Qatar agrees to kick Hamas out of Doha following US request, sources say

“Qatar agreed in recent weeks to kick Hamas out of its country following a request from the US to do so, capping off months of failed attempts to try to get the militant group – whose top leaders reside in the Qatari capital of Doha – to accept a ceasefire and hostage release deal in the Israel-Hamas war, US and Qatari sources told CNN.
With efforts to pause the war – which has been a top priority for President Joe Biden – firmly stalled, US officials informed their Qatari counterparts about two weeks ago that they must stop giving Hamas refuge in their capital; Qatar agreed and gave Hamas notice about a week ago, sources said.

“Hamas is a terrorist group that has killed Americans and continues to hold Americans hostage,” a senior administration official told CNN. “After rejecting repeated proposals to release hostages, its leaders should no longer be welcome in the capitals of any American partner.”

Throughout the course of the war and negotiations to bring the hostages home, US officials have asked Qatar to use the threat of expulsion as leverage in their talks with Hamas. The final impetus for Qatar agreeing to kick Hamas out came recently after the death of American-Israeli hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin and Hamas’ rejection of yet another ceasefire proposal.

Qatar has been a major player in efforts over the past year to try to secure a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war, in no small part because senior members of the militant group are based in Doha. Major negotiations have taken place in the Qatari capital for that reason.

Exactly when Hamas operatives would be exiled out of Qatar – and where they would go – are unclear.”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/qatar-agrees-kick-hamas-doha-232635018.html

Noah Smith is too down on nuclear energy

“Noah acknowledges, in passing, one particular provision of the existing nuclear regulatory framework on the United States that’s very important: radiation is held to the As Low As Reasonably Achievable (ALARA) standard, which makes it essentially impossible for nuclear to be cost-competitive.
Suppose I had a design for a cost-effective nuclear reactor, and I said I should be allowed to build it, because electricity is good and air pollution is bad. The regulator is going to look at it and say, “Well, that reactor seems awfully cheap to build, why not add a bunch more features to make the radiation levels even lower?” And then I will say, “That would be hideously expensive in a way that is net bad for public health, because it leads to more burning of fossil fuels and worse air pollution.” But the regulator comes back and says, “We’re not using a cost-benefit framework, we’re using ALARA.” And I say, “That doesn’t make sense, coal ash is radioactive — you are creating more radiation by raising my costs.” And the regulator says, “I don’t regulate coal plants, I regulate you — ALARA!”

As Jason Crawford writes, “any technology, any operational improvement, anything that reduces costs, simply gives the regulator more room and more excuse to push for more stringent safety requirements, until the cost once again rises to make nuclear just a bit more expensive than everything else. Actually, it‘s worse than that: it essentially says that if nuclear becomes cheap, then the regulators have not done their job.”

This is a deeply dysfunctional regulatory paradigm, and it reflects the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s origins in 1974 legislation that was explicitly motivated by a belief that the old Atomic Energy Commission was too friendly to the industry.

In 2019, Congress passed the Nuclear Energy Innovation and Modernization Act, which, among other things, “requires the NRC to develop new processes for licensing nuclear reactors, including staged licensing of advanced nuclear reactors.” The hope of NEIMA’s proponents was to change 45 years of the NRC fundamentally being an agency that says “no” to stuff and make them into an agency that would create a regulatory pathway under which new kinds of nuclear reactors could be licensed and built. And after several years, the NRC did get around to writing the new rules for SMRs, but they came up with an even longer and more cumbersome regulatory process.

Earlier this summer, the ADVANCE Act reiterated Congress’s determination for the NRC to change.

But the NRC staff, to the best of my knowledge, fundamentally does not believe that America’s elected officials genuinely want them to make it faster and cheaper to build nuclear reactors. And one reason they don’t believe it is that even though the Biden administration says lots of pro-nuclear stuff, has plenty of pro-nuclear appointees, signed the ADVANCE Act, and has done a lot to help with SMRs in terms of financing, they still coughed-up an NRC nominee who basically supports the status quo. You need a team of political appointees at the agency who are willing to both drive change and also personally take the heat when change makes people mad. You can’t “just use nuclear, bro.” You need to put people in place to actually drive specific policy change in a way that will let the industry grow and work.

And of course, even if you did that, it might not work.”

https://www.slowboring.com/p/noah-smith-is-too-down-on-nuclear

Biden Pulls America Even Deeper Into the Middle East

“The U.S. deployment may have been prompted by sudden, unexpected weaknesses in the famous Iron Dome and other Israeli air defense systems. Israeli authorities have heavily censored the aftermath of Iran’s October 1 missile strike, arresting an American journalist who reported on impact sites. And the Lebanese militia Hezbollah has been increasingly able to penetrate Israeli defenses. On Sunday, shortly after the U.S. announced the THAAD deployment, a Hezbollah drone penetrated a military base deep inside of Israel, killing four Israeli troops.
But direct U.S. involvement has also been a long time in the making. After Hamas’ October 2023 attack on Israel, the Biden administration sent two aircraft carriers to the region—an implicit threat to attack anyone who joined in the war. Soon after, American troops deployed to Israel as part of an intelligence sharing mission. In May 2024, the U.S. military landed in Gaza to deliver food to Palestinians under Israeli supervision. That same month, the Biden administration drew up plans for a new Palestinian government run by an American “director-general.”

The direct Iranian-Israeli combat began in April, when Israel bombed the Iranian consulate in Syria, which the Israeli army claimed was being used for threatening military purposes. Two weeks later, Iran fired a barrage of missiles and drones at Israel, and the U.S. military shot down many of the Iranian projectiles outside Israeli airspace. Last month, Israel killed an Iranian general in Lebanon, and Iran again fired missiles at Israeli military bases on October 1. Israel is now planning a much bigger retaliation inside Iran.”

https://reason.com/2024/10/14/biden-pulls-america-even-deeper-into-the-middle-east/

Biden’s historic climate record has one big problem

“The challenge is that permitting is an expensive, tedious, and time-consuming process, sometimes stretching decades. Developers often find there’s a lack of accountability between the local, state, and federal authorities that have a say in granting approval for things like wind energy farms or interstate power transmission lines.
The current system puts a lot of project developers in a frustrating limbo — not a “no,” not a “yes,” but a “maybe, we’ll see” that can stretch indefinitely.

This uncertainty makes it harder for companies to make a business case and often leads to proposals falling apart. The net result is that few things get built at all. In the past decade, the United States has built transmission lines at half the rate as in the 30 years prior. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law included $7.5 billion to build thousands of electric vehicle charging stations, yet only a handful are operating. The American Clean Power Association, an industry group, reports that permitting delays have cost the US economy more than $100 billion in lost investment. Earlier this year, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory surveyed wind and solar power developers and found that one-third of permit applications for placing wind turbines and solar panels in the ground were canceled over the past five years.

These false starts cost businesses a lot of money: The average sunk cost was more than $2 million on average for a canceled solar project and $7.5 million for a scrapped wind farm. The main causes cited for these axed proposals were difficulties in getting approvals from zoning boards, in connecting to the power grid, and opposition from local communities — all issues that inhibit permitting.”

“That brings us to permitting reform. The idea is to change the existing system of rules — smoothing out the application process, setting tighter deadlines, reducing veto points — to get a verdict on projects faster.”

https://www.vox.com/climate/367950/permitting-reform-biden-climate-manchin-renewable-energy

Mark Zuckerberg’s letter about Facebook censorship is not what it seems

“The Biden administration did pressure Meta, as well as its competitors, to crack down on Covid-19 misinformation throughout the pandemic. In 2021, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called it “an urgent threat,” and Biden himself said that misinformation was “killing people,” a statement he later walked back. This pressure was also at the center of a recent Supreme Court case, in which justices ruled in favor of the Biden administration.
We also knew that Meta, then known simply as Facebook, pushed back at efforts to stop the spread of misinformation on its platforms. Not long after Biden’s “killing people” remark, leaked company documents revealed that Facebook knew that vaccine misinformation on its platforms was undermining its own goal of protecting the vaccine rollout and was causing harm. It even studied the broader problem and produced several internal reports on the spread of misinformation, but despite pressure from Congress, Facebook failed to share that research with lawmakers at the time.

We actually learned about the specific kind of pressure the White House put on Facebook a year ago, thanks to documents the company turned over to, you guessed it, Jim Jordan and the House Judiciary Committee.

The Biden administration issued a statement after Zuckerberg’s latest letter became public. It said, in part, “Our position has been clear and consistent: We believe tech companies and other private actors should take into account the effects their actions have on the American people, while making independent choices about the information they present.”

But the Zuckerberg letter didn’t stop with details of the well-known crackdown on Covid misinformation. It also reminds the public of the time, ahead of the 2020 election, the FBI warned social media companies that a New York Post article about Hunter Biden’s laptop could be part of a Russian disinformation campaign. Without mentioning any direct pressure from the government, Zuckerberg says in the letter that his company demoted the laptop story while it conducted a fact-check. He told podcaster Joe Rogan something similar in a 2022 interview, when he mentioned that an FBI disinformation warning contributed to the decision to suppress the story. Twitter also suppressed the laptop story, and its executives denied that there was pressure from Democrats or law enforcement to do so.

Zuckerberg also addresses some donations he made to voting access efforts in the 2020 election through his family’s philanthropic foundation. “My goal is to be neutral and not play a role one way or another — or to even appear to be playing a role,” the billionaire said. “So I don’t plan on making a similar contribution this cycle.” The House Judiciary Committee responded in a tweet, “Mark Zuckerberg also tells the Judiciary Committee that he won’t spend money this election cycle. That’s right, no more Zuck-bucks.” Neither party mentioned that Zuckerberg also declined to make a contribution in the 2022 cycle for the same reasons.

The right is taking a victory lap over this Zuckerberg letter. Others are simply wondering why on earth, on an otherwise quiet week in August, did Zuckerberg even bother to remind us of all of these familiar facts?

https://www.vox.com/technology/369136/zuckerberg-letter-facebook-censorship-biden

Is the Democratic Party a strong party?

“this doesn’t necessarily mean the parties are back to being Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. “There are some strengths and some weaknesses,” she said. For example, the formal rules and structures of the parties are still weak; Democrats had to rely on informal levers of power to oust Biden from the race. All the coordination in the world couldn’t have forced Biden to withdraw without his acquiescence.
And those informal levers only work when elites are united behind a singular goal.”

https://abcnews.go.com/538/democratic-party-strong-party/story?id=113359935

House GOP hits end of Biden impeachment effort

“House Republicans are all but officially giving up on trying to impeach Joe Biden.
GOP lawmakers on the Judiciary, Oversight and Ways and Means committees released a nearly 300-page report on Monday detailing the findings of their impeachment inquiry, accusing Biden of engaging in “impeachable conduct.” The Republicans said they’re still investigating, but even they didn’t directly call for an impeachment vote, leaving that up to the wider GOP Conference.”

“House Republicans have spent months on their investigation, which has largely focused on the business deals of Biden’s family members. A hefty chunk of their report on Monday delves deeply into the financial affairs of Hunter and James Biden, including their business ventures and loans the two received. While the report notes the inquiry remains open, both Comer and Jordan have said their investigations are largely over, though a handful of legal battles remain.

Republicans say they traced $27 million to the Biden family and their associates from foreign entities, and allege that they would not have received the funding had Joe Biden not been in office. They also uncovered examples of Hunter and James Biden leaning on their last name, and their connections to Joe Biden, to bolster their own influence.

But investigators struggled to find clear evidence that shows a direct link between actions Biden took as president or vice president and those business deals or that Biden committed a crime.

Some former business associates told investigators that Hunter Biden would put his father on speakerphone during meetings with potential business partners, though they said the conversation was limited to pleasantries. In other instances, witnesses recalled Joe Biden stopping by dinners or lunches — but that business wasn’t discussed at those moments. Hunter and James Biden have both denied that Joe Biden has been involved in their business deals — a denial repeatedly echoed by the White House.

In their report, GOP investigators argued they didn’t need to show evidence of a crime or a quid pro quo — but that’s exactly what some of their colleagues said they needed to see in order to approve a Biden impeachment. And Democrats quickly claimed victory on Monday, arguing that the report effectively cleared Joe Biden’s name.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/08/19/house-gop-biden-impeachment-00174711

Biden’s DHS Halting Migrant Program Raises Border Security Concerns

Biden’s DHS Halting Migrant Program Raises Border Security Concerns

https://reason.com/2024/08/09/bidens-dhs-halting-migrant-program-raises-border-security-concerns/

Pelosi: ‘I was asking for a campaign that would win’ in talks with Biden

“Nancy Pelosi didn’t want President Joe Biden to step down, the former speaker told ABC News Monday morning. What she wanted, she explained, was “a campaign that would win.”
The California Democrat was instrumental in the behind-the-scenes pressure campaign within her party pushing Biden to end his campaign last month, though she has denied in recent days calling members as the list of Democratic defectors grew.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/08/05/pelosi-campaign-biden-gma-00172648