Not Funny

 

Balls

Gavin Newsom picks the West’s most complicated fight

His final legislative push is angering insurance companies, wildfire victims and local officials — and billions of dollars are at stake.

By Noah Baustin, Jeremy B. White and Camille von Kaenel

With just months left in office, Gavin Newsom is reopening one of California’s most bitter political fights.

At the center of it is a question the state has struggled with for years: When a power company sparks a catastrophic wildfire, who ultimately shoulders the cost?

Newsom took office in the aftermath of the deadly 2018 Camp Fire, which sent Pacific Gas and Electric into bankruptcy and threatened to destabilize the state’s electricity system. Now, as he prepares to leave office and embark on a likely presidential run, he is pushing eleventh-hour legislation that would sharply limit how much utilities can be forced to pay when their equipment sparks a wildfire, in an effort to avoid another financial collapse.

It is an extraordinarily complex — and risky — undertaking, and almost everyone with a stake in California’s wildfire fights has something to lose.

If Newsom gets his way, he’ll anger insurance firms, which argue his proposed changes would upend their marketplace. Local officials worry they won’t be able to secure enough money to rebuild after future fires. And wildfire victims, fearing that future survivors could be shortchanged, staged a recent protest on the steps of the governor’s mansion.

Utilities are making the opposite case, warning that without changes, the system could deliver a severe blow to their finances.

The fight has spurred millions of dollars in advertising blitzes from outside groups looking to sway voters and lawmakers. Opponents are already calling the proposal a corporate and utility “bailout.”

But Newsom argues that doing nothing also carries enormous risks. It may be his last chance to resolve an issue that has haunted his entire time in office, and that could disrupt the state’s power system in the years to come. California’s electricity costs are already among the highest in the nation, fueled in part by the costs of making the grid more fire-resistant.

“Here’s my response to those that don’t want change: It’s untenable,” the governor said on Wednesday. “The status quo is not going to work.”

If Newsom runs for president, his opponents will be eager to highlight the state’s most intractable issues, from homeless encampments sprawled across city sidewalks to homeowners struggling to rebuild incinerated properties — and, of course, costly electricity. Newsom now has less than five months left as governor to do something about that problem.

The controversy points to the difficulty of retaining California’s status as a pioneer in renewable energy and climate policy while also shoring up a power system increasingly strained by wildfire costs. There’s just over a week left in the legislative session, and Newsom has shared his proposal with lawmakers, but there’s still no bill in print. That’s intensified criticism, with wildfire survivors accusing the governor of negotiating an opaque, utility-friendly deal.

“There is literally nothing about this situation that does not include tradeoffs,” said Kate Gordon, who headed the state’s catastrophic wildfire commission when she led the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research under Newsom. “There is not a political win-win-win where everyone walks away with what they want.”

Baptism by fire

Newsom was elected governor just two days before Pacific Gas & Electric equipment sparked the Camp Fire, which burned the town of Paradise, then the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California history. Weeks after he took office, PG&E filed for bankruptcy, setting off a scramble among the scores of people and entities the distressed company owed money. Insurance companies, financial firms, local governments and wildfire survivors all had to duke it out in court.

In the end, the heavyweight institutions secured multibillion-dollar settlements, but survivors weren’t compensated enough to cover the full cost of rebuilding, according to Newsom’s office.

That fact, they say, is animating the governor now.

Back in 2019, Newsom ultimately oversaw the creation of a ratepayer- and shareholder-funded wildfire fund, a behemoth back-up pot of money that power companies can tap to cover claims from fires they spark.

Newsom acknowledged to reporters this month that critics called that first effort a “bailout,” too. He faced similar criticism last year, when he successfully pushed state lawmakers to reup the fund to make sure it had enough money to cover the tens of billions of dollars in claims against Southern California Edison for starting the Eaton Fire in Pasadena in January 2025.

Michael Wara, a Stanford scholar who served as a consultant to the state Senate during the PG&E bankruptcy, called the episode eight years ago a “baptism by fire” for Newsom and his closest energy aides. It left such a lasting impact, he said, that it continues to shadow them as they look to the next big chapter.

“This is not easy politics,” Wara said. “But having a second utility bankruptcy while Governor Newsom is running for president would not be easy politics either.”

One last attempt at a fix

Thorny questions of who pays for what have only grown more challenging over Newsom’s tenure, as climate change’s impacts intensify and mounting costs increase the strain on utilities, homeowners, and insurers.

Power companies across the fire-prone West are increasingly shaping legislation aimed at lowering their costs and remaining solvent, while insurance companies are hiking their premiums or pulling out of fire-prone regions altogether. California Assemblymember Cottie Petrie-Norris, a Democrat who chairs the energy committee, has warned that tinkering with wildfire costs does little to solve the larger crisis.

“If we make a bunch of changes, but we’re just shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic, that doesn’t feel like a very productive use of our time or energy,” Petrie-Norris said.

But the scale of the Eaton Fire last year, which raised the specter of a Southern California Edison bankruptcy, made clear the system is more fragile than even Newsom or lawmakers expected.

To prevent power companies from collapsing financially when they spark big wildfires, Newsom wants to stop insurers from suing them to recoup what they paid policyholders.

He also wants to bar financial firms from purchasing those claims from insurance companies, which can bring deep-pocketed competitors into a utility bankruptcy proceeding.

And he wants to create a state-run fast-pay program to get cash to wildfire survivors quickly.

Unsurprisingly, that’s drawn the ire of the insurance industry, which argues that it would have to raise rates to compensate for the loss of income.

Local governments have taken issue with a provision that would prevent them from recouping the full replacement cost of damaged infrastructure from power companies.

And prominent wildfire victim groups are against the plan because Newsom wants to limit how much survivors can recover from utilities that spark blazes.

Newsom’s proposal would bar anyone who wasn’t within the perimeter of a fire from getting compensation for emotional distress, and it would cap claims at $150,000 for anyone who fled the “zone of danger.” (People who were injured or witnessed a family member get injured could still bring an unlimited claim for emotional distress.)

“The proposal would cripple fire survivors,” said Joy Chen, executive director of the Every Fire Survivor’s Network.

Altogether, the chorus of opponents is arguing that rather than fix California’s wildfire problems, the proposal could simply shift more of the bill from now-profitable power companies onto everyday people.

“If the utilities are concerned about the cost of wildfires, and it’s untenable, they have to ask themselves, ‘What can we do to stop wildfires?’” said Chris Holden, a former California Democratic lawmaker who chaired the Assembly energy committee and wrote the 2019 bill that created the first wildfire fund. He now leads LA Fire Justice, a group of lawyers who represent wildfire survivors.

“If you do something wrong, you have to be held responsible,” Holden said.

The Newsom administration has been fending off that characterization of its proposal, arguing that it would maintain utility accountability while easing upward pressure on electricity rates.

“California is the only state in the nation that holds investor-owned electric utilities strictly liable for damages caused by their equipment, even if the company was not negligent,” Cynthia Stein, Newsom’s senior counselor for the LA recovery, wrote in a letter last week. “This would not change under this proposal.”

Looking ahead to 2028

The dicey politics of the issue haven’t factored into Newsom’s decision to elevate it in his final months in office, spokesperson Bob Salladay said. He noted Newsom has been steeped in wildfire recovery issues since the opening weeks of his term.

“This is so outside of any political calculation because of the deep damage from these wildfires,” Salladay said. “It doesn’t matter if someone is running TV ads against you or someone is mad at you. It’s too big of an issue.”

Gordon said Newsom had little choice but to tackle an issue that touches on core concerns for voters both in California and nationally as he prepares to leave office and looks ahead to a potential presidential run.

Just this month, California’s chief energy regulator called wildfire “the enemy” of energy affordability. The credit downgrades now looming over California’s utilities could drive those costs even higher. Meanwhile, high electricity rates have become a top issue for voters, driving both of the candidates to replace Newsom to make energy costs a focal point of their campaigns.

“It’s such a top-of-mind issue for people really viscerally — (energy costs) are where affordability is hitting people in a real way,” Gordon said. “That’s an issue for him as head of state now, but this is going to be an issue for him in whatever he chooses to do next, so I think he has to address it.”

Need to stop the revolving door.....

White House official’s move to oil company she aided raises ethics questions

Brittany Kelm’s departure from the White House to lead the Washington office of a Houston oil company has raised questions about the close proximity between a government official and the interests of a private corporation.

By Ian M. Stevenson, James Bikales and Scott Waldman

People milling around before a press conference in Santa Barbara, California, in early June might have mistaken Brittany Kelm, a White House staffer, for an oil company representative.

During the tour of oil facilities run by Sable Offshore Corp., a company that owns an offshore pipeline which the Trump administration had recently helped to get oil flowing through, Kelm sported a Sable-branded cap and a Sable-branded shirt with her name embroidered on it, according to a photograph she posted to LinkedIn.

“We’ve unleashed California’s offshore oil production!” Kelm, a senior energy adviser for the White House’s National Energy Dominance Council, wrote in the post.

Less than three months later, Kelm would announce her departure from her job at the council to take over Sable’s Washington policy office. The move, even by Washington’s normally swampy standards, threatens to erode the lines between public officials and the industries they interact with, according to experts and former government ethics officials.

More specifically, it gives rise to questions about how the company’s new lead at its Washington office will represent its interests while abiding by ethics requirements.

The Trump administration as late as June hailed Kelm’s work helping to restart the pipeline system off the California coast owned by Sable, despite the objections of state and local officials. Indeed, both she and the administration made her heavy involvement very publicly clear for months in official statements and social media posts.

Top administration officials even touted her work on behalf of the company on LinkedIn, the professional networking platform that’s become vital to career mobility and advancement in many industries.

“Brittany Kelm never gave up on Sable Offshore Corp.,” Jarrod Agen, executive director of the National Energy Dominance Council, wrote on LinkedIn shortly after the June visit. Her work “unlocked production in California,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, who chairs the council, said in a statement last week praising her work at the White House.

At the Santa Barbara event in June, Sable’s CEO Jim Flores thanked the Cabinet members and council for their help, saying that “you don’t get a project like this off the ground without help from everybody, top to bottom.”

“Jarrod and Brittany, thank you for your help working with that,” he said.

Kelm’s work as a government official subjects her to strict ethics laws before and after she took the job with Sable, according to five ethics experts. The rules should have barred her from doing any work related to Sable after starting to negotiate her new job and prohibited her for life from appearing before any federal agency on certain specific matters she worked on at the White House, they said.

While departing government for the private sector is not inherently improper, “the ethics concern arises when that distance between an official’s public responsibilities and the private employment is so exceptionally close together, particularly when the official moves directly to a company whose interests she personally worked on while exercising governmental authority,” said Davina Hurt, director of government ethics at Santa Clara University’s Markkula Center for Applied Ethics. “That is what sort of has red flashing lights to me about the ethical implications of that change.”

Kelm and Sable did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story.

The White House said Kelm did not work on “official” matters with Sable while negotiating a job with the company — as is prohibited by ethics laws — and Kelm does not plan to work on any “ongoing official matters” between Sable and the administration when she takes on her new role as vice president of policy and commercial. It is unclear when her first day at Sable will be; she left the White House Aug. 14 and said on LinkedIn that this week was her first in the “private sector.”

In a statement, White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said White House employees follow ethics laws.

“As is standard practice in every administration, White House employees coordinate their departures with ethics officials to ensure full compliance with all applicable guidelines and restrictions during offboarding,” Rogers said. “The media’s continued attempts to fabricate conflicts of interest are irresponsible and reinforce the public’s distrust in what they read.”

Before joining the council, Kelm worked for three months as a senior policy adviser in the Interior Department. For the seven years before that, she worked at various oil companies, including Shell.

The council has been particularly keen on wresting jurisdiction over the small oil pipeline off the coast of Santa Barbara, owned by Sable. Production had been idle for years at the offshore platforms following a 2015 oil spill, but the Houston-based company bought the infrastructure in 2024 and has worked to bring the system back online.

‘Let’s go Sable’

The company has faced pushback from California regulators, who are trying to clamp down on oil and gas activity off their coast. But its bid to turn on the spigots dovetailed with Trump’s efforts to challenge blue states’ aims to transition away from fossil fuels.

After Sable sent a letter to council leaders last September asking for assistance, help arrived from the administration, which seized oversight of the pipeline from the state. Agen said in February that his office was “working with Sable,” and then the Department of Energy in March ordered a restart of the platforms’ oil production, citing emergency powers.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, has sued the administration over Energy Secretary Chris Wright’s emergency order, joining a set of other legal challenges to the project. Earlier this week, a federal judge assigned to the case ruled that oil can keep flowing in the pipeline.

Kelm heavily touted her work with Sable on LinkedIn, writing “We are bringing more US production online ASAP 🇺🇸 let’s go Sable Offshore Corp.” In January, she highlighted on LinkedIn the administration’s work ensuring that Sable’s pipeline wouldn’t be stopped by litigation after lawsuits from the state were first filed earlier that fall.

“Thank you Sable Offshore Corp. for trusting the Trump Administration to deliver on regulatory certainty for your operations to provide Americans with affordable and reliable energy,” she wrote.

In a LinkedIn post on June 5, Kelm posted photos of her visit to Sable’s California property along with Burgum, Wright and Rogers, the White House spokesperson.

“The list of energy projects we have permitted and gotten to (final investment decisions) is too long for a LinkedIn post,” Kelm wrote in a parting post on Monday, adding that she has been referred to as a “deal closer” and had been the lead official working on oil and gas development issues at the council.

“The revolving door between government and the private sector is nothing new, but it’s troubling how brazenly and frequently it’s been on display of late,” one oil industry executive told POLITICO regarding Kelm’s move from the White House to Sable.

Anthony Martinez, a spokesperson for California’s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, called the council a “taxpayer-funded lobbying shop for the fossil fuel industry, dressed up to look official while it guts clean air and water protections and tramples on states’ rights.”

“It should surprise no one that a senior official from what is really Big Oil’s personal concierge service inside the White House is now heading straight to the payroll of the company she spent her time at the White House clearing a path for,” Martinez said.

Trump admin cuts ethics guardrails

Presidents since Barack Obama have issued executive orders strengthening revolving door requirements for administration officials both before and after their time in government, which have imposed requirements beyond those required by federal law.

Trump administration officials are bound by the least restrictive ethics requirements of any presidential administration in the last 15 years. While Trump in his first term implemented a similar order, last year he rescinded a Biden-era ethics order but never issued a new one.

But criminal statutes that limit former officials from taking on the same projects they advanced while in government are still in effect.

Former officials are subject to a lifetime ban on attempting to influence the government on specific matters they were “personally and substantially” involved in as an official, such as contracts and grants, according to federal law. They also face a one-year prohibition against communicating with or making official appearances before their former office.

Jessica Tillipman, associate dean for government procurement law studies at George Washington University Law School, said the statute covering post-government work, as well as another covering pre-employment discussions, are both “highly fact-specific, and both carry criminal penalties.”

“The timing question is critical: when did the employment discussions begin, and what Sable matters was she working on at the time?” Tillipman said. “At that point she had three options: recuse from the Sable matters, terminate job discussions, or obtain a waiver.”

Margaret Dylus-Yukins, who served as an attorney-adviser in the U.S. Office of Government Ethics until March, said in an email that in her new position Kelm is barred from engaging with the White House on any government matter for a year. But she can communicate with other agencies on “broad policy or regulatory issues…so long as she is careful to abide by criminal ethics laws,” said Dylus-Yukins, who is now a senior legal counsel for ethics at Campaign Legal Center.

Another key part of Kelm’s work in the White House was opening up Venezuela’s oil sector after the U.S. deposed former President Nicolás Maduro in January. She traveled to the country on the first commercial flight to Caracas in seven years and touted her work crafting policy that will make it easier for energy companies to begin operations there.

“A highlight of our work at NEDC this year has been establishing diplomatic relations with Venezuela and assisting with the bolstering of Venezuela’s natural resources, specifically with oil and gas and critical mineral development,” she wrote on LinkedIn earlier this summer.

On Tuesday, four days after concluding her White House role, Kelm was in Houston at a signing ceremony for oil contracts with Venezuela’s state-run oil company Petróleos de Venezuela, which she told POLITICO had invited her.

“Happy to be included and invited by PDVSA and the Venezuelans to see the deals we started at NEDC signed,” Kelm said.

They need to: Impeach, Put on trial, and drag if out for 2 years.....

Democrats put Trump’s ‘corruption’ front and center as they plan possible 2027 probes

Planning for a potential majority, House committee leaders say they are staying focused on “the president and the family.”

By Chris Marquette and Riley Rogerson

Democrats haven’t yet won the House majority. But top party leaders are wasting no time in preparing an all-out oversight campaign targeting President Donald Trump, his family and administration should they flip the chamber in November.

At the center of the effort are California Rep. Robert Garcia, who is poised to lead the Oversight Committee under a Democratic takeover, and Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, who is in line to lead the Judiciary Committee. They are each already planning to use their potential gavels to investigate key Trump controversies — such as his acceptance of a Qatari jet for use as his new Air Force One and his family’s massively profitable cryptocurrency investments.

Garcia and Raskin both said in interviews they have a long list of administration officials that they plan to probe and possibly bring before their committees. But each said they intend to focus intently on Trump himself.

“Ideally, it’s the president’s sons and the president and the family,” Garcia said, adding a litany of other members of the Trump inner sanctum he wants to hear from. They include chief of staff Susie Wiles, deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller and son-in-law and foreign envoy Jared Kushner, as well as former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Cory Lewandowski, who served as her chief of staff.

In addition to the crypto profits and the much-criticized Qatari 747, Garcia said he planned to probe federal contracts awarded to members of Trump’s family and the series of pardons Trump has granted early in his second term.

Raskin, a veteran of the investigative onslaught that took place in the second half of Trump’s first term, said he planned to focus on allegations of self-enrichment by Trump and his family — as well as illicit foreign influence on American institutions and rising authoritarianism in government.

“We are going to be looking at systems of bribery, kickback and financial corruption and opportunities for disgorgement and restitution to the American people,” Raskin said. “That would be No. 1.”

Asked to comment on Democrats’ oversight plans, White House spokesperson Olivia Wales responded with a statement outlining Trump’s legislative achievements.

“The President will continue to draw a sharp contrast with his commonsense agenda and radical Democrats who want to massively raise taxes, defund the police, and are soft on crime,” she said. “The choice has never been more clear: doubling down on President Trump’s winning agenda or far-left liberal policies and partisan gridlock.”

Raskin and Garcia are forging ahead even as voters reject some Democrats who were at the forefront of the Trump accountability effort that unfolded eight years ago. And while the preparations Garcia, Raskin and others are making now in many ways resemble how their predecessors planned ahead of the 2018 midterms, there are differences.

Democrats in the leadup to the elections that year warily tiptoed around the prospect of impeachment in fear of alienating voters, and they laid out some investigative targets that did not implicate Trump personally.

Once in power, though, they launched a flurry of investigations aimed at Trump — including the president’s tax returns, his acceptance of foreign “emoluments” and later his effort to leverage aid to Ukraine for political favors. In virtually every case, the administration stonewalled Democratic investigators.

Now, after two impeachments that failed to remove Trump from office and with a party base intent on pulling no punches, House Democrats are reluctant to take anything off the table — while also recognizing the limitations of impeachment as a check on Trump’s power.

“Nobody on the Democratic side is afraid of impeachment,” Raskin said this week, adding that he considers it a “tool in the toolbox.”

The larger project for Democrats if they win power in November is to use subpoena power and public hearings to provide a backbone for the accountability message they intend to continue into the 2028 presidential election season.

Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries emphasized the wide-reaching scope of oversight inquiries during his campaign kickoff speech last month, in which he unveiled House Democratic midterm messaging that included a pledge to “hold the crooks accountable.”

“Anyone,” Jeffries said, “who is stealing from the American people, screwing over the American people, or shortchanging the American people is going to be held accountable beginning on Day 1.”

While the Oversight and Judiciary panels would be the leaders of the investigatory push in a Democratic House, other committees are set to target Trump as well in a bid to deliver the bold action Democratic primary votes have demanded.

Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), a member of the Ways and Means Committee, said he expected the oversight subpanel would be a highly sought-after assignment should Democrats win gavels — with a potential “big” emphasis, he said, on probing Trump family corruption.

He added he was “very concerned” about how the Trump administration has managed the IRS and Social Security, particularly after the Department of Government Efficiency upended federal agencies last year.

“We certainly will exercise our oversight responsibility,” said Rep. Richard Neal of Massachusetts, who is expected to return as Ways and Means chair in a Democratic majority.

Garcia and Raskin, meanwhile, have other pet priorities beyond the personal benefits Trump and his family have allegedly garnered in office.

Raskin said he intends to probe what he deems “fraudulent and vindictive prosecutions” including those of former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Leticia James.

“The prosecution function has been utterly tainted and the Judiciary Committee obviously can’t let that go,” he said.

He has also set his sights on Paramount Skydance’s proposed $110 billion buyout of Warner Bros. Discovery, a deal Democrats have blasted not only as an antitrust violation but also a threat to national security and free speech.

Previewing his intentions for the majority, Raskin requested a transcribed interview with Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison in a letter last week. While he cannot haul Ellison, a close Trump ally, before the committee now as a member of the minority party, Raskin said his inquiry into Paramount would be a “priority” if Democrats win subpoena power.

Garcia, meanwhile, said he is determined to fill in gaps he sees in the GOP-led investigation into the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. He said he wants to bring key witnesses back to testify under oath, potentially in public hearings “because most of them were not called under oath and most of them were not called under subpoena.”

That could include big names in the world of finance, such as Leon Black, the co-founder of Apollo Global Management, and Jes Staley, a former top executive at JPMorgan Chase — both of whom had substantial communications with Epstein and met with the committee privately.

“I think we’re going to have, in the majority, public Epstein hearings,” Garcia said.

The Epstein investigation is similar to the Trump corruption probe in that it would potentially span multiple committees, and Garcia and Raskin both praised each other and said they are planning to work in concert on both issues.

Raskin said he doesn’t envision any issues with coordination between two panels

“There’s enough Trump family corruption to go around,” he said. “I don’t think we have to worry about that. We will just be dividing it up.”

Just fucking with everyone....

Trump pauses quota tariff on 300,000 tons of beef ahead of midterms

Domestic farmers and ranchers are likely to protest any policy that floods the U.S. market with imported product.

By Gregory Svirnovskiy

President Donald Trump on Friday morning said he would exempt from tariffs 300,000 metric tons of imported ground beef, the administration’s latest bid to lower prices ahead of midterm elections in which voters appear set to punish the GOP for the rising cost of living.

“This deal will reduce prices for Americans while giving space for our Great American Beef Herd to grow again,” he wrote on Truth Social. The administration had secured a commitment, he said, “that this beef will be sold at 25 percent below current market prices.”

The president framed the measure as an important tool to let ranchers grow the U.S. beef herd without facing market pressures. But he also shifted blame onto former President Joe Biden, whom he continues to claim bears responsibility for the sky-high prices that have hampered the president’s popularity since returning to the White House some 20 months ago.

“As everyone knows, under President Biden, beef prices soared at their fastest rate and the American beef herd fell to its smallest size in modern history,” he wrote.

Voters, meanwhile, blame the administration for the rising prices. The biggest failure of the president’s second term — many of his own supporters told The POLITICO Poll in July — is the cost of living.

It’s not the first time the president has weighed a temporary tariff reduction on beef. Trump shelved a long-telegraphed White House plan to do just that in May, amid fierce resistance from Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins.

Domestic farmers and ranchers are likely to protest any policy that floods the U.S. market with imported product.

Congress’ funding power

Republicans bristle at Trump’s latest tactics to undermine Congress’ funding power

GOP lawmakers are bracing themselves for a possible rerun of the White House’s “pocket rescission” gambit.

By Jennifer Scholtes

Republican lawmakers are still locked in a power struggle with the White House over control of federal cash, long since President Donald Trump swept back into office with unprecedented orders undermining Congress’ power of the purse.

Earlier this month, GOP senators overwhelmingly agreed to a bipartisan government funding bill that would temporarily block the Trump administration from finalizing a federal rule to let political appointees steer money toward grants “aligned with the president’s agenda.” The House could clear that bill next month, and Trump is expected to sign it to avert a shutdown before the midterms.

And while the days of widespread funding freezes might be over, the Trump administration continues to create new rules for federal grants and then deny funding based on them — only to be repeatedly shot down in court this summer.

Lawmakers in both parties have also blasted White House budget director Russ Vought this year for delaying the release of cash for congressionally backed programs for antipoverty services, foreign assistance, banking in underserved areas and more.

“Congress has appropriated money, and you don’t have the authority to impound it,” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) chastised Vought this spring over the withholding of hundreds of millions of dollars the Trump administration is supposed to send quarterly to states.

Now Republicans are watching for clues about whether Vought, between now and Sept. 30, will claim the authority to nix appropriations in the final weeks of the fiscal year through what’s known as a pocket rescission. He used the move last year to unilaterally cancel $4.9 billion in foreign aid through the legally dubious maneuver.

“Pocket rescissions would be a very interesting way to curry favor with the legislative branch — especially the one part of the legislative branch which has delivered on all of the administration’s shit,” Rep. Mark Amodei of Nevada, a senior Republican appropriator, said in a recent interview.

Indeed, the White House needs the support of GOP appropriators in both chambers to advance Trump administration priorities.

Those top lawmakers have already taken some modest steps to stop the White House from shirking Congress’ intent on spending by inserting stricter language into bipartisan funding bills Trump signed into law for the current fiscal year. That included new rules for shifting money between accounts and more explicit instructions for how dollars should be spent.

Some Republican lawmakers have also been resisting the administration’s push this summer to enact billions of dollars for the military and agriculture programs through another party-line budget reconciliation package. Top House Republican appropriators slammed the White House in June for pursuing a “risky and uncoordinated” strategy to enact funding for the Iran war through a party-line bill that’s not guaranteed to pass.

Relying on the reconciliation process to skirt the Senate filibuster is a key step to achieve the “paradigm shift” Vought has touted throughout Trump’s second term, designed to make funding negotiations “less bipartisan” so Republicans don’t have to agree to nondefense increases in order to get enough votes to boost military budgets.

“At what point did we stop legislating?” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), another senior appropriator, said last month after Vought privately pitched Senate Republicans on the latest party-line plan, which would inherently take funding power away from the appropriations committees.

Murkowski was also among the Senate Republicans who chided the White House for not seeking input from lawmakers before forging ahead with its plan to put political appointees in charge of approving federal grants and minimize the role of the objective peer-review process for selecting recipients of those dollars.

“There was no consultation at all,” she said. “When you start issuing grants based on political connections, that’s not good for the system here.”

Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) publicly called on Vought to extend the public comment period for the plan last month, to no avail.

She also continues to pan the pocket rescission gambit, saying in a recent interview that the administration should “go through the proper process with the Appropriations Committee” if it wants to rescind money intended for a specific program.

Under a decades-old law, the White House is allowed to send Congress a request to revoke funding, then withhold the cash for 45 days while lawmakers consider whether to approve, reject or ignore the proposal. Republicans last summer voted to approve Trump’s request to rescind $9 billion for public media and foreign assistance.

Then Trump used that same law weeks later to send Congress a request to rescind $4.9 billion in foreign aid — this time with less than 45 days left before the end of the fiscal year. Vought immediately declared the funding canceled, arguing that the administration had to withhold the funding until it expired at the end of September, regardless of congressional action.

The Office of Management and Budget did not respond to requests for comment on whether the White House plans to execute new pocket rescissions in the coming weeks. But Trump’s new pick for deputy director at the agency, Hal Duncan, told lawmakers this summer that the agency isn’t ruling out any “fiscal tools.”

House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole said White House officials have given him no assurances that they won’t deploy the tactic again this year and that his reaction would hinge on the type of funding eliminated.

“It would depend on what it is — it really would,” the Oklahoma Republican said last month.

In courtrooms throughout the country, federal judges continue to weigh in on whether Trump is illegally encroaching on Congress’ funding power.

Last month a federal judge declared that the administration can’t cancel grants based on new rules or goals established after the fact. The Trump administration later admitted in a different case that it canceled $7.6 billion “based solely on the political identity of the grant recipient’s state.” Then a federal judge halted changes to teen-pregnancy prevention grants, concluding that it’s unlawful “to impose conditions … that Congress did not intend or that are unreasonable or unexplained.”

The Supreme Court has yet to conclusively rule on the president’s spending tactics, and many Democrats on Capitol Hill argue Republicans shouldn’t rely on the courts to defend Congress’ authority. GOP leaders have repeatedly bucked Democratic calls for action, including to reverse the cancellation of specific grants, nullify Trump’s pocket rescission last fall and head off a future end-run around Congress by barring rescissions requests in the last months of the fiscal year.

“When are our Republican colleagues going to assert our legislative authority?” Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, a top appropriator, said in an interview. “I mean, why in the hell did they run for Congress?”

Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii, a senior appropriator in line to be the No. 2 Democrat in the next Congress, was more charitable.

“I just think there’s a bipartisan desire to get back to the way the Constitution is supposed to operate,” he said in an interview, “where we decide how the money is spent.”

Fatality rate of 47.4%

Congo's Ebola outbreak reaches 5,000 cases as it outpaces response efforts

By The Associated Press

The Ebola outbreak in Congo has reached 5,000 cases, government data showed Wednesday, as responders warn it is spreading at an unprecedented speed outpacing efforts to slow it in one of the country's remotest regions.

Data from Congo's Ministry of Health showed the outbreak had so far recorded 5,021 cases, including 2,378 deaths as of Sunday, as it rages in some of the most challenging conditions imaginable fueled by insecurity, displacement and intense population movements.

The outbreak has infected and killed more people at a greater speed than any other outbreak in history. The World Health Organization estimates it will likely surpass the outbreak of 2014 to 2016 across West Africa, which was the deadliest Ebola outbreak on record with more than 11,000 deaths.

Starting from the first detected case, the current outbreak has spread about three times faster than the deadliest on record.

The outbreak "has spread rapidly and the risk of further national and international spread remains high," WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Tuesday at a meeting convened by the agency.

"We must be frank: the epidemic is far from being under control," he said.

Thérèse Anyiya, a nurse working in Ituri's capital Bunia, said she is exhausted by the work demands and poor working conditions. Some health workers have gone on strike after not being paid.

"If the managers don't take things seriously, we too will end up withdrawing. The way this epidemic is being managed is exhausting," Anyiya told The Associated Press.

A key challenge has been the lack of approved vaccines or treatments for the rare Bundibugyo virus, which is responsible for the current outbreak. Most new cases are being reported outside of the people being monitored, showing it has spread quickly and left surveillance teams racing to catch up.

Lack of information in Ituri causes attacks on health workers

Ituri, the province that has been hit the worst by the outbreak, has become a primary location for violence that has limited the response as health workers are targeted.

Residents on Monday attacked a health team in the territory of Aru after a suspected case was reported there. A mob set fire to an ambulance and damaged two other vehicles, according to Michael Wani, president of the Union of Cultural Associations for the Development of Ituri.

Dr. Martin Cwinyay, who is involved in the Ituri response efforts, explained it is "essential to bring the response closer to the people, particularly in rural, mining and displacement areas."

Trish Newport, an emergency coordinator with Doctors Without Borders, known by its French acronym MSF, said not all the people in the impacted areas have the essential information they need.

"The community needs to be aware about the outbreak. They need to be involved in the response. They need to know what the signs and symptoms are and what to do if they get sick," Newport said.

Limited care is resulting in more deaths

Experts believe the virus began spreading from the mining town of Mongbwalu as early as February, months before authorities declared the outbreak on May 15.

Responders racing to catch up are also battling several other challenges including threats by rebel groups, anger from communities that have been traumatized for years and bad roads into the affected territories.

Although the 2014-2016 outbreak is considered the deadliest among the virus types that causes Ebola disease, government data shows this Bundibugyo outbreak has killed a higher percentage of people as care and support are not getting to patients quickly enough, while many are not reporting symptoms or doing so late.

The situation also varies across the six affected provinces. While the case fatality rate is so far 47.4%, it is far worse in some places where response efforts are more challenging, such as in North Kivu province where the fatality rate is 70%.

If they do, they need to use Velcro, since it will be ripped off again...

Kennedy Center says it will add Trump’s name back to building in early September

By Devan Cole

The Kennedy Center plans to add President Donald Trump’s name back to the front of its building in early September, lawyers for the institution told a federal judge.

The revelation came in court filings submitted late Tuesday as part of a protracted legal fight over the fate of the historic preforming arts venue and memorial to the late President John F. Kennedy, which just last week voted, once again, to close its doors for a yearslong renovation and to add the president’s name to its marble façade.

The latest change would see the addition of an inscription below the Kennedy Center’s sign that says the venue was “Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump.”

Another add to the front referencing Trump could come later if an endowment reaches $100 million, the board said. The center also plans to rename the physical site the building sits on in honor of Trump.

A federal judge had previously ruled that the center’s board violated the law when it added Trump’s name alongside that of Kennedy, the 35th president, and lawyers representing Democratic Rep. Joyce Beatty, who brought the legal challenge, plan to ask him to step in again to block this latest change. The center told the court in the filing that they won’t add Trump’s name back until September 8 at the earliest.

“This Court should not permit defendants to effectuate this latest gambit, in direct contravention of its earlier decision and in naked defiance of the law,” lawyers for Beatty told US District Judge Christopher Cooper, urging him to decide whether adding Trump’s name back to the building is lawful before September 8.

The lawyers blasted the center for its decision to “refuse to unequivocally commit to forestall effectuation” of the latest name change until Cooper has a chance to decide whether or not it’s legal.

The case is one of several questioning the legality of Trump’s efforts to leave a lasting mark on historic sites in and around Washington, DC, by renovating buildings or adding new memorials. The center’s board, which is stacked with individuals picked by the president, is trying to close the center for extensive renovations to the building, but critics contend that the plans were cooked up so the center wouldn’t continue to face slumping ticket sales and lackluster programming.

Earlier this summer, Trump’s name was removed from the front of the building after Cooper, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, ruled the venue could only be named for Kennedy. Crews standing on scaffolding erected outside the building worked behind tarps to take down the letters spelling out “The Donald Trump and.”

But since then, the tarps have remained, obscuring the public’s view of the official name of the building.

The center had previously said that the tarps and scaffolding needed to remain up so workers could address damage to the part of the building where Trump’s name used to be. But in Tuesday’s filing, they said the scaffolding was still in place to help workers “investigate, and engineer structural repairs to the overhead soffit.”

Beatty’s lawyers say that explanation falls flat since “the soffits are some twenty feet or more above the scaffolding.” They’re asking Cooper to issue an order that would require the center to explain why the tarp should not be taken down in coming weeks.

“Defendants imply that they will erect more scaffolding around the rest of the Center, presumably to examine other portions of the roof,” they wrote. “But defendants tellingly have not done so for months, leaving only the Center’s iconic name obscured – a strong indication that this structure has nothing to do with the roof and is, instead, meant to defy a return to the status quo.”

The line about trump's whore makes me smile....

Jon Ossoff’s ‘travel with Natalie’ shows how candidates win attention in a culture of clips

Analysis by Brian Stelter

Sen. Jon Ossoff knew exactly what he was doing by invoking President Trump’s “travel with Natalie” the other day.

Google searches for Trump’s executive assistant Natalie Harp spiked by 5,000%. News outlets hurried to meet the demand for information by publishing new stories about Harp.

Liberal commentators cheered Ossoff while conservative commentators condemned him. Tuesday afternoon on Fox News, a bemused Jesse Watters remarked, “This is the first time we have covered Ossoff on this show in six years.”

That’s hard to believe, but it amounts to a victory for Ossoff, 39, who is running for re-election in Georgia while some Democrats dream about him running for president in 2028.

His “travel with Natalie” line — part of a broader but still just TikTok-length argument that Trump “doesn’t want to do the job” of president — showed a sophisticated understanding of the social media environment.

The comment at a rally last Sunday titillated, provoked and enraged different audiences simultaneously, all but guaranteeing saturation news coverage and even more attention.

Video clips of the comment were approvingly shared on X and other sites by Trump critics who had previously questioned Trump’s working relationship with Harp, 35.

“Pod Save America” co-host Tommy Vietor wrote that Ossoff was “winking” at the subject, and “the question now is whether this will kick up a round of actual reporting by news outlets.”

It did, in part because audiences were hungry for more information, and in part because of the White House’s aggressive pushback against Ossoff.

On Tuesday morning, an article titled “Who is Natalie Harp?” ranked as the most-read story on CNN’s website.

Vietor told CNN that Ossoff’s campaign “is doing a great job of peppering his speeches with new lines and attacks on Trump that are designed to get clipped and go viral.”

“In the old days, we called that putting a topper on a stump speech, which was designed to give the press something new and topical to write about,” Vietor said. “What’s odd is how few candidates seem to be executing what was once the most basic campaign tactic!”

Mastering the clipping economy

Some of Ossoff’s newfound fans know him mostly from clips — one or two-minute-long videos that travel wide and far on social media platforms.

Candidates are increasingly thinking in terms of clips when they deliver speeches and appear on TV shows, but some are obviously much more comfortable with the so-called “clipping economy” than others.

Ossoff is a natural. Clippable moments from his campaign speeches have repeatedly taken off on social media platforms and garnered millions of views.

Earlier this summer, veteran political journalist Jonathan Martin, now a columnist and host for Politico, said “the Ossoff model” entails a “weekend rally, clips delivered for social media and a tight corruption focus.”

Ossoff’s most recent viral moment also emphasized alleged corruption: His full sentence invoking Harp was, “He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the Emir of Qatar.”

“Travel with Natalie” led some on the right to accuse Ossoff of sexism, which in turn led some on the left to invoke Trump’s own track record, and on and on it went — just the type of political bickering that’s amplified and incentivized by social media algorithms.

Watters, on Fox, seemed to see through it all. “To suggest that Trump surrounds himself with attractive women — yeah, he’s done that his whole life, I don’t think he’s very upset about the comment,” he said.

The Fox host went on: “Am I fazed by this comment? No. Has Trump said so much worse, so much more sleazy things against other people? Yes. Have I defended those things? Absolutely. So I’m not going to pretend I’m all hot and bothered about it. And the president doesn’t care.”

But Fox proceeded with a full segment about it anyway, further amplifying Ossoff’s message.

Amanda Litman, president of Run for Something, which works to get young progressives elected, said “younger candidates, at basically every level, are fluent in the internet. They understand the lingua franca. They know their strengths and they lean into them.”

For Ossoff, she told CNN, that’s delivering speeches “that can be clipped up, because that’s really his strength.”

Litman said she senses that winning candidates are thinking more about social reach and attention versus individual TV hits or other one-off media appearances.

At rallies, she said, “It’s not just what’s happening in the room, it’s what the room can be cut up into for later use.”

The strategy is evident all across the political spectrum, not just among Democrats like Ossoff. It calls to mind something that Democratic Rep. Ritchie Torres said about Zohran Mamdani back when the New York City mayor was running for office last year.

Torres told reporter Astead Herndon that Mamdani had mastered the “three threes,” meaning a 30-second social media video, a three-minute television segment and a three-hour long-form podcast.

Miami tied its all-time high temperature of 100 degrees.......

Miami hit an all-time record on Tuesday. It’s more significant than you think

By Andrew Freedman

Miami tied its all-time high temperature of 100 degrees Fahrenheit on Tuesday, amid a sprawling heat wave that is affecting areas from Texas to the Southeast. The heat wave, caused by a stalled-out heat dome, continues on Wednesday.

Yes, it’s significant that Miami tied its all-time record. It’s another example of the extreme warming trend caused by climate pollution. But perhaps what’s more surprising is how relatively cool the record is in Miami — a city with a reputation for being hot.

As Miami hit 100 degrees on Tuesday, parts of Oklahoma saw high temperatures soar well past that, with Kingfisher reaching 112 degrees, a record high there for the date. The all-time hottest temperature on record anywhere in Florida is 109 degrees. Oklahoma’s is 120 degrees. Minnesota’s is 115 degrees.

So what’s up with Florida?

The relatively low all-time record in Miami is tied to its proximity to the ocean and the city’s typically high levels of humidity. It is more difficult for the sun’s energy to heat very humid air to extreme levels than it is to raise the temperature of dry air. A lot of the solar energy goes into evaporating the moisture in the air, so in drier climates, more of the Sun’s energy can go directly into heating the air.

This is part of the reason the hottest locations in the US are in the desert Southwest, rather than in the humid Southeast.

Still, Miami — and the rest of the Southeast — has been experiencing a sharp increase in extreme heat in recent years, including dangerous combinations of heat and humidity that can cause people to succumb to heat illness.

Miami now has 44 more days with temperatures above normal during the summer months compared to the city’s summer climate during the 1970s, according to the nonprofit climate research and communications group Climate Central.

For the summer months of June, July and August, the city has warmed by 2.6 degrees on average, Climate Central found. The city has seen a huge jump in annual days of dangerously humid heat, going from 50 such days in the 1970s to 117 days in the 2016 to 2025 period, Climate Central researchers found.

They attributed a significant proportion of today’s dangerous heat days — 80 days — to human-caused climate change from burning fossil fuels. Tuesday was a good example of a day with dangerously high levels of heat and humidity, as the heat index, which measures how the air feels to the human body, soared as high as 107 degrees.

Miami is forecast to be unusually hot once again on Wednesday, with heat advisories covering all of the Florida Peninsula, with the exception of the Florida Keys, and a forecast high temperature in the mid-to-upper 90s in the city.