Undoing disastrous Trump farm/food policies

A very informative and helpful guide.

In January 2021, President-elect Biden will have the opportunity to roll back the rollbacks, to re-regulate the de-regulated. These are changes he can make without the aid of Congress; Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell may slow down the process of confirming his Secretary of Agriculture, but his reach doesn’t extend to the rulemaking process.

In many cases, Biden won’t have to do much to ensure the Trump administration’s most controversial food and farming policies never see the light of day. In others, he’ll need to go to court or issue executive orders. Still more will require Congressional action or a lengthy rulemaking process.

Here’s your guide to the Trump administration’s signature rollbacks—and our predictions on their survival in 2021. - The Counter

President-elect Biden needs to follow through on Yemen

What better way to get started, than to get going on ending a crime against humanity?

One thing Biden can do, start­ing on day one, is end U.S. involve­ment in the Yemen war — involve­ment that he helped ini­ti­ate. ​“By exec­u­tive order, Biden could get the Pen­ta­gon to end intel­li­gence shar­ing for the Sau­di coali­tion airstrikes, end logis­ti­cal sup­port, and end spare parts trans­fers that keep Sau­di war­planes in the air,” Has­san El-Tayyab, lead Mid­dle East pol­i­cy lob­by­ist for the Friends Com­mit­tee on Nation­al Leg­is­la­tion, a pro­gres­sive orga­ni­za­tion, tells In These Times. ​“He could restore human­i­tar­i­an assis­tance to north­ern Yemen. He could use his pow­er as pres­i­dent to put pres­sure on oth­er nations that are sup­port­ing the Sau­di coali­tion — like France, the Unit­ed King­dom and Cana­da — and get them to fol­low suit. He could have the State Depart­ment put a stop on all arms sales to Sau­di Ara­bia unless they meet cer­tain benchmarks.” - In These Times

The best boot-on-Trump's-ass rant I've seen yet

There are a lot of progressives who write with high excellence. Three of my favorites (though they're stylistically quite different from one another), at national websites, are David Dayen at The American Prospect, William Rivers Pitt at Truthout, and Hunter at Daily Kos.

Most importantly, we must look forward, not back. Instead of dwelling on the past, we should instead dwell on the clusterf--k that will be the future if Trump's unending list of white nationalists, professional liars, and eager criminals does not receive our public revulsion, our contempt, and the fullest possible prosecutions. Our nation depends on coming together, here and now, to wipe every last incompetent Republican sycophant from our politics and our televisions.

This means all those that stood by Trump, as he careened through our "norms" and revealed us to be an autocracy in waiting. The pundits. The Republican lawmakers. The "conservative" think tankers. The appointees. Every last one of them has betrayed this nation, has shown themselves to be supporters of even this, and the damage done has been incalculable. It is unforgivable. There is no possible repentance. They must be purged—or the next Republican autocrat may be successful where this incompetent, addled fart of a man was not. - Daily Kos

Military basically says if Trump orders them to do something crazy, they won't

I think that's pretty clear, here. The article spins it a little differently.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley held an off-the-record video call with top generals and network anchors this weekend to tamp down speculation about potential military involvement in the presidential election, two people familiar with the call tell Axios.

Why it matters: The nation's top military official set up Saturday's highly unusual call to make clear that the military's role is apolitical, one of the sources said — and to dispel any notion of a role for the military in adjudicating a disputed election or making any decision around removing a president from the White House. - Axios

More indicators that the end of Big Oil could be sooner than people think

I find myself wondering whether vulture funds and the like will try to get involved. Or already are.

But the pandemic has had a material impact, hastening Exxon’s decline, but the company has been gliding downward for years. Part of its problem has been doubling down on oil, which has made the economy hum along for decades (thanks in part to Exxon’s aforementioned lying). A Carbon Tracker analysis released on Wednesday shows the company’s investment in exploration and resource- and carbon-intensive projects played a role in Exxon’s decline since 2014. The report notes investors “would have been better off putting their cash under the mattress” over the past six years. Climate change means the world needs to rapidly sunset the use of oil or face unspeakable horrors, and will further constrain Exxon’s future as long as it focuses on oil as its main means of making money.

Exxon is hardly alone in layoffs, though its overall totals are among the steepest in the industry. Earlier this year, BP announced it would lay off 10,000 workers as it transition to an “energy” company, a new fresh hell of greenwashing. At the time, the CEO called it the “right thing” to do. With the end of oil now coming up over the horizon, it’s more vital than ever to have a plan for affected workers who are about to or already are losing their livelihoods. - Gizmodo

How Trump's SCOTUS is paid for

Disgraceful, that this is legal, and happens. And imagine the freakouts on the right, and the corporate media attention, if progressives did this kind of shit.

A close informal advisor to President Trump who has been deeply involved in all three of his Supreme Court nomination battles is the sole trustee of a mysterious group that brought in more than $80 million in 2018, according to a previously unreported tax return uncovered by CREW. The filing vastly expands the amount of money known to be flowing into the growing constellation of dark money groups tied to Federalist Society co-chairman Leonard Leo and provides new details about his role in a secretive firm that was responsible for one of the largest donations received by President Trump’s inaugural committee.

What makes Rule of Law Trust (RLT) particularly interesting is that despite its $80 million haul, the group seems remarkably hollow. It claimed it had no employees and no volunteers in its first year and listed what appears to be a virtual office in Virginia as its main address. Its stated mission is “to advance conservative principles and causes through communications, research, strategy and assistance to other organizations,” but there’s no apparent public information to demonstrate what that work entails, not even a website. - CREW

Trumpers are burying clean energy studies

I don't know whether President-to-be Biden will be able to quickly reverse a lot of what Trump has done by blanket executive orders and the like, or whether it will have to be an arduous, one-at-a-time process.

In all, the DOE has blocked reports for more than 40 clean energy studies. The department has replaced them with mere presentations, buried them in scientific journals that are not accessible to the public, or left them paralyzed within the agency, according to emails and documents obtained by InvestigateWest, as well as interviews with more than a dozen current and former employees at the Energy Department and its national labs.

Bottling up and slow-walking studies is already harming efforts to fight climate change, according to clean-energy experts and others, because Energy Department reports drive investment decisions. Entrepreneurs worry that the agency’s practices under the current White House will ultimately hurt growth prospects for U.S.-developed technology. - InvestigateWest/Grist