"What would Jesus say about climate change?"

PRESENTED BY COUNT BINFACE

Hill Heat hasn’t had enough birds lately, since our summer schedule has been mostly U.S. Climate Politics Almanac posts. Let us replenish our store, with photos from the official Hill Heat birder, Ash Ponders.

Yesterday, Sunrise Movement co-founder William Lawrence easily won the Democratic nomination in Michigan’s 7th District (Lansing) to take on Trumpist backbencher Rep. Tom Barrett (R). Lawrence, an unapologetic climate hawk, won by committing himself to on-the-ground campaigning for months on voters’ livability concerns, but also drew clear contrasts with his better-funded opponents over Gaza, data centers, universal health care, and opposition to corporate power.

Fellow (back in the day) Green New Dealer Abdul El-Sayed and (current) Green New Dealer Donavan McKinney also won their races in Michigan—El-Sayed overcame more than $70 milion in outside spending to win the Senate primary and McKinney defeated the iconoclastic Rep. Shri Thanedar in Michigan’s 13th District (Detroit).

Carbon-corporate media outlets were churlish about progressives’ big election night, warning direly that Democratic candidates who proved they could out-organize concentrated money would do poorly in the general election. Politico, owned by neo-Nazi-curious Germans and Presented by Chevron and the American Petroleum Institute, went over the top, in a piece written by five reporters entitled “Progressives didn’t get the big election night they wanted.” My favorite line: “For some El-Sayed allies a win is a win, even if the final margins are close.” The lickspittles responsible for this farcical farrago are Alec Hernandez, Erin Doherty, and Aaron Pellish, with contributions from Andrew Howard and Will Steakin.

Downballot victories for climate hawks include Yousef Rabhi for Ann Arbor mayor and every candidate backed by the Jane Fonda Climate PAC in Washington state. Unfortunately, the great Green New Dealer Cori Bush was unable to knock out Rep. Wesley Bell (D-Mo.), whom AIPAC spent $5 million last cycle to install in her place.

The MAGA forces suffered embarrassing defeats in Kansas and Missouri, as voters crushed anti-democratic ballot initiatives.

And Democrats nominated Methodist megachurch pastor Adam Hamilton to challenge Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kansas), inspiring the Cook Report to say the seat is (barely) in play. By contemporary Kansas standards, Hamilton is a climate hawk. In 2020, he asked his congregation, “What would Jesus say about climate change?” In the sermon, he wildly misrepresented the scientific consensus on climate pollution, but otherwise accurately described the science and came to the right conclusion:

In amusing Trumpworld news, the Trump loyalist and fabulously incompetent United States attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro is about to be discarded by Trump, for abandoning the specious Reflecting Pool vandalism cases against Davey Hearn and several others who were arrested by National Parks Police for touching the failed pool liner. Pirro’s prosecutors presented reams of evidence that the National Park Service knew the coating had failed catastrophically, well before they started seizing passersby to appease Trump. Now her stock with Trump is dropping faster than SpaceX’s is. Unsurprisingly, our mad king is mad, siding with Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and clearly on his way to dumping Pirro, just as he did with Kristi Noem and Pam Bondi.

In less amusing Trumpworld news, Senate Republican lame ducks John Cornyn and Thom Tillis ended their sham resistance to confirming Trump hatchetman Todd Blanche as U.S. Attorney General, and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) handed her threatened Republican counterpart Susan Collins (R-Maine) a sweetheart deal to temporarily keep the U.S. government funded through the election but not through the lame duck session.

Bad news everybody: Spokane is burning; Portland is choking; the Rhine is disappearing; the Danube is dropping; Big Oil is profiteering; Italy is searing; Tokyo’s lions are dying; South Korea’s baseball games are killing; Puerto Rico is water-rationing; Hungary is power-rationing; and Big Balls is hiring.¹

Stick that on a bus!

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1  I know my loyal readers were growing concerned this newsletter would only be of good cheer. Fear not!