This morning, Politico hosted a star-studded Playbook Breakfast event with the Creative Coalition, an political advocacy organization for the entertainment industry. During the question and answer period, we asked actress Rosario Dawson about the Republican budget plan, which cuts the corporate tax rate and taxes for millionaires. Dawson, who clarified that she is not a formal member of the Creative Coalition, curtly responded that “no,” celebrities do not need another tax cut. Dawson then followed up and noted that immigrants pay more in taxes than ExxonMobil:
FANG: Hi this is Lee Fang from ThinkProgress. Here in DC after Republicans made large gains in the election last year, the debate started shifting towards giving more tax breaks to large corporations, more tax cuts to the rich. Bank of America for example paid nothing in corporate income taxes last year and now we’re debating the Paul Ryan budget plan that gives large tax cuts to upper income earners. Do you think celebrities or people in the Creative Coalition need another tax cut?
DAWSON: Ok I’m not part of the Creative Coalition but, no.
ALLEN: That’s a lightning round, how’s that!
DAWSON: I will just say immigrants pay more taxes than Exxon!
Watch it:
As we have reported here at ThinkProgress, undocumented immigrants alone paid over $11 billion in taxes into the economy. Tax dodging companies like GE, Bank of America, Boeing, and ExxonMobil routinely pay little to no income taxes at all.
Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-TX) held a “listening session” at Burns Elementary School on Tuesday where he discussed a variety of issues with a crowd of nearly two dozen constituents. One of the attendees uploaded video of the session on YouTube.
At one point during the session, a man asked about drug testing for “welfare recipients.” Farenthold said that this is an idea worth considering, and then went on to complain that unemployment insurance is too generous. He then compared Americans on unemployment insurance to alcoholics and drug addicts:
FARENTHOLD: Drug testing for recipients of various welfare programs, I really think that’s something that needs to be considered. We’ve gotta, you know, nobody wants to starve anybody. Everybody wants to help folks out. But we’ve got a system where you can stay on unemployment for an awfully long time. And I think we need to create a system of decreasing benefits over time to encourage you to get a job. I think anybody who’s had an alcoholic in their life or somebody with a drug problem, realizes that until things get bad enough there’s no incentive to change. I think that we’re so generous in some of our social problems that people are unwilling to get a job outside in the heat. Rather than get 15 dollars to go get roofing they’d rather get 9 or 10 dollars in benefits. I think drug testing is not an unreasonable requirement to get benefits.
Watch it:
Farenthold’s insults towards unemployed Americans are as devoid of factual backing as they are offensive. The reason there are so many unemployed people in his state right now is because the jobs simply do not exist, not that unemployment benefits are too “generous.” The following chart from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows a gigantic jump in unemployment from 2008 to 2011. Unless the congressman is arguing that Texans simply became more lazy during this time or that there was a massive expansion of the welfare state during this time, it appears that the recession is the primary reason to explain unemployment, not meager benefits:
Additionally, it should be noted that U.S. social spending is far from “generous” when compared to other developed countries. Among OECD countries, the United States ranks second to last in social spending, ahead of only Turkey. Goldman Sachs actually studied this issue earlier this year and concluded that “only ½ percentage point of the current 9.4% jobless rate can be explained by the extension of UI benefits. Moreover, our calculations suggest that this effect will fade when the extended benefits eventually expire. These estimates—broadly in line with a recent study by the San Francisco Fed—reinforce our view that the overwhelming share of unemployment is cyclical rather than structural.” (h/t: rgvtpweb YouTube account)
Yesterday, the Florida Senate passed a package of six of the 916 anti-abortion bills working their way through state houses nationwide. The GOP package includes bills to force women to hear a description of their fetus, require ethics training for abortion doctors, strengthen parental consent requirements, and allow money from “Choose Life” license plates to go to an anti-abortion organization.
Florida state senators, however, only passed two of these bills. One bans insurance policies purchased under the health care exchanges set up by the Affordable Care Act from covering abortion. The other? A constitutional amendment to ban public funding and “exempt abortion from the Florida Constitution’s strong privacy right.”
The fact that both federal and state law already prohibit public funding for abortion didn’t stop 27 senators from insisting it be enshrined in the state’s constitution — three more than needed to put it on the 2012 ballot, where it must be approved by voters in order to proceed. The unfortunate redundancy of the measure was completely lost on the amendment’s sponsor, state Sen. Anitere Flores (R), who said, “Should Floridians be forced to pay for something that they don’t agree with? I think the answer is no.”
It was not lost, however, on two Republicans — state Sens. Evelyn Lynn and Dennis Jones — who joined all but one Democrats in opposition. “We know the intent of all these bills and that is to restrict the right of all women as well as to nip away and chip away at Roe versus Wade,” said state Sen. Eleanor Sobel (D).
Lynn was also the only Republican to vote against the bill banning insurance policies from covering abortion because, she said, the bill unfairly targets women:
Lynn argued the bill discriminates against women because public funds are used to buy Viagra and other impotency drugs for men.
“This is not a funny issue,” Lynn said. “All the males on the floor seem to be laughing.”
Florida now joins Montana in pushing for a constitutional amendment on abortion and at least 25 states that already ban, or are working to ban, insurance coverage for abortion under the Affordable Care Act.
ThinkProgress filed this report from Pittsburgh, PA at the NRA’s annual convention.
Shortly after the shooting massacre in Tucson earlier this year, President Obama called on all sides of the guns and gun control issue to come together to figure out ways to avoid future tragedies like Tucson. In March, the administration made good on the pledge and invited National Rifle Association officials to participate in closed-door meetings to hash out a way forward.
However, NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre rejected that offer, despite the fact that various news reports said that in interviews, LaPierre “sounded at times like the White House” on the issue and “favored much of what Obama endorsed.” LaPierre explained his decision, “It shouldn’t be a dialogue about guns; it really should be a dialogue about dangerous people.” An Obama administration official said that it too wanted to “focus on the people, not the guns.” Nevertheless, the NRA was unwilling to talk.
Today, at the NRA’s annual convention in Pittsburgh, ThinkProgress asked a number of NRA members if they thought, in the wake of Tucson, NRA leaders and the Obama administration should, at the very least, sit down and discuss a way forward. While one person we spoke with said, “I really don’t know,” everyone else agreed, “It’s never a bad thing” to have conversation:
TP: I’m wondering if you think it’s a good idea to – or for the NRA leadership, I guess, and the Obama administration to sit down and talk about ways to prevent people like that from getting firearms – just to have a discussion about it.
NRA MEMBER 1: Yeah, a discussion is fine. … It’s never a bad thing to conversate about it. That’s how ideas are formed and things change. [...]
NRA MEMBER 2: It never hurts to talk. [...]
NRA MEMBER 3: If it’s a genuine conversation. [...]
NRA MEMBER 4: I would hope, I think a discussion is warranted. And I would hope there would be what they call some middle ground. … Yes I personally believe yes. I believe there should be discussions on a lot of things like that.
ThinkProgress also spoke with another attendee whose father is a lifetime NRA member. “I think it’s definitely worth a discussion,” she said, adding, “Everything is worth a discussion, so to just kind of get things out on the table and see each other’s point of view to see if there’s a compromise or a different way to do things.” Watch the interview clips:
So if NRA members think it’s a good idea to sit down and talk, why doesn’t the NRA leadership? As former NRA insider Richard Feldman once noted, “Safeguarding the rights of gun owners has become secondary to keeping the fundraising machinery well greased and the group’s senior staff handsomely compensated.” And how does the NRA do that? By making President Obama the enemy. After all, according to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, LaPierre said “gun rights are the safest they’ve been in 25 years.”
Throughout human history, the climate system has been a source of life and death, the sun and rain capable of feeding our crops and bringing us comfort, or unleashing terrible devastation in wind, fire, drought, storm, and flood. Each tragedy that occurs — such as the terrible outbreak of tornadoes and flooding storms this week in the South — reminds us of that awesome power, which is beyond our control and at the limits of our comprehension. We have also learned that humanity is meddling with that power, primarily through the burning of coal and oil that increases the amount of heat trapped in the atmosphere and oceans. Scientists have been warning our leaders for decades that this interference with the climate system is dangerous, and have worked tirelessly to explain how these threats are now coming to pass.
However, the Republican Party is now dominated by ideologues who deny the threat of polluting our climate, even when faced with direct evidence of what the climate system can do to the people they are sworn to protect.
Conservatives attack any discussion of climate policy within the context of the killer tornadoes as “grotesque,” saying that to do so is blaming the victims.
In an email interview with ThinkProgress, Dr. Kevin Trenberth, one of the world’s top climate scientists, who has been exploring for years how greenhouse pollution influences extreme weather, said he believes that it is “irresponsible not to mention climate change” in the context of these extreme tornadoes. Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, added that the scientific understanding of how polluting our atmosphere with billions of tons of greenhouse gases affects tornadic activity is still ongoing:
It is irresponsible not to mention climate change. … The environment in which all of these storms and the tornadoes are occurring has changed from human influences (global warming). Tornadoes come from thunderstorms in a wind shear environment. This occurs east of the Rockies more than anywhere else in the world. The wind shear is from southerly (SE, S or SW) flow from the Gulf overlaid by westerlies aloft that have come over the Rockies. That wind shear can be converted to rotation. The basic driver of thunderstorms is the instability in the atmosphere: warm moist air at low levels with drier air aloft. With global warming the low level air is warm and moister and there is more energy available to fuel all of these storms and increase the buoyancy of the air so that thunderstorms are strong. There is no clear research on changes in shear related to global warming. On average the low level air is 1 deg F and 4 percent moister than in the 1970s.
Climate scientist Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University, explains further that “climate change is present in every single meteorological event”:
The fact remains that there is 4 percent more water vapor–and associated additional moist energy–available both to power individual storms and to produce intense rainfall from them. Climate change is present in every single meteorological event, in that these events are occurring within a baseline atmospheric environment that has shifted in favor of more intense weather events.
Climate scientist Gavin Schmidt, climate modeller at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, concurred:
It is a truism to say that everything has been affected by climate change so far and therefore this latest outbreak must in some sense have been affected, but attribution is hard and the further down the chain the causality is supposed to go, the harder this is. For heat waves it is easier, for statistics on precipitation intensity it easier – there are multiple levels of good modelling, theory and observations to back it up. But we have much less to go on with tornadoes.
Those who deny the threat of polluting our climate system are not to blame for its fury — but none of us can shirk our responsibility to end our interference with the weather.
To find out if loved ones are okay, use safeandwell.org. Text REDCROSS to 90999 to donate $10 to relief efforts.
Video recorded by ThinkProgress Blog Fellow Micah Uetricht, a reporter from the Chicago area.
On Tuesday at a town hall in Sycamore City, IL, freshmen Rep. Randy Hultgren (R-IL) was asked about the nearly $4 billion in taxpayer subsidies Big Oil companies receive every year, which the House GOP recently voted to preserve. A well-informed man in the audience asked Hultgren why he had done nothing to cut the subsidies, in light of the high national debt. The constituent noted that the billions in cuts forced by the GOP in the FY 2011 budget deal from valuable programs like Pell Grants and FEMA is about equivalent to the amount of money given to incredibly profitable oil companies. Hultgren hemmed and hawed before finally saying he would “look into that”:
CONSTITUENT: With the oil industry, we’re giving them $63 billion in oil subsidies. And you cut what, thirty one, thirty two billion?
HULTGREN: Thirty nine billion.
CONSTITUENT: Thirty nine? Why don’t you cut out the subsidies? The depletion allowance that they take, four dollar, every quarter its a record profit. C’mon, you don’t have to subsidize an organization, a group of organizations that every quarter they make so much more than they did the last quarter and the quarter before that and so on. How about cutting that out? It’ll give you a nice tidy sum over ten years.
HULTGREN: I’m very open to looking at every subsidy that we do and questioning why we do this. And I want to know. I want to have the answers there. I just–
CONSTITUENT: But there’s no logic there. None whatsoever.
HULTGREN: Well I’ll look into that. That’s something we just talked about on the way into here.
Watch it:
Hultgren mentioned that he had been talking about the oil subsidies issue earlier that day, but had no answer for the question. Although he claimed that he has been “questioning” the subsidies, Hultgren concealed the fact that earlier this year, around the same time he voted for the GOP’s budget cuts, he voted twice to extend billions in tax subsidies to big oil.
Republicans are facing a growing backlash over oil subsidies. Not only have top lawmakers faced angry constituents and questions from the press, but even Tea Party activists have called for the GOP to stop giving so much taxpayer money to multinational oil companies.
A few Republican lawmakers, like Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA), have called for an end to oil subsidies, as well as all other energy subsidies.
On Wednesday, Rep. Michael Grimm (R-NY) held a town hall meeting with constituents in Brooklyn. As video posted on YouTube shows, his constituents peppered him with questions about the GOP budget and were clearly outraged by his vote to end Medicare and give even more tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans.
During one exchange, a frustrated constituent who works in the medical industry explained that we can’t dismantle Medicare because it would devastate seniors, drawing huge applause from the audience. Later, a frustrated Grimm asked the audience if they were all against the GOP budget, to which they responded with a chorus of “Yes!” The audience repeatedly demanded an end to the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. Watch a video compilation of highlights from the town hall:
“I think most of the people here did not buy what he was selling,” Grimm constituent Peggy Devane told local news source WNYC. “He didn’t listen to people. He said yes, yes. He followed his script and he is Republican and it is what he thinks.” (h/t: YouTube account taxdayvideosny)
Oklahoma state Rep. Sally Kern (R), who said this week that “blacks” don’t work as hard as white people, will not be admonished by the Oklahoma House’s GOP leadership. Kern issued a written apology claiming she “misspoke” when she said during a 10-minute floor speech on Wednesday that African Americans and women don’t work as hard as whites or men because they’re dependent on the government and men, respectively.
The NAACP says that’s not enough, calling on Kern to resign. “You cannot commit racism and then offer an apology for the racist statement that you make,” Anthony Douglas, the president of the Oklahoma NAACP, said. “The citizens of Oklahoma, the constituents, can no longer stand by and allow this type of action to happen.”
But apparently the leadership of the Oklahoma House of Representatives is willing to stand by Kern, the Tulsa World reports:
[GOP House Speaker Kris] Steele said he thought the apology was enough, that she handled it appropriately and that a public reprimand was not necessary. [...]
Steele spent most of his weekly briefing with reporters fielding questions about Kern’s comments and SJR 15. He said he does not believe Kern’s speech has hurt the state’s image and that he supports SJR 15.
Even though Steele said he told Kern “I disagreed with her comments,” Senate Democratic leader Andrew Rice is calling on state Republicans to officially reprimand Kern, saying a failure to do so “can only be seen as tacit agreement with Sally Kern.” The Black Legislative Caucus also condemned Kern.
Freshman Rep. Rick Crawford (R-AR) became the latest Republican to face the ire of his own constituents for voting for the Medicare-ending GOP budget when he was repeatedly challenged by attendees at a town hall meeting in Jonesboro, AR last night. At his first town hall since being seated, Crawford had attendees write their questions on index cards and then read them out loud, “but a handful of audience members weren’t satisfied and shouted at Crawford from their seats.”
While Republicans have insisted that their budget saves Medicare, Crawford veered off message at one point, responding to the question “why are you going to end Medicare as we know it?” by saying, “the answer to that is because Medicare as we know is bankrupt.”
Later, Crawford faced a heated question about why the GOP budget cuts taxes for the wealthy and corporations while slashing social services. Crawford replied, “I don’t support tax cuts for the wealthy over help for socio-economically challenged individuals.” A number of his constituents repeatedly challenged him on this claim, accusing Crawford of “class warfare against the poor people” and explaining that tax cuts don’t create jobs. Crawford apparently did not appreciate this, and ended the session:
CONSTITUENT 1: [The GOP budget ] is a significant tax cut for the wealthy.
CRAWFORD: A 10 percent tax cut?
CONSTITUENT 2: Wouldn’t that be class warfare against the poor people?
CRAWFORD: Well, you’re asking me if I want to continue taxing at a higher rate the people that are creating jobs and no –
CONSTITUENT 2: They’re not creating jobs, though! They haven’t created any more jobs! … They’re taking them all overseas!
CONSTITUENT 3: Are you taking any more questions?
CRAWFORD: No, we’re done.
CONSTITUENT 3: We’re done?
CRAWFORD: We’re done.
CONSTITUENT 4: During the Bush administration, and the tax cuts, how many jobs were created?
CRAWFORD: I don’t have those numbers.
CONSTITUENT 4: Three million. During the Clinton administration, where he raised taxes on the highest bracket to 39.5, how many jobs were created? 22 million. You’re going to tell me that tax cuts create jobs?!
Watch a video shot by Arkansas progressive blog Blue Arkansas, and edited by ThinkProgress for length (full videos here):
Crawford walked away from the podium and left the meeting moments later.
As ThinkProgress has been reporting, all over the country a Main Street Movement of ordinary Americans is fighting back against right-wing attacks on their basic services and safety net. In recent days, this movement has been focused on conservative legislators who voted for the GOP budget plan that would effectively end Medicare.
Now, a video posted on YouTube shows that Rep. Bill Huizenga (R-MI) came face to face with this movement during a listening session at Montague High School in Montague, Michigan. Constituents challenged Huizenga about why is he targeting Medicare and other social programs but resisting raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans, who are facing the lowest tax rates in a generation.
One attendee asked when the country was going to start trying to “trickle up” instead of following failed “trickle down” policies. Later, a frustrated constituent stood up and told Huizenga that his party has been completely captured by the richest Americans, to applause from the audience:
CONSTITUENT: You [by endorsing the Ryan plan] have done something that I have been unable to do trying to explain to my friends, and all my neighbors, and my relatives, that your party has become of the rich by the rich and for the rich! (applause)
Watch a video compilation of constituents challenging the congressman:
(h/t: smul333 YouTube account)
Town hall attendee in Orlando
Now that Republican representatives have returned to their districts for the congressional recess, everyday Americans at town hall meetings across the country are reacting with outrage at the perverse priorities of the Ryan budget. And this latest manifestation of the burgeoning Main Street Movement against the right’s economic agenda has only grown in intensity since both ThinkProgress (and even some mainstream media outlets) began reporting on the phenomenon.
Watch a compilation video of some highlights from town halls across the country over the past week:
As ThinkProgress has reported, Republicans across the country have faced backlash at town halls for voting for the GOP budget plan that effectively ends Medicare. While many of the challenges have come from concerned older Americans, freshman Rep. Frank Guinta (R-NH) faced a unique opponent at a town hall in Manchester yesterday: a 14-year-old boy. The Boston Globe reports:
A 73-year old man stood up and criticized the plan to cut Medicare, which has become one of the most controversial aspects of the budget blueprint that was drafted by Representative Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican, and approved earlier this month by the House.
“Why congressman Guinta?” he said. “Why in the world did you ever vote for the Paul Ryan Medicare plan?”
Guinta began to answer, by saying many of the changes likely wouldn’t be phased in in time to affect him.
“What about me?” shouted Joe Platte, an eighth grader from Stratham, NH. “I’m 14! What am I going to do?”
Watch ABC News’ video of the event:
Republicans, including the budget’s mastermind, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), have touted (incorrectly) that the transition of Medicare into a voucher program will not affect anyone 55 years of age or older. But as eighth grader Platte notes, the effects will be felt far and wide by those who are not yet 55. That includes many Americans older than Platte who have paid into the Medicare system for years, only to find out that — if the Republican plan passes — the benefits they thought they would receive from the broadly popular program will not be there when they reach enrollment age.
Guinta later told attendees that, while this was “a tough issue,” Congress was committed to following through:
“This is a tough issue, and I sympathize with anyone who is reliant on a program like this, or who expects to be on a program like this,” Guinta said. “But my goal, my objective, is to make sure that if you’re in or near retirement, nothing changes. Because the country made a promise to you.”
Apparently, Platte’s future, and that of millions of other Americans, contains no such promise.
President Obama will tour the aftermath of deadly Alabama tornadoes today, two days after an outbreak of southern storms killed at least 280 Americans. Obama declared a state of emergency Wednesday and dispatched FEMA head Craig Fugate to the region. “The federal government will do everything we can,” Obama said.
In a “landslide 77-13 vote” yesterday, the Oklahoma House passed a “birther” bill that compels presidential candidates to provide proof of citizenship. But the bill sponsor state Rep. Sue Tibbs (R) swears the bill “has nothing to do with Obama” and is just meant to reinforce the Constitution which already requires candidates to be natural born citizens.
A new USA Today/Gallup Poll found that 47 percent of Americans have unfavorable views of the tea party, compared with just 33 percent who said they have favorable views. Americans have soured on the tea party, as their views of the right-wing movement have grown increasingly negative over the past year.
House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) will not hold a vote on legislation ending oil subsidies, despite expressing openness earlier this week to ending the tax breaks oil companies receive. His spokesman walked back his earlier comments, saying “raising taxes” was off the table. Oil companies receive roughly $4 billion in subsidies each year.
Several GOP-led states including Kansas, Indiana, North Carolina, New Hampshire, and Texas are racing to become the first to defund Planned Parenthood. The Guttamacher Institute noted that, while Texas’s budget cuts would have the biggest impact on family planning services, Indiana’s recent action will most likely make it the first to gut a “fundamental right in this country” to access health care.
“A growing number of Democrats are threatening to defy the White House over the national debt,” with numerous elected Democrats now promising to vote against raising the debt ceiling without major spending cuts. These Democrats include Sens. Kent Conrad (D-ND) and Joe Manchin (D-WV).
In its annual report on air quality, the American Lung Association (ALA) says half of all Americans are breathing polluted air. “We have proof that cleaning up pollution results in healthier air to breathe. That’s why we cannot stop now. Half of our nation is still breathing dangerously polluted air. Everyone must be protected from air pollution,” said the ALA president Charles Connor.
And finally: While cable news has been offering wall-to-wall coverage since 3 am of the Alexander McQueen gown Kate Middleton wore to the royal wedding, Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) was a bit behind this morning, tweeting, “Just catching up here. So she wore a Steve McQeen dress? #TheOneHeWoreInBullitt” — a reference to the actor’s 1968 classic cop flick.
For breaking news and updates throughout the day, follow ThinkProgress on Facebook and Twitter.
ThinkProgress filed this report from a town hall meeting in Orlando, FL.
In March, the entire House Republican Caucus voted to protect oil subsidies, which total $40 billion over 10 years. Now, it appears that numerous Republicans are questioning the wisdom of those subsidies, especially with high gas prices and soaring profits for oil companies.
One such congressman is Rep. Daniel Webster (R-FL). ThinkProgress spoke with Webster prior to his raucous town hall meeting yesterday and asked him about whether he’d like to see oil subsidies ended, as House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) initially called for and then later backtracked. Webster was unequivocal in his support for ending subsidies to oil companies, saying that further cutting “any kind of corporate welfare is on the table”:
KEYES: Yesterday, Speaker Boehner came out and said that oil companies ought to be paying their fair share in order to close down this debt. Is that something you would join him in? Would you like to see those subsidies ended?
WEBSTER: The Ryan plan includes tax reform and it includes lowering of corporate taxes, but also spreading out the base so those who are not paying are paying. So that’s already included in the plan. I think he was only saying in a specific manner what that plan already does.
KEYES: So you’d like to see those subsidies to oil companies ended?
WEBSTER: Yes, any kind of corporate welfare is on the table, right now. For sure.
Watch it:
As laudable as Webster’s call for an end to corporate welfare is, the fact remains that he joined every single House Republican in voting to protect subsidies for oil companies. Still, as oil companies rack up extraordinary profits, more GOPers like Webster might be reconsidering whether the government ought to continue doling out oil subsidies.
Today, news agencies are still tallying reports of deaths from the most devastating storm system in the United States in decades:
Dozens of massive tornadoes tore a town-flattening streak across the South, killing at least 250 people in six states and forcing rescuers to carry some survivors out on makeshift stretchers of splintered debris. Two of Alabama’s major cities were among the places devastated by the deadliest twister outbreak in nearly 40 years.
“Given that global warming is unequivocal,” climate scientist Kevin Trenberth cautioned the American Meteorological Society in January of this year, “the null hypothesis should be that all weather events are affected by global warming rather than the inane statements along the lines of ‘of course we cannot attribute any particular weather event to global warming.’”
The congressional delegations of these states — Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, Georgia, Virginia, and Kentucky — overwhelmingly voted to reject the science that polluting the climate is dangerous. They are deliberately ignoring the warnings from scientists.
Death toll continues to rise. Now stands at 267. Alabama accounts for 180 of these. #severe
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