Juliet Eilperin and Brady Dennis, Reporters - Washington Post
Stephan: For the last four years Trump did everything he could to keep the carbon industries alive. Now Biden has the reins and it is a whole new day, as I described in today's lede story. However, that doesn't mean the carbon corporations are going to go easily into history. They will not and the Republican Party which heavily depends on carbon corporate money will try to protect those industries as much as they can. And here is that story.
Joe Biden had long promised to become the climate president, and on Wednesday he detailed far-ranging plans to shift the U.S. away from fossil fuels, create millions of jobs in renewable energy, and conserve vast swaths of public lands and water.
“This is not a time for small measures,” Biden said at the White House, adding that the nation had already wasted precious years as it delayed in dealing with the climate crisis.
But as he detailed his plans, the gas, oil and coal industries were already mobilizing on all fronts. From an oil patch in Alaska to state capitals to the halls of Congress, the industries and their allies are aiming to slow Biden’s unprecedented push for climate action and keep profits from fossil fuels flowing. Republican attorneys general from six states wrote to the new president, warning him not to overstep his authority. GOP lawmakers attacked his executive orders as “job killers.” And the petroleum industry revived television ads promoting drilling on federal lands.
Industry executives expressed dismay at the scope, speed and direction in which Biden is heading, saying he is going much further than President Barack Obama ever did, while environmentalists said the danger that Earth faces […]
Stephan: More good news from the Biden administration. Finally, the vile private prison system encouraged by the Trump administration, corporations profiting from the warehousing of human beings, is going to be dismantled.
Barbed wire at a private prison Credit: FooT Too/Getty
For four years, the Trump administration embraced private prisons, signing contracts with corporations to incarcerate detainees, immigrants, and people serving federal sentences. Now, that era is coming to a close as President Joe Biden signs an executive order Tuesday afternoon instructing the Department of Justice to allow its contracts with for-profit prison companies to expire.
The executive order “will ultimately end the Justice Department’s use of private prisons, an industry that houses pretrial detainees and federal prisoners,” Biden said Tuesday in a speech on his racial equity policy agenda. The decision means the gradual end for a dozen private prisons that currently incarcerate about 14,000 people—about 9 percent of the federal prison population. Most of those are men without US citizenship serving short federal sentences under low security. It could also affect for-profit jails run by private prison companies under contract with US Marshals Service, a DOJ division that holds pretrial detainees.
“Private prisons profiteer off of federal prisoners and are proven to be—or are found to be by […]
Stephan: I want to start today's edition of SR, with the good news that is pouring out of the Biden administration, and then let you compare that with what is still going on with Trumperism.
The slew of executive actions that President Biden started off his presidency with are popular with the public, according to two recent polls.
In his first week in office, Biden announced at least 33 new policies that he will implement through the executive branch, according to a count from CNN. Polls conducted by Morning Consult and Ipsos since Biden’s first day in office have assessed public opinion on 14 of these policies. In all cases, more of those polled favor the policies than oppose them, and a majority support nearly every policy.
And while polls haven’t been released to specifically ask about Biden’s executive order to reverse the ban on transgender people serving in the military, previous surveys suggest that move will also likely be popular with the public.
The popularity of these policies is notable for a few reasons. First, Biden’s emphasis on trying to unify the country in his inaugural address has created a debate in political circles about exactly what constitutes “unity.” These early executive orders meet one definition — adopting policies that a clear majority of Americans support, which necessitates that at least some Republicans back […]
Stephan: You would think people in public office would realize that over time everything will come out. But they don't. With Trump it is already starting. I had two readers who are in the national security community send me URLs for this story, telling me that it is well-researched and fact-based. It is also horrifying.
The author claims Trump’s association with Russia began in 1976 when he decided to make his move from developing real estate in Queens to Manhattan
Trump was rescued multiple times from multiple bankruptcies by boatloads of Russian cash laundered through his real estate in the 1980s and 1990s
When Trump became President, it was time to pay the piper and Trump gave Putin everything he wanted, Unger writes
The author claims Trump was connected to Russians through friend Jeffrey Epstein, who was supplying the Russians and Silicon Valley with underage girls
Trump also appealed to the KGB because he was ‘vain, narcissistic, highly susceptible to flattery and greedy,’ the author writes
The author interviewed high-level sources, Soviets who defected, former CIA officers, FBI counter-intelligent agents, lawyers and more for the book
Donald Trump was cultivated as a Russian asset more than 40 years ago which exploded into a decades-long ‘relationship’ of mutual benefit to both Russia and Trump, […]
Stephan: When I saw the vote in which 45 Republican senators voted to say that they believed Trump should face no trial in the Senate, I realized that Trump may be gone but Trumpism is not and that there has been a fundamental change in the Republican Party. Most of the Republican Senators no longer support democracy and a system of governance based on the law and accountability, and about 25% of the American population is okay with that. We are getting wonderful good news from the Biden administration, but I want to make sure my readers do not think this fight for America is over.
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, a man who has surrendered his integrity to try and retain power. Credit: C-Span
President Joe Biden has promised swift action on the pandemic, the economic crisis and more, but much of his agenda hinges on whether he can get enough support in the Senate, where an unprecedented number of bills in recent years has required a 60-vote supermajority in order to overcome filibusters. Many progressives and civil rights groups have urged Democratic leaders to kill the filibuster, warning that if they don’t, Senate Republicans will obstruct Biden’s plans just as they did with the Obama administration. Former Senate aide Adam Jentleson, author of the new book “Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy,” says the filibuster has historically been used to stop racial progress and thwart majority opinion. “The framers … did not want the filibuster to exist,” he says. “When they created the Senate, it was an institution that had no filibuster power. It was designed to be a majority-rule body.
