The Daily 202: Trump is not ‘the number one environmental president since Teddy Roosevelt’

“Environmental protection is a sacred obligation,” Trump said Tuesday in Jupiter, Fla., boasting that he signed a bill to tackle a maintenance backlog at national parks, oversaw the cleanup of polluted Superfund sites, strengthened regulations to reduce lead in drinking water and endorsed a global effort to plant a trillion trees.

When doing so is politically beneficial, as it was during his visit to western Pennsylvania last week, Trump presents himself as a champion for fossil fuels, including fracking and coal, as well as the consummate defender of energy jobs.

In 2018, Trump proposed a vast expansion of oil and gas drilling in U.S. continental waters. Under pressure from then-Gov. Rick Scott (R), who was running for Senate that year, the president exempted Florida. With his own name on the ballot in November, Trump announced Tuesday that he will extend a moratorium on oil drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, which includes the state’s west coast, as well as expanding it to include the Atlantic coasts of Florida, Georgia and South Carolina.

“It’s an order that does so much for the state of Florida,” Trump told a cheering crowd on Tuesday. “This protects your beautiful Gulf and your beautiful ocean, and it will for a long time to come.”

His comments came hours after a fresh NBC News-Marist poll showed Trump and Biden tied at 48 percent among likely voters in Florida.

A Quinnipiac University survey last year found 64 percent of Florida voters oppose offshore drilling.

A Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation poll conducted last year found that, nationally, more than 8 in 10 Americans said drilling in the United States should “decrease” or “stay as is.” Less than 15 percent supported an increase in drilling at sea or on public lands.

Trump has repeatedly indicated that he will do whatever it takes to help his reelection campaign and boost his allies down the ticket. On Tuesday afternoon, for example, the White House formally notified the Senate that the president is withdrawing the nomination of William “Perry” Pendley to run the Bureau of Land Management. The administration put out word that Trump would do this last month amid growing signs that Pendley’s controversial public-lands agenda was hurting the reelection hopes of Republican Sens. Cory Gardner in Colorado and Steve Daines in Montana.

Trump also reportedly signed the Great American Outdoors Act last month, which funds the national park conservation efforts he touted, partly to help Daines and Gardner hold their Senate seats. Trump said lawmakers told him that if he signed the bill, it would make him “the number one environmental president since Teddy Roosevelt.”

“I said, ‘Huh, that sounds good,’ because I wasn’t going to do it,” Trump told the crowd in Florida. “I figured, you know, let’s not do it. But when they said that, there was like a challenge. … Who would have thought Trump is the great environmentalist?”

Trump also reversed himself last month on his administration’s decision to grant a permit for a controversial gold and copper mine in Alaska. The move represents a blow to Pebble Mine, which was vetoed under President Barack Obama but has been revived under the Trump administration. Trump changed his position at the urging of his son Donald Trump Jr., Fox News host Tucker Carlson and Vice President Pence’s former chief of staff Nick Ayers, who have campaigned against the project on the grounds it could harm the world’s largest sockeye salmon fishery in Bristol Bay.

Republican governors lead all three states that benefit from the offshore drilling moratorium announced by Trump. It might also boost Senate incumbents facing tough reelection fights in Georgia and South Carolina. Other states on the Eastern seaboard that are led by Democratic governors who also want the federal moratorium on offshore drilling were snubbed, including North Carolina and Virginia.

Trump does not even have anywhere close to the strongest environmental record among modern Republican presidents. Richard Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency. George H.W. Bush strengthened the Clean Air Act.

This president is removing the United States from the Paris climate accord, a marquee move that will be central to his legacy and become official the day after the election. But in addition to Trump calling climate change a “hoax” and attacking alternative fuel sources, there have been efforts by his appointees to avoid even mentioning the issue of climate change in official policy documents and to remove the topic from a list of national security threats.

The Brookings Institution, which maintains a database that tracks Trump’s deregulatory agenda, counts 74 actions that this administration has taken to weaken environmental protections. The Trump administration replaced Obama’s Clean Power Plan, rolled back fuel economy standards, stripped California’s autonomy to set its own fuel economy rules, weakened methane and mercury limits, reduced pollution reporting requirements and relaxed standards for disposing of coal ash. Trump has lifted bans on oil and gas exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and parts of the National Petroleum Reserve. Administration lawyers have fought environmental groups tooth and nail in court for three-and-a-half years. 

Trump’s environmental record, just in the period since the pandemic began pummeling America, speaks louder than his rhetoric. Take a gander at this sampling of Washington Post headlines from the past five months:

• Aug. 31: “Trump administration rolls back Obama-era rule aimed at limiting toxic wastewater from coal plants.”
• Aug. 13: “Trump administration scraps limits on methane leaks at oil and gas sites.”
• Aug. 11: “Quoting ‘To Kill a Mockingbird,’ judge strikes down Trump administration rollback of historic law protecting birds.”
• July 15: “Trump scales back landmark environmental law, saying it will help restart the economy.”
• July 13: “Trump’s move to weaken key environmental law could sideline communities of color.”
• July 13: “EPA rejects tougher air-quality standards, says 2015 limits are sufficient.”
• July 6: “Major oil and gas pipeline projects, backed by Trump, flounder as opponents prevail in court.”
• June 25: “Trump administration wants drilling on more than two-thirds of the largest swath of U.S. public land.”
• June 8: “Trump administration makes it easier for hunters to kill bear cubs and wolf pups in Alaska.”
• June 5: “Trump lifts limits on commercial fishing at ocean sanctuary off New England.”
• June 4: “Trump signs order to waive environmental reviews for key projects.”
• June 1: “EPA limits states and tribes’ ability to protest pipelines and other energy projects.”
• May 19: “EPA staff warned that mileage rollbacks had flaws. Trump officials ignored them.”
• May 18: “Two states, D.C. plan to sue EPA for failing to enforce Chesapeake Bay cleanup plan.”
• May 14: “EPA decides against limits on drinking water pollutant linked to health risks, especially in children.”
• April 19: “Ten years after Gulf of Mexico oil spill, Trump administration weakens regulations.”
• April 16: “EPA overhauls mercury pollution rule, despite opposition from industry and activists alike.”

Speaking only a few miles away from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Tuesday, Trump also bragged about federal money he authorized to restore and protect the Everglades, including a dike at Lake Okeechobee. “But the Trump administration actually sought to eliminate that specific funding earlier in the president’s tenure,” Dino Grandoni notes in the Energy 202. “Lawmakers restored it after the White House removed the ask from its budget requests to Congress. The White House amended its budget proposal last year after touring the lake and hearing from Sen. Marco Rubio and other Republican members of Congress from Florida who pushed to restore the money.”

“Trump’s head popped up during his top-secret intelligence briefing in the Oval Office on Jan. 28 when the discussion turned to the novel coronavirus outbreak in China. ‘This will be the biggest national security threat you face in your presidency,’ national security adviser Robert O’Brien told Trump, according to a new book by Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward,” per Bob Costa and Phil Rucker. “Ten days later, Trump called Woodward and revealed that he thought the situation was far more dire than what he had been saying publicly. … Trump admitted to Woodward on March 19 that he deliberately minimized the danger. ‘I wanted to always play it down,’ the president said.

“Aside from exploring Trump’s handling of the pandemic, Woodward’s new book, ‘Rage,’ covers race relations, diplomacy with North Korea and a range of other issues that have arisen during the past two years. … The book is based in part on 18 on-the-record interviews Woodward conducted with the president between December and July. … In the midst of reflecting upon how close the United States had come in 2017 to war with North Korea, Trump revealed, ‘I have built a nuclear — a weapons system that nobody’s ever had in this country before. We have stuff that you haven’t even seen or heard about. We have stuff that [Vladimir] Putin and Xi [Jinping] have never heard about before. There’s nobody — what we have is incredible.’ Woodward writes that anonymous sources later confirmed that the U.S. military had a secret new weapons system, but they would not provide details, and that the sources were surprised Trump had disclosed it.”

The Justice Department’s filing moves the defamation suit to federal court and says that Attorney General Bill Barr wants to make the U.S. government — rather than Trump — the defendant in the case. The maneuver will almost surely delay the resolution of the litigation until after the election and push back a potentially problematic discovery process for the president. “In filings in federal court in Manhattan, the Justice Department asserted that Trump was ‘acting within the scope of his office as President of the United States’ when he denied during interviews in 2019 that he had raped journalist E. Jean Carroll more than two decades ago in a New York City department store. Carroll sued Trump over that denial in November,” Matt Zapotosky reports. 

“The maneuver removes the case — at least for now — from state court in New York, where a judge last month had rejected Trump’s bid for a delay and put Carroll’s team back on course to seek a DNA sample and an under-oath interview from the president. It also means that Justice Department lawyers will be essentially aiding Trump’s defense, and taxpayers could be on the hook for any potential damages, if the U.S. government is allowed to stand in for Trump. Winning damages against the government, though, would be more unlikely than in a suit against Trump, as the notion of ‘sovereign immunity’ gives the government and its employees broad protection from lawsuits. … Citing the Federal Tort Claims Act, the department said that Barr has the authority under federal law to move such a case to federal court if he certifies a federal employee was acting within the scope of their job during an incident.”

“Trump’s reelection campaign is paying to replace sod on the White House South Lawn and in the Rose Garden after damage to the greenery late last month from large crowds and heavy equipment used for Republican National Convention festivities, White House and campaign officials said,” Ashley Parker and Philip Rucker report. “Trump’s unprecedented decision to stage overtly political events on public property — which drew complaints that the Trumps were using ‘the people’s house’ for personal gain — continues to reverberate … The president has been transported to Joint Base Andrews for recent flights via motorcade rather than by helicopter because Marine One cannot land on the South Lawn during the construction and repairs. In addition, White House staff members have kept journalists covering events there from seeing the work underway in the Rose Garden and on the South Lawn by using alternative venues.”

That’s according to Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. “Raffensperger’s office is investigating whether those who voted twice did so intentionally and whether two votes were actually counted in each case. Georgia’s June 9 primary was plagued by widespread problems with the delivery of mail ballots and long lines at the polls,” Amy Gardner reports. “Raffensperger’s office acknowledged that many voters may have shown up in person because they were afraid that their mail ballots would not be counted. The secretary of state said systems are in place to prevent double voting in Georgia. … But Raffensperger emphasized that voters who seek to cast two ballots could face criminal charges. ‘Let me be clear, it is a felony to double vote in Georgia — and we prosecute,’ he said. … Trump has encouraged his supporters to attempt to vote twice to show that such fraud is possible. … His announcement Tuesday followed reports that a Trump supporter from Long County, Ga., claimed he had voted twice in the primary, an assertion that has not been verified.” In case you missed it last week: “Barr claims a man collected 1,700 ballots and filled them out as he pleased. Prosecutors say that’s not what happened.”

“The president’s actions — urging his followers to commit an illegal act and seeking to undermine confidence in the credibility of election results — are doubly wrong. They impose an obligation on his campaign and the Republican Party to reevaluate their position in the more than 40 voting cases they’re involved in around the country,” Ginsberg writes in an op-ed for today’s newspaper. “These cases are part of a torrent of 2020 voting litigation that pits Republicans’ belief that election results won’t be credible without state law safeguards against Democrats’ charges that many such rules are onerous and designed to suppress the votes of qualified citizens inclined to vote Democratic. The president’s words make his and the Republican Party’s rhetoric look less like sincere concern — and more like transactional hypocrisy designed to provide an electoral advantage. And they come as Republicans trying to make their cases in courts must deal with the basic truth that four decades of dedicated investigation have produced only isolated incidents of election fraud.

“These are painful conclusions for me to reach. Before retiring from law practice last month, I spent 38 years in the GOP’s legal trenches. I was part of the 1990s redistricting that ended 40 years of Democratic control and brought 30 years of GOP successes in Congress and state legislatures. I played a central role in the 2000 Florida recount and several dozen Senate, House and state contests. I served as counsel to all three Republican national party committees and represented four of the past six Republican presidential nominees (including, through my law firm, Trump 2020).” It is difficult to overstate what a big deal this op-ed is coming from Ginsberg.

Gordon spent 31 years as a U.S. intelligence officer and was the principal deputy director of national intelligence from 2017 to 2019. “As you read this, foreign adversaries and competitors are actively seeking to manipulate the outcome of our elections. There is zero doubt about this,” she writes in an op-ed for our paper. “Maddeningly, the national conversation around election security has turned vitriolic, diversionary and unhelpful, and we are doing our enemies’ work for them. When intelligence assessments are described as biased, when federal institutions are decried as inept or corrupt, when vague fears of widespread tampering with our physical election infrastructure are advanced, and when disagreement over policy and approach turns to accusation of illegitimacy, our enemies’ destructive goals are advanced as we busily attack ourselves. …

“We need to keep exposing adversaries’ actions and intent, organize defenses at every level, pursue effective deterrence, commit sufficient funds so no one has to sacrifice security, recognize responsibility that comes with capability, and be discerning about the pedigree of the information we receive. And most of all, don’t believe that our system is so broken that it can’t work. That’s exactly what our rivals want. Instead, let’s work to make our system and our actions be worthy of our ideals.”

“While Biden’s team conducts no in-person campaigning and has yet to open a stand-alone office in any swing state, Trump’s operation has regularly flouted recommendations from local and state officials to hold in-person events and opened more than 280 offices,” Josh Dawsey, Michael Scherer and Annie Linskey report. “Elliott Echols, the RNC’s national field director, says the party has held 31,000 in-person campaign events since June 11 and knocked on over 1 million doors every week in August. It has doubled door-knocks since 2016, he said, and prizes such personal encounters over digital contact. … Trump aides say to expect extensive travel — sometimes several stops in a day — in the campaign’s last weeks. Trump has dispensed with his arena-filled rallies for now, but he continues to address large gatherings in sites like airplane hangars or parks … In the next week, Trump’s campaign has scheduled outdoor mass gatherings in Saginaw County, Mich.; Reno, Nev.; and Las Vegas, including a $150,000 fundraiser. …

“With a fully remote workforce of 2,500 staffers, the Biden campaign has relied on long-distance outreach, largely by phone or text message, and has reported logging more than 2.6 million one-on-one conversations with voters in August. Trump campaign staffers have worked at their Arlington office, with many not wearing masks, aides say. … Biden’s strategy also carries risks, as some supporters and activists in key states have signaled that they are disappointed they have not seen a more direct personal presence from the nominee and his campaign.”

“Larry Milunic worked in manufacturing and steel-related jobs in the industrial Wyoming Valley, and for most of his life was a Democrat. But in 2016, he voted for Trump, and this November he plans to back him again. About 130 miles away in a wealthy Philadelphia suburb, Matt Fetick, who works in real-estate services and serves as mayor of a small borough, left the Republican Party earlier this year and will vote for Joe Biden,” the WSJ reports. “Milunic and Fetick are part of a national political realignment in which white, working-class voters have migrated to the Republican Party, while voters with white-collar jobs have increasingly backed Democrats. The shift has been particularly acute in Pennsylvania, where these long-running changes filtered into local politics in dramatic fashion last year. Party control of county commissions changed hands in 11 counties in 2019, some for the first time in decades. In five counties with large shares of professional workers, voters gave Democrats control, including in Chester County, where Mr. Fetick lives. Six counties with large shares of blue-collar workers shifted Republican, including Luzerne County, where Mr. Milunic lives. Now, many of these counties are among the most contested battlegrounds in the state.”

• Biden leads Trump by a 9-point margin among likely voters in Pennsylvania, according to an NBC News-Marist poll released this morning.
• Biden will travel to Michigan this afternoon for the first time since he secured the Democratic nomination, where he plans to unveil new tax proposals aimed at protecting American workers from the effects of globalization. (Sean Sullivan)

“The number of new cases reported daily peaked above 70,000 in July and has been falling since. The decline now seems to be slowing, with the daily number hovering near 40,000 for more than a week, a review of nationwide data showed Tuesday. That is one sign that the infection may be leveling off,” Anne Gearan and Rachel Weiner report. “Although that is good news, the numbers suggest continued high levels of infection and a long road ahead, particularly as cold weather and the flu season approach. Without a vaccine or a major advance in treatment, significant reductions in new cases would probably require voluntary or mandated changes in behavior that experts say are unlikely six months into the public health crisis.”

• Tony Fauci, the chief expert for infectious diseases at the National Institutes of Health, warned that eight states are at risk of spikes in new cases: North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Iowa, Arkansas, Missouri, Indiana and Illinois. “It’s almost like whack-a-mole,” Fauci said of the rise in cases in the Midwest as cases in the South decline.
• Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said it no longer makes sense to talk about “waves” of virus spread, but spikes followed by plateaus. “This is just one big forest fire of coronavirus, and it will burn hot wherever there is human wood to burn,” he said. “If you don’t put the fire out completely, and then you walk away from it, it’s going to start burning again in days.”

“A large, Phase 3 study testing a Covid-19 vaccine being developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford at dozens of sites across the U.S. has been put on hold due to a suspected serious adverse reaction in a participant in the United Kingdom,” Stat News reports. “AstraZeneca, a frontrunner in the race for a Covid-19 vaccine, said in a statement that the company’s ‘standard review process triggered a pause to vaccination to allow review of safety data.’ In a follow-up statement, AstraZeneca said it initiated the study hold. The nature of the adverse reaction and when it happened were not immediately known, though the participant is expected to recover … The spokesperson described the pause as ‘a routine action which has to happen whenever there is a potentially unexplained illness in one of the trials, while it is investigated, ensuring we maintain the integrity of the trials.’ … A second individual familiar with the matter, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, said the finding is having an impact on other AstraZeneca vaccine trials underway — as well as on the clinical trials being conducted by other vaccine manufacturers.”

• The chief executives of nine drug companies pledged not to seek regulatory approval before the safety and efficacy of their experimental coronavirus vaccines have been established in Phase 3 clinical trials, an extraordinary effort to bolster public faith in a vaccine amid Trump’s pressure to introduce one before Election Day. (Chris Rowland)
• The World Health Organization’s top scientist said the vaccine trial process “has to follow the rules of the game” as the Oxford trial was paused. “Just because we talk about speed and scale, it doesn’t mean that we start compromising or cutting corners on what would normally be assessed,” said Soumya Swaminathan. (Rick Noack) 

“Six months ago, Bergamo was a startling warning sign of the virus’s fury, a city where sirens rang through the night and military trucks lined up outside the public hospital to ferry away the dead. Bergamo has dramatically curtailed the virus’s spread, but it is now offering another kind of warning, this one about the long aftermath, where recoveries are proving incomplete and sometimes excruciating,” Chico Harlan and Stefano Pitrelli report. “Those who survived the peak of the outbreak in March and April are now negative. The virus is officially gone from their systems. ‘But we are asking: Are you feeling cured? Almost half the patients say no,’ said Serena Venturelli, an infectious-disease specialist at the hospital. … Bergamo doctors say the disease clearly has full-body ramifications but leaves wildly differing marks from one patient to the next, and in some cases few marks at all. Among the first 750 patients screened, some 30 percent still have lung scarring and breathing trouble. The virus has left another 30 percent with problems linked to inflammation and clotting, such as heart abnormalities and artery blockages. A few are at risk of organ failure.”

• The U.S. Agency for International Development will shut down its coronavirus task force, despite being on the front lines of the battle. Some fear the decision will lead to greater dysfunction at the agency, which is already facing personnel and structural turmoil. (Politico) 
• Global economic output could decline by 1.5 percent over the rest of the century because of disruptions to schooling caused by the pandemic, according to a new estimate from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. In the United States alone, that might mean a total economic loss equivalent to $15.3 trillion, per the OECD.

“As child care centers and schools reopen, parents are encountering another coronavirus testing bottleneck: Few sites will test children. Even in large cities with dozens of test sites, parents are driving long distances and calling multiple centers to track down one accepting children,” the New York Times reports. “Many testing sites, including those run by cities and states, do not test any children, or they set age minimums that exclude young children. The age limits vary widely from place to place. Los Angeles offers public testing without any age minimum, while San Francisco, which initially saw only adults, recently began offering tests to children 13 and older. Dallas sets a cutoff at 5 years old. The District of Columbia decided not to test young children at its public sites because children have nearly universal health coverage in the city, meaning they could be tested at a pediatrician’s office. Parents …  however, are finding that pediatricians’ offices appear to have limited testing capacities.”

• A month into the forced reopening of Florida’s schools, dozens of classrooms — along with some entire schools — have been temporarily shuttered because of coronavirus outbreaks, and cases among school-age children have jumped 34 percent. “Volunteers around the state have set up their own school-related coronavirus dashboards, and one school district is using Facebook after the county health department was told to stop releasing information about cases tied to local schools,” Lori Rozsa and Valerie Strauss report.
• More than 2,000 students and staff are in isolation at the University of Tennessee Knoxville after fraternity members sidestepped testing and covertly threw parties. The number of active coronavirus cases on campus soared in that time, rising from 126 cases to 600. (Katie Shepherd)
• In D.C., where neighborhood public school buildings continue to be closed, charter schools are starting to offer in-person learning for small groups. The city’s two largest charter operators — KIPP DC and Friendship, which together educate more than 11,000 students — plan to start some in-person learning this week. KIPP DC has identified 243 students across its seven campuses to return once a week for in-person learning, and Friendship will bring in 150 students with undefined critical needs for in-person learning two days a week. (Perry Stein) 
• Los Angeles County barred trick-or-treating and costume parties because of the pandemic. To celebrate Halloween, people in the county can go to Halloween-themed dinners at local restaurants or scary movie nights at drive-in theaters, as long as those businesses comply with existing restrictions. (Shepherd)
• A Long Island teen was suspended for refusing to stay home from a school running a hybrid learning model. Maverick Stow, 17, said he believes he should be in school five days a week, rather than rotating between in-person and online classes. (Shepherd)
• The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, in one of the worst-case scenarios, could be linked to 266,000 cases. “The report from San Diego State University’s Center for Health Economics & Policy Studies used anonymized cellphone location data and virus case counts to analyze the impact of the 460,000-person event that took place last month, believed to be one of the largest events held during the pandemic,” Brittney Shammas reports.
• California Senate Minority Leader Shannon Grove (R) was supposed to be under quarantine when she spoke with no mask at a prayer event in Sacramento. As many as 3,000 people showed up for the event. (Tim Elfrink) 
• A predominantly Black nursing home in Atlanta is trying to heal after an outbreak. Nearly everyone who lives at the 186-bed Legacy Transitional Care and Rehabilitation is Black. More than 120 residents and staff fell ill, and 12 residents died in what became one of the largest nursing home outbreaks in Georgia. (Sidnee King and Joel Jacobs) 
• The hard-hit Navajo Nation reported no new cases for the first time since March. In April, the Navajo Nation surpassed New York City for the highest per capita infection rate in the country. (Shepherd)

“Facebook software engineer Ashok Chandwaney has watched with growing unease as the platform has become a haven for hate,” Craig Timberg and Elizabeth Dwoskin report. “‘I’m quitting because I can no longer stomach contributing to an organization that is profiting off hate in the US and globally,’ Chandwaney wrote in a letter posted on Facebook’s internal employee network … The nearly 1,300-word document was detailed, bristling with links to bolster its claims and scathing in its conclusions. … 

“Chandwaney specifically cited the company’s role in fueling genocide in Myanmar and, more recently, violence in Kenosha, Wis. Facebook did not remove a militia group’s event encouraging people to bring guns to protests ahead of fatal shootings last month despite hundreds of complaints, in what [chief executive Mark] Zuckerberg called an ‘operational mistake.’ The letter, which Chandwaney elaborated on during an interview with The Washington Post, also cited Facebook’s refusal to remove a post by President Trump in May saying ‘when the looting starts, the shooting starts’ and dismissed the company’s response to civil rights issues as mere public relations maneuvers. … 

“One turning point [for Chadwaney] came when Facebook’s most senior Republican, the D.C.-based policy chief Joel Kaplan, appeared as a visible, on-screen supporter of Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh during his Senate confirmation hearing in October 2018. Kaplan defended his support of Kavanaugh, a close friend, but the affiliation rankled many at Facebook at a time when the nominee was battling allegations of sexual assault … Kaplan has been a strong internal advocate for the platform being ‘politically neutral,’ but former employees have said that in practice his approach has meant favoring Republicans and Trump.”

“While not as deadly or damaging to property as blazes here in recent years, the fires have set in motion a seasonal displacement of weary Westerners, many of whom are now accustomed to packing ‘go bags’ each late-summer season when forced evacuations have become commonplace,” Scott Wilson reports from Santa Barbara, Calif. “In California, where two dozen major wildfires are burning, a new round of fast-moving blazes sparked up over the weekend just as thousands of people began returning to homes evacuated only last month because of a different set of fires. More than 2.2 million acres have burned in the state this year, a modern record with the traditional fire season still weeks away. It is a measure of how quickly the West’s climate is becoming one of extremes — periods of soaking rains followed suddenly by high heat — that the old record was set just two years ago.” 

• The wildfires ripping through thousands of acres of land in southwestern Oregon resulted in the mandatory evacuation of tens of thousands of residents. The fire, as of early this morning, was burning its way to the central neighborhoods of Medford, Ore., a city of 82,000. (Timothy Bella)
• A report commissioned by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission found that climate change poses a “slow motion” systemic threat to the stability of the American financial system and requires urgent action from financial regulators, including the Federal Reserve and the SEC. (Reuters)
• Uber announced that 100 percent of its rides in the U.S., Canada and Europe will take place in electric vehicles by 2030. “But rather than pay drivers directly to trade their gas-burning vehicles for electric ones, the company will impose an extra fee on trips completed in an electric vehicle to incentivize drivers to make the switch,” the Verge reports.

“The retirements and voluntary demotions came as the city on the shores of Lake Ontario has been gripped by protests. While the ­41-year-old’s death occurred in March, it received little notice ­until the footage was released by his family’s attorneys last week, adding to the nationwide outcry as another Black man died after an encounter with police,” Shayna Jacobs, Mark Berman and Griff Witte report. “Prude’s death continued to roil Rochester’s department, with seven police officers suspended from the city’s force and New York’s attorney general saying she would impanel a grand jury as part of an ongoing investigation. Then came the abrupt twin retirements on Tuesday of Police Chief La’Ron Singletary and Deputy Chief Joseph Morabito, who joined a growing cadre of top police officials who have stepped down or have been forced out in cities where protest and outcry about the nation’s policing have not subsided.” 

• Dallas’s first Black female police chief will also step down in November. U. Reneé Hall submitted her resignation, which didn’t give a reason for her departure. (AP) 
• My June 22 Big Idea from Richmond: “Ousting police chiefs does not ensure systemic reform, activists fear.”

“To be eligible for best picture, a film must meet at least two standards across four categories: ‘Onscreen Representation, Themes and Narratives,’ ‘Creative Leadership and Project Team,’ ‘Industry Access and Opportunities’ and ‘Audience Development.’ Within each category are a variety of criteria involving the inclusion of people in underrepresented groups, including women, people of color, LGBTQ+ people and those with cognitive or physical disabilities. (Other Oscar categories will not be held to these same standards, but the contenders for best picture typically filter down to other feature-length categories),” the Los Angeles Times reports.

• The College Board launched a national curriculum on race, spotlighting the African diaspora with a new Advanced Placement program. (Erik Gleibermann)
• Debates over race, history and values are roiling Texas A&M after a summer of protests over a Confederate statue challenged the university system and alumni, who chant “Aggie traditions matter.” The statue, of former university president and Confederate general Lawrence Sullivan Ross, is still standing. Lately, it’s been surrounded by two crowds constantly: multicultural students who want to see it come down, and a group of older, White Texans guarding it. (Susan Svrluga, Mary Lee Grant and Brittney Martin)
• Christian Cooper, the Black birder in Central Park who gained national attention after a White woman threatened him with a call to the police, turned the clash into a graphic novel about racism. The novel features a Black teenager who looks at birds through his binoculars and instead sees the faces of Black people who’ve been killed by police. The 10-page story will be available online for free starting today. (NYT)

A reporter for the New Republic offered a sobering way to think about the coronavirus death toll: 

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) shared images of the devastating fires in his state: 

A family recorded this hellscape as they fled their campsite during the Oregon fires: 

“You can’t Tinder your way into a long-term relationship,” said former first lady Michelle Obama, in her new podcast, while discussing her love life with comedian Conan O’Brien.

Seth Meyers said reports that Trump has insulted fallen soldiers sound believable: 

Trevor Noah agreed, once again, that there’s so much news and so little time: 

Democratic congressional candidate Tedra Cobb rips Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) for defending Trump despite his reported comments on the troops and his refusal to take action against the Russians allegedly paying bounties for the killing of U.S. troops. The ad is noteworthy because this congressional district includes the Fort Drum Army base: