Happy Birthday America, You Have Stage Four Oligarchy

PRESENTED BY SOCIOPATHIC CORPORATE LOBBYISTS

Happy birthday America, you have stage four oligarchy. Symptoms include biblical fire and flood.

What a week it has been. The One Big Brutal Bill Act, backed by Trump, 3M, AT&T, Altria, American Airlines, Chevron, Comcast, Delta, Southwest, T-Mobile, Uber, United, UPS, Verizon, and SuperCuts, passed the House 218-214, effectively on party lines, after a similar 51-50 vote in the Senate.¹ Instead of locking up carbon criminals, we just gave them a four-trillion-dollar tax cut.

The Big Brutal Bill devastates renewable and climate investments, including the nation’s green bank programs. The climate denier Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), who laughably co-chairs the bipartisan Congressional Solar Caucus, was promised by Trump that the White House would work to stifle renewable tax credits even faster.

While Trump was signing this Project 2025 dismantling of climate policy, catastrophic floods in Texas from the fossil-fueled remnants of Tropical Storm Barry killed dozens of children at Camp Mystic along the Guadalupe River. Local Republican officials failed to heed the increasingly urgent warnings of the federal climate scientists and meteorologists under attack by Trump.

Republican Rob Kelly, the top elected official in Kerr County, used the classic “no one could have predicted” line:

He continued that county officials had “no reason to believe that this was going to be anything like what’s happened here. None whatsoever.”

What he meant was “I’m a climate denier.”

Texas’s Big-Oil politicians have blood on their hands.

The National Weather Service’s San Angelo office is missing a meteorologist in charge, senior hydrologist, and staff forecaster; the San Antonio office is down a warning coordination meteorologist and science officer; those remaining worked day and night to predict and warn about the danger of floods.

Wildfires are blazing in California, Syria, Greece, and Turkey.

The Mediterranean Sea is boiling hot. Eastern China is sweltering. More heat is on its way.

Tropical Storm Chantal landed today on South Carolina, lashing the Carolinas with heavy rains.

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.

1  Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) cast a decisive vote for legislation that will devastate her constituents. She is back in her home state, hiding in bathrooms to get away from them.