Sir David Attenborough makes bold statement about the future of humanity: ‘This needs to be shared as much as possible’
Erin Feiger – November 15, 2023
The voice of “Planet Earth” has spoken, and it brings a dire warning and a plea.
Sir David Attenborough, British biologist, natural historian, and narrator of the beloved television series “Planet Earth,” among many other things, spoke about the state of the planet.
The video was shared to X, formerly known as Twitter, and is just over a minute long, yet carries a warning spanning millions of years.
“‘Please make no mistake. Climate change is the biggest threat to global security that modern humans have ever faced.’ Sir David Attenborough,” reads the caption above the video.
"Please make no mistake. Climate change is the biggest threat to global security that modern humans have ever faced." Sir David Attenborough.
The Attenborough quote — which is spoken at the end of the video — is then followed by words from the poster: “No time to wait. #ActOnClimate.”
As for the video itself, Attenborough explains that due to increased warming, “Our atmosphere now contains concentrations of carbon dioxide that have not been equaled for millions of years.”
He continues to say that we are close to reaching tipping points that, once passed, will send global temperatures spiraling.
“If we continue on our current path,” he warns, “We will face the collapse of everything that gives us our security. Food production, access to fresh water, habitable ambient temperatures, and ocean food chains, and if the natural world can no longer support the most basic of our needs, then much of the rest of civilization will quickly break down.”
His warning is not unfounded either, as there are more and more examples of ocean food chains at risk, dangerous extreme temperatures, decreasing water access, and loss of essential ecosystems like glaciers.
While the video and the warning came with the usual level of naysaying and denial, many viewers seemed to hear the message loud and clear.
“The feeling of shouting into a void,” lamented one viewer. “He’s absolutely correct, but no one is listening.”
“This needs to be shared as much as possible,” said another. “Humanity has to realize, we are all in trouble…earth is home to all of us.”
How Trump and His Allies Plan to Wield Power in 2025
Jonathan Swan – November 15, 2023
Former President Donald Trump during a campaign event at Stevens High School in Claremont, N.H. on Nov. 11, 2023. (Sophie Park/The New York Times)
Former President Donald Trump declared in the first rally of his 2024 presidential campaign: “I am your retribution.” He later vowed to use the Justice Department to go after his political adversaries, starting with President Joe Biden and his family.
Beneath these public threats is a series of plans by Trump and his allies that would upend core elements of American governance, democracy, foreign policy and the rule of law if he regained the White House.
Some of these themes trace back to the final period of Trump’s term in office. By that stage, his key advisers had learned how to more effectively wield power and Trump had fired officials who resisted some of his impulses and replaced them with loyalists. Then he lost the 2020 election and was cast out of power.
Since leaving office, Trump’s advisers and allies at a network of well-funded groups have advanced policies, created lists of potential personnel and started shaping new legal scaffolding — laying the groundwork for a second Trump presidency they hope will commence on Jan. 20, 2025.
In a vague statement, two top officials on Trump’s campaign have sought to distance his campaign team from some of the plans being developed by Trump’s outside allies, groups led by former senior Trump administration officials who remain in direct contact with him. The statement called news reports about the campaign’s personnel and policy intentions “purely speculative and theoretical.”
The plans described here generally derive from what Trump has trumpeted on the campaign trail, what has appeared on his campaign website and interviews with Trump advisers, including one who spoke with The New York Times at the request of the campaign.
Trump wants to use the Justice Department to take vengeance on his political adversaries.
Allies of Trump have also been developing an intellectual blueprint to cast aside the post-Watergate norm of Justice Department investigatory independence from White House political direction.
Foreshadowing such a move, Trump had already violated norms in his 2016 campaign by promising to “lock up” his opponent, Hillary Rodham Clinton, over her use of a private email server. While president, he repeatedly told aides he wanted the Justice Department to indict his political enemies, including officials he had fired such as James Comey, the former FBI director. The Justice Department opened various such investigations but did not bring charges — infuriating Trump and leading to a split in 2020 with his attorney general, Bill Barr.
He intends to carry out an extreme immigration crackdown.
Trump is planning an assault on immigration on a scale unseen in modern American history. Millions of immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally would be barred from the country or uprooted from it years or even decades after settling here.
Bolstered by agents reassigned from other federal law enforcement agencies and state police and the National Guard, officials with Immigration and Customs Enforcement would carry out sweeping raids aimed at deporting millions of people each year. Military funds would be used to erect sprawling camps to hold detainees. A public-health emergency law would be invoked to shut down asylum requests by people arriving at the border. And the government would try to end birthright citizenship for babies born on U.S. soil to parents without legal status.
Trump has plans to use U.S. military force closer to home.
While in office, Trump mused about using the military to attack drug cartels in Mexico, an idea that would violate international law unless Mexico consented. That idea has since taken on broader Republican backing, and Trump intends to make the idea a reality if he returns to the Oval Office.
While the Posse Comitatus Act generally makes it illegal to use federal troops for domestic law enforcement purposes, another law called the Insurrection Act creates an exception. Trump wanted to invoke the Insurrection Act to use troops to crack down on protesters after the 2020 police killing of George Floyd, but was thwarted, and the idea remains salient among his advisers. Among other things, his top immigration adviser has said they would invoke the Insurrection Act at the southern border to use soldiers to intercept and detain migrants who enter the U.S. illegally.
Trump and his allies want greater control over the federal bureaucracy and workforce.
They have adopted a maximalist version of the so-called unitary executive theory, which says the president can directly command the entire federal bureaucracy and that it is unconstitutional for Congress to create pockets of independent decision-making authority.
As part of that plan, Trump also intends to revive an effort from the end of his presidency to alter civil-service rules that protect career government professionals, enabling him to fire tens of thousands of federal workers and replace them with loyalists. After Congress failed to enact legislation to block such a change, the Biden administration is developing a regulation to essentially Trump-proof the federal workforce. However, since that is merely an executive action, the next Republican president could simply undo it the same way.
Trump allies want lawyers who will not restrain him.
Politically appointed lawyers sometimes frustrated Trump’s desires by raising legal objections to his and his top advisers’ ideas. This dynamic has led to a quiet split on the right, as Trump loyalists have come to view the typical Federalist Society lawyer — essentially a mainstream Republican conservative — with disdain.
In a potential new term, Trump’s allies are planning to systematically install more aggressive and ideologically aligned legal gatekeepers who will be more likely to bless contentious actions. Trump and his 2024 campaign declined to answer a series of detailed questions about what limits, if any, he would recognize on his powers across a range of war, secrecy and law enforcement matters — many raised by his first term — in a New York Times 2024 presidential candidate survey.
Trump Wants Us to Know He Will Stop at Nothing in 2025
By Jamelle Bouie – November 14, 2023
Credit…Damon Winter/The New York Times
Over the past few weeks, we’ve gotten a pretty good idea of what Donald Trump would do if given a second chance in the White House. And it is neither exaggeration nor hyperbole to say that it looks an awful lot like a set of plans meant to give the former president the power and unchecked authority of a strongman.
Trump would purge the federal government of as many civil servants as possible. In their place, he would install an army of political and ideological loyalists whose fealty to Trump’s interests would stand far and above their commitment to either the rule of law or the Constitution.
With the help of these unscrupulous allies, Trump plans to turn the Department of Justice against his political opponents, prosecuting his critics and rivals. He would use the military to crush protests under the Insurrection Act — which he hoped to do during the summer of 2020 — and turn the power of the federal government against his perceived enemies.
“If I happen to be president and I see somebody who’s doing well and beating me very badly, I say, ‘Go down and indict them.’ They’d be out of business. They’d be out of the election,” Trump said in a recent interview on the Spanish-language network Univision.
As the former president wrote in a disturbing and authoritarian-minded Veterans Day message to supporters (itself echoing a speech he delivered that same day to supporters in New Hampshire): “We pledge to you that we will root out the Communists, Marxists, Fascists, and Radical Left Thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country, lie, steal, and cheat on Elections, and will do anything possible, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America, and the American dream.”
Trump has other plans as well. As several of my Times colleagues reported last week, he hopes to institute a program of mass detainment and deportation of undocumented immigrants. His aides have already drawn up plans for new detention centers at the U.S.-Mexico border, where anyone suspected of illegal entry would be held until authorities have settled the person’s immigration status.
Given the former president’s rhetoric attacking political enemies and other supposedly undesirable groups, like the homeless — Trump has said that the government should “remove” homeless Americans and put them in tents on “large parcels of inexpensive land in the outer reaches of the cities” — there’s little doubt that some citizens would find themselves in these large and sprawling camps.
Included in this effort to rid the United States of as many immigrants as possible is a proposal to target people here legally — like green-card holders or people on student visas — who harbor supposedly “jihadist sympathies” or espouse views deemed anti-American. Trump also intends to circumvent the 14th Amendment so that he can end birthright citizenship for the children of unauthorized immigrants.
In the past, Trump has gestured at seeking a third term in office after serving a second four-year term in the White House. “We are going to win four more years,” Trump said during his 2020 campaign. “And then after that, we’ll go for another four years because they spied on my campaign. We should get a redo of four years.” This, too, would violate the Constitution, but then, in a world in which Trump gets his way on his authoritarian agenda, the Constitution — and the rule of law — would already be a dead letter.
It might be tempting to dismiss the former president’s rhetoric and plans as either jokes or the ravings of a lunatic who may eventually find himself in jail. But to borrow an overused phrase, it is important to take the words of both presidents and presidential candidates seriously as well as literally.
They may fail — in fact, they often do — but presidents try to keep their campaign promises and act on their campaign plans. In a rebuke to those who urged us not to take him literally in 2016, we saw Trump attempt to do what he said he would do during his first term in office. He said he would “build a wall,” and he tried to build a wall. He said he would try to keep Muslims out of the country, and he tried to keep Muslims out of the country. He said he would do as much as he could to restrict immigration from Mexico, and he did as much as he could, and then some, to restrict immigration from Mexico.
He even suggested, in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election, that he would reject an election defeat. Four years later, he lost his bid for re-election. We know what happened next.
In addition to Trump’s words, which we should treat as a reliable guide to his actions, desires and preoccupations, we have his allies, who are as open in their contempt for democracy as Trump is. Ensconced at institutions like the Heritage Foundation and the Claremont Institute, Trump’s political and ideological allies have made no secret of their desire to install a reactionary Caesar at the head of the American state.
As Damon Linker noted this month in his essay on these figures for Times Opinion, they exist to give “Republican elites permission and encouragement to do things that just a few years ago would have been considered unthinkable.”
Americans are obsessed with hidden meanings and secret revelations. This is why many of us are taken with the tell-all memoirs of political operatives or historical materials like the Nixon tapes. We often pay the most attention to those things that have been hidden from view. But the mundane truth of American politics is that much of what we want to know is in plain view. You don’t have to search hard or seek it out; you just have to listen.
And Donald Trump is telling us, loud and clear, that he wants to end American democracy as we know it.
“That’s game over”: Legal experts say new Jenna Ellis revelation is beyond “devastating” for Trump
Igor Derysh – November 14, 2023
Jenna Ellis John Bazemore-Pool/Getty Images
Former Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis told prosecutors in Fulton County, Ga., that a senior aide to the former president told her he was “not going to leave” the White House even after losing numerous legal challenges.
Ellis in a video of a confidential proffer session with prosecutors obtained by ABC News and The Washington Post said that Trump aide Dan Scavino told her “the boss” would refuse to leave the White House even though she told him that their cause was “essentially over.”
“And he said to me, in a kind of excited tone, ‘Well, we don’t care, and we’re not going to leave,'” Ellis recalled. “And I said, ‘What do you mean?’ And he said ‘Well, the boss’, meaning President Trump — and everyone understood ‘the boss,’ that’s what we all called him — he said, ‘The boss is not going to leave under any circumstances. We are just going to stay in power.'”
Ellis added: “And I said to him, ‘Well, it doesn’t quite work that way, you realize?’ and he said, ‘We don’t care.'”
Ellis also told prosecutors that Scavino’s statement “indicated to me that he was serious and that was in furtherance of something that he had discussed with the boss.
EXCLUSIVE: ABC News has obtained video from Georgia prosecutors' interview with ex-Trump attorney Jenna Ellis, in which Ellis tells them she was personally informed by a top Trump adviser that Trump was "not going to leave" the White House — despite losing the 2020 election.… pic.twitter.com/J9c4bm9cbZ
New York University Law Prof. Ryan Goodman, a former special counsel for the Pentagon, told CNN that Ellis’ revelation could be key evidence in the Fulton case as well as Trump’s federal election subversion case in D.C.
“She’s adding something that’s golden evidence for prosecutors both in Georgia and in DC, which is, they don’t have to prove this but if they can show that Trump knew he lost and was still trying to hold on to power, that’s it,” he said. “That’s game over. And that’s exactly what she says is the context of the conversation.”
Gwen Keyes, a former DeKalb County, Ga., district attorney, told MSNBC that Ellis’ testimony may be key to the Fulton case.
“That is a key element of every one of the crimes that is listed in the indictment,” she said. “That being that the defendants knew that they were perpetrating a lie, and so this goes right to the heart of that.”
Former acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal, who was also on the segment, pointed out that the conversation between Ellis and Scavino took place after the safe harbor deadline to resolve state disputes, after state electors met to cast their vote and after the Supreme Court rejected Trump’s legal challenge.
“You might remember, that Jenna Ellis testified before the Jan. 6 Committee, that at a holiday party, Donald Trump said to Mark Meadows, his chief of staff, ‘I don’t want people to know that we lost. It’s embarrassing, figure it out. We need to figure it out.’ So, all of this together paints a really damaging picture for Donald Trump,” he said.
Fellow former TrumpWorld attorney Sidney Powell told prosecutors in her proffer session that she knew nothing about election law when she sought to challenge Trump’s loss.
“Did I know anything about election law? No. But I understand fraud from having been a prosecutor for 10 years, and knew generally what the fraud suit should be if the evidence showed what I thought it showed,” she told prosecutors.
Though Trump has denied that Powell was ever his attorney, Powell described being in close contact with him and said he frequently called her for updates on the legal efforts, even after his campaign publicly distanced from her.
“He always wanted to know where things were in terms of finding fraud that would change the results of the election,” she said.
Powell also confirmed reporting that Trump was “willing to appoint me a special counsel” to investigate fraud and seize voting machines, though the effort fell through.
“I called Mark Meadows the next morning just to run it to ground, and said, ‘Hey, when can I come pick up my badge and my key?'” Powell said. “He essentially laughed — I mean he said, you know, ‘It’s not going to happen.'”
Powell said she was present when multiple advisers told Trump that he lost and prosecutors questioned why the president followed her advice instead of the others.
“Because I didn’t think he had lost,” Powell replied, later adding: “I saw an avenue pursuant to which, if I was right, he would remain president.”
"The boss is not going to leave."
Video excerpts show former Trump lawyers telling Georgia prosecutors about efforts to overturn 2020 election.
National security attorney Bradley Moss said the revelations from Ellis and Powell were “devastating.”
“Trump never had any intention of complying with the election results. He was told repeatedly in the presence of a convicted co-defendant that he had lost. He ignored it and conspired with his lawyers to overthrow the election anyway,” he tweeted.
“Devastating is an understatement,” agreed former U.S. Attorney Harry Litman, adding: “The series of revelations from the video interviews of the Defendants to pleaded guilty in Fulton County really serves to validate Willis’s strategy of charging broadly then giving pleas. The testimony is just overwhelming.”
Trump attorney Steve Sadow in a statement to ABC News called the “purported private conversation” described by Ellis “absolutely meaningless.”
“The only salient fact to this nonsense line of inquiry is that President Trump left the White House on January 20, 2021, and returned to Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida,” Sadow said. “If this is the type of bogus, ridiculous ‘evidence’ DA Willis intends to rely upon, it is one more reason that this political, travesty of a case must be dismissed.”
Ex-Prosecutor Says A Torn-Up Note Could Be Key To Taking Down Donald Trump
Lee Moran – November 14, 2023
Former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann on Monday pointed to a ripped-up note he argued “absolutely” shows Donald Trump’s intent in his failed efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to President Joe Biden.
Trump aide Jonny McEntee wrote the note after then-U.S. Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy and then-U.S. Army Chief of Staff James McConville issued a statement in December 2020 saying the military could not determine the outcome of a U.S. election.
McEntee wrote: “[Acting Defense Secretary] Chris Miller spoke to both of them and anticipates no more statements coming out. (If another happens, he will fire them).”
The torn-up note was patched up and appeared as part of the House Jan. 6 Committee’s investigation into the deadly U.S. Capitol riot. It is now included in ABC News journalist Jonathan Karl’s new book “Tired of Winning: Donald Trump and the End of the Grand Old Party.”
MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace asked Weissmann if the note got “right at his [Trump’s] intent of what he wanted them [the military] to do.”
“Absolutely,” replied Weissmann.
The military is “incredibly law-abiding” and “really stands for the rule of law,” he continued. “As much of you think of it as a military organization with a hierarchy, they are also trained that they do not violate the Constitution. And when there’s an invalid order, they know that they cannot follow it because the Constitution comes first.”
Weissman said he was concerned that Trump, who has been indicted over his alleged efforts to thwart democracy and toss out the 2020 result, has now learned “the levers of power,” which he’ll know how to pull immediately should he win a second term.
“I remember when he first started a friend … said this was malevolence matched by incompetence so they weren’t really effective,” he recalled. “The Muslim ban is a perfect example where it took them so many tries to get it ‘right’ so it could pass muster.”
“But I took your book as that it going to be a pale comparison about what will come in a Trump 2.0.,” Weissmann added to Karl.
John Hanno, Tarbabys Blog – Veteran’s Day, November11, 2023
HuffPost
‘Brilliant’ Joe Biden Ad Torches Donald Trump In Simplest Possible Way
Lee Moran – November 14, 2023
Donald Trump’s derogatory comments about U.S. military service members and veterans were used against him in a powerful new ad released by President Joe Biden’s 2024 campaign to mark Veterans Day.
MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough hailed the spot as “brilliant” because it simply used the former president’s own words “to drive the message home.”
The video highlights Republican 2024 front-runner Trump’s description of fallen soldiers as “suckers” and his criticism of the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) for being captured during the Vietnam War.
“If you don’t respect our troops, you can’t lead them,” the ad says at the end.
Who’s to blame for climate change? Scientists don’t hold back in new federal report.
Dinah Voyles Pulver and Doyle Rice – November 14, 2023
Climate change is here and prompting unprecedented actions in every state to curb the greenhouse gas emissions fueling warming temperatures, but a new federal report out Tuesday says bigger, bolder steps are needed.
In remarks Tuesday morning, President Joe Biden announced more than $6 billion to bolster the electric grid, update water infrastructure, reduce flooding, and advance environmental justice.
“This assessment shows us in clear scientific terms, that climate change is impacting all regions, all sectors of the United States,” Biden said. “We’ve come to the point where it’s foolish for anyone to deny the impacts of climate change anymore.”
The assessment includes more evidence than ever before to demonstrate the cause and effects of the changing climate, said L. Ruby Leung, one of its authors. It also breaks from previous reports by saying unequivocally that humans are responsible for changes to Earth’s climate.
“It’s important for us to recognize that how much climate change we will be experiencing in the future depends on the choices that we make now,” said Leung, a climate scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and lead author on the earth sciences chapter.
All of the impacts people are feeling, like sea level rise and extreme weather events, she said “are tied to the global warming level, to how warm the earth becomes,” Leung said. “And that depends very much on the level of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.”
In other news, the United Nations released its latest analysis of national climate plans on Tuesday morning and found them “strikingly misaligned” with science. “The chasm between need and action is more menacing than ever,” said Secretary-General António Guterres. “It’s time for a climate ambition supernova in every country, city and sector.”
The impacts of climate change are felt in every corner of the country, the latest National Climate Assessment finds
What is the 2023 National Climate Assessment?
The massive assessment describes the climate and economic impacts Americans will see if further action is not taken to address climate change. The report, issued roughly every four years, was mandated by Congress in the late 1980s and is meant as a reference for the president, Congress, and the public.
“Too many people still think of climate change as an issue that’s distanced from us in space or time or relevance,” said Katharine Hayhoe, an author of the report and chief scientist at The Nature Conservancy.
The assessment “clearly explains how climate change is affecting us here in the places where we live, both now and in the future and across every sector of human and natural society,” Hayhoe said. It also shows that “the risks matter and so do our choices.”
Climate Nexus, a nonprofit communications organization, said the new report is “essential reading,” because it highlights the seriousness of current impacts and shows the existing pace of adaptation isn’t enough to keep pace with future climate changes.
“Without deeper cuts in global net greenhouse gas emissions and accelerated adaptation efforts, severe climate risks to the United States will continue to grow,” the report states. “Each additional increment of warming is expected to lead to more damage and greater economic losses.”
However, greater reductions in carbon emissions could reduce the risks and impacts, and have immediate health and economic benefits, the report states.
Millions are experiencing more extreme heat waves, with warmer temperatures and longer-lasting heat waves, the report states. It adds climate changes are apparent in every region of the country.
Among the noted effects:
◾ The number of nights with minimum low temperatures at or above 70 degrees has increased compared to 1901-1960 in every corner of the country except the northern Great Plains and Alaska.
◾ Average annual precipitation is increasing in most regions, except the Northwest, Southwest, and Hawaii.
◾ Relative sea levels are increasing along much of the coast, except for Oregon, Washington, and Alaska.
◾ In the 1980s, the country experienced on average a $1 billion disaster every four months but now experiences one every three weeks. This year, the country has set a new record with 25 billion-dollar disasters.
Climate scientists around the world say 2023 is almost certain to be the globe’s warmest year in recorded human history. The global mean temperature through October was 1.4 Celsius (more than 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit) above the preindustrial average.
So far this year, the nation is experiencing its 11th warmest year on record through October, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. However, 12 states are experiencing their warmest or second warmest year on record.
Growing evidence that humans are changing the climate
This assessment is most notable for the certainty scientists have gained about warming and its impacts, said Leung, who served as the lead author for the report’s Earth Systems Processes chapter, which lays the scientific groundwork and is used to illustrate points throughout the report.
The chapter, a collaboration among more than a dozen authors, was intended to answer such questions as whether humans are causing global warming, whether warming is changing extreme weather and climate events and how much warming the planet might expect to see.
In prior reports, scientists often hedged their statements, for example saying they were 90% sure humans were responsible for the changes being seen,” Leung said. “In this NCA 5 report, we are now saying that we are totally sure.”
Starting from the 1900s, the observed warming has been caused by human activities, she said. “It’s definitive.”
Another key difference is scientists reduced by 50% the uncertainty in how much temperatures would warm if the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere doubles, she said. In previous assessments that number had hovered around a range from 2.7 degrees to 8 degrees. “It was a pretty big range,” she said. “Our goal has always been to narrow this down.”
Thanks to the increase in instrumental observations, satellite data, the study of the paleoclimate, and higher resolution computer modeling, scientists now have amassed more evidence than ever before, giving them more certainty, she said. “Now we can say that the global warming that is caused by a doubling of the CO2 in the atmosphere should be between 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit and 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit.”
The Fifth National Climate Assessment shows the U.S. has warmed rapidly since the 1970s.
Reducing greenhouse gas emissions
Efforts to adapt to climate change, reduce net greenhouse gas emissions, and be more energy efficient are underway in every U.S. region and have expanded since 2018, the report concludes.
Greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. fell 12% between 2005 and 2019, mostly driven by changes in the way electricity is produced, the assessment concluded. The nation burns less coal, but more natural gas, which is cleaner. Because of the electrical industry’s 40% reduction in emissions, the transportation sector took the lead as the industry with the most emissions.
Growth in the capacity of wind, solar, and battery storage is supported by the falling costs of those technologies, and that ultimately means even more emissions reductions, the report states. For example, wind and solar energy costs have dropped 70% and 90%, respectively.
While the options for cleaner technologies and lower energy use have expanded, the authors found they aren’t happening fast enough for the nation to meet the goal of achieving a carbon-neutral energy system.
Without deeper cuts in global net greenhouse gas emissions and accelerated adaptation efforts, the scientists found severe climate risks to the United States will continue to grow. Each additional increment of warming is expected to lead to more damage and greater economic losses compared to previous increments of warming, and the risks of catastrophic consequences also increase.
But the report also finds that reducing greenhouse gas emissions and removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere can limit future warming and associated increases in many risks, and bring immediate health and economic benefits.
What others are saying about the report:
The scientific assessment is “the latest in a series of alarm bells and illustrates that the changes we’re living through are unprecedented in human history,” said Kristina Dahl, a principal climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists and a contributor to the report. “The science is irrefutable: we must swiftly reduce heat-trapping emissions and enact transformational climate adaptation policies in every region of the country to limit the stampede of devastating events and the toll each one takes on our lives and the economy.”
The report illustrates three things, said Arati Prabhakar, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
◾ The events Americans have already experienced firsthand are “unfolding as predicted.”
◾ Communities in every state and territory have taken action.
◾ People across the nation can use the assessment to take future actions.
For example, Prabhakar said the report could be used by a water utility manager in Chicago trying to understand extreme rainfall, an urban planner deciding where to locate cooling centers in Texas, or a manager of a Southeastern hospital trying to get ahead of the diseases ticks and mosquitoes are bringing into their region as a result of the changing climate.
What an increase of 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit over pre-industrial temperatures would feel like in the United States.
Why Biden Shouldn’t Run for Reelection—According to Biden Himself
Rob Anderson – November 14, 2023
When Joe Biden was deciding in late 2018 whether to run for president, he reached out to his network of would-be supporters with a pithy, pragmatic ask. “If you can persuade me there is somebody better who can win, I’m happy not to do it,” he said, according to The New York Times. It turned out there wasn’t somebody better to take on President Trump—or at least, Biden wasn’t persuaded that there was—and a few months later he officially threw his hat into the ring.
It wasn’t exactly a surprise. Biden, already a twice-failed presidential candidate, had been openly weighing another run for years. In a 2017 speech at Colgate University, he said he regretted “not being president” and that he could have beaten Trump. “I had a lot of data,” Biden said. “I was fairly confident that if I was the Democratic Party nominee, I had a better-than-even chance of being president.” And in January 2019, he said, bluntly, “I don’t see the candidate who can clearly do what has to be done to win.”
Within the next three months, though, the Democratic field ballooned with myriad compelling, experienced candidates, most of whom were far younger and more representative of the party’s diverse coalition. Did Biden, then 76 years old, really still believe he was the best hope to stop Trump? It seemed he did, based on a simple calculus. He had the blue-collar bona fides to win over working-class whites in the Midwest, high support among African American voters, thanks in part to his close relationship with the most popular Democratic president of the modern era, and a folksy charm to win over suburban soccer moms. And the pollsagreed.
But Biden’s decision to jump into the race wasn’t just strategic; it was moral. As the candidate best positioned to beat Trump, he owed it to the American people to run. “We are in the battle for the soul of this nation,” he said in his April announcement video. “If we give Donald Trump eight years in the White House, he will forever and fundamentally alter the character of this nation—who we are—and I cannot stand by and watch that happen.”
It was a sound—and winning, it turned out—argument. But if you apply the logic of Biden’s 2020 campaign to today’s presidential race, the conclusion is decidedly different, albeit equally clear: He should not be running for reelection.
First, the idea that Biden is uniquely qualified to unify the factions in the Democratic Party, let alone the nation as a whole, no longer holds true. Black voters are as alienated from the Democrats as they have been in decades. Blue-collar voters are defecting en masse. Suburban voters have turned on him too. And after years of commanding the spotlight himself, Biden can no longer bask in the glow of the now-distant Obama years. Today, his approval ratings are on par with Trump’s and Jimmy Carter’s at this point in their presidencies. Even more troubling, they dip below those of George H.W. Bush, Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon, and Lydon Johnson. Things didn’t turn out well for any of them. Why would Biden be any different?
He’s not. Biden has lost all of his advantages in battleground states, trailing Trump in Nevada, Georgia, Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. A recent Times/Siena poll showed that among registered voters in those five states plus Wisconsin—all of which Biden carried in 2020—he trails Trump by four points (which is barely within the margin of error). His campaign argues that polls always look bad for incumbents at this stage and that it’s easy to overblow an outlier poll here and there. But the Times/Siena poll wasn’t an outlier. Polling data aggregators have consistently shown Trump beating Biden for over two months now.
Democrats looking for a calm, nuanced explanation for why these polls shouldn’t be troubling will have to look elsewhere than the president, who said on Thursday he simply doesn’t believe he’s trailing in battleground states. Even the Biden of 2018 wouldn’t buy that.
It’s true that a lot could change between now and next November. The Biden optimists often note that Trump could become a convicted felon, but it’s not at all clear whether that would actually hurt Trump in the election. Inflation has eased, but prices are expected to remain high—perhaps for good. Russia’s war in Ukraine is at a stalemate, and one can only guess how much worse the conflict in the Middle East will get.
As much as political commentators like to disdain them for it, Americans ultimately pick their presidents on a feeling. The candidate who wins is the one who best recognizes the national mood and taps into it. After years of Bill Clinton’s slipperiness, the idea of grabbing a beer with George W. Bush sounded a lot better than chilling with the sweater-vested Al Gore and kite-surfing John Kerry. Barack Obama made the electorate feel hopeful after years of wars and recession. And in the end, Donald Trump tapped into a powerful feeling of resentment.
In 2020, voters turned to Biden because he promised competence and normalcy after the chaos and negativity that Trump had wrought. There’s no doubt that Biden delivered on that front—and even passed some historic legislation—but ultimately many Americans are still racked by despair and pessimism. In 2024, just like they have in the past, Americans will pull the lever, wisely or not, for whichever candidate they feel will most likely shake us out of our current malaise just to get us someplace different, for better or for worse.
Seen through this lens, the answer to the question that baffles some pundits—why is Biden so unpopular?—seems fairly obvious. The antidote to a world enmeshed in wars, a leaden economy, and an environmental catastrophe is not a mumble-prone 80-year-old incumbent. There’s no tactful way to say it: We want to face the apocalypse with Bill Pullman’s President Whitmore, not Weekend at Bernie’s.
The country is once again facing more than a 1 percent chance of a second Trump term—indeed, perhaps a greater than 50 percent chance. At the top of the Democrats’ priorities should be nominating someone with an overwhelming chance to stop that from happening. That candidate is not Joe Biden.
To be sure, even if Biden were swayed by my modest proposal, dropping out of the race would cause a host of complications. The deadlines for candidates to file in several primaries have already passed. And the candidates most prepared to step into his place—Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, maybe Dean Phillips—wouldn’t be a likelier bet to beat Trump. But were Biden to drop out, it would clear the way for more promising candidates to step in: Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, Maryland Governor Wes Moore, New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, California Governor Gavin Newsom, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro. And as the likelihood of a second Trump presidency came into view, Democratic voters, as in the run-up to the 2020 election, would eventually flock to the candidate they felt was most likely to take down Trump.
While the strategic arguments for Biden’s candidacy have all but collapsed, the pressing moral argument he made in 2018 remains as true now as ever. If Democrats lose the White House in 2024, they won’t be turning over 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to a generic Republican or even a Trump mini me like Ron DeSantis. They will most likely be handing the keys back to Trump himself. And if the Biden of 2019 is to be believed, that will fundamentally alter the character of our nation. If only the Biden of today would listen.
Donald Trump is talking like a Nazi again. Over the weekend, in both a speech and a subsequent social media post, he referred to his enemies as “vermin”—a favorite word of fascists and antisemites of yore—and channeled Hitler, declaring that America’s biggest enemies were domestic foes that needed to be “rooted out” and destroyed. “The real threat is not from the radical right; the real threat is from the radical left, and it’s growing every day, every single day,” he said. “The threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous, and grave than the threat from within. Our threat is from within.”
As if doubling down on the authoritarianism, Axios reported on Monday morning that Trump and his allies had formulated a plan to purge the federal government of ideological opponents. Trump and his allies “are pre-screening the ideologies of thousands of potential foot soldiers, as part of an unprecedented operation to centralize and expand his power at every level of the U.S. government if he wins in 2024,” wrote Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei. Although they note that this plan—which they’ve taken to calling “Agenda 47”—has an “authoritarian sounding” name, Allen and VandeHei (the latter of whom has harbored some authoritarian sentiments of his own), ever eager to ingratiate themselves, observe that those in charge of this plan “are smart, experienced people, many with very unconventional and elastic views of presidential power and traditional rule of law.” For sure!
Finally, to underline the weekend of goose-stepping, Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung responded to the criticism by tellingThe Washington Post that those “who try to make [the] ridiculous assertion [that Trump is channeling Hitler] are clearly snowflakes grasping for anything because they are suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome and their entire existence will be crushed when President Trump returns to the White House.” Not exactly a posture aimed at reassuring those who are alarmed by the increasingly fascistic bent of the leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination.
The response to Trump’s “vermin” comments and the revelation of the “Agenda 47” plan have led to a deserved round of hand-wringing about Trump’s authoritarianism, the threat his political project poses to American democracy, and the media’s role in covering both. In 2016, the press failed to adequately capture the sum total of this threat, partly because Trump’s political career was seen as a doomed project and partly because it was still too abstract. Seven years later, Trump’s rhetoric is substantially darker and we’ve had plenty of hard evidence of his willingness to push past the acceptable boundaries of our democracy in his continued insistence that the 2020 election was stolen from him, as well as in the Capitol riots that this rhetoric inspired.
Emphasizing Trump’s authoritarianism—and the related damage he can do to the fabric of the country—will be a necessity both for the press and for Joe Biden. Trump is rather transparently announcing his intentions to purge and weaponize the federal government against his political opponents, immunize himself against legal prosecution, and manipulate the levers of power to preserve his own for as long as possible. Given the threat of physical violence that so often accompanies his words, this is more or less open fascism. But declaiming against it will not be enough to defeat him.
“This is not normal” was a potent rallying cry during Trump’s presidency—it was arguably the defining admonition of that period. In many ways, Trump’s abnormality has only metastasized since voters evicted him from the White House. His rhetoric has grown more extreme. He is facing multiple criminal trials and will likely head into the presidential election as both his party’s nominee and as a convicted felon.
But Trump very much is a normal Republican now. That is true in many frightening ways, certainly. Trump’s political rivals have begun to echo his authoritarianism. Vivek Ramaswamy has arguably an even more insane plan to force the federal bureaucracy to submit to his will (he has suggested firing everyone whose social security number ends in an odd number). Ron DeSantis has called for shooting migrants. Nikki Haley has advocated for invading Mexico. Trump’s positions are the norm in the GOP now, and they will remain that way for the party’s foreseeable future: The GOP has, in eight years, been remade in his image.
But Trump has also become a normal Republican in the traditional sense, in that he’s more or less ended up embracing the long-standing policy positions of his GOP forebears. During his first term in office, his most important legislative accomplishment was a gigantic tax cut for corporations and the rich. Even though it is unlikely that he will staff his second-term office with the same kind of establishment figures—think Rex Tillerson and Steven Mnuchin—who briefly defined the early part of his presidency, one can rightly assume that he will continue to pursue regressive, supply-side economic policies, especially considering that this is what Republicans in Congress will want to do. The domestic agenda of a second Trump term would likely involve the greatest hits of Republican fiscal policy: tax and entitlement cuts, as well as the elimination of various environmental, labor, and economic regulations.
For all the talk of Trump’s abnormality, the fact that he’s always marched to the recognizable, old-school beats of the GOP drum has always been the less celebrated aspect of his time in politics. So there’s a danger in continually casting him as a pathbreaking sort of politician. Voters don’t like the status quo. They’ve repeatedly voted to reject the economic dogmas that have defined Republican policymaking for several consecutive elections. They thought that this was what they were getting from Trump in the first place—and the media did a much better job of selling Trump as a change-of-pace candidate, and clung to the notion that he was an economic populist long after he’d demonstrated no real interest in refreshing the Republican brand.
Democratic messaging needs to account for both Trump’s unique authoritarian leanings and his embrace of vintage Republican ideas. To solely advance the idea that Trump is a unique political figure in American life—a wild departure from the norm—runs the risk of implanting the idea that he is a politician bent on shattering the status quo during a time when many might prefer the short sharp shock of change. Ideally, you want to capture Trump as a chaos agent whose plans to sledgehammer the system won’t lead anywhere fruitful or new, but will more deeply entrench the unpopular ideas for which the GOP has long been known.
The clearest and most potent position for Democrats is to push on reproductive rights—it embodies the new post-Dobbs dystopia with the Republican Party’s decades-long effort to bring it about. Trump has, of late, escaped much attention for his abortion policy, in part because he’s skipped the Republican debates and in part because many of his opponents have adopted even more extreme positions. (Trump claims to oppose a nationwide abortion ban, though it seems highly likely he would sign one if he was given the chance.) More to the point, no one in the country is more responsible for the repeal of Roe v. Wade than Donald Trump, who appointed the three justices to the Supreme Court necessary to do the deed. Still, there is nothing new under the sun. Here we see a normal Republican doing normal Republican stuff. It is both odious and unpopular: Republicans have repeatedly lost elections when abortion is on the ballot. It will be again in 2024.
For Democrats, campaigning against Trump’s reelection will be an exercise in threading a needle between the new threats he poses and bad, old ideas to which he clings. This is something Democrats did successfully in the 2020 presidential election and then refined to great effect in the 2022 midterms; voters said that abortion and threats to democracy were the two issues that were front of mind as they tamed the “red wave” that was supposed to sweep Republicans into power. With less than a year before the election, both Biden and the press are doing a better job of making the case that Trump is a unique danger to the Republic. They should spend a little time reminding voters that he’s just as bad in other, more banal ways, as well.
Trump Campaign Officials Try to Play Down Contentious 2025 Plans
Maggie Haberman – November 14, 2023
Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally in Claremont, New Hampshire, U.S., November 11, 2023. REUTERS/Brian Snyder (Brian Snyder / reuters)
Two top officials on former President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign on Monday sought to distance his campaign team from news reports about plans for what he would do if voters return him to the White House.
Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, who are effectively Trump’s campaign managers, issued a joint statement after a spate of articles, many in The New York Times, about plans for 2025 developed by the campaign itself, and trumpeted on the trail by Trump, as well as efforts by outside groups led by former senior Trump administration officials who remain in direct contact with him.
Wiles and LaCivita focused their frustration on outside groups, which they did not name, that have devoted considerable resources to preparing lists of personnel and developing policies to serve the next right-wing administration.
“The efforts by various nonprofit groups are certainly appreciated and can be enormously helpful. However, none of these groups or individuals speak for President Trump or his campaign,” they wrote, calling reports about their personnel and policy intentions “purely speculative and theoretical” and “merely suggestions.”
Trump’s team has sought to portray him as the most substantive candidate on policy in the Republican Party. But according to several people with knowledge of the internal discussions, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations, Trump’s campaign advisers have grown enraged at what they perceive alternately as credit-taking by the groups, and headlines that could be problematic for more moderate voters in a general election.
The statement noticeably stopped short of disavowing the groups and seemed merely intended to discourage them from speaking to the press.
One challenge for the Trump team is that the most incendiary rhetoric and proposals have come from Trump’s own mouth.
For instance, an article in the Times in June explored Trump’s plans to use the Justice Department to take vengeance on political adversaries by ordering investigations and prosecutions of them, eradicating the post-Watergate norm of Justice Department investigative independence from White House political control.
Trump said in June: “I will appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the history of the United States of America, Joe Biden, and the entire Biden crime family.”
The Times recently published an extensive article on Trump’s immigration plans for a second term. He has promised what he called “the largest domestic deportation operation in American history” and has used increasingly toxic language to describe immigrants, including saying that they are “poisoning the blood of our country.”
The Times article detailed plans for an immigration crackdown in part based on a lengthy interview with Stephen Miller, the architect of the Trump White House immigration policy. The Trump campaign, after being approached by Times reporters about Trump’s immigration agenda, had asked Miller to speak with them.
President Joe Biden’s 2024 campaign pounced on the article concerning immigration — which described plans for mass detention camps, among other things — saying that Trump had “extreme, racist, cruel policies” that were “meant to stoke fear and divide us.”
Other Times articles have focused on plans being fleshed out by close allies of Trump who occupied senior roles in his White House and are likely to return to power if he is elected.
Those plans include efforts to increase White House control over the federal bureaucracy that are being developed, among others, by Russell Vought, who was Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget.
But as the Times noted, Vought’s plans dovetailed with statements Trump made in a video his campaign published on its website, including vowing to bring independent regulatory agencies “under presidential authority.”
The Times series has also examined plans by Trump allies to recruit more aggressive lawyers seen as likely to bless extreme policies. Trump fired the top lawyer at the Department of Homeland Security in 2019 after disputes over White House immigration policies and has blasted key lawyers from his administration who raised objections to his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss.
The statement from Wiles and LaCivita on Monday said that, “all 2024 campaign policy announcements will be made by President Trump or members of his campaign team. Policy recommendations from external allies are just that — recommendations.”
