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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Chris Stein in Washington

Biden to make Wednesday climate address as dangerous heat grips US and world – as it happened

Donald Trump Joe Biden White House
Joe and Jill Biden at the White House on Tuesday for the arrival of Olena Zelenska, the first lady of Ukraine.
Joe and Jill Biden at the White House on Tuesday for the arrival of Olena Zelenska, the first lady of Ukraine. Photograph: Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Closing summary

President Joe Biden plans an address on climate change tomorrow, where he may announce new executive orders to curb US emissions after his attempts to achieve reductions via legislation stalled in Congress. However, he won’t declare a climate emergency, at least not yet.

Here’s what else happened today:

National Archives demands probe of Secret Service January 6 text message deletion

Following today’s revelation that the Secret Service deleted text messages from the January 6 attack and the day before, The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports that National Archives is now demanding an investigation:

The US National Archives has asked the Secret Service to conduct an internal investigation over “erased” text messages from the day before and the day of the Capitol attack, according to a letter sent to the agency’s records management officer on Tuesday.

The request marks the latest escalation of the matter after the watchdog for the Secret Service, the Department of Homeland Security inspector general, notified Congress he had sought the texts only to be told they no longer existed.

In the letter sent to the Secret Service records officer, reviewed by the Guardian, the National Archives requested the agency launch an internal review and report within 30 calendar days if it finds any texts were “improperly deleted”.

Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Mississippi’s only abortion clinic and the subject of the supreme court case that overturned Roe v. Wade last month, has given up its legal battle to continue operating.

Reuters reports that the clinic was making a last-ditch legal effort before the state supreme court to get it to halt Mississippi’s almost total ban on abortions, but threw in the towel after the clinic’s owner sold the building. Its fate seemed sealed earlier this month after a judge rejected the clinic’s petition to halt the ban, which went into effect following last month’s ruling by the US supreme court in the case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

U.S. first lady Jill Biden, first lady of Ukraine Olena Zelenska and U.S. President Joe Biden pose for photos as Zelenska arrives on the South Lawn of the White House July 19, 2022 in Washington, DC.
U.S. first lady Jill Biden, first lady of Ukraine Olena Zelenska and U.S. president Joe Biden pose for photos as Zelenska arrives on the South Lawn of the White House July 19, 2022 in Washington, DC. Photograph: Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Ukraine’s first lady Olena Zelenska is in Washington for meetings at the White House and an address to Congress. As you can see above, she’s already met Joe and Jill Biden.

Here’s what Zelenska had to say about the visit after meeting with secretary of state Antony Blinken:

Tomorrow, she will address senators and House representatives in the Capitol. In a letter to lawmakers, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, “We hope that all Members will take advantage of this important and timely opportunity to hear directly from First Lady Zelenska, to learn more about the terrible toll of the Russian invasion and to express our gratitude to the people of Ukraine for their fight for Democracy.”

Meanwhile in Washington, a group of House Democrats was arrested in front of the supreme court after staging a demonstration in support of abortion rights.

Last week, the Democratic-led House approved legislation that protected abortion access nationwide, after the supreme court overturned Roe v. Wade and allowed states to ban the procedure. However, there’s no sign the legislation will be able to overcome a Republican filibuster in the Senate.

Updated

A small explosion and fire broke out but was quickly extinguished at Hoover Dam, which is at the center of the western United States’s massive drought.

The embankment straddling the Nevada-Arizona border holds back Lake Mead, which has dropped to its lowest level since it was full 20 years ago due to drought and climate change. Reuters reports that the blaze at Hoover Dam had been extinguished before the local fire department arrived.

It is unclear if the lake’s low water level played a role in the explosion, but authorities warn that the reservoir could soon hit “dead pool” levels, when water will no longer be able to flow downstream.

Former New York City mayor Bill de Blasio has ended his bid for the Democratic nomination in the state’s 10th congressional district.

De Blasio, who led America’s largest city for eight years and left office with low approval ratings, was trailing in polls to represent the district that includes part of the city in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Updated

The Secret Service will tell Congress it doesn’t have any new texts to give to the House subcommittee investigating the January 6 insurrection, according to Washington Post reporter Carol Leonnig.

The House committee set a deadline for today for the Secret Service to hand over deleted texts that were sent among agents, Donald Trump and Mike Pence on the day before and the day of the riot. Last week, the inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security notified the committee that texts from those days had been deleted. The explanation from the Secret Service for the deletions have shifted several times, from software upgrades to device replacements.

From the Guardian’s senior reporter Nina Lakhani, who reports on climate justice:

As attention focuses on the extreme temperatures scorching large swathes of Europe and the US, its worth drawing attention to other parts of the world where dangerous heat and drought have also been causing misery.

In Monterrey, Mexico’s third largest city where temperatures above 100F are the norm throughout the summer, residents are enduring a second month of water rationing as three dams which supply households are almost dry. Authorities are turning on taps for only six hours per day, though some residents have gone without any running water for long spells, and are forced to spend hours every day lining up at communal taps. The national water authority has declared a state of emergency across the country because of drought.

According to the North American Drought Monitor, 56% of Mexico is experiencing some level of drought with northern states like Nuevo Leon (home to Monterrey), Sonora, Chihuahua, and Coahuila particularly badly due to a combination of La Niña and global heating. Most of the country’s wheat is farmed in this northern belt, which is among three crops (along with maize and rice) that make up almost half the world’s calories. All three grains are vulnerable to extreme heat and drought, in large part because industrialised agriculture favors monocropping over crop diversity.

This was a little reported consequence of the punishing spring extreme heatwave in India and Pakistan, where more than a billion people faced temperatures from 100 to 122F from late March to the end of June, a period of almost 100 days. As a result, wheat yields dropped by about 15%, compounding the shortages caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Livestock died across the subcontinent.

The number of deaths so far attributed directly to the extreme spring heat is surprisingly low, just 90, compared to more than 1100 so far in Spain and Portugal, though this is likely at least partly down to issues with counting and reporting heat deaths. (Recent floods in India and Bangladesh have led to high death tolls, but this could be because such deaths are easier to count.) It’s the monsoon now in India, so temperatures have dropped significantly - it’s only 90F in Delhi today - but the humidity is very high. Humid heat is far more dangerous than dry heat, so the death toll could rise across the Asian subcontinent without anyone paying much attention.

Read more about crop scientists in Mexico developing heat and climate resilient wheat varieties here:

Joe Biden is not going to declare a climate emergency when he delivers an address on climate change in Somerset, Massachusetts tomorrow, according to the Associated Press.

A source told the AP that while Biden is planning to announce steps the White House is taking to address climate change, he will not declare a climate emergency.

Earlier today, the Washington Post reported that Biden was floating the idea of declaring an emergency after senator Joe Manchin effectively blocked a spending package that would have allocated billions toward addressing the climate emergency. Manchin told Democratic leaders last week that he does not support the package, ultimately striking down its chance of passage.

Updated

It’s day two of Steve Bannon’s federal trial in Washington DC as he faces charges of contempt for Congress, ignoring subpoenas from the House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection.

A lawyer for Bannon has asked the judge to delay the trial by a month so the defense team can figure out what evidence they could offer. The judge, Carl J Nichols, denied his lawyer’s request, but said he may push back the start of opening arguments a day so both teams can organize themselves.

Bannon’s trial began yesterday with jury selection. Attorneys have narrowed the pool down to 22 prospective, with a final 12 needed, along with two alternatives.

Ohio’s supreme court has struck down the state’s 15 congressional districts, saying they were so distorted in favor of Republicans that they violated the state constitution.

In a 4-3 ruling, the court gave the state legislature 30 days to come up with a new map. If the legislature fails to come up with a new plan, a GOP-controlled commission would then have another 30 days.

Any new map would be in effect for the 2024 elections. After striking down the initial map Republicans passed earlier this year, the Ohio supreme court declined to intervene again ahead of the state’s primary and block a revised map. The map they struck down Tuesday was that revised plan.

The plan creates 10 Republican-leaning districts and five Democratic-leaning districts, the court noted. While all 10 GOP districts are solidly Republican, three of the five Democratic ones are highly competitive, meaning Republicans could win them in a strong year for the party. Projections show Democrats would most likely win four in the state’s congressional delegation, despite winning around 47% of the statewide vote.

That split violates a provision in the state constitution that prohibits maps that “unduly favors or disfavors a political party or its incumbents.” Ohio voters overwhelmingly approved adding that language to the state constitution in 2018.

“Comparative analyses and other metrics show that the March 2 plan allocates voters in ways that unnecessarily favor the Republican Party by packing Democratic voters into a few dense Democratic-leaning districts, thereby increasing the Republican vote share of the remaining districts,” the court’s majority wrote. “As a result, districts that would otherwise be strongly Democratic-leaning are now competitive or Republican-leaning districts.”

The three judges who dissented argued that the majority opinion sought to use a system of proportional representation, which is not required under Ohio’s constitution.

Tuesday’s ruling marks the seventh time the Ohio supreme court has struck down congressional and state legislative maps this cycle. Despite all of those rulings, all of the maps struck down passed by lawmakers will be in place for at least the 2022 elections.

The day so far

President Joe Biden plans an address on climate change tomorrow, during which he could declare a national climate emergency after his attempts to get legislation lowering America’s carbon emissions through Congress stalled.

Here’s what else has happened so far today:

Biden plans Wednesday address on climate crisis

President Joe Biden will outline his next steps to tackle climate change in an address in Somerset, Massachusetts on Wednesday, the White House announced. “The president will deliver remarks on tackling the climate crisis and seizing the opportunity of a clean energy future to create jobs and lower costs for families,” according to a statement.

The president may use the trip to declare the national climate emergency The Washington Post reports his administration has been mulling. Reuters quotes a White House official as saying, “We are considering all options and no decision has been made.”

Updated

120. That’s the number of Republican candidates who deny the results of the 2020 election and will be on the ballot this fall, according to an analysis by FiveThirtyEight, which notes that may not be the full count.

Election denying is most common in House of Representatives and governorship races, and least in secretary of state and Senate contests, according to the analysis. It’s also hard to pin down the degree to which Republican politicians refuse to accept the validity of the results of the last presidential race, since many haven’t made their views known - which FiveThirtyEight concludes means some likely believe baseless theories about the outcome, but are keeping it to themselves.

Finally, the analysis finds that election denying is no surefire path to victory. Candidates who rejected the theory have in fact won 54 percent of races against an election denier, versus 36 percent for the deniers themselves. Here’s what FiveThirtyEight has to say about that dynamic:

In other words, questioning the results of the 2020 election might not be a surefire path to the nomination, but it hasn’t proven to be a dealbreaker for Republican voters, either. That speaks volumes as to the overall direction the Republican Party is moving in.

The board of American journalism’s highest honor, the Pulitzer Prizes, has put out a statement upholding its awarding of the 2018 prize in National Reporting to reporters from The New York Times and The Washington Post for their coverage of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and the Trump campaign’s involvement.

The prize administrators had commissioned a review of the awards following “inquiries” from Donald Trump and others, but found no wrongdoing. Here’s their full statement:

The Pulitzer Prize Board has an established, formal process by which complaints against winning entries are carefully reviewed. In the last three years, the Pulitzer Board has received inquiries, including from former President Donald Trump, about submissions from The New York Times and The Washington Post on Russian interference in the U.S. election and its connections to the Trump campaign--submissions that jointly won the 2018 National Reporting prize.

These inquiries prompted the Pulitzer Board to commission two independent reviews of the work submitted by those organizations to our National Reporting competition. Both reviews were conducted by individuals with no connection to the institutions whose work was under examination, nor any connection to each other. The separate reviews converged in their conclusions: that no passages or headlines, contentions or assertions in any of the winning submissions were discredited by facts that emerged subsequent to the conferral of the prizes.

The 2018 Pulitzer Prizes in National Reporting stand.

Allegations that Trump colluded with Russia in the 2016 election sparked an investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller, which enraged the then-president but found no overarching conspiracy with Moscow, though it did turn up plenty of troubling conduct.

Maryland is holding its primary elections today, and The Guardian’s Chris McGreal reports on the surprising involvement of pro-Israel lobbying groups in one of the races:

Pro-Israel lobby groups have poured millions of dollars into a Democratic primary for a Maryland congressional seat on Tuesday, in the latest attempt to block an establishment candidate who expressed support for the Palestinians.

A surge in political spending by organisations funded by hardline supporters of Israel, led by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), has reshaped Democratic primaries over recent months even though debate about the country rarely figures as a major issue in the elections.

Critics accuse Aipac and its allies of distorting Democratic politics in part because much of the money used to influence primary races comes from billionaire Republicans.

In other January 6 committee news, a lawmaker says the panel will be getting Secret Service text messages from the day of the insurrection and just before that the agency originally said had been deleted:

Deleted Secret Service texts sent on 6 January, the day of the insurrection at the US Capitol, and the day before will be released by Tuesday to the House committee investigating the failed attempt by supporters of Donald Trump to overturn the 2020 presidential election result, a panel member said.

“You can imagine how shocked we were to get the letter from the [Department of Homeland Security] inspector general saying that he had been trying to get this information and that they had, in fact, been deleted after he’d asked for them,” committee member and California Democratic congresswoman Zoe Lofgren told ABC’s This Week.

“We need all the texts to get the full picture,” Lofgren added.

January 6 committee will hold Thursday's hearing despite chair's Covid-19 test

The January 6 committee has just released a statement saying Thursday’s hearing will proceed as scheduled, despite chair Bennie Thompson disclosing he had tested positive for Covid-19.

“While Chairman Thompson is disappointed with his COVID diagnosis, he has instructed the Select Committee to proceed with Thursday evening’s hearing. Committee members and staff wish the Chairman a speedy recovery,” committee spokesperson Tim Mulvey said.

January 6 committee chair has Covid-19

Bennie Thomspon, the Democratic House representative leading the panel of lawmakers probing the January 6 insurrection, announced he has tested positive for Covid-19.

Thompson made no mention of how the diagnosis would impact the next hearing of the January 6 committee scheduled for Thursday, when two former top aides to Donald Trump are set to testify during the prime-time TV hour about what the president was doing as the Capitol was attacked.

The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell has the latest on the trial of former top Trump adviser Steve Bannon, which began yesterday, continues today and has thus far confirmed that Bannon still goes around wearing two shirts:

With jury selection nearly complete, opening arguments are expected to take place on Tuesday in the federal trial against Steve Bannon, the top former Trump strategist charged with contempt of Congress after he failed to comply with a subpoena from the House January 6 committee.

Bannon appeared in federal court on Monday as his trial formally opened in Washington. The far-right provocateur – one of the principal architects of Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election – is attempting to argue that he did not willfully fail to comply with the subpoena, which sought documents and testimony.

DC district court judge Carl Nichols is expected to proceed to opening arguments in the contempt trial once the final 12-person jury, with two alternates, is seated from a group of 22 prospective jurors, which was whittled down from an initial pool of 60 DC residents on Monday.

China warns US over Pelosi's reported trip to Taiwan

China has warned that its already-fraught relationship with the US will be further damaged if the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, goes ahead with a reported trip to Taiwan next month.

Beijing said on Tuesday it would take “forceful measures” if the visit took place. Pelosi had previously planned to travel with a congressional delegation to Taiwan in April. The trip was delayed because she tested positive for Covid.

Citing multiple sources, the Financial Times – which first reported Pelosi’s trip this week – said Pelosi and her delegation will also stop by Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia and Singapore, as well as Hawaii, where they will visit the headquarters of US Indo-Pacific command.

China regards Taiwan as a breakaway province and has vowed – repeatedly – to take it back, and by force if necessary. Beijing also calls the island’s democratically-elected president, Tsai Ing-wen a “separatist”.

Back in April, China’s foreign ministry issued a similar warning, saying the trip would “bring serious damage to the foundation of China-US relations, and would send the wrong messages to the Taiwan secessionists.”

Tensions over the island of Taiwan has been on the rise. But China’s Taiwan problem is not only with the United States. In the UK, the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee was also said to be planning on a trip to Taiwan in the autumn this year. But sources say the plan is rather uncertain now due to Conservative Party’s leadership competition, which is under way.

You may have seen the viral clip of a wave swamping a wedding in Hawaii. The Associated Press has the backstory to the rough seas, which were indeed caused, in part, by rising global temperatures:

Towering waves on Hawaii’s south shores crashed into homes and businesses, spilled across highways and upended weddings over the weekend.

The large waves, some more than 20ft (6m) high, came from a combination of a strong south swell that peaked Saturday evening, particularly high tides and rising sea levels associated with climate change, the National Weather Service said Monday.

A wedding Saturday evening in Kailua-Kona was interrupted when a set of large waves swamped the event, sending tables and chairs crashing toward guests.

Declaring a national climate emergency, as The Washington Post reports Biden is considering in response to the apparent demise of his efforts to get measures cutting America’s climate emissions approved by Congress, would certainly generate headlines. But what exactly would it do?

The Post’s report underline the ambiguities associated with the move:

It is unclear how, exactly, Biden plans to proceed if he opts to declare a climate emergency, which Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) urged him to do just days after the president took office last year.

Some climate activists have urged the White House in recent months to deploy an emergency declaration to maximum effect, arguing that it would allow the president to halt crude oil exports, limit oil and gas drilling in federal waters, and direct agencies including the Federal Emergency Management Agency to boost renewable-energy sources.

The sad truth is that America is behind where it needs to be when it comes to keeping the planet from experiencing the worst effects of rising temperatures, and even if Biden had gotten his Build Back Better plan through Congress, it wouldn’t have been enough, as the below story from last October makes clear:

The Build Back Better plan will put America on track to meet its goals, but it must not be the only action congress takes to combat the climate crisis, said congresswoman Kathy Castor, a Florida Democrat and chair of the House select committee on the climate crisis. More federal action is needed to meet the scale of the emergency, she said.

“Even if we pass the Build Back Better Act as it is, that doesn’t get us to net-zero by 2050, which is the goal,” she said in an interview. Pointing to the latest climate research and a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that declared a “code red” for humanity, she added: “We are going to have to do more.”

Build Back Better is now dead, and it’s unclear if the executive actions Biden says he will now resort to will be anywhere near as effective as his unrealized proposals to curb climate change.

With Congress paralyzed, Biden mulls declaring climate emergency

Good morning, US politics blog readers. Is America in the midst of a national climate emergency? The White House may as soon as this week declare it is indeed, the Washington Post reports today, after Joe Biden’s proposals to lower carbon emissions stalled in Congress, sending his administration looking for other ways to take action to curb the planet’s warming. Meanwhile, much of the United States is dealing with a wave of high temperatures, while a heatwave in Europe is breaking records.

That’s not all that’s happening:

  • The January 6 committee’s primetime hearing on Thursday will feature two former White House aides, who will testify as to what Donald Trump was doing as the Capitol was attacked, the Associated Press reports.
  • Maryland is holding its primary elections with a familiar dynamic: a Trump-backed candidate is standing against other mainstream Republicans for the governorship nomination.
  • The trial of former top Trump adviser Steve Bannon resumes at 9am eastern time.
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