Love implementing the demands of justice

PRESENTED BY POWER AT ITS BEST

You love to see it: About 100 youth climate activists with the Sunrise Movement blockaded the Joe Biden presidential campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Del., calling for the president to declare a climate emergency, demand a ceasefire in Israel, and end the era of fossil fuels. Wilmington police arrested 20 of the demonstrators. Sunrise Campaign Director Kidus Girma explained:

The League of Conservation Voters’s Tiernan Sittenfeld, however, offered Biden lots of smooches, calling him a “true climate champion” in The New York Times:

LCV is working hard on selling Biden to young people.

More love is in the air, as Greenpeace protesters held a mock party for Shell’s announced £22.4 billion in profits for 2023 outside the oil gian't’s London headquarters.

And the Goddess of Love was flooded with valentines by Last Generation activists yesterday. To be more precise, the protesters briefly attached photographs of recent deadly flooding in Italy to the glass case of Botticelli’s Birth of Venus.

The Senate is now on vacation through next week, having passed its $95 billion foreign military aid package by a vote of 70-29. The three Democrats who voted against the bill in protest of its support for Israel’s indiscriminate campaign in Gaza were Sens. Bernie Sanders and Peter Welch of Vermont, and Jeff Merkley of Oregon.

The awful Tom Suozzi is back in Congress, having won back the seat he gave up for his embarrassing run for New York governor, which was briefly filled by the fabulist George Santos (R-Lunatic). When Suozzi is sworn in, the Republican majority will narrow to 219-215. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and President Biden celebrated Suozzi’s victory as an opportunity to move the Democratic Party to the right on immigration policy, but Suozzi’s real priority is protecting the profits of the Wall Street billionaires in his district.

On their second attempt, Republicans squeaked through their impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alexandro Mayorkas for not being enough of a xenophobic fascist at the border on a 214-213 vote. Now they can get back to their primary order of business, defending the fossil-fuel industry whose pollution is responsible for the global migrant crisis.

At 2 pm in the afternoon, the Rural Climate Partnership, a new grantmaking organization backed by the Wallace Global Fund, McKnight Foundation, and Stolte Family Foundation, is hosting a webinar on new communications research on rural renewable energy siting, which is a hotly contentious issue, with local communities trying to ban solar and wind farms across the nation.

In the House, Republicans are going after environmental policies on multiple fronts:

• At 10 am, the Small Business Committee has a hearing on how the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is destroying small business, particularly Texas oil and gas drillers.

• At 10:30 am, Energy and Commerce has a hearing with state utility regulators on grid reliability, with Republican officials from Indiana and Arizona complaining about being forced to shut down coal plants.

• Most importantly, at 10:15 am, the Natural Resources wildlife subcommittee holds a legislative hearing on bills to weaken protections for endangered species and against illegal logging on behalf of the timber industry. Logging and wood products executives will testify in favor of Rep. Pete Stauber’s (R-Minn.) Endangered Species Act Flexibility Act (H.R. 6784), written in particular to allow logging of the endangered Northern Long-Eared Bat’s habitat; and the so-called Strengthen Wood Product Supply Chains Act (H.R. 7157), cosponsored by Reps. John Duarte (R-Calif.) and Jim Costa (D-Calif.), which would severely curtail Lacey Act restrictions on importing illegal timber or wildlife. Alexander von Bismark, executive director of the Environmental Investigation Agency, will testify on the importance of not destroying complex ecosystems.

Also at 10 am, Agriculture holds a hearing with Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, Budget holds a hearing with Congressional Budget Office director Phill Swagel, and Transportation’s emergency management subcommittee interrogates FEMA head Deanne Criswell about the propriety of FEMA being engaged with emergency management other than climate disasters, such as the Covid and border crises, and supporting the resettlement of Afghan refugees.

Hearings on the Hill:

• 10 AM: House Transportation and Infrastructure
  Economic Development, Public Buildings, and Emergency Management
  Disaster Readiness: Examining the Propriety of the Expanded Use of FEMA Resources

• 10 AM: House Small Business
  EPA and Small Business

• 10 AM: House Agriculture
  Testimony from Thomas J. Vilsack, Secretary, U.S. Department of Agriculture

• 10 AM: House Budget
  The Congressional Budget Office’s Budget and Economic Outlook

• 10:15 AM: House Natural Resources
  Water, Wildlife and Fisheries
  Bills to Weaken Protections for Endangered Species and Against Illegal Logging and Wildlife Imports

• 10:30 AM: House Energy and Commerce
  Energy, Climate, and Grid Security
  State Utility Regulators on Challenges to Reliable, Affordable Electricity

Climate Action Today:

• 2 PM: Rural Climate Partnership
  New Communications Research on Rural Clean Energy Siting

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.

As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., said: