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The Sunrise Movement has a plan to force presidential candidates to address climate change

The Sunrise Movement has had a big year: The climate activist group staged a protest in Nancy Pelosi’s office, helped spur a standoff between kids and California Democrat Dianne Feinstein, and had a meeting with Beto O’Rourke that resulted in the candidate taking a pledge to eschew fossil fuel donations. Sunrise activists are known for coming in real hot and pushing the Green New Deal like their lives depend on it. The next piece of their climate plan is no different.

On Monday night, the group hosted a rally in Washington, D.C., featuring two of the patron saints of the current climate movement: Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Bernie Sanders. At that rally, between jabs at Joe Biden’s alleged “middle of the road” climate approach and stabs at the fossil fuel industry, Sunrise unveiled the next rung of a ladder that the group hopes will lead all the way to the White House.

Here’s how the group aims to center the 2020 presidential race around climate change, even though the main Republican contender has one of the most severe allergies to climate action doctors have ever seen.

Sunrise hopes to get Democratic candidates to accept their three key demands: Candidates must sign the No Fossil Fuel Money Pledge, make the Green New Deal a priority on day one in office, and call on the Democratic National Committee to host a climate debate. The group says it is in the process of mobilizing its network of thousands of volunteers across the nation to put pressure on the candidates to meet its demands.

Sunrise is also organizing a demonstration at the presidential debate in Detroit beginning on July 30, the deadline for candidates to accept the aforementioned three demands. The group says it will host a parallel event featuring speakers and stories from folks on the frontlines of the climate struggle.

Will 2020 candidates buckle under pressure? We’ll see. But it’s clear from the rapid-fire way Beto took the no fossil fuel money pledge that Sunrise’s tactics have left a serious impression on the presidential hopefuls: No one wants that awkward Feinstein moment.

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The Sunrise Movement has a plan to force presidential candidates to address climate change

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‘Step the f#$@ off’: Dianne Feinstein gets the SNL treatment

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The recent showdown between California Senator Dianne Feinstein and a bunch of young climate activists asking her to back the Green New Deal has taken social media by storm.

Want to relive the heated exchange? Saturday Night Live has you covered. In an unaired sketch, comedian Cecily Strong plays a feisty, condescending version of the Democratic senator. She did not hold back.

“Oh, I see what’s happening,” Strong tells the kids in the video. “You’re gonna tell me how to do my job. OK, well, I don’t come into your first-grade classroom and knock the Elmer’s glue out of your mouth, do I? So why don’t you stay in your lane and step the f#$@ off?”

As each attempt to talk to the kids goes awry, Strong keeps asking for a do-over. One kid states the obvious: “You’re mean.”

The skit is laugh-out-loud funny, but the producers cut the segment from Saturday’s live show. That decision may have been due to time constraints — the sketches ran longer than normal, according to Rolling Stone. But it may also be a sign that SNL’s producers, like Feinstein, might be a little out of touch on climate change.

There’s another indication that SNL doesn’t know what’s up: In the sketch, one of the children holds up a cute sign that says “Save the Whales.” Seems innocuous, right? Well, the purpose of the protesters’ visit to the senator’s office wasn’t to save ocean creatures — it was to get Feinstein on board with the Green New Deal.

“SNL writers/editors thought that made sense, that climate change — the real subject of the visit — is another version of esoteric critter-saving,” tweeted Vox’s David Roberts, a former Grist writer.

While climate change affects every ecosystem on Earth, “saving the whales” overlooks the point of the Green New Deal. Rather, its intent is to propose an economy-wide transformation that links renewable energy with policies such as universal healthcare and a federal jobs guarantee, addressing that climate change and inequality coexist.

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‘Step the f#$@ off’: Dianne Feinstein gets the SNL treatment

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California Water Bill Rewards Farmers, Screws Environment

Mother Jones

A controversial bill that would override environmental rules to supply farmers with more water from California’s ecologically sensitive Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta sailed through the House of Representatives on Thursday. The bill may come up for a vote as soon as today in the Senate, where it is being championed by California senior Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat and powerful ally of agribusiness interests.

California’s other Democratic US senator, Barbara Boxer, staunchly opposes the bill and has threatened to filibuster it, potentially keeping her fellow senators from leaving for the year. It would be a dramatic last act for Boxer, an ally of environmental groups who is retiring this year after working closely with Feinstein in the Senate for 24 years. “I guess that’s how it goes,” Boxer said on the Senate floor this morning. “You come in fighting, you go out fighting.”

The contentious California provisions, which also include policies that would make it easier to build dams, were added on Monday by Bakersfield Republican Kevin McCarthy as a rider to the sprawling Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation Act, a popular bipartisan bill that would also provide aid to Flint, Michigan. The provisions reflect negotiations between Feinstein, California’s 14 Republican lawmakers, and a handful of Democrats.

The bill represents the culmination of a fight that has been brewing over the course of California’s six-year drought. It pits Central Valley farmers and Los Angeles area homeowners against environmental interests, fishermen, and farmers in the Delta region east of the San Francisco Bay Area. The Los Angeles Times‘ Sarah D. Wire summarizes the conflict. (Today she is following the hearings live on Twitter):

At issue is that the measure would allow officials at state and federal water management agencies to exceed the environmental pumping limits to capture more water during storms. Those limits have been a pet peeve of water contractors, including the Westlands Water District and the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which complained of water supplies “lost to the sea” during last winter’s heavy rains.

Federal biologists have said certain levels of water flowing through the delta are vital for native fish, which have suffered devastating losses during the state’s prolonged drought, and help maintain the quality of the delta’s freshwater supplies. In short, if fish are determined to have enough water, or are not near the pumps, the excess water could be sent to the south.

Rep. Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael) characterized it as placing political wants above science to go around federal law.

“When an act of Congress specifically supersedes peer-reviewed biological opinions that are the very mechanism of how the Endangered Species Act gets implemented, that is a grave undermining of the act,” Huffman said.

Feinstein, who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee’s powerful energy and water panel, typically serves as the key negotiator on California-related water bills. Progressives often accuse her of ignoring environmental interests in favor of agricultural ones, particularly the billionaire California farmers Stewart and Lynda Resnick, who use more water than all the homes in Los Angeles combined. For more on Feinstein’s ties with the Resnicks, read our profile of them here.

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California Water Bill Rewards Farmers, Screws Environment

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California Bill Seeks to Get All Children Vaccinated

Mother Jones

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On the heels of an ongoing measles outbreak that has ignited a national debate over childhood vaccinations, California lawmakers introduced a bill on Wednesday seeking to put an end to the use of personal belief exemptions—which allow parents to opt out of vaccinating their children—in the state.

The proposed legislation would essentially require all school children to get vaccinated, unless immunization puts the child’s health at risk.

“We shouldn’t wait for more children to sicken or die before we act,” Rep. Richard Pan (D-Santa Monica) said at a press conference on Wednesday. “Parents are letting us know our current laws are insufficient to protect their kids.”

The current outbreak started in Disneyland and has since spread to 14 states, with at least 102 cases reported, according to the latest report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. California is one of 20 states that allow for such waivers, which public health officials have cited as a primary cause for the recent reemergence of the highly contagious disease. Only 92.3 percent of children in California are vaccinated, and many of the state’s more affluent neighborhoods report even lower rates.

While Gov. Jerry Brown previously signed bills permitting more parental choice on the matter, a spokesperson for the governor indicated he would be open to possible changes.

“The governor believes that vaccinations are profoundly important and a major public health benefit and any bill that reaches his desk will be closely considered,” Evan Westrup said.

Also on Wednesday, Senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein released a joint statement calling upon California officials to consider tightening the state’s vaccination policies and ending the both personal belief and religious exemptions.

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California Bill Seeks to Get All Children Vaccinated

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Is Dianne Feinstein Crafting a Secret Water Deal to Help Big Pistachio?

Mother Jones

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) is negotiating a behind-closed-doors deal with Republican lawmakers to pass a bill that would ostensibly address California’s drought—an effort that has uncorked a flood of criticism from environmental circles.

Feinstein’s quiet push for a compromise drought bill that’s palatable to Big Ag-aligned House Republicans has been in the works for six months, Kate Poole, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, told me. And it has accelerated recently, as the Senator hopes to pass it by year end, during the “lame duck” period of the outgoing Democratic-controlled Senate.

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Is Dianne Feinstein Crafting a Secret Water Deal to Help Big Pistachio?

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