Dear Commons Community,

Figures released yesterday by the U.S. Census Bureau offered the most detailed portrait yet of how the country has changed since 2010 and will also be instrumental in redrawing the nation’s political maps.

The numbers are sure to set off an intense partisan battle over representation at a time of deep national division and fights over voting rights. The numbers could help determine control of the House in the 2022 elections and provide an electoral edge for years to come.

The data also will shape how $1.5 trillion in annual federal spending is distributed.

The data offered a mirror not only into the demographic changes of the past decade, but also a glimpse of the future. To that end, they showed there is now no majority racial or ethnic group for people younger than 18, as the share of non-Hispanic whites in the age group dropped from 53.5% to 47.3% over the decade.  As reported by the Associated Press.

The share of children in the U.S. declined because of falling birth rates, while the share of adults grew, driven by aging baby boomers. Adults over 18 made up more than three-quarters of the population in 2020, or 258.3 million people, an increase of more than 10% from 2010. However, the population of children under age 18 dropped from 74.2 million in 2010 to 73.1 million in 2020.

“If not for Hispanics, Asians, people of two or more races, those are the only groups underage that are growing,” said William Frey, a senior fellow at Brookings’ Metropolitan Policy Program. “A lot of these young minorities are important for our future growth, not only for the child population but for our future labor force.”

The Asian and Hispanic populations burgeoned from 2010 to 2020, respectively increasing by around a third and almost a quarter over the decade. The Asian population reached 24 million people in 2020, and the Hispanic population hit 62.1 million people.

The Hispanic boom accounted for almost half of the overall U.S. population growth, which was the slowest since the Great Depression. By comparison, the non-Hispanic growth rate over the decade was 4.3%. The Hispanic share of the U.S. population grew to 18.7% of the U.S. population, up from 16.3% in 2010.

“The 2020 Census confirmed what we have known for years — the future of the country is Latino,” said Arturo Vargas, CEO of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Educational Fund.

The share of the white population fell from 63.7% in 2010 to 57.8% in 2020, the lowest on record, driven by falling birthrates among white women compared with Hispanic and Asian women. The number of non-Hispanic white people shrank from 196 million in 2010 to 191 million.

White people continue to be the most prevalent racial or ethnic group, though that changed in California, where Hispanics became the largest racial or ethnic group, growing from 37.6% to 39.4% over the decade, while the share of white people dropped from 40.1% to 34.7%. California, the nation’s most populous state, joined Hawaii, New Mexico and the District of Columbia as a place where non-Hispanic white people are no longer the dominant group.

“The U.S. population is much more multiracial and much more racially and ethnically diverse than what we have measured in the past,” said Nicholas Jones, a Census Bureau official.

Some demographers cautioned that the white population was not shrinking as much as shifting to multiracial identities. The number of people who identified as belonging to two or more races more than tripled from 9 million people in 2010 to 33.8 million in 2020. They now account for 10% of the U.S. population.

People who identify as a race other than white, Black, Asian, American Indian, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander — either alone or in combination with one of those races — jumped to 49.9 million people, surpassing the Black population of 46.9 million people as the nation’s second-largest racial group, according to the Census Bureau.

But demographers said that may have to do with Hispanic uncertainty about how to answer the race question on the census form, as well as changes the Census Bureau made in processing responses and how it asked about race and ethnicity in order to better reflect the nation’s diversity.

The data release offers states the first chance to redraw their political districts in a process that is expected to be particularly brutish since control over Congress and statehouses is at stake.

It also provides the first opportunity to see, on a limited basis, how well the Census Bureau fulfilled its goal of counting every U.S. resident during what many consider the most difficult once-a-decade census in recent memory. Communities of color have been undercounted in past censuses. The agency likely will not know how good a job it did until next year, when it releases a survey showing undercounts and overcounts.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett refused yesterday to block Indiana University’s requirement that most students on campus this fall be vaccinated against COVID-19. It was the first time the Supreme Court has weighed in on the legality of such mandates, which hundreds of U.S. universities and some companies have adopted amid the pandemic.

Indiana University was sued in June by eight students who claimed the school’s vaccine requirement was unconstitutional. The university has said all students, faculty and staff must be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 unless they are approved for an exemption on medical, religious or ethical grounds. Students who are exempted must wear masks on campus and be frequently tested for the coronavirus.

After a federal court in Indiana and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit both sided with the university, refusing to block the mandate while litigation continues, the eight students sought an emergency injunction against the requirement from Barrett. The justice, an appointee of Donald Trump, has jurisdiction over the 7th Circuit.

“IU is coercing students to give up their rights to bodily integrity, autonomy, and of medical treatment choice in exchange for the discretionary benefit of matriculating at IU,” read the students’ petition to the Supreme Court, according to CNN.

Barrett ― who could have referred the case to the full court but chose to act unilaterally ― sided with the lower courts and denied the students’ request without additional comment.

In its ruling earlier this month, the 7th Circuit had said that vaccination requirements “have been common in this nation” and noted that Indiana University has allowed for exemptions in some cases, which hasn’t always been true in American vaccination history.

The appeals court pointed to a 1905 Supreme Court decision that states could make smallpox vaccines compulsory without exemption.

In July, U.S. District Judge Damon Leichty in South Bend, Indiana, said Indiana University’s mandate “isn’t forced vaccination” and that the Constitution permits the school “to pursue a reasonable and due process of vaccination in the legitimate interest of public health for its students, faculty and staff.”

Glad to see that sanity rules!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

More than three decades after the movie “Field of Dreams” seeped into the country’s cultural consciousness, one of the most famous cornfields in Hollywood history finally gets the opportunity to host real major league ball.

“Is this heaven?” the ghost of John Kinsella asked in the movie that inspired the game to be played tonight between the Chicago White Sox and New York Yankees next to the actual site used in the 1989 film, which is maintained as a tourist attraction.

“No, it’s Iowa,” dutiful farmer Ray Kinsella — played by Kevin Costner — responded to his father with a smile before they played catch under the lights in the movie’s most poignant scene.

This week, the ball playing isn’t fiction.  As reported by AFP.

“Shoeless” Joe Jackson and other long-ago players who took the field in the movie will be replaced by José Abreu and Aaron Judge.

The proud and quintessential Midwestern state, usually only in the spotlight every four years during presidential campaigns, will be hosting a Major League Baseball game for the first time when the White Sox and Yankees play at a temporary venue built for about 8,000 fans in tiny Dyersville — population “about 4,400, we’re hoping for in the next census,” said mayor Jim Heavens.

The event, part of MLB’s increased effort to grow the game by setting up shop in places without in-person access to the highest level of the sport, has been in the works for years. The original plan to play in 2020 was postponed when the coronavirus forced a shortened schedule at mostly empty ballparks, but if the White Sox, the Yankees or the Iowans became impatient then they were out of step with the spirit of the film.

“The one constant through all the years,” as the sage author Terence Mann declared to Ray Kinsella in the film, “has been baseball.”

Dyersville found its place on the map through the movie that starred Costner, James Earl Jones, Ray Liotta and Amy Madigan, but the sport has been entrenched in the town for more than a century. Commercial Club Park is where the team from Beckman Catholic High School and the local semipro club play, a spot as much at the heart of the community as the well-kept farms around it.

About one-third of the crowd on Thursday is expected to be Iowa residents.

“I see a lot of people as I travel around the state, and when they find out you’re from Dyersville, they all know about this MLB game,” Heavens said. “I think there’s a real element of pride in Iowa that MLB is coming. It’s kind of warmed my heart to see that the people of Iowa are so honored that this is happening.”

The original movie site was quickly deemed too small for a standard game, so the made-for-the-moment ballpark required removal of 30,000 cubic yards of material and the installation of 4,000 tons of sand and 2,000 tons of gravel. The bullpens were designed to mimic those at old Comiskey Park, the former home of the White Sox. There’s even a just-for-fun corn maze beyond right field.

This has been an especially hot and dry summer in this part of the country, so an irrigation system was installed to keep the prime crop in good shape for its time to shine on national TV — between 10 and 12 feet high.

“We wanted to make sure we didn’t show up in the middle of August with brown corn,” said Chris Marinak, MLB’s chief operations and strategy officer.

Just about everything about this event is unique.

“When we first heard that this game would happen, I think everybody had that kind of initial rush of ‘Oh, this is going to be amazing to be a part of this broadcast,’” said Brad Zager, executive vice president of production and operations for Fox Sports. “When you start looking at it, there are very few events that we get a chance to produce that there’s no blueprint for.”

Both teams will wear throwback uniforms harkening back to 1919, when Jackson played for the White Sox and was one of eight players banned for fixing the World Series. The history of that team is one of the many themes woven into a film that transcends sports.

The White Sox and Yankees were also the two favorite teams of the  Kinsella character in the movie, at different points of his life.

This sounds like a fun game to watch this evening!

Tony

Gov. Gavin Newsom

Dear Commons Community,

California has become the first state to require all public school teachers and staff  be vaccinated before returning to their positions or submit to weekly testing for Covid-19.

Gov. Gavin Newsom announced the sweeping policy yesterday, saying it’s the only way for in-person education to return safely in the fall.

“To give parents confidence that their children are safe as schools return to full, in-person learning, we are urging all school staff to get vaccinated. Vaccinations are how we will end this pandemic,” Newsom said in a statement.

“As a father, I look forward to the start of the school year and seeing all California kids back in the classroom.”

The new policy takes effect today.

“There’s no substitute for in-person instruction, and California will continue to lead the nation in keeping students and staff safe while ensuring fully open classrooms,” said Dr. Tomás J. Aragón, the state’s top public health officer.

“Today’s order will help the state’s continued efforts to increase vaccinations, similar to the orders encouraging state and health care workers and businesses to get vaccinated.”

Newsom’s action comes amid a recall effort that’s slated for the ballot box Sept. 14.

Yesterday’s order could pose some political risk to Newsom, but the state has generally embraced vaccinations as 53.7 percent of Golden State residents have been fully inoculated, according to a rolling count by NBC News.

That compares relatively well to other large states such as Texas (44.6 percent), New York (57.9), Florida (49.7) and Pennsylvania (53.1), Illinois (49.2), Ohio (47.0) and New Jersey (59.2).

Good move by Gov. Newsom!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Governor Greg Abbott appealed for out-of-state help to fight the third wave of COVID-19 in Texas while two more of the state’s largest school districts announced mask mandates in defiance of the governor.  As reported by the Associated Press.

Abbott’s request came as a county-owned hospital in Houston raised tents to accommodate their COVID-19 overflow. Private hospitals in the county already were requiring their staff to be vaccinated against the coronavirus.

Meantime, the Dallas and Austin school districts announced Monday that they would require students and staff to wear face masks. The Houston school district already announced a mask mandate for its students and staff later this week if its board approves.

The highly contagious COVID delta variant is fueling the wave.

Gov. Abbott has directed the Texas Department of State Health Services to use staffing agencies to find additional medical staff from beyond the state’s borders as the delta wave began to overwhelm its present staffing resources. He also has sent a letter to the Texas Hospital Association to request that hospitals postpone all elective medical procedures voluntarily.

Hospital officials in Houston said last week that area hospitals with beds had insufficient numbers of nurses to serve them. 

Abbott also directed the state health department and the Texas Division of Emergency Management to open additional COVID-19 antibody infusion centers to treat patients not needing hospital care and expand COVID-19 vaccine availability to the state’s underserved communities. He also announced about $267 million in emergency Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program food benefits for August. That was on top of the $3.9 billion in benefits previously allocated since April 2020.

The governor is taking action short of lifting his emergency order banning county and local government entities from requiring the wearing of masks and social distancing to lower the COVID-19 risk. Abbott has said repeatedly that Texans have the information and intelligence to make their own decisions on what steps to take to protect their health and the health of those around them.

Also Monday, Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins filed a lawsuit asking a judge to strike down Abbott’s mask mandate ban.

Meantime, one of Houston’s two county-owned hospitals was pitching tents to accommodate its COVID-19 overflow. Harris Health System and Lyndon B. Johnson Hospital in northeastern Houston added nearly 2,000 square feet of medical tents in the hope of taking control of the anticipated increase in patient volume and keep staff and non-COVID-19 patients safe.

Last week, Houston area officials said the wave of delta variant infections so strained the area’s hospitals that some patients had to be transferred out of the city, with one being sent to North Dakota.

In Dallas, the superintendent of the state’s second-largest public school system announced Monday that the district would require masks and social distancing from Tuesday, Abbott’s ban notwithstanding.

At a news conference, Dallas schools Superintendent Michael Hinojosa said the school district’s legal advisors assured that Abbott’s order does not limit the district’s rights as an employer and educational institution to establish reasonable and necessary safety rules for its staff and students.

Austin schools announced their mask requirement late Monday.

The superintendent of the Houston school district, the state’s largest, announced last week that the district would require masks and social distancing in the district’s schools effective upon district board approval Thursday. A group of parents sued the Houston Independent School District over the weekend, challenging the requirements.

The rolling two-week daily average of new COVID-19 cases has increased by 165% to 8,533, according to Johns Hopkins University research data. About 45% of the state’s population has been vaccinated against the coronavirus, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

We hope Texas can weather this situation but people need to get vaccinated.

Tony

Kathy Hochul

Dear Commons Community,

Following New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s resignation yesterday, Lieutenant Governor Kathy Hochul, will become the state’s first female governor.

Hochul, a Buffalo native and former Democratic congresswoman, will now assume the governorship and become the first governor from outside New York City or its neighboring counties in nearly a century.

After the release of the report last week, Hochul tweeted, “I believe these brave women & admire their courage coming forward.

“No one is above the law. Under the New York Constitution, the Assembly will now determine the next steps.”

However, she stopped short of calling for Cuomo’s impeachment or resignation. “Because Lieutenant Governors stand next in the line of succession, it would not be appropriate to comment further on the process at this moment,” she wrote.

But numerous lawmakers and politicians did not hesitate in calling on Cuomo to resign, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and, most notably, President Biden.

“I think he should resign. I understand that the state Legislature may decide to impeach. I don’t know that for a fact. I have not read all the data,” Biden said last Tuesday.

Hochul has served as Cuomo’s lieutenant governor for nearly seven years, after being elected in 2014 as his running mate and winning reelection in 2018.

She first gained national attention when she upset a U.S. House special election in 2011 for New York’s 26th Congressional District, which had sent a Republican to Congress for the previous four decades. The prior occupant of the seat, Rep. Christopher Lee, resigned during his term after a shirtless photo of him, emailed to a woman he met on Craigslist, was published online.

While in Congress, Hochul introduced the Clothe a Homeless Hero Act, which directs airports to donate unclaimed clothing at security checkpoints to local veterans’ organizations and became law in 2013. However, her time in Congress was short-lived; she lost reelection to a Republican candidate in the redrawn district in 2012.

Hochul, who earned a bachelor’s degree from Syracuse University and a law degree from Catholic University, has a long history of working in New York state politics.

After graduating from law school, she worked as a legal counsel and an aide to two former Democratic politicians, Rep. John LaFalce and the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan. She went on to be elected to the Hamburg Town Board in Erie County, N.Y., and served until 2007, when she was elected as the Erie County clerk.

During her time on the town board, Hochul, along with her mother and aunt, founded the Kathleen Mary House in 2006, a transitional home for women and children who are victims of domestic violence. She told Politico that her grandmother had been a victim of domestic abuse, which prompted her and her mother’s activism on the issue.

Before running for lieutenant governor, Hochul was known for being a moderate. During her tenure as county clerk, she built up a pro-gun record, which led her to be endorsed by the National Rifle Association during her congressional reelection campaign in 2012.

In 2007, she opposed a proposal by then-Gov. Eliot Spitzer that would allow immigrants living in the U.S. illegally to obtain driver’s licenses, vowing to have them arrested if they applied for a driver’s license in the offices under her control. As lieutenant governor, Hochul reversed her stance, saying, “This is a different climate right now. … I would say my position now is different.”

She has also since reversed her stance on gun laws and backed the NY SAFE Act, a state law signed by Cuomo that is one of the toughest gun control laws in the country.

As lieutenant governor, Hochul chairs 10 Regional Economic Development Councils, which work with leaders from academia, business and nonprofits on various projects across the state. She also leads the State Workforce Investment Board, which addresses the lack of skilled workers in businesses, and co-chairs the Heroin and Opioid Abuse Task Force. She spearheaded the Enough Is Enough campaign, which combats sexual assault on college campuses.

Despite being Cuomo’s No. 2 in command, Hochul was never close to the governor. After allegations of sexual assault against him emerged earlier this year, she stopped mentioning Cuomo by name. In his 300-page pandemic memoir, which highlights members of his administration who helped him respond to the COVID-19 crisis, he omits Hochul’s name.

On Thursday, the state Assembly announced that its impeachment investigation against Cuomo was “nearing completion” and requested that he and his legal team submit any defense evidence by Friday of this week.

Since the release of James’s report, the Assembly had worked to expedite the impeachment process. A simple majority vote to impeach from lawmakers in the Assembly would have led to a trial in the state Senate, where Democrats are also in the majority. If Cuomo had been convicted, he would have been removed from office, and Hochul would have replaced him.

In a message posted to Twitter (see below) yesterday, Hochul said she was “prepared” to take over for Cuomo.

We wish her luck and hope she does a good job for the people of New York!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

A few hours ago, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced  he will resign after a report from the state’s attorney general documented multiple accusations of sexual harassment against women.

The decision heads off his almost certain impeachment and conviction in the New York State Legislature.  As reported by NBC News.

“Given the circumstances, the best way I can help now is if I step aside and let government get back to government, and therefore that is what I’ll do, because I work for you, and doing the right thing, is doing the right thing for you,” Cuomo said in a televised address, at which he took no questions.

Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul, a fellow Democrat, will serve the rest of his term when the resignation becomes effective in 14 days. She will become the state’s first female governor.

Though Cuomo, 63, apologized to his accusers, he made it clear he did not believe he stepped over a red line requiring removal from office. Instead, he framed his decision as one necessary to avoid protracted argument and divisiveness that would bring the state’s government to a halt.

“It is a matter of life and death,” he said, referring to the immediate need to combat Covid. “Government operations and wasting energy on distraction is the last thing government should be. I cannot be the cause. New York tough means New York loving. And I love New York and I love you. Everything I have ever done has been motivated by that love and I would never want to be unhelpful in any way.”

Speaking to his three daughters, Cuomo said, “I want them to know from the bottom of my heart that I never did and I never would intentionally disrespect a woman, treat any woman differently than I would want them treated, and that is the God’s honest truth.”

“Your dad made mistakes. And he apologized, and he learned from it and that’s what life is all about.”

After he was first hit with sexual harassment allegations this year, Cuomo ignored bipartisan demands that he resign, and predicted the investigation that he authorized state Attorney General Letitia James to carry out would exonerate him. Instead, the report alleged that he’d harassed 11 women — nine of whom were state employees — and subjected some of them to unwelcome touching and groping. His office also retaliated against one of the women after she spoke out about how she was treated, the report alleged.

“Today, closes a sad chapter for all of New York, but it’s an important step towards justice,” said James’ in a series of tweets following the resignation, adding that the ascension of Hochul will help New York enter a “new day.”

In the wake of the report, the state Assembly began to organize impeachment proceedings. Local law enforcement officials also announced they were investigating whether criminal charges were appropriate.

On Tuesday, Cuomo apologized for his behavior, thanked the women who came forward, but insisted that he had not intended to harass any of his accusers.

“I do hug and kiss people casually, women and men. I have done it all my life. It’s who I’ve been since I can remember,” Cuomo said. “In my mind, I’ve never crossed the line with anyone, but I didn’t realize the extent to which the line has been redrawn. There are generational and cultural shifts that I just didn’t fully appreciate.”

The resignation caps a remarkable fall from grace for the third-term governor, who was riding high in public opinion polls last year after his public briefings about the coronavirus pandemic in his hard-hit state were lauded.

Cuomo intended to run for a fourth term next year, a feat his three-term governor father, Mario, was not able to achieve.

A number of fellow Democratic lawmakers lauded his resignation.

“I think the Governor did the right thing, and I just want to commend the brave and courageous women who came forward. That was not an easy thing to do,” said Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., following the announcement.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said he’s already spoken with Hochul and has full confidence that she will “establish a professional and capable administration.”

“There is no place for sexual harassment, and today’s announcement by Governor Cuomo to resign was the right decision for the good of the people of New York,” he said in a statement.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, who had a long-running public feud with Cuomo, said it was “past time” for the governor to resign.

“Make no mistake, this is the result of survivors bravely telling their stories,” de Blasio said. “It was past time for Andrew Cuomo to resign and it’s for the good of all New York.”

Cuomo’s reputation took a major blow in January when James’s office issued a report that found that the state Health Department had underreported the Covid-19 death toll in nursing homes by as much as 50 percent. A top Cuomo aide was then caught on tape telling Democratic legislators that the administration took months to release the full data about nursing home residents in part because of worries that the information was “going to be used against us” by the Trump administration.

The U.S. attorney in Brooklyn and the FBI began a preliminary investigation into how the Cuomo administration handled the data.

Cuomo was then accused in mid-February of having threatened to “destroy” a Democratic lawmaker who alleged that the administration “covered up” the nursing home numbers. Cuomo denied there had been any cover-up.

That was followed by a string of sexual harassment allegations, including by some former aides. The first to speak out was Lindsey Boylan, who wrote an essay on the website Medium that described being subjected to “pervasive harassment” in her years of working for the governor.

Boylan said Cuomo made numerous inappropriate comments to her in front of other people, including once asking her to play “strip poker,” and said he once kissed her on the lips when they were alone.

Cuomo’s office called Boylan’s claims “quite simply false,” but they led to numerous other women stepping forward to say they’d been mistreated and to a flood of Democratic lawmakers calling for his resignation, including the vast majority of New York’s congressional delegation.

Fighting for his political survival, Cuomo authorized James to investigate the harassment claims and predicted the probe would exonerate him — but it wound up substantiating all the claims against him in a blistering 165-page report.

In one case, he allegedly groped an executive assistant under her shirt, and in another, he fondled a state trooper, the report alleged. The governor “sexually harassed a number of current and former New York state employees by, among other things, engaging in unwelcome and nonconsensual touching, as well as making numerous offensive comments of a suggestive and sexual nature that created a hostile work environment for women,” the report alleged.

Cuomo addressed the accusations from the female trooper, who accused him of touching her inappropriately while they were in an elevator.

“I didn’t do it consciously with a female trooper,” Cuomo said. “I did not mean any sexual connotation, I did not mean any intimacy by it. It was embarrassing to her, and it was disrespectful.”

A most difficult decision but the right one!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Fox News commentator, Juan Williams, has a guest essay in The Hill that calls Donald Trump’s Republican Party, a giant scam.   Williams comments that “Trump raised a whopping $82 million in the first six months of 2021.  The total money raised is “extraordinary for an ex-president who has been booted off social media.”

“Trump has continued to vigorously solicit donations from supporters, based mostly on false claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election.”

In Congress, Trump’s success in raising money with lies has led to shameless imitators following his road to the gold.

In the first six months of 2021, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), a former QAnon supporter, raised more than $4 million.”

Williams’s entire essay is below.  He is absolutely correct in labeling Trump a scam artist but then again those of us who have seen and witnessed his behavior in New York have known that for decades.

Tony

The Hill

Juan Williams: “Trump’s GOP is a giant scam”

Scam alert!

Former President Trump and his disciples in the GOP are really putting the “con” in modern conservatism these days.

According to filings made public last week, Trump raised a whopping $82 million in the first six months of 2021.

The total money raised — even if it did include some transfers from old Trump accounts — is “extraordinary for an ex-president who has been booted off social media,” The Washington Post noted.

“Trump has continued to vigorously solicit donations from supporters, based mostly on false claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election,” the Post added.

In Congress, Trump’s success in raising money with lies has led to shameless imitators following his road to the gold.

In the first six months of 2021, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), a former QAnon supporter, raised more than $4 million.

Greene is raising money despite being stripped of her committee assignments earlier this year because of her penchant for extremism. Greene in the past has endorsed the idea of assassinating Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and engaged in antisemitic nonsense about space lasers causing wildfires to the benefit of the Rothschild banking family.

In the same period, Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) raised about $1.8 million. Her appeal for GOP dollars centers on her bragging that she carries a gun.

And then there is Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.). He also raised $1.8 million so far this year.

His pitch is to distort Biden administration efforts to get people vaccinated with a door-to-door outreach effort. To Cawthorn, this is the precursor to a plot to take Bibles and guns away from Americans.

Trump’s grifting game is also being mimicked by powerful, well-funded conservative donor networks.

As The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer reported last week, those groups are also relying on Trump’s “Big Lie.” They tell donors they need money to uncover voter fraud.

And when they fail to find any fraud, these dark-money organizations then tell donors they need more cash for more probes in search of fraud. They never find any and so they ask again.

It is a never-ending pitch.

These conservative groups also attract money for voter suppression.

“Leaked records of their internal deliberations,” Mayer disclosed, show these groups “have drafted, supported, and in some cases taken credit for state laws that make it harder to vote.”

Meanwhile, small donors keep opening their wallets because they are being primed to do so by constant harangues on right-wing talk shows about “socialism,” “cancel culture,” and the “stolen” election.

The hosts get their cut of the riches from the Trump grift game by creating an angry, paranoid audience sending dollars to fight a purported invasion of younger, more educated, racially diverse people likely to vote for Democrats.

These right-wing media rants lack facts. But there is no disputing their business model.

Entertaining people with scary conspiracies about a stolen election and mocking Democrats jacks up advertising revenue and puts more money in their bank accounts.

Now big corporations, apparently fearing they are being left behind, are joining the game.

After the Jan. 6 riots, many companies pledged to stand up for democracy and halt campaign donations to the 147 Republican lawmakers who voted not to certify President Biden’s election.

But as The Associated Press (AP) reported last month, most of those companies have now basically reversed themselves. They are circumventing their pledge by giving money to PACs that support those lawmakers instead of giving directly to the lawmakers.

“When it comes to seeking political influence through corporate giving, business as usual is back, if it ever left,” the AP reported, citing Walmart, Pfizer, Intel, General Electric and AT&T as companies that have resumed donations.

“The companies contend that donating directly to a candidate is not the same as giving to a PAC that supports them … a distinction without a difference, according to campaign finance experts,” the AP wrote.

The corporations are worried about loss of clout with Republicans in Congress because the politicians increasingly rely on money coming from small donors excited by Trump’s lies.

“Donald Trump is a one-man scam PAC,” Paul S. Ryan, vice president of policy and litigation with Common Cause — not to be confused with the former Speaker of the same name — told The Guardian.

“Bait-and-switch is among his favorite fundraising tactics,” Ryan added, pointing to Trump’s Save America PAC which told “supporters he needed money to challenge the result of an election he clearly lost, and then wound up not spending [anything] on litigation last year.”

Trump is largely unrestricted in how he can use the PAC money. He can use it to travel on campaign trips to raise more money. He can use it to raise his political profile by backing candidates of his choice in the upcoming midterm elections.

Trump’s fundraising haul exceeded the sums raised by his party’s House and Senate campaign groups. As an individual, he was basically on pace with the Republican National Committee.

The old saying in Washington about campaign finance used to be “he who pays the piper calls the tune.”

Trump is calling the tune for a frightening game of grifting that has robbed the GOP of its principles.

Where is the Republican willing to call out this scam?

Dear Commons Community,

The United Nations issued a 3,000-plus-page report yesterday from 234 scientists that provides  dire predictions for the climate change that is occurring on our planet. Earth is getting so hot that temperatures in about a decade will probably blow past a level of warming that world leaders have sought to prevent what the United Nations called a “code red for humanity.”

“It’s just guaranteed that it’s going to get worse,” said report co-author Linda Mearns, a senior climate scientist at the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research. “Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.”  As reported by the Associated Press.

The authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, which calls climate change clearly human-caused and “unequivocal” and “an established fact,” makes more precise and warmer forecasts for the 21st century than it did last time it was issued in 2013.

Each of five scenarios for the future, based on how much carbon emissions are cut, passes the more stringent of two thresholds set in the 2015 Paris climate agreement. World leaders agreed then to try to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above levels in the late 19th century because problems mount quickly after that. The world has already warmed nearly 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit) since then.

Under each scenario, the report said, the world will cross the 1.5-degree-Celsius warming mark in the 2030s, earlier than some past predictions. Warming has ramped up in recent years, data shows.

“Our report shows that we need to be prepared for going into that level of warming in the coming decades. But we can avoid further levels of warming by acting on greenhouse gas emissions,” said report co-chair Valerie Masson-Delmotte, a climate scientist at France’s Laboratory of Climate and Environment Sciences at the University of Paris-Saclay.

In three scenarios, the world will also likely exceed 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-industrial times — the less stringent Paris goal — with far worse heat waves, droughts and flood-inducing downpours unless there are deep emissions cuts, the report said.

“This report tells us that recent changes in the climate are widespread, rapid and intensifying, unprecedented in thousands of years,” said IPCC Vice Chair Ko Barrett, senior climate adviser for the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

With crucial international climate negotiations coming up in Scotland in November, world leaders said the report is causing them to try harder to cut carbon pollution. U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken called it “a stark reminder.”

The report said warming is already accelerating sea level rise and worsening extremes such as heat waves, droughts, floods and storms. Tropical cyclones are getting stronger and wetter, while Arctic sea ice is dwindling in the summer and permafrost is thawing. All of these trends will get worse, the report said.

For example, the kind of heat wave that used to happen only once every 50 years now happens once a decade, and if the world warms another degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit), it will happen twice every seven years, the report said.

As the planet warms, places will get hit more not just by extreme weather but by multiple climate disasters at once, the report said. That’s like what’s now happening in the Western U.S., where heat waves, drought and wildfires compound the damage, Mearns said. Extreme heat is also driving massive fires in Greece and Turkey.

Some harm from climate change — dwindling ice sheets, rising sea levels and changes in the oceans as they lose oxygen and become more acidic — is “irreversible for centuries to millennia,” the report said.

The world is “locked in” to 15 to 30 centimeters (6 to 12 inches) of sea level rise by mid-century, said report co-author Bob Kopp of Rutgers University.

Scientists have issued this message for more than three decades, but the world hasn’t listened, said United Nations Environment Program Executive Director Inger Andersen.

For the first time, the report offers an interactive atlas for people to see what has happened and may happen to where they live.

Nearly all of the warming that has happened on Earth can be blamed on emissions of heat-trapping gases such as carbon dioxide and methane. At most, natural forces or simple randomness can explain one- or two-tenths of a degree of warming, the report said.

The report described five different future scenarios based on how much the world reduces carbon emissions. They are: a future with incredibly large and quick pollution cuts; another with intense pollution cuts but not quite as massive; a scenario with moderate emission cuts; a fourth scenario where current plans to make small pollution reductions continue; and a fifth possible future involving continued increases in carbon pollution.

In five previous reports, the world was on that final hottest path, often nicknamed “business as usual.” But this time, the world is somewhere between the moderate path and the small pollution reductions scenario because of progress to curb climate change, said report co-author Claudia Tebaldi, a scientist at the U.S. Pacific Northwest National Lab.

While calling the report “a code red for humanity,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres kept a sliver of hope that world leaders could still somehow prevent 1.5 degrees of warming, which he said is “perilously close.”

Alok Sharma, the president of the upcoming climate negotiations in Scotland, urged leaders to do more so they can “credibly say that we have kept 1.5 degrees alive.”

“Anything we can do to limit, to slow down, is going to pay off,” Tebaldi said. “And if we cannot get to 1.5, it’s probably going to be painful, but it’s better not to give up.”

In the report’s worst-case scenario, the world could be around 3.3 degrees Celsius (5.9 degrees Fahrenheit) hotter than now by the end of the century. But that scenario looks increasingly unlikely, said report co-author and climate scientist Zeke Hausfather, climate change director of the Breakthrough Institute.

“We are a lot less likely to get lucky and end up with less warming than we thought,” Hausfather said. “At the same time, the odds of ending up in a much worse place than we expected if we do reduce our emissions are notably lower.”

The report also said ultra-catastrophic disasters — commonly called “tipping points,” like ice sheet collapses and the abrupt slowdown of ocean currents — are “low likelihood” but cannot be ruled out. The much talked-about shutdown of Atlantic ocean currents, which would trigger massive weather shifts, is something that’s unlikely to happen in this century, Kopp said.

A “major advance” in the understanding of how fast the world warms with each ton of carbon dioxide emitted allowed scientists to be far more precise in the scenarios in this report, Mason-Delmotte said.

In a new move, scientists emphasized how cutting airborne levels of methane — a powerful but short-lived gas that has soared to record levels — could help curb short-term warming. Lots of methane the atmosphere comes from leaks of natural gas, a major power source. Livestock also produces large amounts of the gas, a good chunk of it in cattle burps.

More than 100 countries have made informal pledges to achieve “net zero” human-caused carbon dioxide emissions sometime around mid-century, which will be a key part of the negotiations in Scotland. The report said those commitments are essential.

“It is still possible to forestall many of the most dire impacts,” Barrett said.

We need to help our planet – it is the only one we have!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Fox News host Bret Baier confronted Senator Rick Scott, a Florida Republican, after he objected to supporting legislation raising the national debt further—pointing out that GOP lawmakers had largely disregarded this position under former President Donald Trump.

During Trump’s four years in the White House, the U.S. debt increased by about 33 percent. Under the Trump administration, the debt surged by about $6.7 trillion to $26.9 trillion at the end of 2020. Although much of this was due to the extraordinary circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic, the signature Trump tax cuts of 2017—which largely benefited the wealthiest Americans and corporations—also contributed substantially to deficit spending, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

In an interview (see video above) with Fox News Sunday, Scott argued that he was opposed to the approximately $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure legislation nearing passage in the Senate because the CBO estimated that it will add more than $250 billion to the national debt.

But Fox News host Bret Baier responded by pointing out the massive growth in the national debt under Trump, when Republicans also controlled the Senate for all four years and the House of Representatives for the first two years of the former president’s term.

“Senator, you’re talking a lot about the deficit and debt, other Republicans are. But it wasn’t that way under the Trump administration,” Baier pointed out. “In fact, if you look at the numbers, the debt went up at the end of 2020, $26.9 trillion. The Trump administration and Republicans added $6.7 trillion to the debt—that was since [former] President [Barack] Obama’s last budget, 33 percent increase,” the Fox News host pointed out.

“I understand COVID had a big role in that, but there’s not a great track record of Republicans recently to tout themselves as deficit/debt hawks and now to be doing it here,” Baier said.

Scott responded by pointing to his record as governor of Florida between 2011 and 2019.

“I walked in as governor of Florida in 2011 with a $4 billion budget deficit. A state that had increased its debt every year by over a billion dollars. In eight years, working with the legislature growing our economy, we paid off a third of the state debt. Since I’ve been up here, I’ve been talking about the debt, how debt, excessive debt, excessive spending costs your family, and the poorest families the most money,” the Republican senator said.

“It’s causing inflation. It’s causing ridiculous inflation right now,” Scott added.

Baier then jumped in, saying: “You’re kind of a lone voice aren’t you. Or one of them.”

Scott responded that the Senate’s Republican Caucus plans to oppose any increase of the debt ceiling without “structural change.”

“But my point is that is what you [Republicans] did under the Trump administration with no strings attached,” Baier said, pushing back against Scott’s response.

Tony