WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican leaders are warning party members against using overtly racist and sexist attacks against Vice President Kamala Harris, as they and former President Donald Trump’s campaign scramble to adjust to the reality of a new Democratic rival less than four months before Election Day.
At a closed-door meeting of House Republicans on Tuesday, National Republican Congressional Committee chairman Richard Hudson, R-N.C., urged lawmakers to stick to criticizing Harris for her role in Biden-Harris administration policies. (snip-more)
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Monthly headlines are turning into daily headlines:
Monday was recorded as the hottest day ever globally, beating a record set the day before, as countries around the world from Japan to Bolivia to the United States continue to feel the heat, according to the European climate change service.
Provisional satellite data published by Copernicus on Wednesday showed that Monday broke the previous day’s record by 0.06 degrees Celsius (0.1 degree Fahrenheit).
Climate scientists say it’s plausible that this is the warmest it has been in 120,000 years because of human-caused climate change. While scientists cannot be certain that Monday was the very hottest day throughout that period, average temperatures have not been this high since long before humans developed agriculture. (snip-more)
A 7-month-old tree kangaroo peeked out of its mom’s pouch at the Bronx Zoo and here is the video
The second baby of a tree-dwelling kangaroo made its public debut this week in New York, poking its pink head head out of its mom’s furry white pouch. (snip-click the Video hyperlink just above the title)
Heather Cox Richardson’s history Substack is just a treasure of information and connections between history and current times. Here’s a copy today, because there are fine talking points in favor of the Dem candidate for US President.
Vice President Kamala Harris continues her momentum toward the 2024 presidential election since President Joe Biden’s surprise announcement on Sunday that he would not accept the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination.
Today more than 350 national security leaders endorsed Harris for president, noting that if elected president, “she would enter that office with more significant national security experience than the four Presidents prior to President Biden.” As vice president, she “has met with more than 150 world leaders and traveled to 21 countries,” the authors wrote, and they called out her work across the globe from her work strengthening partnerships in the Indo-Pacific region to her historic trip to Africa and her efforts to expand U.S. relationships with nations in the Caribbean and North Central America. In contrast to Harris, the letter said, “Trump is a threat to America’s national security.”
Those signing the letter included former Central Intelligence Agency director Michael Hayden, former director of national intelligence James Clapper, national security advisors Susan Rice and Thomas Donilon, former secretaries of defense Chuck Hagel and Leon Panetta, and former secretaries of state Hillary Clinton and John Kerry.
In a New York Times op-ed today, former secretary of state Clinton praised Biden for his “decision to end his campaign,” which she called “as pure an act of patriotism as I have seen in my lifetime.” She went on to say that Vice President Harris “represents a fresh start for American politics,” offering a vision of an America with its best days ahead of it and, rather than “old grievances,” “new solutions.”
Clinton noted that her own political campaigns had seen her burned in effigy, but said, “It is a trap to believe that progress is impossible” and that Americans cannot overcome sexism and racism. After all, she pointed out, voters elected Black American Barack Obama in 2008, and she herself won the popular vote in 2016. “[A]bortion bans and attacks on democracy are galvanizing women voters like never before,” Clinton wrote, and “[w]ith Ms. Harris at the top of the ticket leading the way, this movement may become an unstoppable wave.”
Today, Harris held her first campaign rally, speaking to supporters in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where the Republicans held their national convention just last week. The energy from the 3000 people packed into the gym where she walked out to Beyoncé’s song “Freedom” was palpable.
She began by thanking Biden and touting his record, then turned to noting that in her past as a prosecutor, California attorney general, U.S. senator from California, and vice president, she “took on perpetrators of all kinds—predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain. So,” she said, “hear me when I say: I know Donald Trump’s type.” She went on to remind the audience that Trump ran a for-profit college that scammed students, was found liable for committing sexual abuse, and “was just found guilty of fraud on 34 counts.”
While Trump is relying on “billionaires and big corporations,” she said, “we are running a people-powered campaign” and “will be a people-first presidency.” The Democrats, she said, “believe in a future where every person has the opportunity not just to get by but to get ahead; a future where no child has to grow up in poverty; where every worker has the freedom to join a union; where every person has affordable health care, affordable childcare, and paid family leave. We believe in a future where every senior can retire with dignity.”
“[A]ll of this is to say,” she continued, “Building up the middle class will be a defining goal of my presidency. Because…when our middle class is strong, America is strong.”
In contrast, she said, Trump wants to take the country backward. She warned that he and his Project 2025 will “weaken the middle class,” cutting Social Security and Medicare and giving “tax breaks to billionaires and big corporations,” while “working families foot the bill.” “They intend to end the Affordable Care Act,” she said, “and take us back…to a time when insurance companies had the power to deny people with preexisting conditions…. Remember what that was like? Children with asthma, women who survived breast cancer, grandparents with diabetes. America has tried these failed economic policies before, but we are not going back. We’re not going back.”
“[O]urs is a fight for the future,” she said “And it is a fight for freedom…. Generations of Americans before us led the fight for freedom. And now…the baton is in our hands.”
Meanwhile, MAGA Republicans are still scrambling for a plan of attack against Harris. One of their first angles has been the sexism and racism Clinton predicted, calling her “a DEI hire.” House Republican leaders have told fellow lawmakers to dial back the sexist and racist attacks.
MAGA Republican representative Andy Ogles (R-TN) has taken a different angle: he introduced an impeachment resolution against Harris, while others are demanding that the House should investigate Harris and demand the Cabinet remove President Biden under the 25th Amendment. The Republican National Committee has decided to make fun of Harris’s laugh.
But concern in the Trump camp showed today when Trump pollster Tony Fabrizio shared with reporters a “confidential memorandum” trying to get ahead of polls he says will show Harris leading Trump. He said he expects to see a “Harris Honeymoon” that will end quickly.
Trump has continued to post angrily on his social media feed but is otherwise sticking close to home. His lack of visibility highlights that the Republicans are now on the receiving end of the same age and coherence concerns they had used against Biden, and there might be more attention paid to Trump’s lapses now that Biden has stepped aside. CNN’s Kate Sullivan noted today, for example, that “Trump said he’d consider Jamie Dimon for Treasury secretary, but now says he doesn’t know who said that.”
As Tim Alberta noted Sunday in The Atlantic, the Trump campaign tapped J.D. Vance in an attempt to harden the Republican base, only to find now that he cannot bring to the ticket any of the new supporters they suddenly need.
According to Harry Enten of CNN, Vance is the first vice presidential pick since 1980 who has entered the race with a negative favorability rating: in his case, –6 points. Since 2000, the usual average is +19 points. Vance won his Senate seat in 2022 by +6 points in an election Republican governor Mike DeWine won by +25 points. Vance “was the worst performing Republican candidate in 2022 up and down the ballot in the state of Ohio,” Enten said. “The J.D. Vance pick makes no sense from a statistical polling perspective.”
Sarah Longwell of The Bulwark, who specializes in focus groups, noted that swing voters groups “simply do not like” Vance. “Both his flip flopping on Trump and his extreme abortion position are what breaks through,” she wrote.
The 2024 election is not consuming all of the political oxygen, even in this astonishing week. Today, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced that eight large companies must turn over information about the data they collect about consumers, product sales, and how the surveillance the companies used affected consumer prices.
“Firms that harvest Americans’ personal data can put people’s privacy at risk. Now firms could be exploiting this vast trove of personal information to charge people higher prices,” FTC chair Lina M. Khan said. “Americans deserve to know whether businesses are using detailed consumer data to deploy surveillance pricing, and the FTC’s inquiry will shed light on this shadowy ecosystem of pricing middlemen.”
The eight companies are: Mastercard, Revionics, Bloomreach, JPMorgan Chase, Task Software, PROS, Accenture, and McKinsey & Co.
In the House, Republicans have been unable to pass the appropriations bills necessary to fund the 2025 U.S. budget, laced as they are with culture-wars poison pills the extremists demand. Today House members debated the appropriations bill for the Interior Department and the Environment which, among other things, bans the use of funds “to promote or advance critical race theory” or to require Covid-19 masks or vaccine mandates.
According to the European climate service Copernicus, last Sunday was the hottest day in recorded history. The MAGA Republicans’ appropriations bill for Interior and the Environment calls for more oil drilling, fewer regulations on pollutants, no new regulations on vehicles, rejecting Biden’s climate change executive orders, and reducing the funding for the Environmental Protection Agency by 20%.
By Scottie Andrew, CNN 2 minute read Updated 9:22 PM EDT, Mon July 22, 2024
(There was a time when this would not have been allowed to be spoken of within the pageant, even after VAWA passed. I’m glad we’ve managed to raise a few generations with more confidence than we had at their ages.)
Alexis Smith was crowned Miss Kansas last month. She wowed audiences when she told them that her abuser was in the audience, reinforcing her platform of ending domestic violence. Miss America/AP/FileCNN —
Being a pageant winner takes more than beauty and talent. The newly crowned Miss Kansas Alexis Smith showed that winning the title sometimes requires bravery, too.
It only reinforced the importance of her platform — “to eliminate unhealthy and abusive relationships.”
When asked about her vision for her tenure as Miss Kansas, Smith maintained her composure in a sparkly azure dress.
“Some of you out in this audience saw me very emotional, because my abuser is here today,” she said.
“But that’s not going to stop me from being on this Miss Kansas stage and from representing as the next Miss Kansas,” she continued to applause and cheers. “Because I and my community deserve healthy relationships.”
She provided more context in an Instagram post the month after her win. On the night of the pageant, she said, “someone I have been healing from tried to disrupt my peace.”
“Instead of falling into silence, I chose to live out my vision for a better world,” she wrote. “I took back my power — not just for myself, but for my dreams and everyone watching and listening.”
She added, “I’m ready to use my story, tools, and resources to end unhealthy relationships in all forms.”
to Scottie, a few times. It’s Jenny Lawson, the author and bookstore owner. She has an art Substack, too, to which I subscribe on the free plan. Again, Jenny Lawson is hilarious, but also sensitive, and sharing in a good way. Maybe some of you have caught her books. Anyway, I just read her recent blog post, referring to this Substack entry. So here’s the Substack, because there is a Share button there. Enjoy!
This week I was more exhausted than normal. I fell asleep on the couch at 6pm. I couldn’t drag myself to see an author I love that I’d been looking forward to for weeks. It felt like it took an extraordinary amount of energy just to breathe, and the time that I normally devote to drawing while watching 90-Day-Fiance ended up with me curled up in a little ball wondering if this was illness or depression or both.
By this weekend I was feeling much better but I didn’t have enough time to draw the more complicated doodle that I’d sketched out with a pencil but never started to ink, so instead I did a simple portrait of my son, Hunter S. Thomcat, who was having his seventh restorative nap of the day and not feeling guilty about it at all. And it’s messy and imperfect and probably one of my favorite doodles because it was fun and ridiculous and reminded me that art is can be all of those things.
We can all take a lesson from cats sometimes.
It’s okay to rest, my friend. It’s okay to not always be productive. It’s okay to just be.
You’re further along than you think.
Hugs,
Jenny
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Another note from me (not Jenny Lawson): Jenny Lawson also blogs on WP, and is hilarious also there, but there is no reblog button; so check it out: https://thebloggess.com/ . I’m not trying to drive readers away from Scottie’s, but I bet we have time to read another article now and then! She’s great.
about national US politics for a bit. I’d just finished writing back to eurobrat’s comment, then I saw the headline. I have no words; things need to shake out a bit. I’m aware of how it should go within the party, but I don’t know that the party is much involved in this; it’s mostly donors and media. I guess as to the presidential ticket, we all need to breathe, very deeply, for the rest of the day. A positive will be transferring good energy to legislative races for fine candidates who aren’t Republicans! I’m not sure how much Project 2025 can get done with no legislation. It’s more important than ever: every single seat in the US House is up for election, and we need that House back. We need to keep the Senate.
That’s what I’ve got, for now. I’ll bring back some sort of sunshiny fun thing, probably yet today, though.
Illustrative purposes only: The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant as seen from the streets of Nikopol, the city in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, on July 6, 2023. (Amadeusz Swierk/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
Around 5,000 workers were rescued from the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP), Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko said on July 19 during a press conference.
The Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, Europe’s largest nuclear power station, has been under Russian occupation since March 2022. Its position near the front line has led to heightened nuclear safety risks throughout Russia’s full-scale war.
All evacuated employees were the workers of Ukraine’s nuclear energy agency, Energoatom, according to Halushchenko.
Halushchenko also brought up that since February 2024, Russian forces have banned access to the plant for those employees who remained in the occupied territory.
“This is the personnel that we plan to attract to complete the construction of Khmelnytskyi Nuclear Power Plant units,” he added.
In April, Energoatom started building reactor units 5 and 6 at the Khmelnytskyi Nuclear Power Plant using U.S. technology that would help prevent power outages in case of Russian attacks.
After the reactor units 5 and 6 are built and units 3 and 4 are put into operation, the Khmelnytskyi Nuclear Power Plant’s power generating capacity will exceed the one of the Zaporizhzhia plant, according to Energoatom
The United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution on July 11 demanding that Russia withdraw from the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant and restore full control of the facility to Ukraine.
The resolution also condemns Russia for failing to implement safety protocols set out by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and calls on Moscow to allow IAEA inspectors full access to the plant’s facilities. (snip)
Scottie's Playtime 