“The pills are already banned in 13 states with blanket bans on all forms of abortion, and 15 states already have limited access to abortion pills.”
…
“Medication abortions became the preferred method for ending pregnancy in the U.S. even before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the ruling that protected the right to abortion for nearly five decades. A two-pill combination of mifepristone and another drug is the most common form of abortion in the U.S.”
“U.S.-Nicaragua links began unraveling more than a decade ago as it became clear that Ortega — a former rebel who fought another Nicaraguan dictator — wouldn’t leave the presidency. Relations worsened over the past five years as Ortega and Murillo strengthened their grip.
The Trump administration imposed economic sanctions and other penalties, mainly targeting individuals such as Murillo, in 2018, a year when the regime brutally cracked down on widespread protests.
In June 2021, Secretary of State Antony Blinken told his Nicaraguan counterpart that the United States could ease up on those penalties if Nicaragua were to move back toward democracy and improve its human rights record. (Abuses such as torture and extrajudicial executions in Nicaragua may constitute crimes against humanity, a U.N. investigative panel said earlier this month.)
Blinken’s message failed to sway the ruling power couple. Over the next few months, Ortega and Murillo imprisoned more dissidents ahead of an election.
The U.S. responded by slapping sanctions on a Nicaraguan state-owned mining company and banning visas for hundreds of Nicaraguan officials and their relatives. Biden also issued orders in October that authorized his administration to impose future sanctions on various economic sectors in Nicaragua, as well as trade and investment.”
“on one cultural issue that did hurt Republicans in the midterm elections — abortion — DeSantis is going even further to the right, preparing to sign a bill banning the procedure after six weeks of pregnancy, with exceptions for rape and incest if victims offer proof of a crime.
“Wow,” said Amy Tarkanian, a former chair of the Republican Party in Nevada, where DeSantis traveled over the weekend. “A lot of people don’t even know they’re pregnant at six weeks. I’m pro-life, but that’s pretty extreme.””
…
““If you’re running for president, you ain’t got no choice,” said Jason Roe, a former executive director of the Michigan Republican Party and adviser to Florida Sen. Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential campaign. “On the abortion issue, if you don’t go as far right as the oxygen will allow you to go, it’s a vulnerability in a Republican primary. That’s just life.””
“President Joe Biden ditched Trump’s brawling style. But he is keeping some of the former president’s key policies in place that are disliked by CEOs — including tariffs on imports from China and the EU and pressure on U.S. companies to cut their vast overseas supply chains to manufacture in America.
Biden has also stocked key agencies with people who have dedicated their careers to antitrust enforcement — including Lina Khan at the Federal Trade Commission and Jonathan Kanter at the Justice Department. In the last week alone, regulators have moved to blow up both a proposed airline merger and a major Wall Street deal, while attacking lucrative fees slapped on consumers by banks, cable providers and myriad other businesses.”
“The executive action directs Attorney General Merrick Garland to address a background check loophole by clarifying the definition of “engaged in the business” of selling firearms. The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act passed last summer updated federal law, requiring anyone who sells guns for profit to be licensed and conduct background checks on buyers. By clarifying who qualifies as a gun dealer, the federal law will require a greater number of sellers to conduct background checks on prospective buyers.
Biden’s latest gun policy rollout, which he announced at the Boys & Girls Club of West San Gabriel Valley, comes amid a deadly year. Almost four months into 2023, there have been 109 mass shootings in which four or more people were injured or killed, according to the Gun Violence Archive. As the violence continues even after the passage of the first gun legislation in 30 years, major gun safety groups have pleaded with Biden to act alone as Congress appears unlikely to reach further compromise on the issue.”
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“The executive order also directed members of Biden’s Cabinet to focus on raising public awareness of red flag laws and safe storage of guns and to address the loss and theft of firearms, the official said. The president also took additional steps aimed at holding gun manufacturers accountable, including by encouraging the Federal Trade Commission to analyze and report how gun manufacturers market firearms to minors.”
“Extreme weather events of the past few years — including the 2022 heat wave that sent temperature records tumbling across much of Europe, and the floods that devastated Pakistan last year — have surprised some of the world’s top climate scientists with just how far they sat outside the normal range.
Experts still know relatively little about when and where these types of extreme climate events will happen. Or what happens when two events, like a drought and a heat wave, hit one place simultaneously. That’s because scientists have tended to look at broader averages across regions, rather than the most intense extremes in specific locations.
“We haven’t asked the models [to] come up with an outrageously high temperature number, like 50 degrees in Canada” — a mark reached during a heat wave in 2021 — “and work out how likely that is or if that’s possible,” said Friederike Otto, an author of the IPCC report and senior lecturer at Imperial College London. “And I think that’s why these are surprises.””
“he U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an international body made up of the world’s leading climate scientists. Its latest report on the science and consequences of global warming was seven years in the making, writes POLITICO’s E&E News reporter Chelsea Harvey.
“The report clearly notes that the effects of climate change grow worse and worse with every little incremental bit of additional warming,” Chelsea told Power Switch. “So it’s imperative to reduce emissions as swiftly as possible in order to limit even worse outcomes in the future as much as we can.”
The assessment sends a warning that the effects of climate change are already happening. And humanity is not on track to curb carbon pollution from fossil fuel production, agriculture and other sources enough to halt warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius, the most ambitious international target.
In fact, at the rate the world is burning carbon, the 1.5 C threshold will likely arrive in the next decade.
The world has already warmed 1 degree since the preindustrial era. Wildfires, floods, droughts and hurricanes are growing more severe. Sea levels are swelling as coastal communities and island nations face existential threats from encroaching waters.
Intensifying droughts and agricultural disruptions are creating food and water insecurity. Infectious diseases are surging. And people around the world are increasingly being displaced by climate-fueled disasters.
Human mortality rates from climate disasters were 15 times higher in highly vulnerable regions of the world, compared with more developed places, the report found.”
“NEPA itself isn’t really the main problem, former regulators say.
While the NEPA process gets the blame for hold-ups, it’s merely a tracking process for all agency and permitting decisions along the timeline of a project, said Ted Boling, a partner at the law firm Perkins Coie who represents the companies building Cardinal-Hickory Creek.
Delays are more often a result of agency capacity and inadequate information provided by project sponsors, he said. He noted that Congress used the Inflation Reduction Act to provide $1 billion for beefing up agencies’ permitting staff, but that effort has not yet been realized.
“Everyone’s looking for their bright idea on how to make it all taste better and be less filling,” said Boling, who was a permitting official at the Interior Department and CEQ during both Republican and Democratic administrations. “Everybody is in relentless pursuit of improvements to the point where we’re tripping over ourselves.”
In addition, the vast majority of energy projects nationwide fall outside NEPA, so the changes Republicans are seeking would not affect them.”