Throwing America into the trash

PRESENTED BY THE SARDINIAN WARBLER

Both chambers of Trump’s Congress worked through the night to accelerate the collapse of human civilization for a few more good years of fossil-fuel shareholder returns.

Celebrating over 900 tornadoes this year, Speaker and theocrat Mike Johnson (R-La., no relation) jammed Trump’s One Big Brutal Bill (belatedly assigned H.R. 1) through the House at 6:55 am this morning. The behemoth packages $3.8 billion in tax cuts with $1.6 billion in public welfare cuts and $300 billion in war and paramilitary increases, along with a raft of cruel policy attacks and polluter giveaways, including a wholesale repeal of Biden’s climate and clean-energy legacy.

Honoring our ever-more brutal summers, House Rules chair and white-supremacist theocrat Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) jammed the One Big Brutal Bill through her committee last night at 10:30 pm, after a marathon session that began at one in the morning. The final text was only released a few minutes before 9 pm. On the good side, the Nevada and Utah federal-lands sell-off was dropped in the final version of the OBBB, as were prohibitions on the implementation of various Western resource management plans and cuts to federal pensions. On the bad side:

• Faster elimination of the Inflation Reduction Act clean-energy tax credits

• Federal support for gender-affirming care banned for all Americans, not just minors

• Abortion coverage under Obamacare marketplace plans banned

• Registration and taxes for gun silencers eliminated

• Anti-regulation slush fund for OMB’s Russ Vought increased from $20 million over 10 years to $100 million over three years

• SALT deduction increased by $109 billion

• Various other new tax loopholes for corporations and the wealthy

The Big Brutal Bill attacks all of us from a thousand directions. The throughline is central premise of extractive capitalism: that there are disposable people and disposable places. And the Trump GOP definitely believe that is most people and most places.

The process to jam this Trumpian monster through the Senate and then back through the House will take all of June, so the American people have that much time to organize against its devastation.

But that’s not all!

At 2:51 am, the House GOP also passed S.J.Res 31, a Congressional Review Act resolution, to remove protections on seven of the world’s most dangerous and deadly pollutants for 1,800 of the nation’s worst industrial polluters. 

Meanwhile, on the Senate side!

In the morning, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) dressed down EPA hatchetman Lee Zeldin for his contempt of Congress and the courts in his illegal attacks on climate programs.

Overnight, the Senate GOP, led by Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) and Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-Coal), went nuclear to blow up parliamentary order in a series of 13 votes that took 11 hours thanks to stiff opposition from Senate Democrats, led by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), to use the Congressional Review Act illegally to strike down California's Clean Cars program. And who knows what’s next?

As the maxim goes, you can’t kill the climate without breaking a few democracies.

The final votes are happening today as I send this newsletter out.

Hearings on the Hill:

• 10:30 AM: House Foreign Affairs Committee
     Africa Subcommittee
  A Dire Crisis in Sudan: A Global Call to Action

• 11:45 AM: Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee
  Vote on nominations of Mine Safety, Labor, and Education Nominees

Climate Action Today:

• 11:30 AM: First Street Foundation
  First Street National Risk Report: Climate, the Sixth "C" of Credit

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.