episode I’ve thought about often in the dark hours: Not the second I get the shot, but the moment when the person ahead of me in line is called. I stand there, no one ahead of me. I got here. I’m excited to step out of line and into what comes next. A message from PL+US and Paid Leave For All: Large & small businesses are coming together in an unprecedented effort to urge Congress to pass paid family and medical leave as part of the next recovery package. This crisis has provided a unique opportunity to build stronger and more equitable workplaces for working families and businesses, while investing in our nation’s economic recovery. We cannot emerge from this pandemic and remain one of only two countries in the world with no form of national paid leave. We need a policy that is inclusive and protects all businesses and working people equally. Paid leave is care infrastructure that contributes to greater stability and viability for our businesses and a stronger recovery for our country collectively. Join the the businesses supporting paid leave including Diageo North America, Levi Strauss & Co, Pinterest, Salesforce, Atalassian, Spotify, Nextdoor, Patagonia, Danone, Stitch Fix, Eventbrite, Etsy Inc, Lime, Rent the Runway, Thumbtack, Sunrun and +190 more.   Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here.   Follow us on Twitter Renuka Rayasam @renurayasam Chris Suellentrop @suellentrop Tyler Weyant @tweyant Myah Ward @myahward   FOLLOW US

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RSN: FOCUS: Bill McKibben | There Are No Borders in a Climate Crisis

 

 

01 April 21

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FOCUS: Bill McKibben | There Are No Borders in a Climate Crisis

Bill McKibben, The New Yorker
McKibben writes: "The 'crisis' at the border is dominating the news, and, as my colleague Jonathan Blitzer has written, the immediate focus is on the political battle to prevent Joe Biden from passing meaningful immigration reform."

Greenhouse gases will still sail right across even the biggest, most beautiful wall.

he “crisis” at the border is dominating the news, and, as my colleague Jonathan Blitzer has written, the immediate focus is on the political battle to prevent Joe Biden from passing meaningful immigration reform. But this might also be a moment for thinking about what globalism means in a world where borders ultimately can’t offer protection against the most serious threats.

To give an example: owing in part to climate change, there was a record hurricane season last year, with the last two storms, Eta and Iota, striking Central America. As Nicole Narea explained in a recent article in Vox, the Northern Triangle countries—Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador—have been afflicted by climate-induced drought for a decade, leaving 3.5 million people facing food insecurity, but the floods from those two storms produced even more savage damage. Twelve hundred schools were damaged or destroyed; forty per cent of corn crops and sixty-five per cent of the bean harvest were lost. As a percentage of G.D.P., the damage is greater than that done by the worst storms ever to hit the United States, yet the people of these countries did comparatively little to cause the climate crisis—whereas the four per cent of us who live in this country have produced more greenhouse gases than the population of almost any other nation. So there’s really no way to pretend that migrants arriving at our southern border have no claim on America. Honduras could have built the biggest, most beautiful wall on its northern border, and our CO₂ would still have sailed right across it.

And it’s not as if this is an isolated case. As early as 2017, according to the organizers at climate-refugees.org, sixty per cent of displaced people around the world were on the move because of “natural” disasters, not civil conflict. In the past six months, according to the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, about eighty per cent of displacements have been the result of disasters, “most of which are triggered by climate and weather extremes.” As Axios reported last week, using a projection model created by the Times, ProPublica, and the Pulitzer Center, “migration from Central America will rise every year regardless of climate change,” but, “in the most extreme warming scenarios, more than 30 million migrants would head toward the U.S. border over the next 30 years.”

There’s a rough analogue emerging right now around access to COVID-19 vaccines. The U.S. and other rich countries are stockpiling more doses than they need. This is morally dubious; unlike with climate change, we didn’t actively cause other countries’ health crises, but it’s hard to make a case that the people living through them need inoculations any less than we do. It’s also epidemiologically dangerous: if we allow the virus to continue to ravage poorer nations, new variants will keep emerging and keep crossing into privileged ones. “As long as the virus continues to circulate anywhere, people will continue to die, trade and travel will continue to be disrupted, and the economic recovery will be further delayed,” the head of the World Health Organization said recently. According to the Times, for example, “even under the best of circumstances,” just thirty per cent of the population of Kenya will be vaccinated by mid-2023.

We could solve some of these problems by donating lots of vaccine, encouraging cross-national coöperation, and overriding patent protections and other intellectual-property restrictions. That would allow everyone to access cheap versions of these remarkable drugs—just as we need to make sure that the use of solar power and cheap batteries spreads globally, because we can’t solve climate change in one country. The pandemic and climate change are defining events in our century, and it’s useless to pretend that national boundaries are the best way to think about them. Biology and physics are mandating new ideas about human solidarity, and demand action in real time.

Passing the Mic

One of the decade’s key questions is whether large banks can be persuaded to end their lending to the fossil-fuel industry. Two weeks ago, more than four hundred advocacy groups called on the Biden Administration to end public financing for coal, oil, and natural-gas projects. Meanwhile, researchers at the Rainforest Action Network issued their annual report on the private-banking sector. They found that, though financing for fossil-fuel projects dropped a tad during the pandemic, it’s higher now than it was in 2016, shortly after the Paris climate accord. Funding for the hundred fossil-fuel companies with the biggest expansion plans—projects that will build new infrastructure—has actually increased in the past five years. JPMorgan Chase maintains its position as the biggest lender, with Citibank, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America in second, third, and fourth. (Inside Climate News points out that the same banks are also financing food companies implicated in rain-forest destruction.)

The biggest changes need to come from government regulators, but there are lots of interesting ideas for how consumers can avoid aiding climate destruction. A new app from GenE can round up your purchases to the next dollar and donate the change to environmental groups. There are alternatives to regular banking, too. Scheduled to open later this year, in Tampa, is the Climate First Bank, where “eco-conscious customers will find dedicated loan options for solar photovoltaic (PV), energy retrofits and infrastructure.” On the East Coast, the Amalgamated Bank has committed to divesting from fossil fuels; Beneficial State, on the West Coast, is also fossil-fuel-free. (Bank of the West has been positioning itself in the same space, but RAN’s annual report shows that its French parent, BNP Paribas, actually increased fossil-fuel funding by more than ten billion dollars last year.) And there are online banking options, too, such as Aspiration.

Ben Jealous, an Aspiration board member and a leader of the environmental-justice movement, helped highlight the role that banks play when he served as the youngest-ever executive director of the N.A.A.C.P., from 2008 to 2013. He is currently the president of the advocacy group People for the American Way. (Our conversation has been edited for length.)

You’ve been an activist at the highest level. How does banking fit into the effort to fight climate change?

Finance shapes the destiny of the communities we live in and the planet we live on. My great-great-grandfather started a bank shortly after the Civil War to help build strong communities for people like him, who had been recently freed from slavery. It feels good to have another way to help insure that our planet and humanity thrive for generations to come.

Can we actually measure the scale of change: carbon saved, trees planted?

Yes. It starts with measuring dollars moved. This is critical because, while account holders at the major banks may not realize it, most of those financial institutions are financing oil pipelines and other destructive fossil-fuel projects.

We refuse to finance destructive projects like pipelines and offshore drilling. We estimate that, for every dollar you pull out of a big bank and put into a place like Aspiration, you are eliminating up to five pounds of carbon that would have gone into the atmosphere.

Moreover, Aspiration’s Plant Your Change program allows consumers to plant a tree every time they swipe their card. Already, in less than a year’s time, we have funded the planting of five million trees, which has the impact of offsetting the carbon emissions of twenty-three thousand cars.

Between the fossil-fuel-free deposits and the trees planted by Aspiration members, we’ve had up to almost six billion pounds of carbon impact. That’s like taking every car in West Virginia off the road for a year.

And is this just a niche, or are there ways that these signals start to reach the giants at Chase and Citi and so on, who are funding the fossil-fuel industry?

Every time an account holder leaves them to come to us, or any of the small yet growing number of banks who have pledged never to loan one cent to Big Oil and Big Gas, they get that message. Every time the broader anti-fossil-fuel divestment movement we have all helped build announces a new major partner, pulling billions more out of circulation from them, they get that message.

Increasingly, they get that message from their richest customers, too, as more of them are demanding that their dollars be invested in companies that are actually good stewards of our planet. The message is this: the old economy is dying because it was unsustainable. A good economy is coming that will better sustain us all. Join us or be left behind.

It’s the same message my great-great-grandfather sent to his old owners, when he helped start that bank right after slavery ended.

Climate School

We are in a remarkable stretch for environmental journalism. Last week, Jonathan Foley, the executive director of Project Drawdown, listed seven reasons that artificially capturing carbon from the air will not make a major contribution in the climate fight. (The Swedish academics Andreas Malm and Wim Carton offered a European perspective on direct air capture.) Politico’s Michael Grunwald contributed what will likely be the definitive piece on the indefensible idea of burning trees to generate electricity. (“Biomass emits more carbon than coal at the smokestack, plus the carbon released by logging, processing logs into vitamin-sized pellets and transporting them overseas. And solar panels can produce 100 times as much power per acre as biomass.”) Look for a Pulitzer citation for the Tampa Bay Times, for a truly remarkable investigation of the lead poisoning of the workforce at a battery-recycling plant in Tampa. (“It’s not unusual for water to hit liquid lead, triggering violent explosions that send molten metal flying. Scars from lead splashes are so common workers refer to them as ‘tattoos’ and consider them a rite of passage.”) And the Wall Street Journal offered a compelling graphic analysis of how much better electric vehicles are for the climate, noting that “by the time we get to 200,000 miles, the lifespan of a typical car, the emissions comparison isn’t even close.”A Tesla, it turns out, produces less than half the carbon of a comparably sized internal-combustion car.

The United Nations Human Rights Commission has launched an investigation into government suppression of climate protest, inviting people to submit examples. “This repression has taken many forms, from protest bans and laws criminalizing legitimate acts of peaceful assembly, to attempts to paint climate defenders as ‘eco-terrorists,’ to online harassment and physical persecution,” according to the call for inputs. “The COVID-19 pandemic has only amplified the existent restrictions on climate and environmental defenders as states have been enacting emergency measures that further enhance their powers. There is a danger that such new powers and restrictions may outlast the pandemic and may become the new norm.”

A new report from the U.K.-based New Weather Institute, “Sweat Not Oil,” details the sponsorship links between the fossil-fuel industry and athletics. “Sport floats on a sea of sponsorship deals with the major polluters,” Andrew Simms, the report’s co-author, said. “It makes the crisis worse by normalising high-carbon, polluting lifestyles, and reducing the pressure for climate action.”

Visual artists and climate researchers have combined to form a new group, Scientists and Artists for Net Zero. They’re starting their efforts with a letter to John Kerry advocating for a six-month collaboration between scientists, policymakers, and artists to plan for rapid energy transitions—and with a logo employing a new font, Climate Crisis, designed by Finland’s leading newspaper, Helsingin Sanomat, which is inspired by melting Arctic sea ice, and can be downloaded here.

Follow-ups: I wrote last year about the emerging Clean Creatives campaign to persuade ad agencies to stop working with the fossil-fuel industry. An article in the Times makes clear that the effort is gaining adherents, citing a major Swedish firm that has sworn off work for oil companies. “There will be a point when it won’t be culturally acceptable to work with these clients,” a principal at a Los Angeles communications firm said. Last week, environmental groups took out a full-page ad in the Financial Times in an effort to pressure the head of the International Energy Agency, Fatih Birol, to improve the agency’s annual World Energy Outlook report, which, as I have noted before, has routinely underestimated the power of renewables.

Scoreboard

Last week, Ireland, which has some of the most remarkable climate activists in the world, adopted a plan that calls for a fifty-one-per-cent reduction in emissions from 2018 levels by 2030. That’s one of the most ambitious targets in the world—a decade’s worth of seven-per-cent annual cuts. That legal spur to action is as necessary there as it is in countries around the world, because, as Sadhbh O’Neill writes, in the Irish Times, “We have an impressive record in Ireland of using distant targets as an excuse to postpone action and in the hope that a magical technology will appear, or better still, a different government with fewer financial constraints on public expenditure.”

Matt Leacock, who sold more than two million copies of his board game Pandemic, is hard at work on a new game that tackles the climate crisis. “I’ve got a big opportunity to come up with a coöperative game that makes a difference,” he said. “I don’t want to blow it.”

Methane emissions from the oil wells in Texas’s Permian Basin are back at pre-pandemic levels, after tumbling sixty per cent last spring, when producers shut down wells in the face of plummeting crude-oil prices.

An extraordinary win in the divestment campaign, as the University of Michigan says that it is dropping fossil fuel from its $12.5-billion endowment. Not only is Michigan regularly ranked alongside the (already divested) University of California as one of the nation’s premier public universities but it’s also situated miles from the heart of the auto industry. President Mark Schlissel had refused to divest in 2015. Last week, he told me that “what’s changed for me is my growing appreciation of the long-term financial risks to the university.” Meanwhile, students are embarking on a legal fight to persuade the bitter-enders at Harvard that the time has come to join their peers and divest. And on Wednesday, Amherst College announced that it, too, was phasing out investments in fossil fuels.

Solar power is already the cheapest way to generate electricity across most of the planet, but the Department of Energy announced plans to drive the cost down a further sixty per cent by 2030, to two cents a kilowatt-hour.

Warming Up

The California-based punk band Neighborhood Brats asks a question increasingly on the minds of state residents: “Who Took the Rain?”

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In Africa, Two Elephant Species Are in Big Trouble

 

Forest and Savanna Elephants Badly Need Help Long-awaited new assessments by the International Union for Conservation of Nature show that elephants in Africa are even closer to extinction than previously thought. The studies recognize two distinct African elephant species: savanna and forest. Savanna elephants have declined by more than 50% in 75 years, forest elephants by a shocking 80% in less than a century. Both are threatened by ivory poaching and habitat loss. "Forest elephants are finally getting the recognition they deserve," said Tanya Sanerib at the Center for Biological Diversity. "Now we have to crack down on the poaching of these desperately imperiled animals."

Meet Our Tiniest New Client: Oregon's Red Tree Vole

The Center and allies just sued over a Trump-era decision to deny protection to red tree voles on the north Oregon coast. These tiny, charming mammals can subsist entirely on conifer needles, spending almost their whole lives in trees. Sadly that means they're incredibly vulnerable to logging of their forest homes.

After our 2007 petition to protect this vole population, they were repeatedly recognized as needing protection, but instead waitlisted — and in 2019 the Trump administration decided they didn't deserve safeguards at all.

"We hope the Biden administration takes a close look at this politically driven decision," said the Center's Noah Greenwald. "Protecting the red tree vole also benefits hundreds of other plants and animals, clean water and our climate."

Lawsuit Launched for Oregon Coast Spring Chinook Salmon

Spring Chinook salmon once thrived in all of Oregon's coastal watersheds. But they've disappeared from many rivers due to logging, roads, and other sources of habitat degradation like dams and poorly run hatcheries. In 2019 the Center and allies petitioned to win these fish Endangered Species Act protection. By law a decision from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was due September 2020 — but we've yet to see it. So we've launched a lawsuit against the agency to force it to follow its own timeline.

New Horizons for California Condors California condors are a true Endangered Species Act success story. They narrowly escaped extinction in the 1980s, when the last 22 wild individuals starred in a captive-breeding program. Today there are more than 500 in the wild and in captivity. And now North America's largest bird is taking off into the next stage of its recovery: Last week the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced it will establish a new population of California condors in the Pacific Northwest. Get more from this story featuring the Center's Quinn Read — and a cute condor chick.

New Recovery Plans for Southeast Salamanders Two critically endangered amphibians in Florida and other southeastern states just got a roadmap out of extinction. The Fish and Wildlife Service has published draft recovery plans for reticulated and frosted flatwoods salamanders after a lawsuit by the Center and allies. "Protecting and properly managing habitat is critical here," said the Center's Elise Bennett. "We expect federal officials to quickly finalize, fund and implement the plans for these tiny beauties before it's too late."

This Flower Lives Only in a Future Mine's Footprint On Monday the Center and allies asked the Bureau of Land Management to protect 4,015 acres surrounding habitat for a beautiful yellow-white wildflower called Tiehm's buckwheat. The acreage includes a buffer zone to protect the extremely imperiled plant from a lithium mine whose footprint would engulf the buckwheat's entire remaining habitat of only 10 acres. "This rare little flower is staring down the barrel of extinction," said the Center's Patrick Donnelly. "We're asking the Biden administration to ensure its habitat is preserved for future generations."

Suit Challenges EPA Thumbs-Up for Antibiotic on Citrus Crops Spraying antibiotics on trees is ineffective in fighting crop diseases and can drive antibiotic resistance in bacteria that seriously threaten human health. Yet under Trump, the Environmental Protection Agency approved widespread use of streptomycin on citrus trees — so the Center and allies sued last Thursday. "To jeopardize an essential tool in controlling the global tuberculosis pandemic by allowing it to be sprayed on citrus trees is the height of irresponsibility," said Center Senior Scientist Nathan Donley. "Leading global health officials are sounding the alarm about overuse of essential medicines like streptomycin, yet the EPA's pesticide office is recklessly blessing its use as a pesticide."

Report Shows Wildlife Exploitation Likely Caused Pandemic On Tuesday the World Health Organization published a report finding that the SARS-CoV-2 virus behind the COVID-19 pandemic probably originated from human exploitation of wildlife. The report comes as U.S. lawmakers consider the Preventing Future Pandemics Act, a bipartisan bill that would shut down the trade in live terrestrial wild animals for human consumption, close wildlife markets, and spur international action to curtail future pandemics. The report also indicated that minks could be the source of the outbreak, providing a stark compilation of data from fur farms in 10 countries where these captive animals have gotten sick. Meanwhile, the Oregon legislature is considering a bill to phase out the state's mink farms. That's Wild: Was Lightning the Key to Life on Earth? Some 4 billion years ago, meteorites brought minerals to Earth that helped foster life. But researchers from the University of Leeds recently found that lightning strikes may have been just as important in delivering certain minerals: They bring schreibersite, a water-soluble form of phosphorus, to the planet's surface. Phosphorus is a key mineral for all life processes, from movement to growth and reproduction. According to head researcher Benjamin Hess, the discovery means life could still erupt on other Earth-like planets long after meteorite impacts become rare.