Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) will lean heavily on Democrats to move a series of bills in the coming days providing aid to Ukraine, Israel and other democratic allies overseas — a strategy that acknowledges the nuances of governing in a divided Washington but also heightens the risk of his removal by disgruntled conservatives.
In rejecting a Senate-passed foreign aid bill favored by Democrats, the Speaker has sought to mollify his hardline GOP critics and put a more conservative stamp on the contentious foreign assistance. Simultaneously, he’s moving a border security bill, also aimed at bringing conservatives on board, that is dead-on-arrival in the Senate.
...House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) stopped short of pronouncing that same support, saying he first wants to gauge the temperature of his Democratic Caucus during a Thursday morning meeting in the Capitol. But with Biden and DeLauro already endorsing Johnson’s legislation, it’s virtually inconceivable that Jeffries would oppose the legislation. And on Wednesday afternoon, he framed the foreign aid in the most sweeping historical terms.
“This is a Churchill or Chamberlain moment,” Jeffries told reporters in the Capitol. “We can either confront Russian aggression in defense of democracy, or we can allow the pro-Putin, extreme MAGA Republicans to appease him.”
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President Joe Biden urged the House and Senate to quickly approve Speaker Mike Johnson’s multi-part plan to get aid to Israel, Ukraine and the Indo-Pacific.
“The House must pass the package this week and the Senate should quickly follow,” Biden said in a statement. “I will sign this into law immediately to send a message to the world: We stand with our friends, and we won’t let Iran or Russia succeed.”
The White House’s support for Johnson’s plan marks a departure from their insistence that the House take up and pass the Senate’s plan. But it is a clear acknowledgment that Johnson’s proposal is the closest Democrats may get to approving much-needed aid to Ukraine and Israel.
It would also mark a significant victory: The House plan hews closely to the Senate’s White House-backed bill, down to the dollar figures. The House plan would also allow some of economic aid to Ukraine to be repayable.
Arizona Republicans celebrated Wednesday after swatting down Democrats’ fourth attempt in two weeks to repeal the state’s near-total abortion ban, which the state Supreme Court upheld last week.
Rep. David Livingston (R-AZ) turned to the galleries, stuffed with a mix of pro- and anti-abortion rights protesters, and applauded his supporters, raising his fists in triumph. Majority Whip Teresa Martinez (R-AZ) mouthed “we got you” and did a thumbs up. Majority Leader Leo Biasiucci (R-AZ) grinned and accepted a handshake on his way out of the chamber.
“They were posing for their far-right base,” scoffed Assistant Minority Leader Oscar De Los Santos (D-AZ), calling TPM from the House floor minutes after the last procedural vote failed.
Arizona Democrats, capitalizing on the national attention the state received after the court upheld perhaps the most draconian ban in the country, had, this week and last, attempted to get their often-introduced repeal bill onto the floor. They were hoping that a few vulnerable Republicans, fearful of the electoral retribution anti-abortion measures have wrought, would cross over to vote with them. Arizona Senate Democrats plan to push to repeal effort too.
Seven countries now generate 100 per cent of their electricity from renewable energy - two are in Europe.
Last year was the best year on record for new wind energy installation.
The world installed 116 gigawatts of new wind power capacity in 2023, according to the latest Global Wind Report from industry trade association the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC). That is a 50 per cent increase from 2022 making it the best year on record for new wind projects.
China led for both offshore and onshore wind installation followed by the US, Brazil and Germany. Thanks to strong growth in the Netherlands, Europe also had a record year in 2023 with 3.8 gigawatts of new offshore wind capacity.
...Though many of these countries currently use a large amount of hydropower or wind energy, experts predict solar could take over as a major source in the near future. Technology has improved and costs are rapidly dropping.
Solar dominated the expansion of renewable energy capacity in 2023, accounting for 73 per cent of all growth, followed by wind power at 24 per cent. It now makes up 37 per cent of the world’s total renewable energy capacity.
The Department of Energy released a new roadmap to help the U.S. adopt tech that can give the grid a much-needed boost in capacity and reliability.
How can the U.S. plug more solar and wind power into the grid and meet fast-growing electricity demand when it doesn’t have enough power lines to handle all those tasks?
A good start would be to adopt technologies that help get more mileage out of existing power grids, according to a new report from the Department of Energy.
The DOE’s three-to-five-year roadmap starts with directing billions of dollars into “innovative grid deployments,” featuring technologies ranging from advanced grid equipment to next-generation grid-control software platforms, that can serve as templates for utilities across the nation.
It also recommends that utilities and their state regulators alter existing policies — like cost-of-service structures, which reward utilities for spending money on grid infrastructure — that have stymied adoption of these technologies in the U.S., compared with in Europe, Australia, and other parts of the world.
The energy future of fossil-fuel dependent Phoenix could be reshaped by some clean-energy advocates who just won seats on the board of a public power utility.
When it comes to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and watershed protection, several downballot elections this year in a handful of states could have a major effect in the transition away from fossil fuel.
The media tend to ignore such contests, which attract far fewer voters than big federal and state elections. But board members of public utilities in Arizona and Nebraska are up for election in coming months, and the results of those contests could potentially transform energy policy for millions of Americans.
The elections come amid growing concern about the role of money in such races and in the wake of headline-grabbing corruption scandals at utilities across the country. Utility fraud and corruption — in Florida, Illinois, Mississippi, Ohio, and South Carolina — has cost electricity customers at least $6.6 billion, according to an analysis by news nonprofit Floodlight, which noted that “some power companies embrace — or seek to block — the transition away from fossil fuels toward wind, solar, hydrogen, and nuclear, which produce fewer greenhouse gases.”
...Institutional and systemic racism built into the fabric of our country means that the people who generate the least amount of pollution still suffer the worst of its effects. Or they suffer the greatest risk from environmental hazards because they receive fewer protections.
Think of the landfills and incinerators in Houston. Think of levee failures during Hurricane Katrina. Think of the communities across the country with oil and gas refineries in their backyards.
These problems are exacerbated by climate change. Poor and minority communities are increasingly at risk of degrading air quality, heat waves, flooding, losing power and more, Bullard said.
There’s no mystery to these consequences, Bullard said. They’re all the result of how we — as a country — planned and built our cities.
“You tell me your ZIP code, I can pretty much tell you what’s in your neighborhood and how healthy you are,” Bullard said.
“This is not rocket science,” he said.
A massive jawbone found by a father-daughter fossil-collecting duo on a beach in Somerset along the English coast belonged to a newfound species that’s likely the largest known marine reptile to swim in Earth’s oceans.
Scientists consider the blue whale, which grows up to 110 feet (33.5 meters) long, to be the largest known animal ever to exist on the planet. But it’s possible that the 202 million-year-old reptile, known as an ichthyosaur or “fish lizard,” may have rivaled it in size.
The ichthyosaur’s jawbone, or surangular, was a long, curved bone at the top of the lower jaw just behind the teeth, and it measured more than 6.5 feet (2 meters) long. Researchers believe the creature, named Ichthyotitan severnensis, or “giant fish lizard of the Severn” in Latin, was more than 82 feet (25 meters) long, or the length of two city buses.
Justin and Ruby Reynolds, who live in Braunton, England, recovered the first pieces of the jawbone in May 2020 as they looked for fossils on the beach at Blue Anchor, Somerset. Ruby, 11 at the time, spotted the first chunk of bone, and then she and her dad found additional pieces together.
There's always been an unresolvable tension between artistry and fame. Very few people find fame to be what they had hoped. It comes with a lot of strings attached. It's like a drug — once you've had it, you spend the rest of your life chasing more. It utterly transforms almost everyone who has it. And you know deep down, in the back of your mind, that it could all go away overnight.
The smartest and most self-aware stars develop tools to deal with it. This New Yorker profile on the super-talented Maggie Rogers is a thoughtful road map for navigating the perilous road of fame. For starters, you have to be aware there even is a problem:
The experience of being thrust into celebrity meant, ironically, that she didn't have time to make music. "I'd never been less of an artist than when I became a professional artist," she said. "There was a really specific moment, in 2017 or 2018, where I was at camera blocking for what must have been my fourth or fifth or sixth late-night performance singing 'Alaska.' I had a massive panic attack. I was just, like, 'What the fuck is my life?' I felt like a show pony."
...So Maggie Rogers took some very unusual steps to get her life back under her control.
In the fall of 2021, the singer and songwriter… entered the graduate program at Harvard Divinity School. For anyone unacquainted with the particulars of the degree Rogers was pursuing—a master's in religion and public life—it might have sounded as though she were abandoning burgeoning pop stardom to reinvent herself as a priest. "It's a peace-and-justice program, it's not a seminary…"
Rogers, who is twenty-nine, was trying to make her life feel more useful and less surreal. "I woke up one day and I was famous," she said. "I was really burnt out. I was diagnosed with chronic fatigue. I thought I wanted to quit music. A lot of what I came here to do was to think about how to create a more sustainable structure around a creative practice."
Anyway, that's how I made it to divinity school. What I ended up doing was developing a system for myself to hold these things. And then I went out and tested it."
What are you overcoming tonight? Tell us all about it in the comments!
The crew of the Overnight News Digest consists of founder Magnifico, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, Chitown Kev, jeremybloom, Magnifico, annetteboardman, Rise above the swamp, Besame and jck. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) eeff, Interceptor 7, Man Oh Man, wader, Neon Vincent, palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse (RIP), ek hornbeck (RIP), rfall, ScottyUrb, Doctor RJ, BentLiberal, Oke (RIP) and jlms qkw