White House to announce actions to modernize America's electrical grid, paving the way for clean energy and fewer outage
Source: CNN
Updated 8:19 AM EDT, Tue May 28, 2024
CNN — The White House on Tuesday will announce steps to modernize a major roadblock to the clean energy transformation: America’s aging electrical infrastructure.
The new initiative between the feds and 21 states aims to make faster fixes and improvements to the grid, committing to build a bigger and more modern grid as part of a larger effort to reduce power outages and increase electrical transmission capacity – a massive hurdle to getting more clean energy on the grid and reducing the planet-warming pollution causing the climate crisis.
The announcement comes on the same day that hundreds of thousands of customers lost power in Texas during destructive storms Tuesday morning, following a deadly holiday weekend of severe weather across the South and Midwest. Weather-related power outages are on the rise as stronger storms put more pressure on outdated infrastructure, a recent report from nonprofit research group Climate Central found.
The White House and Department of Energy will make the announcement at a summit for states, industry groups and electric regulators. White House national climate adviser Ali Zaidi called the new initiative “unprecedented” and said it will “drive grid adaptation quickly and cost-effectively.”
Senator Robert Menendez Is Scoring Big Wins in His Gold-Bar Bribery Trial by Dan Friedman
June 1, 2024
Introduction:
(Mother Jones) Federal prosecutors went to court last month with what seemed like a slam-dunk case that New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez had accepted bribes to help the governments of Egypt and Qatar while he was the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Prosecutors have the gold bars Menendez supposedly received as a corrupt payment, a cooperating witness, and text messages that, they say, showed the senator promising to take votes and other official actions in exchange for bribes.
But the prosecution is being complicated by the Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause—or at least by the trial judge’s expansive reading of it. This provision aims to allow lawmakers to avoid legal liability for things they say or do in Congress. The idea is to protect elected representatives from being sued or prosecuted for performing their constitutional duties.
You might assume that this clause—while sensibly protecting lawmakers from things like libel suits or criminal charges over controversial floor speeches—would have a carveout for public corruption cases. It, in fact, does not. Read literally, it appears quite broad. “For any speech or debate in either House, [members of Congress] shall not be questioned in any other place,” it says.
Conclusion:
… so far, the fallout from Menendez’s trial looks (yet again) like good news for lawmakers accused of corruption. Donald Trump, it seems, isn’t the only politician who could soon be essentially immune from prosecution.
Justice Clarence Thomas Acknowledges He Should Have Disclosed Free Trips From Billionaire Donor by Joshua Kaplan, Justin Elliott and Alex Mierjeski
June 7, 2024
Introduction:
(ProPublica) Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas acknowledged for the first time in a new financial disclosure filing that he should have publicly reported two free vacations he received from billionaire Harlan Crow.
The pair of 2019 trips, one to Indonesia and the other to the Bohemian Grove, an all-male retreat in northern California, were first revealed by ProPublica. Last year, Thomas argued that he did not need to disclose such gifts. “Justice Thomas’s critics allege that he failed to report gifts from wealthy friends,” his lawyer previously said in a statement issued on the justice’s behalf. “Untrue.”
In the new filing released Friday, however, Thomas amended his financial disclosure for 2019, writing that he “inadvertently omitted” the trips on his previous reports.
Last year, ProPublica documented an array of undisclosed luxury vacations and other gifts Thomas has received over the years from several billionaires, including Crow. ProPublica revealed Crow had treated Thomas to numerous private jet flights and international yacht cruises, covered private school tuition for Thomas’ relative, and paid Thomas money in an undisclosed 2014 real estate deal.
Legal ethics experts said that Thomas appeared to have violated the law by failing to disclose the trips and gifts.
firestar464 wrote: ↑Sun Jun 09, 2024 11:47 pm
I thought America was better than that
Can you name on country that allows the entire world to walk through it without any "green card" or ability to vet people? I believe in immigration but there needs to be limits.
Supreme Court Upholds Full Access to Mifepristone Abortion Pill
Greg Stohr
Bloomberg News
The US Supreme Court preserved full access to a widely used abortion pill in a case that carried major stakes for reproductive rights and election-year politics.
The court unanimously overturned a federal appeals ruling that would have barred mail-order prescriptions for mifepristone, the drug now used in more than half of US abortions. The lower court ruling would have reduced abortion access even in states where reproductive rights have broad support.
The court stopped short of affirming Food and Drug Administration decisions to loosen restrictions on mifepristone starting in 2016. The majority instead said the anti-abortion doctors and organizations that sued lacked legal "standing" because they aren't directly affected by the FDA's actions.
