Abundance of Destruction

PRESENTED BY EZRA KLEIN, CHARLES KOCH, AND WARREN BUFFETT

Yesterday in good news:, Susan Crawford easily beat Elon Musk to win a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.Y.) beat Strom Thurmond (Dixiecrat-S.C.) for the record of the longest speech on the U.S. Senate floor. And a coalition of Democrats and Republicans in the House beat Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La., no relation) on his attempt to kill the campaign for proxy voting for members who are new parents.

Skip to the blue jay to avoid the bad news:

Yesterday in bad news: the fascist billionaire coup launched one of its most deadly attacks yet on the American people, devastating the health infrastructure of the United States and the world. The Trump regime illegally eliminated the Centers for Disease Control's Office on Smoking and Health, the National Center for Environmental Health's Asthma and Air Quality Branch, and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health's Respiratory Health Division and Mine Safety Division. Also damaged or destroyed: the National Center for HIV, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and Tuberculosis Prevention; the Global Health Center, Division of HIV and TB; National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases; the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities; the Office of Health Equity; and the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.

The fracking-powered chainsaw also came for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which ensures poor households do not freeze in the winter or broil in the summer by ensuring their utilities are not cut off. Green New Dealers Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-Ariz.), who on Monday introduced legislation to modernize and expand the program, denounced the billionaire cruelty.

The people are gathering today at the U.S. Supreme Court. From 9 am to 2 pm, Planned Parenthood is holding its Rally for Patients’ Rights, as the court is hearing arguments in Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, a case that could allow states to block Medicaid patients from accessing care at Planned Parenthood health centers.

And at 11 am, Repairers of the Breach, led by Bishop William J. Barber II, is holding Moral Witness Wednesday in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. Every first Wednesday of the month, they will gather in D.C. to examine the impacts of policy violence on the most vulnerable communities.

Stop reading here to avoid the bad news.

Fossil-fueled storms are unleashing deadly floods and strong tornadoes up and down the Mississippi Valley today before moving to strike the Appalachians and then the East Coast. The Storm Prediction Center in the National Weather Service in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the U.S. Department of Commerce in the United States of America, at the moment of this writing all entities in precarious existence, has issued a rare high risk warning for a major tornado outbreak today in the quint-state region from Arkansas up to southern Illinois.

The House Natural Resources oversight subcommittee receives testimony in a hearing with the fascistic title “Unleashing the Golden Age of American Energy Dominance” from Democratic witness Megan Gibson from the Southern Environmental Law Center, hard-right operatives Matthew Jensen and Kevin Dayaratna, and Koch industry oil executive and former Obama-Trump oil development official Glen Sweetnam.

At a Judiciary subcommittee hearing entitled Artificial Intelligence: Examining Trends in Innovation and Competition, GOP witnesses are arguing AI means we need to limit anti-trust. The Koch Abundance Institute operative Alex Chilson is a witness, alongside fellow conservative operatives Joseph Coniglio and Jessica Melugin. The Democratic witness is Alvaro Bedoja, a Federal Trade Commissioner recently illegally fired by Trump.

And the House Appropriations Committee is receiving witness testimony on State and national security programs that are being destroyed by Trump; testifying organizations include one happy with the fascists, namely AIPAC; and dozens gutted, including Catholic Relief Services, Food for the Hungry, Vaccine Alliance, Friends of the Global Fight Against AIDS, TB and Malaria, Malaria No More, and World Learning.

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee holds the confirmation hearing for Katharine MacGregor to be Deputy Secretary of the Interior and James Danly to be Deputy Secretary of Energy. Both are Republican operatives, polluter lobbyists, and former high-level officials in the first Trump administration. MacGregor is the recent Vice President of Environmental Services for NextEra Energy, while Danly represented NextEra Energy and others in cases before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, before joining the agency for Trump.

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee receives testimony from reality TV star and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy on the Surface Transportation Reauthorization Bill.

Senate Judiciary chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) holds yet another hearing on limiting court injunctions, in support of Josh Hawley’s (R-Mo.) S. 1099, the companion to the House bill H.R. 1526.

The “good” billionaire Warren Buffett is working to solve one of the problems of global warming, in terms of the threat it poses to the profit margins of fossil-fueled electric utilities when deadly wildfires are caused by them:

From Adam Aton: the politicians running Louisiana, Oklahoma, Texas, and North Dakota—all dominated by oil-and-gas corruption—are planning to pull a DOGE to destroy their already weak regulation of climate polluters.

Hearings on the Hill:

• 10 AM: Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee
  Nominations of Katharine MacGregor to be Deputy Secretary of the Interior and James Danly to be Deputy Secretary of Energy

• 10 AM: Senate Environment and Public Works Committee
  The Surface Transportation Reauthorization Bill: United States Secretary of Transportation’s Perspective

• 10 AM: House Natural Resources Committee
     Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee
  Oversight of fossil-fuel and renewable energy production

• 10 AM: House Appropriations Committee
     National Security, Department of State, and Related Programs Subcommittee
  Outside Witness Day for National Security and Department of State

• 10 AM: House Judiciary Committee
     the Administrative State, Regulatory Reform, and Antitrust Subcommittee
  Artificial Intelligence: Examining Trends in Innovation and Competition

• 10 AM: House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee
  Markup of Mexico-US Wastewater Treatment and Other Bills

• 10:15 AM: Senate Judiciary Committee
  Limiting Court Injunctions

Climate Action Today:

• 9 AM: Planned Parenthood
  Rally for Patients' Rights

• 11 AM: Repairers of the Breach
  Moral Witness Wednesday: A National Call for Justice, Love, & Truth-Telling

Thanks for subscribing and spreading the word. If you’ve got job listings, event listings, or other hot news, I want to hear it. Connect with me—@[email protected], @climatebrad on Threads, and @climatebrad.hillheat.com on BlueSky.