Tag: states

Red states are winning big from Dems’ climate law

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The dynamic has prompted a tricky balancing act for the GOP: Tout the jobs and economic benefits coming to their states and districts, but not the bill that helped create them. The results are also potentially awkward for Democrats who expended political capital and more than a year of wrangling to enact the bill, only to see Republican lawmakers and governors sharing in the jobs and positive headlines it’s creating — although Democrats say they also see longer-term benefits for the nation in building GOP support for alternatives to fossil fuels.
Republicans insist their positions on the bill and the jobs are not in conflict.
“Just because you vote against a bill doesn’t mean the entire bill is a bad bill,” said Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.), who was the top GOP member of Democrats’ Select Climate Crisis Committee in the last Congress. “I go out there and advocate for our district to try and get transportation funds, to try and get energy funds. That’s my job. I am not embarrassed about it. I don’t think it’s inconsistent with my vote.”
To Democrats, the slate of new investments stand as proof that they were correct that the Inflation Reduction Act, H.R. 5376 (117), would expand the reach of clean power to rural and conservative areas — a promise that failed to sway a single Republican vote to support the bill.
“It’s hard not to point out the hypocrisy for people who fought tooth and nail against the bill, those very incentives that are now creating opportunities in their [Republican] districts they are now leading,” said Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.). “We just have to point out, thanks for your kind words, but this didn’t just happen. It happened despite your best efforts.”
Smith attended an October ribbon-cutting in her state for Canadian solar panel maker Heliene’s expansion of its manufacturing facility — an effort that was started prior to the Inflation Reduction Act’s passage and that has drawn praise from Rep. Pete Stauber (R-Minn.), whose district is home to the plant that will be one of the largest panel makers in the country.
Democrats’ climate law includes billions of dollars to spur green energy technologies and cut greenhouse gas emissions, including a new tax credit for manufacturing the components crucial for solar, wind and electric vehicles, as well as additional incentives for using domestic content in projects.
Republicans, though, have moved to slash funding of the Internal Revenue Service, the central agency charged with implementing the climate law’s incentives, over concerns that Democrats have expanded its mandate. And Friday, former President Donald Trump urged GOP lawmakers to target “billions being spent on climate extremism” in their fight over the debt limit.

Supporters of the Inflation Reduction Act say its success is due in part to the way it provides long-term certainty for companies looking to place a footprint in the U.S.
The bill is a “fundamental element” of the recent spate of manufacturing announcements, said Abigail Ross Hopper, the president and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association. “There certainly were a number of plans being evaluated and discussed [prior to the bill]. But I think the vast majority were contingent upon the passage of the IRA.”

In the three months after Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act in August, companies announced more than $40 billion of new clean energy investments, according to a December report from the American Clean Power Association, an industry trade group. POLITICO’s analysis of the law’s early results includes those projects as well as separate news reports and company announcements of manufacturing expansions and plans, and additional announcements on electric vehicle plants.
Out of 33 projects examined, 21 are expected to be located in Republican-held congressional districts, compared with 12 in Democratic districts. POLITICO’s analysis did not reflect every announcement made and does not include facilities where a specific congressional district could not be found.
Just this month, South Korean solar company Hanwha Q Cells announced it would invest $2.5 billion in Georgia to expand its solar panel manufacturing plant and construct another facility in the state.
That expansion is occurring partially in the district of conservative firebrand Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene — who has described climate change as “actually healthy for us” and has blasted Democrats’ bill. Greene, however, recently told POLITICO that she’s “excited to have jobs” in her district that will come from the Q Cells announcement, though she gave credit to Georgia’s GOP Gov. Brian Kemp, who has courted clean energy and electric vehicle manufacturing investments through state-level subsidies and tax incentives.
Federal and state incentives alike are playing a role in the companies’ decisions, said J.C. Bradbury, an economics professor at Kennesaw State University in Georgia.
“They are coming to Georgia for one reason — we are paying them to come here with subsidies,” Bradbury said in an interview, referring to the combination of federal and state tax credits. “These projects are being pitched as economic development projects 100 percent.”
But while manufacturing proponents point to factors including geography, economic development plans and states’ anti-union laws as factors drawing investment to deep-red districts, they also say the announcements are directly tied to the federal subsidies provided under Democrats’ bill.
“It’s not random,” said Jason Walsh, executive director of the BlueGreen Alliance, which includes labor unions and environmental organizations. “It’s because specific policies have been put in place and passed by the U.S. Congress to actually incentivize exactly the kind of activity that we’re seeing.”
And the investments are only expected to grow. Solar manufacturer and Bill Gates-backed CubicPV, for one, is planning a 10-gigawatt facility in the United States, but has not yet chosen a location, while Enel North America, a unit of an Italian energy company, is evaluating sites to build a new solar panel and cell manufacturing plant. Battery manufacturing facilities are also expected to come online in the years ahead across several states, including Michigan, Tennessee, Arizona and Georgia.
Companies aren’t necessarily looking at which lawmaker represents the district when they invest, said Scott Paul, president of Alliance for American Manufacturing. They’re looking instead at where the supply chains exist and where they can leverage the tax benefits and capital provided by lawmakers.
“Red state-blue state [is] not really a factor,” Paul said, adding, “This isn’t one of those things that looks like an electoral map at all.”
Republicans express no regret about opposing the IRA despite previously supporting individual pieces of the bill, such as tax incentives for carbon capture, nuclear and hydrogen projects. GOP members argued that the bill would pump too much money into the economy and worsen inflation, and they’ve criticized Democrats for using the partisan reconciliation process that allowed them to pass it with a simple majority in the Senate.
“The overall process, the overall bill, particularly the spending, really frustrates Republicans — not necessarily every specific in the bill,” said Rep. John Curtis (R-Utah).
But the GOP is likely to find itself in an uncomfortable position as funding from the Inflation Reduction Act plays a growing role in Republicans home states and districts.
Former Virginia Democratic Rep. Tom Perriello, who lost his reelection bid in 2010 after voting for the Affordable Care Act, said those dynamics put Republicans in a tricky spot once voters see the jobs stemming from Democrats’ agenda.
“Biden has driven his agenda right down Main Street with a big ‘Made in America’ banner on the back of an electric truck, and people’s only choices are to get on board with the parade or seem to be against making things in America again,” he said. “I think of those two choices, Republican hypocrisy makes a lot more sense than standing in the way of jobs and American competitiveness.”
He called it “squirrely” for lawmakers to argue to voters that they like certain parts of the bill, but not others.
“That’s just not how legislating works. That’s not how things pass,” he said.
House Republicans have promised robust oversight of the climate law, pledging to seek out wasteful spending in search of would-be scandals such as the failed Solyndra loan guarantee of the Obama administration — even if the overall program is a success.
“I don’t think it complicates the oversight,” a House GOP leadership aide told POLITICO, who asked for anonymity to speak candidly. “Oversight is an important function. There could be 20 great projects [supported by IRA], but if one is bad, it’s our job to understand why.”
Republicans also criticized the Biden administration’s rush to embrace greener energy while the country still relies on China for technology components, and they’ve been critical of government support that has helped companies with manufacturing in China.
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, said he rejected Ford Motors’ efforts to consider locating a battery plant in his state over concerns about China and national security.
Democrats, though, hope the trend of clean energy boosting the economic prospects of red states helps shift the rhetoric of Republicans and enables more bipartisan cooperation on narrow interests benefiting the climate.
“Over time, I anticipate their [Republican] talking points will change as their neighbors become a part of the clean energy economy,” said former House climate committee Chair Kathy Castor (D-Fla.).
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#Red #states #winning #big #Dems #climate #law
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

January 23, 2023
In conservative states, abortion opponents push back on Republicans

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At the same time, these disagreements threaten to further fragment the anti-abortion movement, which was unified for nearly 50 years over the goal of toppling Roe. And they portend further infighting in states where the biggest threat most GOP lawmakers face is a primary from the right.
“As far as the Republican Party, I don’t think we’ve ever really defined what it means to be pro-life,” said Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton, who is pushing to clarify the state’s abortion law and is open to adding rape and incest exceptions. “Unfortunately, we have a wide variety of people who say they’re pro-life. Some believe in no abortions at all. Some believe in exceptions. Some believe when you hear a heartbeat. Some believe other things.”
Similar debates are heating up in states such as Idaho, Missouri, North Dakota, Utah and Wisconsin, where GOP lawmakers have introduced or may soon introduce bills that revisit who is exempt from their state’s near-total abortion bans — some of which date to the 19th century.
“When the legislature passes a law, it’s very important that the people who are going to be governed by that law — and possibly criminalized, depending on what they do — understand clearly what the law means,” said Utah Republican Rep. Raymond Ward, whose bill tweaks the state’s medical exception language.
Sexton, Ward and other GOP lawmakers remain opposed to abortion but say they are responding to physicians who complain the laws are so confusing that they’ve in some cases delayed or denied medical care because of fears of prosecution.
Some anti-abortion groups, however, view the proposed changes as a betrayal of their cause and are pressing Republicans to hold the line. They fear that lawmakers, motivated by political concerns, will weaken what they view as gold-standard laws — and are instead urging state attorneys general or medical licensing boards to make any clarifications.
“All of the sky-is-falling misinformation about the laws isn’t actually coming true,” said Stephen Billy, vice president of state affairs at Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. “Letting the laws come into effect and continuing to educate on the laws, I think, is the prudent thing to do right now.”
In several states, nonpartisan medical associations have urged lawmakers to revisit abortion laws. They said the laws have left doctors vulnerable to prosecution and loss of their medical license before they’ve even stood trial under what’s known as an affirmative defense.

“Any time a physician performs a pregnancy termination for, say, an ectopic pregnancy to save mom’s life, they’re technically committing a felony,” said Yarnell Beatty, senior vice president and general counsel for the Tennessee Medical Association. “The only thing between them and jail is the hope that the affirmative defense will work at trial and the jury will agree with their position and acquit them.”
While no physician has been criminally charged for providing a medically necessary abortion since the laws in Tennessee and elsewhere have taken effect, some doctors said the laws have changed the way they practice medicine.
Progressive advocacy groups representing patients and doctors, including the ACLU, said carve-outs to abortion restrictions will not mitigate the harm. If a law is too broad, they argue, doctors won’t know exactly what kind of health care emergencies allow for an abortion. If it’s too specific, doctors could be prevented from using their medical judgment in a life-or-death scenario.
“Politicians aren’t doctors — they shouldn’t be legislating personal medical situations,” said Jessica Arons, a senior policy counsel for the ACLU. “They can’t anticipate every complication that could arise in a pregnancy.”
Republican Tennessee Sen. Richard Briggs — who voted for the state’s trigger law in 2019 — said he changed his mind after hearing from physicians who were afraid to perform abortions in cases of ectopic pregnancies, which are nonviable and can be fatal if not terminated.
He’s one of several Republicans calling for changes to the state’s affirmative defense provision as well as rape and incest exceptions.
“I don’t like the idea of the legislature trying to practice medicine,” said Briggs, a retired cardiac surgeon.
But Briggs’ position is earning him enemies among abortion opponents who are resisting changes to the state’s 2019 trigger law banning abortion in nearly all circumstances. The anti-abortion group Tennessee Right to Life revoked Briggs’ endorsement in December because of his comments on the law.
“We feel very strongly that it needs to stay as it was drafted,” said Will Brewer, legal counsel and lobbyist for Tennessee Right to Life, which led the charge on the trigger law. “[It’s] sad to say, in a GOP supermajority legislature, that we have to play defense on this.”
In Utah, Ward said his bill would clarify language that is confusing to doctors, including “irreversible impairment of a major bodily function” and “mentally vegetative state.”
In Wisconsin, Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos is speaking with his caucus about tweaking the state’s 1849 abortion ban, which allows for “therapeutic” abortions that are “necessary … to save the life of the mother.” He proposed adding clear life and health exceptions in the pre-Roe law and allowing abortions in cases of rape and incest — though Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, who is challenging the 1849 law in court, has vowed to veto any bill that keeps the pre-Roe law in place.
Republican North Dakota Sen. Janne Myrdal is pushing a bill that would change the state’s affirmative defense provision for doctors to an exception explicitly allowing abortions in cases of medical emergency, in addition to other changes she says would clean up the state’s abortion law. The legislation is supported by doctors, hospitals and in-state anti-abortion groups.
“We don’t want any ambiguity in the law whatsoever, and it’s time that we have that conversation face-to-face instead of fear mongering like the abortion industry has been doing up here with, ‘Oh my gosh, they’re going to arrest women that do IVF or take birth control or go to Moorhead, Minnesota, they’re going to arrest them when they come back.’ All of that is just complete bull. It’s not true,” Myrdal said.
And in Missouri, lawmakers are having conversations about whether to clarify the definition of abortion or add rape and incest exceptions, said Sam Lee, director of Campaign Life Missouri.
GOP lawmakers pushing for changes to their state abortion laws are pitching them as both good policy and broadly supported by the public, pointing to polls that show their near-total abortion bans are wildly unpopular. A November poll from Vanderbilt University, for instance, found that 75 percent of people think abortion should be legal in Tennessee if the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest.
“I don’t think it’s a knee-jerk reaction,” Sexton, the Tennessee House speaker, said. “I just think it’s members talking to people in their district and having an understanding of the people they represent, where they’re at.”
Some state-level anti-abortion groups, however, have signaled a willingness to work with their state’s GOP lawmakers to clarify existing exceptions.
Gracie Skogman, legislative and PAC director for Wisconsin Right to Life, said that while anti-abortion advocates on the ground don’t see pursuing rape and incest exceptions as a “worthwhile task” — forcing GOP lawmakers to take a difficult vote ahead of an essentially guaranteed veto — they are encouraging lawmakers to clarify the medical exceptions.
Abortion rights advocates, meanwhile, are dismissing the debate about whether to clarify or add new exceptions to abortion laws as an attempt by Republicans to save face while having little to no impact on people’s ability to access abortion.
“Exemptions don’t reopen clinics. Even where they go back and add broader exemptions to state law, that won’t be enough for clinics that shut down to reopen and provide services,” Arons said.
Abortion providers in states with new bans said the rules for Medicaid funding for abortion — which have operated for decades with the same rape, incest and health exceptions now under discussion — illustrate the gap between what’s allowed in theory and what works in practice.
Some state laws, for instance, require people to file a police report to qualify for a rape or incest exemption — a deterrent to marginalized groups that fear contact with law enforcement or those who don’t know how to navigate the legal system.
Ashley Coffield, the CEO of Tennessee’s Planned Parenthood Affiliate, said that in the 10 years she’s worked there, they never had a case of rape or incest qualify for Medicaid coverage. Planned Parenthood’s Missouri affiliate pointed to a similar record when asked why they oppose the push to add exceptions, saying that in the 18 months before Roe was overturned, only two of their patients qualified under the rape and incest exemptions for Medicaid coverage.
“They don’t actually protect patients in reality, and neither do medical emergency exemptions,” said Bonyen Lee-Gilmore, the spokesperson for the network’s St. Louis region clinics. “As the provider, we know that folks very rarely qualify.”
Doctors acknowledge the changes won’t restore people’s ability to access abortion care. But they said the tweaks could save a patient’s life and keep them out of jail.
“This is about taking care of patients. It’s about getting the government out of my exam room and letting me do what I do well, which is to practice medicine and save people’s lives,” said Nicole Schlechter, an OB/GYN in Nashville.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

January 21, 2023
Top Tennessee pair fired after damning review of state’s execution protocol

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Two top Tennessee officials have been fired by the corrections department after an independent report revealed striking errors in the state’s lethal injection execution protocol.
According to official documents reviewed by the Tennessean newspaper, the deputy commissioner and general counsel, Debra Inglis, was fired, as well as inspector general Kelly Young, on 27 December.
The firings came a day before Governor Bill Lee publicized the report, which found that multiple executions were carried out in recent years without proper testing of the drugs used in the lethal injection death penalty process.
Specifically, the report revealed that when Tennessee revised its lethal injection protocol in 2018, there was no evidence of the state ever providing the pharmacy in charge of testing the drugs with a copy of its lethal injection protocol.
The report also found that the three drugs used in the state’s protocol – midazolam to sedate the person, vecuronium bromide to paralyze the person and potassium chloride to stop their heart – were not properly tested for endotoxins, a type of contaminant.
Since 2018, seven prisoners have been executed in Tennessee following a nearly decade-long hiatus in executions. Five chose to die in the electric chair while two were administered lethal injections.
Last April the state called off the execution of inmate Oscar Smith an hour before his scheduled execution after Lee acknowledged the state’s failure to properly adhere to its lethal injection protocol.
According to the report released in December, in all seven executions since 2018, none of the lethal injections – some of which were prepared in case the person to be put to death changed their mind and opted to be executed by lethal injection instead of electrocution – were tested for endotoxins.

In the case of one person who was executed by lethal injection, the report also found that the midazolam used during his execution was not tested for potency. The report revealed that in 2017, a pharmacist warned state correction officials that midazolam “‘does not elicit strong analgesic effects’, meaning ‘[t]he subjects may be able to feel pain from the administration of the second and third drugs’”.
According to inmates’ expert witnesses, midazolam has been said to cause sensations of doom, panic, drowning and asphyxiation.
Some US states, especially Alabama, are embroiled in scandal over botched executions by lethal injection.
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )

January 21, 2023
What Colombia’s First Black VP Really Wants from the United States

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So, the forebears of my grandmother had to fight to wrest free from slavery; my grandmother had to fight against the development of the dam, which was going to impact their land; my mother had to fight so that the Ovejas River wasn’t re-routed toward the dam; and I had to fight to keep illegal large-scale mining out of the land, so they wouldn’t exploit our resources. Each generation of my community has been in a constant struggle — for survival, for freedom, for the land. I’m not here today as the vice president of Colombia because of something that started three years ago. It’s because of a lifelong fight. My community and my family have fought for all their lives to live in peace, to live within their rights, to live with dignity.
Rodríguez: Amid all those fights, you decided to go to law school and to become a lawyer, a profession guided by rules and norms. Now, you’re in a position working within the trappings of the state. What is your relationship to activism now that you’re working within the government and not organizing outside of its structure?
Márquez: I became a lawyer to wield the legal system’s tools. As a community, we didn’t speak the language of the institutions. They would tell us of a “right to petition” and we didn’t know how to access it. They would speak of “administrative review,” which in fact were eviction orders against our community, because the state had given the land away to multinational companies, choosing to protect corporations over communities. So I said, “I’m going to study the law to understand, to fight and to struggle.” And I have fought and struggled to defend my community to the point where my life and those who surround me have been at risk, because we have confronted power.
I grew frustrated that in spite of my advocacy and my efforts I couldn’t get answers for my community in terms of stopping femicides and preventing the persecution of our social leaders. I felt powerless to see how leaders who fought like me were being killed. I expected that someday, it would be my turn.
I thought about Martin Luther King’s dream. Even though I’ve read a lot of Malcolm X’s writings, I listened a lot to King’s “I have a dream” speech. [On Aug. 11, 2020,] there was a massacre in Cali, where five children went to a sugarcane plantation to grab some sugarcane — surely to have fun or because they were hungry, or just because that’s part of our culture. (We’re raised to be able to go grab fruit from a neighbor’s farm. It’s something that’s passed down through the generations, and it’s part of our culture as Black people.) But when those children went to practice the same customs that they were used to doing in their communities, they were murdered [by civilians]. I felt a lot of pain and a lot of powerlessness. I have two children, and I worried that they would meet the same fate.
Amid all that impotence I thought, too, about King’s speech, and I said, “I have a dream that one day our children won’t be murdered for picking sugarcane.” And that’s when I made the decision to run for president. I didn’t give it too much thought. I have to admit, I rejected politics because of everything that I had lived through, because my community has always had to defend itself from the state. Even though they say that we’re all one nation, Black people, Indigenous people and farmworkers have been the most excluded and marginalized. I didn’t want anything to do with the state or politics because the politics I knew didn’t make me feel proud of my people, of my country. It’s a politics based on corruption, based on violence, based on dispossession.
Taking a risk that I might get trapped in all of that, I decided to participate in the system and change it. I made the decision, then, to run for the presidency. After many political attacks and rampant racism, I ended up as Gustavo Petro’s running mate and we were both elected.
Politics isn’t easy. It’s hard. It’s not like I have changed much, but we’re planting a seed to grow a politics that’s different from what I have known, from what my parents knew, from what my grandparents knew.

Rodríguez: Now as a vice president, do you continue facing those racist attacks? Just two days ago, your security team foiled an assassination attempt. How are you processing that, and do you feel like that has to do with your race and gender?
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#Colombias #Black #United #States
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

January 20, 2023
Centre seeks state’s report on ‘Azad Kashmir’ question in Bengal’s test-paper

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Kolkata: A day after a row erupted in Bengal over the recently-released compilation of test-papers for secondary examination released by the West Bengal Board of Secondary Examination (WBBSE) having a question on ‘Azad Kashmir’, the Centre on Wednesday sought an explanatory report from the state government on this count.
WBBSE releases the test-paper compilation every year, which contains Class 10 final test examination (pre-board) questions of some leading schools. The compilation acts as a suggestion for the candidates appearing for the Class 10 board exams.
However, page 132 of this year’s test-paper carried a question paper of Ramakrishna Mission Vivekananda Vidyamandir, Malda, with a question that asks the students to point out ‘Azad Kashmir’ on the map.
Sources in the state government said that a communique from the Union Education Ministry has reached the state secretariat, seeking an explanatory note from the West Bengal education department on this count.
In the communique, it has been stated that the matter of ‘Azad Kashmir’ is an extremely sensitive issue and the Union government does not recognise ‘Pakistan occupied Kashmir’ as ‘Azad Kashmir’.
“The Education Ministry has sought clarification from the state government as to how such a sensitive issue managed to find a place in the test-paper,” said a state education department official, who refused to be named.
Meanwhile, sensing the gravity of the matter, the state education department has already initiated an internal probe into the matter. Sources said that a total of nine teachers have been identified and cautioned in the matter by the WBBSE.
Out of the nine teachers cautioned, six are members of the board’s history syllabus committee.

A letter of caution has also been forwarded to the headmaster of Ramakrishna Mission Vivekananda Vidyamandir, whose question paper carrying the controversial question on ‘Azad Kashmir’ featured in the test-paper.
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#Centre #seeks #states #report #Azad #Kashmir #question #Bengals #testpaper
( Disclaimer: With inputs from www.siasat.com )

January 18, 2023