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Every Insane Thing Donald Trump Has Said About Global Warming

by bT2jW9hX8q Posted on December 5, 2016

Mother Jones

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Donald Trump has a lot of things to say about global warming. He’s called it an urgent problem, and he’s called it a hoax. He’s claimed it’s a scam invented by the Chinese, and he’s denied that he ever said that. He’s promised to “cancel” the historic Paris climate agreement, and he’s said he still has an “open mind” on the matter.

Some environmental activists have pointed to Trump’s unpredictable statements as evidence that he might not follow through on his campaign pledges to dismantle the Obama administration’s climate legacy. But Trump has already put one of the nation’s most prominent climate skeptics in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency transition. And just last week, one of Trump’s top aides assured Americans that the president-elect still believes climate science is mostly “bunk.”

For those keeping score at home, here’s a timeline of the Donald’s thoughts on global warming. We’ll update it from time to time.

12/6/09

Read the full the letter at Grist.

Trump signs a letter calling for urgent climate action. As Grist reported earlier this year, Trump and three of his children signed a 2009 letter to President Barack Obama calling for a global climate deal. “We support your effort to ensure meaningful and effective measures to control climate change, an immediate challenge facing the United States and the world today,” declared the letter, which was signed by dozens of business leaders and published as an ad in the New York Times. “If we fail to act now, it is scientifically irrefutable that there will be catastrophic and irreversible consequences for humanity and our planet.”

2/14/10

Trump changes his mind, says Gore should be stripped of Nobel Prize because it’s cold outside. According to the New York Post, Trump had changed his tune by early 2010, telling an audience at one of his golf clubs, “With the coldest winter ever recorded, with snow setting record levels up and down the coast, the Nobel committee should take the Nobel Prize back from Al Gore…Gore wants us to clean up our factories and plants in order to protect us from global warming, when China and other countries couldn’t care less. It would make us totally noncompetitive in the manufacturing world, and China, Japan and India are laughing at America’s stupidity.” (He would later say he was joking about the Nobel Prize being rescinded.)

2/16/10

Trump claims scientists admitted global warming is a “con.” Around this time, Trump caught wind of the so-called “ClimateGate scandal,” in which climate deniers wrongly claimed a trove of hacked emails showed that scientists had conspired to fabricate evidence of global warming. Trump said (inaccurately) on Fox News that there was an email “sent a couple months ago by one of the leaders of global warming, the initiative…almost saying—I guess they’re saying it’s a con.” He added that “in Washington, where I’m building a big development, nobody can move because we have 48 inches of snow.”

11/6/12

“The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese.”

12/6/13

Trump declares global warming a “hoax.” As an unusually powerful ice storm ripped through the southern part of the United States, Trump announced that climate change is a “hoax.”

Jan. 2014

Trump says scientists are in on the hoax. On January 6, Trump went on Fox News to discuss a severe cold snap that set records across the country. “This winter is brutal,” said Trump, adding that climate change is a “hoax” perpetrated by “scientists who are having a lot of fun.” Trump kept up this line of argument throughout the long and miserable winter.

2014

Trump donates money to fight climate change. At some point in 2014, Trump donated $5,000 of his foundation’s money to Protect Our Winters, an advocacy group dedicated to “mobilizing the outdoor sports community to lead the charge towards positive climate action.” As the group’s website explains, “If we’re serious about slowing climate change, it’s imperative that we decrease our dependence on fossil fuels and focus on cleaner sources of energy and electricity.”

An entry in the Donald J. Trump Foundations’s 2014 tax filings

According to the New York Daily News, Trump made the donation at the request of Olympic snowboarding gold medalist Jamie Anderson, who was one of the contestants on Trump’s Celebrity Apprentice reality show. Anderson was participating on behalf of Protect Our Winters, which, she said on the show, “brings light and inspiration to climate change.” Still, Trump remained a climate change denier. During the season premier, which aired in early 2015, Trump suggested that New York’s cold weather undermined Gilbert Gottfried’s belief in climate science:

6/17/15

Trump says it’s “madness” to call climate change our “No. 1 problem.” The day after announcing his candidacy for the GOP presidential nomination, Trump appeared on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show, where he said he was “not a believer in man-made” warming. He added, “When I hear Obama saying that climate change is the No. 1 problem, it is just madness.”

9/21/15

“I’m not a believer in man-made global warming.” During the GOP primary race, Trump kept up his climate denial. Here he is on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show: “I’m not a believer in man-made global warming. It could be warming, and it’s going to start to cool at some point. And you know, in the early, in the 1920s, people talked about global cooling…They thought the Earth was cooling. Now, it’s global warming…But the problem we have, and if you look at our energy costs, and all of the things that we’re doing to solve a problem that I don’t think in any major fashion exists.”

12/1/15

Trump says it’s “ridiculous” for Obama to pursue the Paris climate agreement. The long-anticipated Paris climate negotiations began barely two weeks after the city was struck by a devastating series of terrorist attacks. As the talks kicked off, Obama called the summit “an act of defiance” against terrorism and urged the world leaders gathered there to agree to an ambitious deal to combat global warming. Trump took to Instagram to express his disapproval. “While the world is in turmoil and falling apart in so many different ways—especially with ISIS—our president is worried about global warming,” he said. “What a ridiculous situation.”

What is Obama thinking?

A video posted by Donald J. Trump (@realdonaldtrump) on Dec 1, 2015 at 8:12am PST

12/30/15

“A lot of it’s a hoax,” and “I want to use hair spray.” During a campaign speech in Hilton Head, South Carolina, Trump criticized Obama for worrying too much about “the carbon footprint” of the greenhouse gas emissions that are causing climate change—an issue that Trump proceeded to conflate with the hole in the ozone layer. “I want to use hair spray,” complained Trump. “They say, ‘Don’t use hair spray, it’s bad for the ozone.’ So I’m sitting in this concealed apartment, this concealed unit…It’s sealed, it’s beautiful. I don’t think anything gets out. And I’m not supposed to be using hair spray?” He then returned to the subject of the climate hoax: “So Obama’s talking about all of this with the global warming and the—a lot of it’s a hoax, it’s a hoax. I mean, it’s a money-making industry, okay? It’s a hoax, a lot of it.”

1/24/16

Trump says his claim that global warming is a Chinese hoax was a “joke.” At a Democratic debate in January, Bernie Sanders criticized Trump, noting the real estate mogul “believes that climate change is a hoax invented by the Chinese.” Trump responded the next day on Fox News, suggesting that his infamous 2012 tweet was a joke. “I think the climate change is just a very, very expensive form of tax,” said Trump, according to PolitiFact. “A lot of people are making a lot of money…And I often joke that this is done for the benefit of China. Obviously, I joke. But this is done for the benefit of China, because China does not do anything to help climate change. They burn everything you could burn; they couldn’t care less. They have very—you know, their standards are nothing. But they—in the meantime, they can undercut us on price. So it’s very hard on our business.”

May 2016

Trump wants to build a sea wall to protect his resort from global warming. Politico reported that one of Trump’s golf clubs asked officials in County Clare, Ireland, to approve construction of a sea wall to guard against the dangers of sea level rise and “more frequent storm events.” According to an environmental impact statement submitted with the application, “If the predictions of an increase in sea level rise as a result of global warming prove correct…it is likely that there will be a corresponding increase in coastal erosion rates…In our view, it could reasonably be expected that the rate of sea level rise might become twice of that presently occurring.”

5/5/16

“Trump digs coal.” Shortly after clinching the GOP nomination, Trump traveled to West Virginia, where he was endorsed by the West Virginia Coal Association. At a rally in Charleston, Trump pointed to signs being waved in the crowd. “I see over here: ‘Trump digs coal,'” he said. “That’s true. I do.” Trump promised to bring back coal mining jobs by repealing Obama’s “ridiculous rules and regulations.”

Coal miners wave signs at Trump’s May 5 rally in Charleston, West Virginia. Steve Helber/AP

5/26/16

Trump pledges to “cancel” the Paris climate agreement. In a major speech on energy policy, Trump said that during his first 100 days in office, he would “rescind all the job-destroying Obama executive actions including” his landmark climate regulations, “cancel the Paris Climate Agreement,” and “stop all payments of US tax dollars to UN global warming programs.”

7/26/16

Trump says he “probably” called climate change a “hoax.” In a remarkably odd exchange on Fox News, Bill O’Reilly asked Trump whether it was “true” that he had “called climate change a hoax.” Trump replied that he “might have” done so following the release of the ClimateGate emails. “Yeah, I probably did,” he added. “I see what’s going on.” Trump went on to say that fossil fuels “could have a minor impact” on the climate but “nothing compared to what they’re talking about.”

Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com
9/26/16

Trump picks leading climate skeptic to run the EPA transition. Hours before Trump’s first debate with Hillary Clinton, word leaked that he had chosen Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute to lead his transition efforts at the Environmental Protection Agency. Ebell has a long history of opposing efforts to fight climate change; he’s even accused climate scientists of “manipulating and falsifying the data.” As we reported, “Ebell has called…Obama’s Clean Power Plan ‘illegal’ and the Paris Climate Accord a ‘usurpation of the Senate’s authority.’ Any small increase in global temperatures, he has said, is ‘nothing to worry about.'”

9/26/16

Trump denies saying climate change is a Chinese hoax. During the first debate, Clinton noted that Trump “thinks that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese.” In response, Trump simply lied. “I did not, I did not,” he said. “I do not say that.” Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway later attempted to clarify his position, telling the Huffington Post, “What he has said is, he believes climate change is naturally occurring and is not all man-made.”

11/23/16

Trump has “open mind” on Paris agreement but still thinks scientists are misleading us. In an interview with the New York Times two weeks after his victory, Trump made a number of confusing and contradictory statements about climate science and policy. Asked if he still planned to pull out of the Paris agreement, Trump said, “I have an open mind to it. We’re going to look very carefully.” He conceded that there is “some connectivity” between humans and climate change,” adding, “It depends on how much. It also depends on how much it’s going to cost our companies.” He claimed that the “hottest day ever” was in 1898. He said climate is “a very complex subject. I’m not sure anybody is ever going to really know.” He once again invoked ClimateGate, declaring, “They say they have science on one side but then they also have those horrible emails that were sent between the scientists.” And, apparently in contrast to his request to build a sea wall in Ireland, Trump even speculated that sea level rise would actually improve the Trump National Doral golf course in Florida. (He may be wrong about that.)

11/27/16

Trump’s “default position” is that climate change “is a bunch of bunk.” Following Trump’s confusing New York Times interview, incoming White House chief of staff Reince Priebus sought to reassure supporters that the president-elect is, in fact, a climate change denier. “As far as this issue on climate change, the only thing he was saying, after being asked a few questions about it, is, ‘Look, I’ll have an open mind about it,'” Priebus explained on Fox. “But he has his default position, which is that most of it is a bunch of bunk. But he’ll have an open mind and listen to people.”

12/1/16

Ivanka Trump “wants to make climate change…one of her signature issues.” According to Politico, a “source close to” Trump’s daughter Ivanka said the first daughter “wants to make climate change—which her father has called a hoax perpetuated by the Chinese—one of her signature issues…The source said Ivanka is in the early stages of exploring how to use her spotlight to speak out on the issue.”

12/5/16

Donald and Ivanka Trump meet with Al Gore.

This story has been updated. Natalie Schreyer contributed to this article.

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Every Insane Thing Donald Trump Has Said About Global Warming

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Obama’s Interior makes it easier to build renewable energy on public land in Trump era.

by cazarebaileolanesti Posted on November 11, 2016

On the campaign trail, President-elect Donald Trump vowed to make the industry great again. “If I win we’re going to bring those miners back,” he said to an audience in West Virginia before donning a miner’s hat and doing a little working-in-the-coal-mine dance.

But for the coal industry — which donated about $223,000 to Trump’s campaign — reality is less rosy. Sure, shares in the bankrupt coal company Peabody soared nearly 50 percent the day after Trump’s victory. But that’s just Wall Street’s knee-jerk response. The fact is, the coal industry’s future is — at best — flat, according to analysts.

Over the last eight years, coal’s portion of the American electricity supply has dropped from half to a third, a result of falling natural gas prices, declining demand from China, and regulatory efforts to reduce carbon emissions. The best Trump can do, says Bloomberg News, is halt coal’s steep decline.

But even though Trump can’t save Big Coal, he can severely damage the planet by enabling the industry. He has promised to dismantle the Clean Power Plan, ignore the Paris climate agreement, and end investments in renewables. Just as coal can’t be revived, the planet can’t either.

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Obama’s Interior makes it easier to build renewable energy on public land in Trump era.

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Virginia Becomes First State to Jettison Abortion Clinic Restrictions Based on Supreme Court’s Ruling

by MarquisLKA Posted on October 26, 2016

Mother Jones

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On Monday, the Virginia Board of Health voted to get rid of building restrictions on abortion clinics. The board said the regulations, which were passed to make clinics more like hospitals, are unconstitutional under the Supreme Court’s ruling in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, a landmark abortion case that was decided in June. Since the board of health approved these requirements in 2013, a third of the state’s clinics have shut down.

“This vote demonstrates to the rest of the United States and the world that Virginia is a community where people can live, find employment, and start a family without politicians interfering with decisions that should be made by women and their doctors,” wrote Gov. Terry McAuliffe in a statement.

The Supreme Court’s Hellerstedt ruling struck down two provisions of a Texas abortion law, including one that required abortion clinics to comply with the expensive structural requirements of an ambulatory surgical center, a hospital-like facility often used for outpatient surgery. The court ruled in June that these requirements constituted an undue burden on women’s access to abortion and weren’t shown to improve women’s health. Virginia is one of 20 states that had onerous building regulations for abortion clinics, but Virginia is the first state to take explicit steps to comply with the precedent set by the Supreme Court in June.

Virginia’s board of health postponed a vote on their state’s clinic regulations, originally slated for last month, in order to weigh the effects of the Supreme Court ruling. A memo presented at last month’s hearing noted, “Based on advice received from the Office of Attorney General, additional amendments have been proposed to the regulations to comply with the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt.”

At Monday’s hearing, Dr. Serina Floyd, an Alexandria-based gynecologist, called on the health board once again to follow the Supreme Court’s precedent. “On behalf of Virginia women, I ask you to hear the Supreme Court ruling and overturn.”

The amended regulations now go to Virginia’s attorney general and Gov. McAuliffe for review.

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Virginia Becomes First State to Jettison Abortion Clinic Restrictions Based on Supreme Court’s Ruling

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McCabegate Is the Latest Scandal That Will Totally Destroy Hillary Clinton

by stephenagee641 Posted on October 24, 2016

Mother Jones

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Today in the category of…oh, forget it. I don’t have the heart for snark. It’s just so goddamn tiresome. The Wall Street Journal headline on the right describes the latest pseudo-scandal in Hillaryland, and it’s obviously intended to make you think there’s yet more fishiness in the Clinton family. In a nutshell, here’s the story:

In early 2015, Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe recruited Dr. Jill McCabe to run for state Senate.
Various organizations under McAuliffe’s control donated lots of money to her campaign.
She lost.
Several months later, McCabe’s husband was promoted to deputy director of the FBI. Because of that promotion, he “helped oversee the investigation into Mrs. Clinton’s email use.” This was presumably in addition to the hundreds of other things that a deputy director has oversight responsibility for.

There’s literally nothing here. Not “nothing substantial.” Not “nothing that other politicians don’t do.” Literally nothing. There’s not a single bit of this that’s illegal, unethical, or even the tiniest bit wrong. It’s totally above board and perfectly kosher. And even if there were anything wrong, McAuliffe would have needed a time machine to know it.

Honest to God, I’m so tired of this stuff I could scream. I’ve been joking about it lately by appending gate to every dumb little non-scandal that’s tossed in Hillary’s direction, and I guess I’ll keep doing that. But our illustrious press corps needs to pull its collective head out of its ass. If you’ve got real evidence of Hillary being engaged in something fishy, go to town. I won’t complain. But if all you’ve got is a thrice-removed, physics-challenged gewgaw that proves nothing except that you know how to play Six Degrees of Hillary Clinton,1 then give it a rest. It just makes you look like those monomaniacs with thousands of clippings glued to their wall and spider webs of string tying them all together.

Just stop it.

1Here’s how it works:

  1. Make a list of the entire chain of command that had some oversight over the FBI’s investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email server. That’s going to be at least half a dozen people.
  2. Make a list of all their close family and friends. Now you’re up to a hundred people.
  3. Look for a connection between any of those people and the Clintons. Since FBI headquarters is located in Washington DC and the Clintons famously have thousands and thousands of friends, you will find a connection. I guarantee it.
  4. Write a story about it.

See how easy this is? But please don’t try it at home. This is a game for trained professionals only.

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McCabegate Is the Latest Scandal That Will Totally Destroy Hillary Clinton

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A Sinking Trump Could Take the Republican Congress Down With Him

by Mitchel123 Posted on October 14, 2016

Mother Jones

For a case study in how much an election can change in a matter of days, you could do a lot worse than the past week. A week ago, it looked probable that Hillary Clinton would win the White House, possible that Democrats would take control of the Senate, and extremely unlikely that they would flip the House of Representatives. But a lot has changed in a few tumultuous days, and Donald Trump’s disastrous week has put every chamber in play.

To recap: Last Friday, the Washington Post unearthed a 2005 video that showed Trump bragging about sexually assaulting women, prompting dozens of Republicans to rescind their endorsements of the Republican nominee. During a debate on Sunday, Trump responded to the video by haranguing his opponent with accusations of rape against Bill Clinton. House Speaker Paul Ryan announced on Monday he would no longer defend Trump and would focus his energy on maintaining the Republican congressional majority; Trump then more or less declared war on Ryan and the GOP establishment. By Thursday, press coverage of the election was dominated by the stories of women who have begun to come forward to claim that Trump assaulted them.

Over the course of those events, polls showed Clinton expanding her lead over Trump. Suddenly, the biggest questions about November 8 were no longer about the White House, but about just how long Clinton’s coattails might be if she continues to build on her lead. Has enough gone wrong for Republicans to cost them the Senate, or even the House, where they hold a substantial built-in advantage?

Unlike presidential polls, the numbers for down-ballot races are trickier to interpret and often lag behind those for the top of the ticket. Though the polls for congressional races are not yet showing a clear effect, Democratic pollster Mark Mellman says they are likely to move in Democrats’ favor. “Races that people were looking at as outside possibilities become more reasonable in a scenario where Clinton has a bigger national lead,” he says. Polling over the next week will provide a few clues as to whether Democrats’ down-ballot fortunes will indeed rise as Trump sinks.

For the House, the most important polling number to watch is the congressional “generic ballot” question, which asks voters which party’s candidate they are more likely to vote for in their district. In a truly representative House, any advantage in the generic ballot for a political party would mean a majority in the chamber. But the House isn’t quite representative, and Democrats face three hurdles to gaining a majority.

First, some districts, such as those in low-population states like Wyoming, have fewer constituents, who therefore hold more voting power. Second, Democrats’ diverse coalition is geographically concentrated in urban areas, limiting the number of congressional districts where they hold an edge and providing a systemic advantage to Republicans. Finally, there’s gerrymandering. As the party in charge in a majority of states during the last redistricting process, Republicans drew maps in many states that defy geographical logic but are very friendly to their electoral prospects. Pennsylvania, for example, has voted for a Democrat for president in every election since 1992, but 13 of its 18 districts are represented by Republicans in the House. That is not expected to change in November, even as the state is likely to go for Clinton.

As a result, Democrats will need to lead by more than a few percentage points on the generic ballot to gain control of the House. How much more? Pollsters and forecasters differ in their projections, but answers generally fall in the range of 6 to 10 percentage points.

Kyle Kondik, managing editor of the electoral forecasting site Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, says the Democrats will need a 10-point margin to put the House in play. Mellman would see margins of between 6 and 8 points as an indication that a Democratic takeover of the House is possible. Republican pollster Bill McInturff says a 7-point advantage would mean Democrats “have a shot.”

So where are the Democrats now? For months, polls have shown Democrats with a slight edge on the generic ballot but nowhere near enough to take back the House. On October 6, the day before the Trump video was released, Democrats had a 3.3-point lead in the RealClearPolitics average. But polls after the video have shown Democrats pulling ahead. A Wall Street Journal/NBC poll over the weekend gave Democrats a 6-point lead on the generic ballot, and a Reuters/Ipsos poll gave Democrats a 10-point lead. Democrats’ advantage in the RealClearPolitics average has now jumped to 6.2. The next week could determine whether Democrats’ polling gains are a blip or the beginning of a down-ballot wave.

A second variable for down-ballot candidates is turnout. The big question is whether some Republican voters who cannot bring themselves to vote for Trump will simply stay home on Election Day, hurting the chances of Republican House and Senate candidates who need them to turn out. “If you’re basically just casting a protest vote for president, it’s easy to imagine voters just not showing up at all,” says Kondik. “That’s when it starts to get very dire for Republicans in the House and Senate.”

Turnout is hard to predict on the basis of polls. Poll questions that ask about levels of enthusiasm could be one indicator: Turnout among Republicans is likely to decline if they start indicating they’re much less enthusiastic about Trump than they were about Mitt Romney in 2012. Another metric is early voting and absentee ballot returns, which are possible to track in certain states to determine whether Republicans are casting ballots in reduced numbers. In the swing state of North Carolina, for example, early data shows that Republicans are returning absentee ballots at a lower rate than they did in 2012—a bad sign for Trump as well as for the incumbent Republican senator, Richard Burr.

It’s still not clear what effect the events of the last week will have on Senate races. The conventional wisdom holds that it will be hard for most Republican Senate candidates to outperform Trump by significant margins, so the presidential polling could dictate the outcome of competitive Senate races. Republican Senate candidates in states where Trump is tanking will have to rely on ticket splitting, when people vote for different parties for president and other offices. Split-ticket voting has declined in recent elections as voters’ association with a political party has grown stronger. “We live in a country where the partisan polarization is very high and very intense,” says Mellman. “Running three, four, five points ahead of the top of the ticket is difficult.”

Still, some Republican Senate candidates seem to be immune to Trump’s collapse. Rob Portman, the incumbent Republican senator in Ohio, has polled ahead of Trump for months and likely will keep his seat even if Trump loses Ohio. (A poll released Thursday had him leading his opponent, former Gov. Ted Strickland, by 18 points.) In other races, Republicans may be dragged down because they decided late in the cycle to disavow Trump—a move that could hurt them among Trump’s most ardent supporters. The prime examples are incumbent Sen. Kelly Ayotte in New Hampshire and Senate aspirant Joe Heck in Nevada. Mellman predicts those two will “have problems”—that they could become casualties of the dilemma of being forced to choose between distancing themselves from Trump and risking the support of moderate voters by standing with him.

At the moment, however, it’s not clear that Clinton is lifting Democratic Senate candidates along with her. In fact, recent polls show Democrats struggling even in races where they were thought to hold a substantial advantage before Trump’s recent controversies, such as in Wisconsin, where Democrat Russ Feingold suddenly leads incumbent GOP Sen. Ron Johnson by only a few percentage points in the latest polls. FiveThirtyEight actually found an inverse correlation on Thursday between Clinton’s polling and that of Democratic Senate candidates in the past few weeks. But it’s too early to tell whether this is a sign of more ticket splitting this cycle than pollsters thought was possible, or whether Clinton’s rise is simply slow to manifest at the Senate level.

The question, says Kondik, is whether we are looking at a cycle like 1996, when Bill Clinton easily won reelection but Republicans kept the House and the makeup of Congress hardly budged. “I just wonder if we’re actually in that kind of election cycle,” he says. There’s a “clear trend toward less ticket splitting.”

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A Sinking Trump Could Take the Republican Congress Down With Him

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Latest Email Hack Too Dull to Get Outraged About

by PrestonGoodlet Posted on September 14, 2016

Mother Jones

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Another email hack from Guccifer 2.0! So what did we learn?

Let’s see. Colin Powell thinks that Donald Trump is a racist idiot who has no shame. That seems fair. Also, Powell thinks that Hillary Clinton could have handled her email affair better. Hard to argue with that. And Powell really, really didn’t want her email woes to be connected to him. That may or may not be fair, but it’s certainly understandable.

In addition, there’s apparently some unremarkable stuff about “tech initiatives from Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine’s time as governor of Virginia, and some years-old missives on redistricting efforts and DNC donor outreach strategy.” Exciting! Plus a bunch of spreadsheets listing DNC donors. That’s a bummer for the DNC, but otherwise pretty dull.

I don’t know who Guccifer is, or whether he’s a front for the Russian government, but he needs to step up his game. If there’s any more like this, he’s going to give email hacking a bad name.

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Latest Email Hack Too Dull to Get Outraged About

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A Federal Judge Just Stopped Trans Students From Using the Bathrooms of Their Choice

by JaymeSeibert Posted on August 22, 2016

Mother Jones

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The school year is off to a rough start for transgender students. A federal judge in Texas has given public schools across the country permission to ignore the Obama administration’s instructions to let trans kids use bathrooms corresponding with their gender identity, rather than their birth sex.

In May, the US Department of Education sent a guidance to public schools, saying they could lose federal funding if they kept trans kids out of bathrooms of their choice. On Sunday, a federal judge in Texas granted a preliminary, nationwide injunction that blocks the department’s guidance from being enforced. The injunction also prevents the Obama administration from using the guidelines in any lawsuits.

The decision comes in response to a lawsuit filed by 13 states against the Obama administration over the federal government’s position on bathroom choice for students.

“Defendants have conspired to turn workplaces and educational settings across the country into laboratories for a massive social experiment, flouting the democratic process, and running roughshod over commonsense policies protecting children and basic privacy rights,” representatives for the states wrote in the lawsuit filed in May. The case was filed by a long list of state attorneys general, including Ken Paxton of Texas, Scott Pruitt of Oklahoma, and Jeff Landry of Louisiana.

A main question in the case is whether Title IX, a civil rights law that prohibits sex discrimination in schools, also bars discrimination on the basis of gender identity. The Obama administration says it does. The suing states argue that references to “sex” in Title IX refer only to biological sex.

US District Judge Reed O’Connor granted the nationwide injunction because the states that filed the lawsuit have a strong chance of winning their case, he wrote in his decision, which was filed on Sunday.

“It cannot be disputed,” he wrote, “that the plain meaning of the term sex as used…following passage of Title IX meant the biological and anatomical difference between male and female students as determined at their birth.” He noted that the injunction would only apply to states that want to separate school bathrooms according to biological sex. Other states can maintain policies allowing kids to use facilities based on gender identity.

“I’m pleased the court has ruled against the Obama Administration’s latest overreach,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton wrote on Twitter following the decision. Meanwhile, the American Civil Liberties Union, which has represented transgender students in other civil rights cases, and four other civil rights groups blasted the judge’s ruling in a joint statement.

“The court’s misguided decision targets a small, vulnerable group of young people…for potential continued harassment, stigma and abuse,” the statement said.

The impact of the injunction may be limited, however. Legal experts told the New York Times that higher-level courts in other regions have previously sided with the Obama administration’s view that transgender people are protected by existing anti-sex-discrimination laws, and those rulings won’t be affected by the new injunction.

The Texas decision follows a similar order from the US Supreme Court. Earlier this month, the high court’s justices temporarily blocked a transgender boy in Virginia from using the boys’ bathroom at his school while the justices decide whether to take up a case concerning that school board’s bathroom policy. If the justices agree to hear the case, it would be the first time the Supreme Court has weighed in on this issue.

The 13 states suing the Obama administration include Texas, Alabama, Wisconsin, West Virginia, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Utah, Georgia, Maine, Arizona, Kentucky, and Mississippi. Separately, 10 other states sued the Obama administration in July over the same issue. Those states include Nebraska, Arkansas, Kansas, Michigan, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Wyoming.

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A Federal Judge Just Stopped Trans Students From Using the Bathrooms of Their Choice

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It’s True. Tim Kaine Rules at the Harmonica.

by kastijoo8753 Posted on August 16, 2016

Mother Jones

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While visiting a local brewery in Asheville, North Carolina, on Monday, Tim Kaine broke out his legendary harmonica skills to join a bluegrass band for an impromptu performance of Bob Dylan’s “Wagon Wheel.” It was the first time the public has seen the Virginia senator, a noted harmonica enthusiast, play the instrument since Hillary Clinton announced him as her running mate last month.

The Democratic vice presidential candidate also sang (!) and sipped on some post-performance brew. Dad jokes and mediocre Donald Trump impressions not included.

“That felt great,” Kaine said. “Nothing makes me more nervous than doing that, but it’s good to get out of your comfort zone.”

According to the New York Times, Kaine lugs around multiple harmonicas in his briefcase at all times.

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It’s True. Tim Kaine Rules at the Harmonica.

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How Oyster Farming is Cleaning Our Water

by pauletteguajardo Posted on August 10, 2016

American palates are becoming more and more refined these days, with trends like pescetarianism and the farm-to-table movement increasing the demand for locally raised fish and shellfish. Overfishing remains a huge problem and so do contaminated waterwaysbut there may be a simple, natural solution on the horizon: oysters.

Increased Demand for Local Shellfish

Oyster farming on the East Coast has doubled in the past six years, according to NPR, and its no mystery why. Americans who can afford to do so are becoming increasingly interested in where their food comes from. They want local, sustainable, organic, antibiotic-free food and this desire has made a big mark in both foodie culture and agriculture.

“As much food as possibly can go on my plate at the least amount of money I can spend used to be the way things were,” says Jimmy Parks, a chef and owner of the Butcher Station in Winchester, Virginia. “Now people are getting away from that, and they’re gravitating toward … cleaner sources.”

For some species, like salmon and tuna, this trend may be alarming. Fish farms are notoriously dirty and bad for the planet, with antibiotics, unnatural fish feed, overpopulation and huge amounts of waste putting a strain on oceanic and river ecosystems.

Oysters, however, are a different story.

Oysters as Natural Water Filters

For one thing, oyster farming has an extremely low carbon footprint. According to the environmental news blog Grist, oysters are one of the cleanest animal protein sources you can eat in terms of carbon emissions.

Additionally, oysters act as natural water purifiers. According to The Nature Conservancy, roughly 40 percent of U.S. waterways are currently considered too polluted for swimming or fishing. Oysters can help change that. Grist reports that a mature oyster can filter up to 50 gallons of water every day. That means that just one acre of populated oyster territory can filter 140 million gallons of water per day.

The mighty bivalves are ocean filters, Grist reports. Oysters soak up nitrogen through their flesh, turning the nutrient into a benign gas. They absorb nitrogen into their shells, too, and can store it there for decades, or even centuries, long after the little creature inside its shell is dead. At their most plentiful, the Chesapeakes oysters were capable of filtering all 18 trillion tons of bay water in about a week, rendering it nearly crystal clear.

Gulnihal Ozbay, an oyster researcher at the University of Delaware, told NPR that oysters not meant for consumption could be added to polluted waterways to help purify them, hopefully making them more appropriate for swimming, drinkingand fishing down the road.

Rebuilding Ecosystems and Economies

Finally, oysters stand to improve the health of some very important ecosystems: those of local waterways and our own human economies.

“The coolest thing is within our cages we see these little shrimp-like creatures that actually eat the pseudofeces of the oysters, Tim Devine, a Maryland-based oyster farmer, tellsNPR. And then things like seahorses and crabs and other things eat those little guys, and then the food chain has begun.”

This helps create a reef-like ecosystem within the waterway, bolstering aquatic populations and filtering water to boot.

From a human population perspective, these mighty little mollusks also play a strong role in maintaining balanced local economies. For years, Chesapeake Bay fisherman survived on proceeds from oyster hunting and sales. When oyster populations collapsed due to overfishing, many oystermen considered making career changes.

I tell you, there was nothing left, fisherman Johnny Shockley told Grist. We knew every spot there was in this river that was a good oyster bottom, and they were all gone.”

Maryland only legalized aquaculture (oyster and clam farming) as recently as 2009. Since then, the economy around oysters and other shellfish has begun to recover, to the relief of many local fisherman and their families.

Oysters are small creatures, but they sure can make a big impact, and its tiny steps that could add up to big changes for our oceans and waterways.

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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How Oyster Farming is Cleaning Our Water

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Third Man Records Sends a Vinyl Record Into Space

by Myrna Posted on August 3, 2016

The spinning gold-plated copy of Carl Sagan’s “A Glorious Dawn” reached 94,000 feet above earth on a high-altitude balloon. Taken from –  Third Man Records Sends a Vinyl Record Into Space ; ; ;

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Third Man Records Sends a Vinyl Record Into Space

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