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Here’s What Donald Trump Really Thinks of America’s Scientists

by JolieDemaria4 Posted on October 7, 2016

Mother Jones

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It wasn’t much of a surprise Thursday when Donald Trump’s campaign issued a blistering statement condemning the Paris climate agreement. The deal—which has now been ratified by enough countries to go into effect next month—is a giant first step toward cutting the greenhouse gas emissions that are causing global warming. “Politicians like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton continue to make bad deals that undermine the interests of the American people,” said a Trump spokesman. “The Paris Accord is just the latest example. Hillary Clinton and other supporters of this global political agreement ignore the reality that it will cost the American economy trillions of dollars.”

It was a bit more surprising, however, that Team Trump decided to use the opportunity to criticize the nation’s scientists. “Mr. Trump and Gov. Pence appreciate that many scientists are concerned about greenhouse gas emissions,” said the statement. It then added, “We need America’s scientists to continue studying the scientific issues but without political agendas getting in the way.”

A few months ago, the implication that scientists were skewing their results to match their supposed political agendas might have seemed like a relatively tame statement from Trump. After all, he spent years declaring that global warming is a “hoax” perpetrated by “scientists who are having a lot of fun.” In July, he defended his use of the word “hoax” by invoking the widely debunked “ClimateGate” scandal: “If you look at Europe where they had their big summit a couple of years ago, where people were sending out emails—scientists—practically calling it a hoax, and they were laughing at it.”

But more recently, Trump has been trying to run away from that rhetoric. During the first debate, Trump insisted (falsely) that he’d never described climate change as a Chinese hoax. The following day, Pence—who once described climate change as a “myth”—acknowledged that human activities do “have some impact on climate.” Regardless, it’s now clear that Trump still thinks scientists are lying to us.

I reached out to a few climate scientists to get their reaction to Trump’s latest attack on them. Needless to say, they weren’t pleased. Trump’s statement is “just another underhanded way of dodging the scientific reality and engaging in mud-slinging against honest scientists by arguing they are engaging in a political agenda,” said Michael Mann, an atmospheric scientist at Penn State, in an email. “This is very Trumpian projection, since of course it is only him and Pence and their fellow congressional climate change deniers who are engaged in a political agenda.”

But years of Trump-like rhetoric seems to have taken its toll. A new survey from the Pew Research Center found that just 32 percent of respondents believe that climate science is guided by the “best available evidence” most of the time. Meanwhile, large majorities of respondents say that climate research is influence at least some of the time by the scientists’ political beliefs and efforts to advance their careers.

All of this helps explain why, according to Pew, just 21 percent of respondent have “a great deal” of confidence that scientists will act in the best interests of the public. Of course, that doesn’t mean the public trusts Trump. In the same survey, just 4 percent of respondents had a great deal of confidence in the nation’s business leaders.

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Here’s What Donald Trump Really Thinks of America’s Scientists

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Senators Press Feds to Stop Locking Up Central American Families Who Have Fled for Their Lives

by LorenD35vd Posted on October 7, 2016

Mother Jones

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Roughly 30 Central American women and their children who are applying for asylum in the United States are being held outside Philadelphia in a federal immigration detention center called the Berks County Residential Center. Many have been there for more than a year, and in August, 22 mothers went on hunger strike to protest their prolonged detention. Now, a group of 17 Democratic senators, including former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and current vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine, have called on Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson to release the families and end the practice of family detention.

“Many of these mothers have asylum claims based on rape, severe domestic violence, and murder threats,” the senators wrote in a letter released on Tuesday. “It is unconscionable to keep these children locked up and goes against our most fundamental values.” The children at Berks, who make up about half the population of detainees, range in age from 2 to 16 years old. Many have been held for months and, in some cases, more than a year. The senators said family detention is “wrong” and “should be ended immediately,” pointing to research showing that prolonged confinement is harmful to children’s physical and mental health.

The Berks Center is one of three family detention centers in the country. The other two, located in Texas, were opened by the Obama administration in 2014 in response to the surge in unaccompanied minors crossing the border. Around that time, the centers came under scrutiny for poor medical care, lack of access to legal council, and alleged sexual abuse. (Earlier this year, one former guard at Berks was sentenced to prison for sexually assaulting a teenage detainee.)

Last summer, the administration announced a series of reforms to reduce the length of confinement. Shortly afterward, a district court in California ordered the government to release migrant children within three to five days of their initial confinement, or within 20 days under extreme circumstances. The administration says it has taken steps to come into compliance with that court decision. Secretary Johnson has said his agency is detaining families for an average of 20 days or less, but advocates say the experience of the Berks mothers tells another story.

The 17 senators urged Johnson to review their cases and release them unless they are a serious flight risk or threat to public safety. Hillary Clinton has taken a similar position as her running mate and called for an end to family detention.

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Senators Press Feds to Stop Locking Up Central American Families Who Have Fled for Their Lives

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Obama Just Signed a Bill of Rights for Sexual-Assault Survivors

by AngelSwanzedehs Posted on October 7, 2016

Mother Jones

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President Barack Obama on Friday signed into law the Sexual Assault Survivors’ Rights Act, a sweeping piece of legislation that guarantees specific rights for people who have been victimized by a sexual assault.

The measure focuses on collecting and preserving rape kits, the forensic evidence collected in a medical examination after a suspected sexual assault. Police enter the DNA collected from rape kits into state and national databases, sometimes identifying and solving other crimes in addition to the initial rape case. Rape kits—more than 100,000 of them, as of 2014—have often languished for years in police warehouses and crime labs, going untested due to a lack of funds and, some argue, contempt for victims. The new law is the first at the federal level to address these problems, protecting survivors’ access to the initial forensic medical examination and instituting measures to ensure evidence of rape is appropriately preserved and tested.

Survivors can no longer be charged fees or prevented from getting a rape kit examination, even if they have not yet decided to file a police report. Once the medical examination is completed, the kits must be preserved, at no cost to the survivor, until the applicable statute of limitations runs out. Survivors will now be able to request that authorities notify them before destroying their rape kits, and they have the right to request that the evidence be preserved. Once the kit is tested, they’ll also have the right to be notified of important results —including a DNA profile match and toxicology report.

Survivors must also be informed of these rights, regardless of whether they decide to pursue legal action against an assailant. The law also creates a task force to examine how well the new regulations work.

The act was spearheaded by Rise, a nonprofit led by Amanda Nguyen, who became an advocate after her rape almost three years ago when she learned that her rape kit would be destroyed by the state of Massachusetts within six months unless she filed repeated “extension requests.”

“The system essentially makes me live my life by date of rape,” Nguyen told the Guardian in February.

Nguyen then contacted Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), who began working with her to craft the bill, eventually introducing it in February. “Beginning today, our nation’s laws stand firmly on the side of survivors of sexual assault,” Shaheen said in a statement Friday. “I hope that these basic rights will encourage more survivors to come forward and pursue justice.”

The act passed unanimously in the House last month and by voice vote in the Senate last week. Obama signed the bill on Friday, two weeks after the White House launched a new effort to combat sexual assault for the youngest survivors—those in K-12 schools.

This story has been updated.

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Obama Just Signed a Bill of Rights for Sexual-Assault Survivors

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As the largest storm in a decade makes landfall in Florida, the Caribbean starts to dig out.

by AdriannZIOM Posted on October 7, 2016

Six of the eight U.S. senators from Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas are climate deniers, rejecting the consensus of 99.98 percent of peer-reviewed scientific papers that human activity is causing global warming. The exceptions are South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham and Florida’s Bill Nelson — the lone Democrat of the bunch.

Here are some of the lowlights from their comments on the climate change:

-Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who does not understand the difference between climate and weather, arguing against climate action in a presidential debate in March: “As far as a law that we can pass in Washington to change the weather, there’s no such thing.”

-Back in 2011, North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr said: “I have no clue [how much of climate change is attributable to human activity], and I don’t think that science can prove it.”

-In 2014, North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis claimed that “the liberal agenda, the Obama agenda, the [then Sen.] Kay Hagan agenda, is trying to use [climate change] as a Trojan horse for their energy policy.”

-Georgia Sen. Johnny Isakson offered his analysis  last year on whether the Greenland ice sheet is melting (it is): “There are mixed reviews on that, and there’s mixed scientific evidence on that.”

-Georgia Sen. David Perdue told Slate in 2014 that “in science, there’s an active debate going on,” about whether carbon emissions are behind climate change.

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As the largest storm in a decade makes landfall in Florida, the Caribbean starts to dig out.

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The Key Moments From the Vice Presidential Debate

by KarmaG62lyzhfxl Posted on October 5, 2016

Mother Jones

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In a debate that was expected to have none of the fireworks of last week’s presidential face-off, the two vice presidential nominees embraced their attack-dog roles Tuesday in a sparring match that was less about the men on stage than about Donald Trump.

Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia used the debate in his home state to slam Trump repeatedly over his refusal to release his tax returns and his surprising comments about nuclear proliferation. Republican Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana, in turn, tried to dodge most of the attacks Kaine lobbed his way and used them to accuse Kaine of running an “insult-driven” campaign. Pence was also able to get in a few swipes at Hillary Clinton.

It was a messy, chaotic affair for two vice presidential hopefuls, both thought to be more mellow than their running mates. The two candidates often talked over each other often during the debate—and over the moderator, CBS News’ Elaine Quijano, who had a hard time holding Kaine and Pence to the allotted time and subject matter for each question.

Here are the best moments from the combative debate:

Pence defends Trump on not paying taxes. Following a New York Times report suggesting that Trump might not have paid any federal income taxes for nearly two decades by claiming $913 million in losses on his tax returns in 1995, Pence defended his running mate. “Donald Trump is a businessman, not a career politician,” Pence said. “He actually built a business. He faced some pretty tough times 20 years ago. His tax returns—that showed he went through a very difficult time but he used the tax code just the way it’s supposed to be used and he did it brilliantly.”

Kaine goes after Trump’s missing tax returns. Kaine went hard after Trump for not releasing his tax returns. He recalled that Trump promised back in 2014 that he would release his returns if he ran for president, and he said that Trump broke that promise. Just as Pence shared his tax returns with Trump as part of the vetting process to be his running mate, Kaine said, Trump should share his returns with the American people as he runs for the job of president.

Pence accuses Kaine of running an “insult-driven campaign.” Throughout the debate, Pence accused Kaine and Clinton of running an “insult-driven campaign.” “I have to tell you, I was listening to the avalanche of insults coming out of Sen. Kaine,” Pence said early in the debate. What had Kaine said that had so offended Pence? The Democratic candidate has just ticked off a litany of statements that Trump had made over the course of the campaign. Pence used this to bring up Clinton’s comment that half of Trump’s supporters are in a “basket of deplorables.”

Kaine ridicules Trump’s inability to apologize. When Pence noted Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” comments, Kaine said that she had apologized for how she phrased that comment. (She apologized for exaggerating and saying the “deplorables” made up “half” of Trump’s supporters.) He went on to name a long list of insults that Trump has spewed since starting his campaign but not apologized for and said, “You will look in vain to see Donald Trump ever taking responsibility for anybody and apologizing.”

Kaine goes after Trump’s penchant for praising dictators. Midway through the debate, Kaine rattled off a list of Trump’s most controversial foreign policy ideas, from his questioning of the NATO treaty to his suggestions that the United States would be better off if more countries had nuclear weapons. But the best zinger came when Kaine listed the figures who would be carved into Trump’s “personal Mount Rushmore”: Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-un, Muammar Gaddafi, and Saddam Hussein.

Kaine suggests Pence revisit his fifth-grade civics lessons. Kaine criticized Trump for his connections to Russian oligarchs and took on Pence for praising Putin as a “stronger leader” than President Barack Obama. For this, Kaine suggested, Pence might need to retake fifth-grade civics.

Pence defends the Trump Foundation. Pence declined many opportunities to defend Trump’s record against Kaine’s onslaught of attacks throughout the night, but he finally backed his running mate up when it came to Trump’s charitable foundation. The Trump Foundation, Pence claimed, “gives almost every cent to charitable causes”—a statement that has been proved false time and again through dogged reporting from the Washington Post. Trump has used his foundation to send an illegal political contribution to the attorney general of Florida, to pay off legal fees incurred by his businesses, and to purchase portraits of himself. The foundation is currently being investigated by the New York attorney general.

Pence defends Trump’s record on abortion. Pence and Kaine went toe-to-toe on the issue of abortion. Kaine said Trump and Pence want to see Roe v. Wade repealed, resulting in laws that punish women for seeking abortions. Kaine also seized on a comment Trump made early in the campaign when he said women who seek an abortion should be punished. (Trump’s campaign later walked back that comment.) Pence responded that he and Trump would not condone punishing women for abortion and defended Trump’s past comments by noting that Trump isn’t a “polished politician” like Clinton and Kaine.

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The Key Moments From the Vice Presidential Debate

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Child Care Is Finally Getting Some Much-Needed Regulation, But It’s Still Expensive As Hell

by DorieHairfiyu Posted on September 30, 2016

Mother Jones

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The Obama administration released a new list of regulations today meant to improve the quality of child care in thousands of centers—from small mom-and-pop shops to large nonprofit and for-profit schools—serving infants and toddlers. Currently, every state has its own safety, health, and learning standards for child care centers, whose quality varies widely. The new federal standards aim to raise the bar for every center that works with any of the 1.4 million low-income children currently receiving a federal subsidy to cover their child care fees.

The new rules require, among other things:

More thorough background checks for all staff working in child care centers;
Unannounced inspection visits of child care centers that will be posted publicly for parents;
Regular mandatory training for child care providers, including safe sleeping practices, preventing infectious diseases and administer CPR, and spotting and reporting child abuse;
More professional development of educators.

“In some states, it is easier to become a child care provider than a hairdresser or a dog walker,” Brigid Shulte, the director of New America’s Better Life Lab, told Mother Jones. The new standards are a very important first step, Shulte added, but the rules cover only a small percentage of the roughly 12 million kids younger than five in the United States.

Shulte is the co-author of the just-released “The Care Report,” which analyzed the quality, cost, and availability of child care in 50 states. Using data from Care.com, New America, and many other recent studies, researchers found:

Child care is very expensive in the United States. The average full-time cost of child care centers for children ages zero to four is $9,589 a year, higher than the average cost of in-state college tuition ($9,410). Infant care is particularly expensive: Full-time care for babies in centers ranges from a low of $6,590 in Arkansas to a high of $16,682 in Massachusetts. In 33 states, one year of infant care in a center is more expensive than a year in public college. And while early care is subsidized in virtually every other advanced country, 60 percent of US child care costs are paid by parents, 39 percent by the government, and only 1 percent by businesses and philanthropy. Another study found that in Sweden, parents spend about 4 percent of their net income on child care; in France, Germany, and Denmark, about 10 percent. “It’s not surprising that our fertility is lowest in history,” Shulte said. “We make it very difficult for parents to have kids.”

Early-learning teachers make poverty wages, which contributes to high turnover and poor quality of care. The median wage of a teacher in this field is $9.77—less than what most janitors and parking garage attendants make. It’s no surprise then that nearly half of the 2 million preschool and child care teachers are enrolled in some kind of public support program, receiving food stamps or welfare assistance.

Percentages of Workers in Public Support Systems (2009-13) Source: Early Childhood Workforce Index 2016. Center for the Study of Child Care Employment, University of California, Berkeley

The quality of child care is low and is the worst for ages zero to three—the most crucial stage for brain development. Only 11 percent of child care centers are accredited by the National Association for the Education of Young Children or the National Association for Family Child Care. The rest operate under state standards and licenses that all have varying—and mostly mediocre—rules and regulations.

Very few poor kids receive help. Only 1 in 5 low-income kids receive federal subsidies to cover child care costs.

Many policymakers still think that taking care of infants and toddlers is “babysitting,” Shulte said. But the research shows otherwise: The first three years of a child’s life are the most important for brain development, and parents or caregivers require specialized knowledge and training to promote important cognitive, social, and emotional skills.

That sort of training costs money, of course, but researchers like Nobel-winning economist James Heckman and others have argued that investments in these early years yield the greatest returns to society. Steven Barnett, a professor of economics and the executive director of the National Institute for Early Childhood Research, calculated that every $1 the government invests in high-quality early education can save more than $7 later on by boosting graduation rates, reducing crime, and increasing tax revenue.

Funding and enrollment for preschool is regaining its momentum since the recession: In 2012, 66 percent of American four-year-olds went to preschool. But despite these gains, the United States still ranks 30th (out of 44) for preschool enrollment among developed nations. And when it comes to child care from birth to age three, the US spends little to nothing: Only 6 percent of total spending goes to this age group, according to Paul Tough, the author of Helping Children Succeed. Compared to other nations, the United States ranks 31st out of 32 developed nations when it comes to government spending on early childhood education.

Getting the United States all the way to high-quality early learning is a long road, the authors of “The Care Report” argue, one that must start with sufficient and sustained funding from the public and private sectors. Other proposed solutions in the report include universal paid family leave, expanding cash assistance programs, and universal pre-K, and providing better training and pay for teachers. “Research tells us that the vast majority of achievement gap you see in high school opens up before kindergarten,” Shulte said. “The work to transform early learning is urgent if we want to reduce these gaps—like other countries with better early childhood policies have done.”

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Child Care Is Finally Getting Some Much-Needed Regulation, But It’s Still Expensive As Hell

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Obama Now Not Tyrannical Enough

by CierraJwrxeqm Posted on September 30, 2016

Mother Jones

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Ladies and gentlemen, your Republican Party:

Do you think Grunwald is exaggerating? Nope. The Wall Street Journal, for example, spent several hundred words acknowledging that Congress’s position on the 9/11 bill was embarrassing, “But not nearly as embarrassing as the junior-varsity effort by the president, who made it easy for Congress to trample him.” Somehow, it’s always Obama’s fault, isn’t it?

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Obama Now Not Tyrannical Enough

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Donald Trump Says Global Warming Is a Chinese Hoax. China Disagrees.

by JennyKTPAedeh Posted on September 29, 2016

Mother Jones

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This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Two years after President Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping announced that their countries would work together to combat climate change, Republicans and conservatives in the United States continue to cite China’s rising carbon emissions as a reason not to bother cutting our own.

Earlier this month, Donald Trump’s economic adviser Stephen Moore claimed that limiting our carbon pollution is pointless because of China’s supposedly growing coal dependency. “Every time we shut down a coal plant in the US, China builds 10,” Moore told E&E News. “So how does that reduce global warming?”

Not only is Moore’s statement simply untrue, but the broader conservative theory behind it is badly outdated. China’s coal use and carbon emissions have dropped for the last two years. In 2015, China cut its coal use 3.7 percent and its emissions declined an estimated 1 to 2 percent, following similar decreases in 2014.

If China continues to cut its emissions, or even just keeps them at current levels, the country will be way ahead of its goal of peaking emissions by around 2030, which it laid out in 2014 and recommitted to during the Paris climate talks last December.

In part, China’s emissions are dropping because the country is undergoing a dramatic shift in the nature of its economy. For years, China had been rapidly industrializing and growing at a breakneck pace. Growth often causes emissions to rise, all the more so when a country has an expanding manufacturing sector and is building out its basic infrastructure such as highways and rail lines. Heavy industrial activity—especially making cement and steel, which are needed for things like buildings, roads, and rail tracks—can be extremely energy intensive and have a massive carbon footprint. But now, as China is becoming more fully industrialized, its growth is slower and driven more by service industries, like technology, that are much less carbon intensive.

And the Chinese government is spurring this shift to a lower-carbon economy by reducing its indirect subsidies, such as favorable lending from state-controlled banks, for coal and other carbon-heavy industries. “This is actually a correction for the economy because China is adopting a more market approach,” says Ranping Song, an expert on Chinese climate policy at the World Resources Institute, an international environmental research organization. “That will have an impact on emissions.”

We can’t know whether Chinese emissions will continue dropping every year, but China is committed to improving the energy efficiency of its economy and the cleanliness of its energy sources, and it’s already off to a strong start. “There is a set of things happening in China that will continue to change the trajectory of its emissions,” says Jake Schmidt, director of the international program at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Here are seven things China is doing to curb its climate-warming emissions:

Limiting coal use. Just a week after that 2014 announcement with Obama, China released an energy strategy that called for capping coal consumption by 2020. China also put a three-year moratorium on new coal mines, starting this year, and it’s been shutting down existing coal mines. Cutting back on coal not only reduces carbon emissions; it combats poor air quality, which has been causing serious health problems in notoriously polluted Chinese cities such as Beijing and Wuhan.

Carbon trading. Next year, China will launch a nationwide carbon market, the world’s largest. It will cover six of the biggest carbon-emitting sectors, starting with coal-fired electricity generation. This cap-and-trade program will build on programs China has already created in two provinces and five cities.

Cleaning up cars and trucks. China is the largest car market in the world. Cutting pollution from automobiles, like cutting pollution from coal plants, is essential not just to reducing CO2 emissions but to clearing the air in cities: The government estimates that roughly one-third of Beijing’s epic smog is from automobiles. China is pulling old, inefficient cars off the road, providing incentives for buying hybrids and electric cars, and enforcing stricter fuel-efficiency standards for new cars.

Making buildings more energy efficient. Two years ago, China started issuing requirements for buildings to be given energy-efficiency upgrades. The energy savings are just beginning to be felt, but given that buildings can last for decades or even centuries, there could be a long payoff period.

Building renewable capacity. China knows it needs alternative sources of energy to replace coal, so the government is investing heavily in developing wind and solar energy. “China has emerged as a leader in renewable energy,” reported Song and one of his colleagues in a blog post in April. “Investment soared from $39 billion to $111 billion in just five years, while electric capacity for solar power grew 168-fold and wind power quadrupled.” In Paris, China promised that at least 20 percent of its energy portfolio will come from non–fossil fuel sources by 2030.

Building nuclear reactors. Whatever you think of nuclear energy, it is one of the lowest-carbon forms of electricity out there. Earlier this month, China announced it will build at least 60 new nuclear power plants within a decade.

Building high-speed rail. A wealthier citizenry in a more industrialized country will be traveling a lot more. To limit transportation emissions, China is rapidly building high-speed rail. It already has more than 11,800 miles of high-speed rail that carry 2.7 million riders daily, and expansion plans are on the drawing board.

China will surely encounter hurdles and hiccups as it continues trying to rein in its emissions. The nation’s economy has recently been slowing down for cyclical reasons, as well as the structural ones mentioned above. After years of debt-fueled corporate investment and growth, Chinese companies are paying down their debts at the same time that the government is reining in industrial overcapacity and winding down the stimulus spending that got it through the Great Recession. China’s economy will eventually pick up again, and when it does, citizens will likely buy more cars, air conditioners, and electronic goods, leading to more electricity and gasoline use and perhaps greater carbon emissions.

But the policies China is enacting are designed to ultimately create a higher standard of living without more emissions. Since China has enormous low-lying cities that will be largely underwater in a century if climate change continues spinning out of control, the country has plenty of reason to curb its emissions and has shown that it is serious about doing it. That’s true whether Republican politicians in Washington choose to believe it or not.

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Donald Trump Says Global Warming Is a Chinese Hoax. China Disagrees.

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Court hears attacks on Obama’s big climate initiative

by LavadaMarsden Posted on September 28, 2016

This story was originally published by Mother Jones and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

President Obama’s signature climate change initiative had its day in court Tuesday, as lawyers for 27 states, nonprofit groups, and utility companies argued that it is unconstitutional.

The rule, known as the Clean Power Plan, would enforce a 32 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from electric power plants by 2030 (compared with 2005 levels). As part of the implementation, the Environmental Protection Agency would require states with at least two coal-fired power plants to submit plans for emissions reductions. If a state chose not to submit an acceptable plan, the EPA would impose one on it. The plan was a critical piece of the Obama administration’s successful efforts to forge the landmark Paris climate agreement last year.

The administration is relying on a section of the Clean Air Act as justification for the regulations, arguing that the law, originally passed by Congress in 1970 and later amended, empowers the EPA to “protect public health and welfare” from pollutants — in this case, carbon emissions that are driving global warming.

But the Clean Power Plan’s path has not been an easy one. Even before the regulations had been finalized, opponents sued to block it — a move that the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected last year. Opponents had more success once the final version of the rule was adopted. In a 5-4 decision in February, the Supreme Court issued an unusual stay, which prevented the rule from being implemented before it made its way through the courts. Yesterday’s arguments were the latest episode in the legal drama.

A panel of 10 federal judges heard the case in a marathon session that pitted the administration’s lawyers and environmental groups against a slate of opponents who argued the regulations exceed the EPA’s authority. West Virginia Solicitor General Elbert Lin charged that the rule would create a complex “new energy economy.” Others, such as attorney David Rivkin, who represents the state of Oklahoma, argued the Clean Power Plan intrudes on states’ rights to regulate their own electric grids. There were also several hours of highly technical arguments relating to inconsistent language in the House and Senate versions of a 1990 amendment to the Clean Air Act.

At a panel discussion on Monday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, whose state is part of the coalition suing to block the rule, said the Clean Power Plan “represents an unprecedented expansion of federal authority.”

Others, such as attorney Allison Wood, who represents utility industry groups, told the court that the EPA can’t regulate emissions from sources like power plants under one section of the Clean Air Act when it already does so under a different section.

But Judge Cornelia Pillard, an Obama appointee, questioned this “double regulation” argument, pointing to laws that require motorists to drive on the right side of the road while also following the speed limit.

On constitutional grounds, the plan has one unlikely critic: Laurence Tribe, a liberal Harvard lawyer and former mentor to Obama who is participating in the case on behalf of the opponents to the rule. During Tuesday’s hearing, Tribe argued the Clean Power Plan violates the separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches of the federal government. If the Obama administration wants to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, he told the judges, “the solution is to go to Congress.”

But advocates say the Supreme Court has already determined that the EPA can regulate carbon dioxide. In the 2007 Massachusetts v. EPA case, they note, the court found that the Clean Air Act gives the EPA authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles.

After a long day of arguments, supporters of the plan were optimistic. “I think it was a remarkable day,” said Howard Fox, counsel for Earthjustice, an environmental law organization that signed on to a motion in support of the Clean Power Plan, on a conference call with reporters.

Where will the fight over the Clean Power Plan end up, and what does it mean for Obama’s legacy on climate issues?

If the D.C. Circuit were to find that the EPA exceeded its authority, it would remand the case to a lower court and the “EPA would essentially redo the rule,” Joanne Spalding of the Sierra Club told Mother Jones at a briefing. That would leave the country’s climate regulations in the hands of an administration led by either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump.

Another pathway is to the Supreme Court. West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, who has led the charge against the Clean Power Plan, speculated at a panel discussion that if the current case doesn’t go his way, it could wind up at the Supreme Court in the fall of 2017. This time around, the result could be very different; Justice Antonin Scalia died in February shortly after casting one the deciding votes to put the regulations on hold. With the court now potentially split 4-4 on the issue, the fate of the Clean Power Plan could be tied to the ongoing fight over Scalia’s replacement.

The D.C. Circuit Court’s opinion in the case is expected to come out near the end of this year or early next year, according to David Doniger of the Natural Resources Defense Council, which supports the plan.

Whichever way it goes, the stakes are high. As Brett Kavanaugh, one of the D.C. court’s most outspoken judges during the arguments, said, “This is a huge case.”

Election Guide ★ 2016Making America Green AgainOur experts weigh in on the real issues at stake in this election

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Court hears attacks on Obama’s big climate initiative

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Big Labor has an identity crisis, and its name is Dakota Access

by WalterHua9800982 Posted on September 28, 2016

A growing rift has split the country’s biggest union federation, the AFL-CIO. Many labor activists and union members are outraged that Richard Trumka, the federation’s president, threw the AFL-CIO’s support behind the Dakota Access pipeline project earlier this month.

The AFL-CIO’s statement backing the pipeline was announced a week after the Obama administration put construction on hold. Trumka acknowledged “places of significance to Native Americans” but argued that the more than “4,500 high-quality, family supporting jobs” attached to the pipeline trumped environmental and other considerations.

That move rankled many in the AFL-CIO’s more progressive wing, highlighting strains within the federation of 56 unions representing 12 million workers. Recent tensions within the AFL-CIO have deepened a long-running divide between a more conservative, largely white, jobs-first faction and progressive union members who are friendly to environmental concerns and count more people of color among their ranks.

Grist interviewed five staffers at the AFL-CIO and its affiliated unions on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak to the press. Trumka’s public support for the pipeline caught these senior-level and mid-level staffers by surprise, they told Grist — especially because he had recently taken progressive positions on on Black Lives Matter, immigration, and criminal justice.

A call to Trumka’s office was not returned. The federation’s policy director, Damon Silvers, who is said to have helped write the statement, also did not respond to an interview request.

Union opponents of the pipeline project and their advocates quickly responded on social media with satire. One post on Twitter likened Trumka’s position to helping the wrong side in Star Wars.

Other frustrated union members and staffers placed calls to Climate Workers, an organization of union workers focused on climate justice, to vent. Brooke Anderson, an organizer at the group, says she fielded dozens of calls from members upset about the AFL-CIO’s position.

For those members, Anderson says, working in a federation means more than collecting a wage — it means being part of a broad movement for justice. Anderson says she thought that Trumka’s statement undermined efforts by groups like hers to protect the environment and jobs.

Trumka’s statement came out the day after one branch of the federation, the Building and Construction Trades, sent a private letter to Trumka complaining about AFL-CIO unions that opposed the pipeline.

In the weeks before Trumka’s public statement, four of the federation’s major unions – the Communications Workers of America (CWA), the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU), National Nurses United (NNU), and the American Postal Workers Union (APWU) – came out in support of the Standing Rock Sioux Nation’s battle against the pipeline project. All four are part of the so-called Bernie Unions, given their support of former Democratic Presidential candidate Sanders. The AFL-CIO endorsed Hillary Clinton in June, shortly before Sanders had conceded his candidacy, marking another fissure in the federation.

In a five-page letter to Trumka provided to Grist by union sources, Sean McGarvey, president of the Building Trades, argued that these four unions were partly to blame for Obama’s suspension of the pipeline. He wrote that union workers employed to build the pipeline have had “their lives placed on hold, their employment prospects upended and have been subjected to intimidation, vandalism, confrontation, and violence both on their job sites and in the surrounding community.”

The letter offers an anecdote to support these allegations. One unnamed worker was reportedly scared for his or her life by protestors “coming towards us.” The workers jumped in their cars and fled, according to the account, but there’s no mention of anyone getting hurt or even touched. (The Standing Rock Sioux Nation has called for protests to remain peaceful as the movement to stop the pipeline has grown.)

McGarvey blames unions opposed to the pipeline for hastening “a very real split within the labor movement at a time that, should their ceaseless rhetoric be taken seriously, even they suggest we can least afford it.”

Progressives within the labor movement describe the Building Trades as being whiter and more conservative than their counterparts. McGarvey’s letter contains what some of them consider dog-whistles. It mentions “outside agitators,” “environmental extremists,” and takes a jab at “theories of the 21st century labor movement.”

McGarvey declined an interview request from Grist, writing in an email that “[The letter] was an internal communication and we don’t comment on those!”

AFL-CIO union members who oppose the pipeline are now making their frustration public. A handful of labor activists picketed the AFL-CIO’s office in Washington, D.C., last week. And the Labor Coalition for Community Action, an alliance of groups representing women, people of color, and LGBT union workers within the AFL-CIO, released a statement in solidarity with those opposed to the pipeline.

“As organizations dedicated to elevating the struggles of our respective constituencies, we stand together to support our Native American kinfolk – one of the most marginalized and disenfranchised groups in our nation’s history – in their fight to protect their communities from further displacement and exploitation,” it says.

Although the statement makes no direct mention of the AFL-CIO’s position on the pipeline, nor of McGarvey’s letter, it calls on “the labor movement to strategize on how to better engage and include Native people and other marginalized populations into the labor movement as a whole.”

Anderson from Climate Workers, who is a rank-and-file member of the CWA, says the dispute over the pipeline represents a historic moment for the AFL-CIO. Rather than issue a statement and ignore the fallout, she says Trumka needs to participate in a crucial conversation with a wide variety of people about how the federation will balance race, labor, and the environment.

“Some of the questions [in that conversation include]: Whose land? Whose water? Whose lungs are going to suffer first? It’s communities of color and lower paid workers of color – and they’re also our brothers and sisters.”

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Big Labor has an identity crisis, and its name is Dakota Access

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