Group items tagged

Fossil fuel projects like the Keystone XL oil pipeline would have free rein, undaunted by court challenges that ruled the Trump administration didn’t properly consider climate change when analyzing the pipeline’s impact.

It’s important to understand that the shredding of environmental regulations is not something that would have been unique to a Trump presidency, unlike his Twitter inanities or nonstop campaign rallies.

Four years of damage can be undone. Eight is far more difficult.

A significant majority of ballots cast so far in Pennsylvania -- 82% -- come from White voters. Black voters make up the second largest share of those early ballots at 11%, followed by Hispanic voters at 4% and Asian voters at 3%.

President Donald Trump, former Vice President Joe Biden, Vice President Mike Pence, and Sen. Kamala Harris will all appear in Pennsylvania at some point today.

More than 14 million ballots have already been cast in these five states, which could be crucial in determining the next president.

It's no coincidence that all the candidates are stopping in Pennsylvania today. There are a lot of voters who still have not cast a ballot in the state that was the lynchpin to Trump's 2016 victory.

Democrats have dominated the pre-election vote in the Keystone State. They currently make up 66% of those ballots.

Polling shows Republicans nationwide strongly prefer to vote in person on Election Day, which the Trump campaign thinks will be enough to recapture the state's 20 electoral votes.

At 83% of early voters so far, White voters make up a smaller share of the early voting electorate compared to the 88% they were at this point in 2016

So far, 13% of Pennsylvania's early voters are under 30, and 38% are 65 or older. More younger voters have been casting ballots in Pennsylvania as the campaign comes to a close. Last week, 11% of the commonwealth's voters were under 30, and 42% were 65 or older.

Texas and Hawaii have already surpassed their total turnout from the 2016 general election. In eight more states, the pre-election vote represents at least 90% of their 2016 total vote -- Montana, Washington, North Carolina, Georgia, Nevada, Florida, New Mexico and Tennessee.

Democrats hold a smaller lead over Republicans in pre-election ballots cast than they did on the day before the 2016 election. Back then, they had an eight-point lead. Currently, it's six points, with Democrats at 37% and Republicans at 31%.

Younger voters make up a larger share of North Carolina's early voters this year than at this point in 2016. Fifteen percent of the state's early voters so far are under 30, almost double the 8% at this time four years ago. That number continues to grow. One week ago, voters under 30 made up 12% of North Carolina's early voters.

Almost 56% of ballots already cast come from women in the Tar Heel State, and men comprise about 44%. This is roughly on par with the gender breakdown at this point in 2016.

Republicans want to hang onto Michigan's 16 electoral votes, while Democrats are working to bring the state back into the fold.

Black voters have expanded their share of pre-Election Day ballots cast from about 9% at this time in 2016 to 12% currently.

Women in Pennsylvania account for nearly 57% of ballots already cast, and men account for about 43%.

Slightly more than 56% of ballots cast so far in the Wolverine State are from women and almost 44% are from men.

Wisconsin has seen a large decrease in the share of early votes from people 65 or older, but the state hasn't seen as much of an increase from voters under 30.

By race, Wisconsin's early voters are similar to that of four years ago, with White voters representing the vast majority -- about 88% -- of those who've cast their ballots so far. Black voters represent about 5% of those early voters, Hispanic voters 3% and Asian voters 2% -- all on par with this time in 2016.

The racial breakdown of Ohio's early voters is almost identical to this time in 2016. Eighty-six percent of ballots already cast have come from White voters. Black voters comprise about 11% of those early ballots, with Hispanic voters accounting for about 2% and Asian voters about 1%. Younger Ohioans have increased their share of the early vote from 7% at this point in 2016 to about 12% now. These voters below the age of 30 have also continued to turn out during the last week of the campaign -- one week ago, they made up 9% of early voters.

In interviews ahead of the election with more than a dozen caregivers in Pennsylvania, one of the country’s most important battleground states, they described how their experiences are shaping their political outlooks. It has hardened some convictions and transformed some caretakers, otherwise apolitical, into activists. It has forced others to reassess their beliefs about American exceptionalism, the role of government in their lives and their industry, and their decision about whom to vote for in November.

Nine months ago, I would have told you that I was 100 percent behind Trump,” Mr. Lohoefer, a lifelong Republican, said of the president. “But as a result of Covid, I’m not 100 percent sure where I stand now.”

There were struggles to procure personal protective equipment, difficulties with rapid testing, staffing shortages, disagreements between local, state and federal government agencies and new rules piled onto an already heavily regulated industry.

stakeholders in every corner of caregiving agree that the pandemic exposed the country’s overburdened health care system, testing the mental, emotional and physical limits of all of the people who work in it.

If you don’t see it, you really don’t understand how difficult it is,”

In interviews, caregivers as well as patient advocates, medical professionals, facility managers and residents themselves said they had never experienced anything like the first six months of the pandemic.

The chaos was so pervasive that it was nearly impossible, everyone said, to separate what was happening from the politics at play. As caretakers endured day after exhausting day, state officials set forth new regulations to govern how nursing homes should work. And President Trump delivered a drumbeat of dangerous claims — mocking masks, praising unproven treatments, speculating about bleach and about the virus disappearing.

And top officials at care facilities voiced deep frustration about how the virus response rapidly devolved from a public health issue to a partisan fight.

Surveys of Pennsylvania voters show that Mr. Trump’s standing has been damaged in recent months by his administration’s handling of the coronavirus.

Four years later, with its 20 electoral votes, Pennsylvania looms as one of the most important swing states in the election. Many of Mr. Trump’s remaining paths to victory require him to win the Keystone State, and to do that, he needs voters like Mr. Lohoefer, the nursing director, in his camp.

Mr. Lohoefer voted for Mr. Trump in 2016. But he has been pushed to his limits. He recalled with derision how the government and his corporate office would send sudden, often conflicting mandates during the early days of the pandemic.

Over all, he thinks the reaction to the virus was “overkill,” but he also thinks Mr. Trump was wrong to suggest it was “nothing to worry about.”

As the virus spread across her facility, Ms. Frazier, the caretaker who witnessed dozens of deaths, said she would see Mr. Trump on television without a mask and grow frustrated. And although she has voted for Republicans and had been a fan of Mr. Trump’s when he was on reality television, she began to blame his cavalier response for her worsening situation at work.

Americans, she came to believe, would not act until the virus affected them personally.

“If we want to make America great again, then we need to change the political face of our country,”

That followed decisions by judges that have thrown the future of the Dakota Access Pipeline into doubt, struck down the relaxation of protections for migratory birds and vacated the rollback of an Obama-era rule to reduce waste from natural gas flaring on federal lands.

According to a database kept by New York University’s nonpartisan Institute for Policy Integrity, the Environmental Protection Agency has won only nine out of 47 cases in court under Mr. Trump, while the Interior Department has won four of 22.

“There is a sense that the administration has been in a hurry and has been sloppy,” said Jonathan H. Adler, a conservative legal expert and professor of environmental law at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.

biggest rollbacks of clean water rules, curbs to greenhouse gas emissions in automobiles and power plants, and environmental reviews of infrastructure projects.

a number of courts ruled that agencies acted illegally by providing little or no justification when they rewrote, weakened or repealed regulation.

It is not only a sin to kill a mockingbird, it is also a crime. That has been the letter of the law for the past century.

rejected the E.P.A.’s 2019 approval of an air pollution rule for Pennsylvania that would have allowed coal-fired power plants in that state to exceed pollution limits.

17 states to block the Trump administration’s revisions to a rule that significantly narrows the definition of which bodies of water are federally regulated

“The current record shows that D.O.J. and E.P.A. are making a solid defense of the Trump administration priorities.”

ignoring facts about climate change.

“The Trump administration, along with allies like me, wins on big-picture issues at the highest levels,” Mr. Morrisey said.

“The Trump administration is impatient,” he said. “The Trump administration is sloppy. The Trump administration doesn’t like to do its homework.”

“The administration is so reluctant to mention climate change that they get in trouble for not even mentioning it,” Mr. Gerrard said.

“A lot of these rollbacks are going to have very shallow roots, and perhaps no roots as all,” said David Hayes, executive director of the State Energy and Environmental Impact Center.

“If there’s a Democratic president, roll up your sleeves and wait for Texas to file lawsuits against President Biden,” he said.

With a sweeping set of executive orders in his initial days in office, Mr. Biden rejoined the Paris Agreement among nations to fight climate change, canceled the Keystone XL pipeline and issued a moratorium on drilling for fossil fuels on federal land, among other things.

“Our infrastructure cannot handle extreme weather events, which these fossil fuels are ironically causing.”

Social media posts mocked renewable energy as “unreliables.”

“Building resilient and sustainable infrastructure that can withstand extreme weather and a changing climate will play an integral role in creating millions of good paying, union jobs, creating a clean energy economy, and meeting the president’s goal of reaching a net zero emissions future by 2050,” said Vedant Patel, a White House assistant press secretary.

The bulk of the power loss in Texas came from natural gas suppliers, according to regulators, as pipelines froze, making it difficult for plants to get the fuel they needed. Production from coal and nuclear plants dropped as well. A similar phenomenon played out in Kansas and other states.

Ms. Boebert mentioned a photo shared repeatedly this week on social media of wind turbines she said were in Texas and apparently being de-iced by helicopter with a substance derived from fossil fuels.

In Kansas, one of few states that rely heavily on wind power, the blades on some turbines froze, too. However, just like in Texas, the bigger problem was that the state’s frigid temperatures stopped delivery of natural gas to fossil-fuel-burning power plants.

Republicans were actually more likely to say that they were doing well in November, compared to October. But nearly three in four said they expected “periods of widespread unemployment or depression” in the next several years, up from three in 10 in October.

Nancy Veits, a Republican voter in Los Angeles County, said the economy was a major factor in her decision to vote for Mr. Trump. A retired small-business owner, Ms. Veits, 81, said that she appreciated the president’s commitment to deregulation — and that she feared for the economy after his departure.

Mr. Keyston, 66, said that he didn’t like Mr. Trump’s penchant for Twitter or his demeanor in office. But he said he liked many of Mr. Trump’s policies, like his tax cuts and his promise to build a border wall and to keep the United States out of wars

. He worries that Mr. Biden will impose new restrictions that will cripple the economy, including a nationwide lockdown, a charge that Mr. Trump repeatedly leveled against Mr. Biden, though Mr. Biden did not call for such a lockdown.

Big partisan shifts in confidence have become common following elections in recent decades.

“It reflects what we’ve seen in the survey data the whole time, which is that everyone is tying their own political beliefs to their views of the economy,” said Laura Wronski, a research scientist for SurveyMonkey. “It’s just kind of crazy to see how entrenched these beliefs are.”

Democrats’ views of the economy have also shifted after elections, but generally less than Republicans’, a pattern that was particularly stark this year.

“I think the economic impact is devastating, and it’s going to take people decades to recover,” she said.

Ms. Garrow, a Democrat, said she supported many of Mr. Biden’s signature policy proposals, such as raising taxes on the wealthy and making public colleges free to students from middle-class families.

Perhaps more surprising, some of Mr. Biden’s proposals earn support from Republican voters. More than four in 10 Republicans support raising taxes on people earning more than $400,000 a year. Three-quarters of Republicans support a proposal to guarantee paid sick leave to workers during the coronavirus pandemic.

Liberal economists with links to Mr. Biden say the results show the popularity of his plans and the challenges of reaching out to supporters of Mr. Trump whose economic hopes were low before he won the 2016 election.

William Spriggs, the chief economist for the A.F.L.-C.I.O. labor federation, said that the polling reflected the “partisan politics” now embedded in economic confidence surveys, and that it offered a message to Mr. Biden on the importance of pushing for policies like paid leave that have attracted Republican opposition in Washington.

But he said the country needed to invest more in public health, education and other priorities, and he said it made sense to raise taxes on corporations and the wealthy in order to pay for that spending.

Factcheckers have pointed out that the main cause of increasing gas prices over the past year is disruptions to global supply and demand following the coronavirus pandemic. Only a 10th of the Keystone XL pipeline was complete when Biden cancelled it and it was not likely to become operational until 2023 at the earliest.

He added that Republicans, in thrall to “big oil”, have spent the past two decades opposing the very measures that would have made America less dependent on foreign oil and fossil fuels in general. Green technology would have shielded the US from the effects of the Ukraine crisis on global markets.

Bardella, a former senior adviser for Republicans on the House oversight committee, added: “Republicans were so vocal about how the Biden administration needed to do sanctions on Russian oil and then they start attacking him. You can’t win because everything that they do is basically an illustration of how they operate in bad faith.”

Ed Rogers, a political consultant and veteran of the Ronald Reagan and George H W Bush administrations, said: “‘It’s the economy, stupid.’ Biden is going to own whatever the economy is come November. Republicans don’t have to do anything to make that happen. People feel it for themselves, they observe for themselves.

“You don’t have to remind people too much of gas prices and overall inflation is a big macro political issue. Doing well as an incumbent is all about peace and prosperity, and prosperity is being eroded by inflation, with gas prices being a focal point.”

Democratic strategists are aware that the issue could weigh heavily on midterm voters. Bob Shrum acknowledged: “The facts don’t matter much here. If gas prices are really high, that becomes a problem for Democrats in the midterms because they’re in office. It’s just a natural tendency to blame someone under those circumstances.”