Summary
Here’s a recap of today’s developments:
President Joe Biden used the first anniversary of his signature Inflation Reduction Act to pitch the landmark clean-energy law as an economic powerhouse to an American public that remains largely unaware of its contents. Speaking at a White House ceremony, Biden said the legislation has already created 170,000 clean energy jobs and will create some 1.5m jobs over the next decade, while significantly cutting the nation’s carbon emissions.
Biden and first lady Jill Biden will travel to Maui on Monday to survey damage from the deadly wildfires that ravaged the resort town of Lahaina last week. The Bidens will meet with survivors of the fires, as well as first responders and other government officials, the White House said.
Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney in Georgia who is prosecuting Donald Trump and 18 other allies over efforts to overturn the 2020 election, has proposed a trial commencement date of 4 March 2024 for Trump and his 18 co-defendants. That would have Trump in court mid-campaign for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
Willis is facing a flurry of racist online abuse after the former president attacked his opponents using the word “riggers”, a thinly veiled play on the N-word. Calls to violence have proliferated across far-right sites since the charges against Trump in the Georgia case were made public on Monday night.
Former vice-president Mike Pence said the Georgia election was not stolen in 2020 and that “no one is above the law” after Trump was indicted in the state’s election subversion case. Pence’s remarks were his first since the indictment was handed down on Monday, and mark a new full-court press in recent days surrounding his certification of the 2020 election results.
Trump’s dubious defense that he was exercising his free-speech rights in response to a four-count federal criminal indictment charging him with pushing illegal schemes to overturn his 2020 election loss is prompting ex-Department of Justice officials and scholars to criticize such claims as bogus and as threats to the rule of law.
Special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into Trump and his attempts to overturn the 2020 election obtained a trove of direct messages that the former president sent to others privately through his Twitter account, according to newly unsealed court documents. A court filing last week showed federal prosecutors obtained a search warrant in January directing Twitter to produce “data and records” related to Trump’s Twitter account as well as a non-disclosure agreement prohibiting Twitter from disclosing the search warrant. The social media platform delayed complying, prompting a federal judge to hold Twitter in contempt and fine it $350,000, the filing showed.
Americans are deeply divided along party lines in their views of Trump’s actions in the most recent criminal cases brought against him, according to a new poll.
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We reported earlier that the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, has proposed that Donald Trump’s trial on election interference charges start on 4 March 2024.
Willis’s suggested date is just one day before Super Tuesday, when 15 states are scheduled to hold primaries or caucuses to select their 2024 candidates.
Willis submitted her recommendation in a court filing which also requested arraignment for the defendants charged in the Georgia election case to take place during the week of 5 September.
Trump is set to be on trial in New York on 25 March 2024 on separate charges connected to a $130,000 payment he made to Stormy Daniels, a porn star, with whom he is alleged to have had an extramarital affair.
He is also set to go on trial in Florida in May on charges of retaining classified documents after leaving office.
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The US has faced some tough times in recent years, Biden says. Despite this, he says the economy is stronger and better than any other industrial nation in the world right now.
He accuses Republicans of having repeatedly tried to repeal key parts of the Inflation Reduction Act, and of taking credit for private investments and the jobs coming into their states. “That’s OK,” he says. “I’m proud of the historic law my administration passed, but it’s not about me. It’s about you.”
Bidenomics is just another way of saying restore the American dream.
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Biden says the US is investing more than $50bn to build up resilience to the impacts of climate change. He vows to cut carbon pollution by half by 2030.
The Inflation Reduction Act is helping families save thousands of dollars in energy bills every year, he says. Consumers will save an estimated $27bn in electric bills between now and 2030, he says.
When I say climate means jobs, I mean good paying union jobs.
Biden says his administration is also boosting the nation’s energy security after years in which China dominated the clean energy supply chains.
He says the time is over in which the answer has been to find the cheapest labor, and then to import the product from abroad. “Not any more,” he says. “We are building it here and sending the product over here.”
The Inflation Reduction Act is projected to help triple wind power and increase solar power eightfold by 2030, he says.
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Biden says the Inflation Reduction Act is bringing jobs back to the US.
We’re leaving nobody behind. We’re investing in all of America, in the heartland and coast to coast.
Joe Biden: One year ago today I signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law. “One of the most significant laws I think that has ever been enacted.” pic.twitter.com/FatlkTukzM
— David Smith (@SmithInAmerica) August 16, 2023
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Fulton county prosecutors propose Trump trial to begin March 2024
The Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, has proposed a trial commencement date of 4 March 2024 for Donald Trump and his 18 co-defendants in the Georgia election interference case.
Willis also asked to schedule arraignments for the defendants for the week of 5 September, according to a court filing.
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Biden says more jobs have been created in the two years since he took office than any administration has in a single four-year term.
The US has more jobs than before the pandemic, he says, and workers are finding better, higher-paying and higher-satisfaction jobs.
Meanwhile, unemployment and inflation are down, he says. He attributes inflation falling to “corporate profits coming back down to earth”.
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Biden says IRA has taken on special interests and is winning
President Joe Biden has started his speech marking the first anniversary of the Inflation Reduction Act, which he described as “one of the most significant laws … of taking on a special interest and winning”.
Biden begins thanking Vice-President Kamala Harris and members of Congress who played a “pivotal” role in getting the bill passed. “Everyone was telling us there’s no possibility with the divided Congress the way it was,” he said.
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As we wait for Joe Biden to take the stage, here is some lunchtime reading on the Georgia election investigation.
As part of Georgia district attorney Fani Willis’s delivery of a 41-count indictment against former president Donald Trump and 18 others, the racketeering charge also lists 30 “unindicted co-conspirators”.
Here is the Guardian’s explainer on those individuals and their involvement in the alleged 2020 presidential election fraud:
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Joe Biden to celebrate anniversary of Inflation Reduction Act in White House address
President Joe Biden is set to deliver an address at approximately 2.30pm on the anniversary of the Inflation Reduction Act.
We will bring you the latest updates of Biden’s remarks.
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It is the nature of conspiracy theories to turn tragedy into grist, to transform grief and human suffering into an abstract game. The latest horrifying example came out of news late July that Barack Obama’s chef Tafari Campbell had drowned in the waters off Martha’s Vineyard.
What was a terrible accident and a tragic loss for Campbell’s family and friends was almost immediately seized upon by the paranoid corners of the internet as proof that somehow Barack and Michelle Obama had been involved in an assassination.
It was not the first time that conspiracists have seized on a senseless death as proof of a deeper plot: the 1993 suicide of Vince Foster, lawyer in the Clinton White House, and the murder of the DNC staffer Seth Rich during the 2016 presidential campaign were both used as proof of a “Clinton body count” by the right wing, a playbook that was immediately resurrected as news of Campbell’s death broke. The difference was that those earlier conspiracy theories were focused almost entirely on the Clintons, while the current iteration is far more diffuse and its targets far more wide-reaching.
Campbell’s death, these conspiracists claim, is not just proof of the Obamas’ criminality but of a massive network of treasonous child sex traffickers – an elaborate and convoluted narrative all too well known to us now as QAnon. QAnon appeared in 2017 and quickly spread through the far right, before beginning to wane in the wake of Joe Biden’s inauguration.
But it hasn’t disappeared entirely, and understanding the conspiracy theory’s rise and fall – and the awful legacy it has left us – reveals a great deal about the modern landscape of partisan paranoia. It also offers some clues on how best to fight back.
Donald Trump is testing the limits of what the federal judge presiding over his 2020 election subversion case will tolerate after warning the former president against making inflammatory remarks.
US district court judge Tanya Chutkan last week admonished Trump against violating the conditions of his release put in place at his arraignment, warning that inflammatory remarks from the former president would push her to schedule the trial sooner.
Trump immediately tested that warning by posting on Truth Social messages that largely amplified others criticizing Chutkan. “She obviously wants me behind bars. VERY BIASED & UNFAIR,” Trump wrote on Monday.
Trump has waged a similarly defiant campaign against others involved in criminal cases against him, including special counsel Jack Smith and Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis, the New York Times reported.
Some lawyers have said that if Mr. Trump were an ordinary citizen issuing these attacks, he would be in jail by now. The question is whether Mr. Trump will face consequences for this kind of behavior ahead of a trial.
‘He is absolutely in my view testing the judge and testing the limits, almost daring and taunting her,’ said Karen Agnifilo, who has a three-decade legal career, including as the chief assistant in the Manhattan district attorney’s office. Ms. Agnifilo added that Mr. Trump is so far benefiting from his status as a candidate for office, facing fewer repercussions from the judges in the cases than other vocal defendants might.
Trump could be found in violation of the conditions of his release, which could entail a fine or even being sent to jail, the report writes.
Calls to violence have proliferated across far-right sites since the charges against Donald Trump in the Georgia case were made public on Monday night.
Several Gab posts reproduced images of nooses and gallows and called for Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney in Georgia, and grand jurors who delivered the charges to be hanged. And posts on Patriots.win combined the wordplay with direct calls to violence.
Earlier this month, Willis wrote to Fulton county commissioners and judges to warn them to stay vigilant in the face of rising tensions ahead of the release of the indictment. She told them that she and her staff had been receiving racist threats and voicemails since she began her investigation into Trump’s attempt to subvert the election two years ago. She said:
I guess I am sending this as a reminder that you should stay alert over the month of August and stay safe.
As Willis’s investigation approached its climax, Trump intensified his personal attacks on her through social media. He has accused her of prosecutorial misconduct and even of being racist herself.
Willis has rebuffed his claims as “derogatory and false”.
Trump has also unleashed a barrage of vitriol against Jack Smith, the special counsel who earlier this month brought four federal charges against Trump over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Trump has referred to the prosecutor, who is white, as “Deranged Jack Smith”.
The judge in the federal case, Tanya Chutkan, has warned him to be careful not to make inflammatory public comments about the proceedings, saying she would “take whatever measures are necessary” to prevent intimidation of witnesses or contamination of the jury pool.
Trump prosecutor Fani Willis faces racist abuse after indicting former president
Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney in Georgia who is prosecuting Donald Trump and 18 other allies over efforts to overturn the 2020 election, is facing a flurry of racist online abuse after the former president attacked his opponents using the word “riggers”, a thinly veiled play on the N-word.
Hours after Willis had released the indictments on Monday night, Trump went on his social media platform Truth Social calling for all charges to be dropped and predicting he would exonerated. He did not mention Willis by name, but accused prosecutors of pursuing the wrong criminal targets.
“They never went after those that Rigged the Election,” Trump wrote.
They only went after those that fought to find the RIGGERS!
Willis is African American. So too are the two New York-based prosecutors who have investigated Trump, the Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg who indicted him in April over alleged hush-money payments, and Letitia James, the state attorney general who is investigating Trump’s financial records.
Trump’s allusion to the racial slur was immediately picked up by his supporters on far-right platforms including Gab and Patriots.win. The sites hosted hundreds of posts featuring “riggers” in their headlines in a disparaging context.
The word has also been attached to numerous social media posts to Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss. The two Black poll workers from Atlanta were falsely accused by some of the 19 defendants in the Fulton county case of committing election fraud during the 2020 vote count, and the indictment accuses Trump allies of harassing them.
The attorney representing Donald Trump in his Georgia case once donated to the campaign of Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney who filed charges against the former president on Monday.
Drew Findling, who is on the team of lead Trump attorneys fighting against Rico charges in Georgia, has backed several Democrats, including donating $1,440 to Willis’ successful primary campaign in July 2020, Federal Election Commission records obtained by Rolling Stone reveal.
Findling also donated $8,400 to Joe Biden’s winning campaign, records show.
Findling is an attorney who has represented rap artists like Gucci Mane, Migos and Cardi B. He also has tweeted critically of Trump, calling him in 2018 “the racist architect of fraudulent Trump University”.
Joe Biden’s landmark climate legislation has been “disappointing” and failed to deliver protections to car industry workers confronted by the transition to electric vehicles, according to the head of the country’s leading autoworkers union, which has pointedly withheld is endorsement of the president for next year’s election.
The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), signed by Biden a year ago today, has bestowed huge incentives to car companies to manufacture electric vehicles without any accompanying guarantees over worker pay and conditions, Shawn Fain, president of the United Auto Workers (UAW), told the Guardian.
So far it’s been disappointing. If the IRA continues to bring sweatshops and a continued race to the bottom it will be a tragedy.
This is our generation’s defining moment with electric vehicles. The government should invest in US manufacturing but money can’t go to companies with no strings attached. Labor needs a seat at the table. There should be labor standards built in, this is the future of the car industry at stake.
The UAW, which is based in the car-making heartland of Detroit and has about 400,000 members, has so far refused to endorse Biden for next year’s presidential election, a major political headache for a president who has called himself a “union guy” and counts upon organized labor as a key part of his base, particularly in crucial midwest states such as Michigan.
Court documents unsealed on Tuesday show a bruising battle with Twitter’s attorneys and special counsel Jack Smith’s office to obtain a search warrant for Donald Trump’s account.
Federal prosecutors investigating Trump over his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election obtained a search warrant in January directing Twitter to produce “data and records” related to Trump’s Twitter account as well as a non-disclosure agreement prohibiting Twitter from disclosing the search warrant.
The social media platform delayed complying, prompting a federal judge to hold Twitter, which recently rebranded to X, in contempt and fine it $350,000. But the fine was the least of the punishment, according to a Politico report.
According to the court transcripts, US district judge Beryl Howell lit into Twitter for taking “extraordinary” and apparently unprecedented steps to give Trump advance notice about the search warrant, despite prosectors’ warnings that notifying Trump could cause grave damage to their investigation.
The judge wondered why Twitter was taking “momentous” steps to protect Trump, returning to the theme repeatedly during the proceedings, the report said. In one hearing, she referenced Elon Musk, asking:
Is it because the new CEO wants to cozy up with the former president?
Special counsel obtained Trump's direct messages in Twitter search warrant
The special counsel’s investigation into Donald Trump and his attempts to overturn the 2020 election obtained a trove of direct messages that the former president sent to others privately through his Twitter account, according to court documents unsealed on Tuesday.
Federal prosecutors obtained a search warrant for the former president’s Twitter account in January in which they sought “all content, records, and other information relating to communications sent from or received” from October 2020 to January 2021, the papers show.
A court filing last week showed the team of special counsel Jack Smith obtained a search warrant in January directing Twitter, which recently rebranded to X, to produce “data and records” related to Trump’s Twitter account as well as a non-disclosure agreement prohibiting Twitter from disclosing the search warrant. The social media platform delayed complying, prompting a federal judge to hold Twitter in contempt and fine it $350,000, the filing showed.
Newly unsealed transcripts of the court proceedings show that US district judge Beryl Howell asserted that the special counsel’s office had sought Trump’s direct messages from Twitter as part of a search warrant it executed in January.
In one of the transcripts, a lawyer for Twitter confirmed that the company had turned over to the special counsel’s office “all direct messages, the DMs” from Trump’s witter account, including those sent, received and “stored in draft form”, the New York Times reported. It remained unclear what information the direct messages may contain and who may have written them.
The warrant also specifically requested contents of “all tweets created, drafted, favorited/liked, or retweeted” by Trump’s account, including deleted tweets, as well as all associated multimedia, metadata and logs.
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Americans deeply divided over Donald Trump’s actions in election cases – poll
Americans are deeply divided along party lines in their views of Donald Trump’s actions in the most recent criminal cases brought against him, according to a new poll.
Just over half of Americans – 53% – approve of the justice department indicting Trump over his efforts to remain in office after losing the 2020 election, the poll by the Associated Press-Norc center for public affairs research showed.
The poll, which was conducted 10-14 August before Monday’s charges in the Georgia case, showed 85% of Democrats approve of the criminal charges brought by special counsel Jack Smith, compared with 47% of independents and 16% of Republicans.
Overall, three in 10 Americans disapprove of the criminal charges brought against Trump over his alleged efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss. Over a third of Americans – 35% – have a favorable view of Trump. Among Republicans, seven in 10 view the former president favorably.
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Millions of dollars of investments in new carbon capture projects in Louisiana – with more announced this week, are unwelcome developments to some environmental activists in the state.
“We’ve been trying to fix the oil and gas damage, while at the same time trying to push the transition away from it,” said Monique Hardin, director of law for the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice.
“And now we have carbon-capture and sequestration to contend with,” added Hardin, whose group is a member of Louisiana Against False Solutions, a coalition of environmental and watchdog nonprofits fighting the carbon capture projects.
Carbon capture technology, supported by the US federal government, the fossil fuel industry and some environmental groups, does not yet exist on a meaningful scale. Some climate experts worry the focus on the technology will distract from and undermine efforts to phase out fossil fuels.
About 30 carbon-capture projects have been proposed in Louisiana – all of them spurred by federal subsidies and most supercharged by increased incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act intended to address global warming.
A total of 170 projects have been announced nationwide, with only Texas having as many projects as Louisiana. On Friday, the Department of Energy announced $1.2bn investment in carbon capture projects in Louisiana and Texas.
West Virginia senator Joe Manchin lauded the Inflation Reduction Act as “one of the most historic pieces of legislation passed in decades but vowed to continue his fight against the Biden administration’s “efforts to implement the IRA as a radical climate agenda”.
In a statement on the anniversary of the act being signed into law, Manchin praised parts of the legislation that he said “will ensure that all Americans have more reliable and more affordable power for years to come”.
He wrote:
Make no mistake, the IRA is exactly the kind of legislation that in normal political times both political parties would proudly embrace because it is about putting the interests of Americans and West Virginians first. Going forward I will push back on those who seek to undermine this significant legislation for their respective political agenda, and that begins with my unrelenting fight against the Biden Administration’s efforts to implement the IRA as a radical climate agenda instead of implementing the IRA that was passed into law.
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Georgia election 'was not stolen', says Mike Pence
Former vice president Mike Pence said the Georgia election was not stolen in 2020 and that “no one is above the law” after Donald Trump was indicted in the state’s election subversion case.
Pence, at the National Conference of State Legislatures legislative summit in Indianapolis today, said:
Despite what the former president and his allies have said, for now more than two and a half years, and continue to insist to this very hour, the Georgia election was not stolen and I had no right to overturn the election on January 6.
Pence’s remarks were his first since the indictment was handed down on Monday, and mark a new full-court press in recent days surrounding his certification of the 2020 election results, Politico reported.
The former vice-president and 2024 Republican presidential candidate added:
No one is above law. And the president and all those implicated are entitled to the presumption of innocence.
If the future wasn’t renewables before the Inflation Reduction Act, it certainly is now – more than 80% of new electricity capacity this year will come from wind, solar and battery storage, according to federal government forecasts.
The framers of the legislation hoped it would create a sort of virtuous circle whereby more renewable capacity will push down the cost of already cheap clean energy sources, seeding yet further renewable deployment.
Solar panels may be dotting California and wind turbines sprouting off the east coast, but without the unglamorous build-out of transmission lines much of the benefits of the Inflation Reduction Act may be lost.
Not only is there a lack of physical poles and wires to shift clean energy from one part of the country to another, many clean energy projects are facing interminable waits, lasting several years, to be connected to the grid at all. There is more than 1,250 gigawatts of solar and wind capacity actively seeking grid connection, which is about equal to the entire existing US power plant fleet.
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No Republican voted for the Inflation Reduction Act but most of the investment that has been triggered by the bill has been funneled into projects in GOP-held congressional districts.
An emerging “battery belt” is forming in the US south, with battery and electric vehicle plants popping up in states such as Georgia, Tennessee and Texas.
“The IRA has been absolutely critical for us in terms of giving market certainties to go bold and big in our investment,” said a spokesperson for QCells, a solar manufacturer that has embarked upon a major expansion in Georgia.
The Inflation Reduction Act was a breakthrough moment following decades of obfuscation and delay by Congress despite increasingly frantic warnings by climate scientists over global heating, with the bill itself borne from months of torturous, comprise-laden negotiations with Joe Manchin, the coal baron senator from West Virginia who held a swing vote for its passage.
But the legislation has already faced the threat of repeal from Republicans, who universally voted against it, with the GOP’s first bill after gaining control of the House of Representatives this year gutting key elements of the Inflation Reduction Act. This is despite the majority of clean energy investments flowing to Republican-led districts.
Joe Biden has also faced the ire of climate progressives for somewhat undercutting his landmark moment with an aggressive giveaway of oil and gas drilling leases on public land, including the controversial Willow oil project in Alaska, and for incentivizing the use of technologies such as carbon capture that have been criticized as an unproven distraction at a time when the world is baking under record heatwaves.
“Biden has an atrocious track record on fossil fuels, and that needs to change,” said Jean Su, an attorney and climate campaigner at the Center for Biological Diversity who called on Biden to declare a climate emergency. There needs to be a “sea-change in this administration’s approach” on the climate crisis, according to Jeff Merkley, a Democratic senator.
No more green lighting fossil gas projects. No more stalling on a climate emergency. Now is the time for us to live up to the full promise of the Inflation Reduction Act.
Polling shows the majority of American voters disapprove of Biden’s handling of the climate crisis and only three in 10 have heard that much about the Inflation Reduction Act at all. Such perceptions will need to be turned around if the US president is to help secure the legacy of the bill in next year’s election.
“We are going at a record clip to try to address this climate crisis,” said John Podesta, Biden’s chief clean energy advisor.
I know people want us to hurry up and I wish we could produce a net zero economy immediately but this is a global transition that’s never occurred in human history. We need to get this job done.
The IRA act has not pleased leaders in the EU who have attacked it for being “protectionist” though some have argued they should instead be investing along similar lines.
The US is the world’s second largest emitter of greenhouse gases and the Inflation Reduction Act is widely forecast to slash these emissions, by as much as 48% by 2035, from 2005 levels, according to one analysis.
These forecasts have a relatively wide range of estimates due to uncertainties such as economic growth but even in the most optimistic scenario the US will require further measures if it is to get to net zero emissions by 2050, as scientists have said is imperative if the world is to avoid catastrophic climate impacts.
“Even though we passed the IRA you ain’t seen nothing yet,” said Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate leader, in promising a fresh climate bill recently. But given the riven nature of US politics, the prospects of such legislation is remote in the near term.
The Inflation Reduction Act includes rebates of up to $7,500 for buying an electric vehicle, and this incentive appears to be paying off – EV sales are set to top 1m in the US for the first time this year. Moreover, over half of US drivers are considering an EV for their next purchase, polling has shown.
This transition isn’t without its hurdles, however – there has been a shortage of key parts in the EV supply chain, many models still remain prohibitively expensive and unions have been unhappy at the lack of worker protections for many of the new plants that are popping up.
Climate advocates, meanwhile, have questioned why similarly strong support hasn’t been given to public transit or e-bikes to help get people out of cars altogether.
There has been around $278bn in new clean energy investments, creating more than 170,000 jobs, across the US in the first year of the Inflation Reduction Act, according to an estimate by the advocacy group Climate Power.
The White House claims that there will be twice as much wind, solar and battery storage deployment over the next seven years than if the bill was never enacted, with companies already spending twice as much on new manufacturing facilities as they were pre-IRA.
What to know about Biden’s climate law
The US’ first serious legislative attempt to tackle the climate crisis, the Inflation Reduction Act, marks its first anniversary both lauded for turbocharging a seismic shift to clean energy while also weathering serious attack from Republicans.
Joe Biden hailed the bill, which despite its name is at heart a major shove towards a future dominated by renewable energy and electric vehicles, as “one of the most significant laws in our history” when signing it on 16 August last year.
And the White House is trying to use the first year marker to extol it as a pivotal moment in tackling the climate emergency.
“It’s the largest investment in clean energy in American history, and I would argue in world history, to tackle the climate crisis,” John Podesta, Biden’s chief clean energy advisor, told the Guardian.
With any legislation it takes time to get traction, but this is performing above expectations.
Podesta said there has been an “enormous response” in take-up for the tax credits that festoon the $369bn bill, directed at zero-carbon energy projects such as solar, wind and nuclear, grants for bring renewables manufacturing to the US and consumer incentives to purchase electric cars, heat pumps and electric stoves.
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A cutting-edge energy storage company is building its main manufacturing plant where a once-thriving West Virginia steel mill once stood in the city of Weirton. According to lawmakers, the much-lauded project was made possible by incentives from 2022’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), signed by President Biden one year ago this Wednesday.
For supporters, it’s a sign that climate policies can also breathe life back into deindustrialized coal and steel communities with green jobs. The symbolism is compelling but how much those communities benefit will depend on a wide array of factors.
Form Energy, a Massachusetts-based company helmed by a former Tesla vice-president, broke ground on its iron-air battery manufacturing plant this past May. Workers will produce batteries capable of storing electricity for 100 hours, which will run on iron, water and air instead of the more common but less-abundant metal lithium. The $760m project will create 750 well-paying permanent jobs, the company said.
The plant is being constructed on the ashes of the old Weirton steel mill, once the beating heart of the steel economy in the Ohio River valley. At its height in the 1940s, the mill was West Virginia’s number one taxpayer and its largest employer, boasting a 13,000-strong workforce.
“You could literally graduate one day from high school and be hired at the steel mill making very good money,” said Mark Glyptis, president of the United Steelworkers Local 2911 and a third-generation steelworker from Weirton.
But Weirton’s economy began to wither in the 1970s. Local industry slowly declined as the market began to prefer cheaper foreign steel – and, Glyptis said, stopped enforcing regulations on the material.
The company filed for bankruptcy protection in 2003. The fallout, said Glyptis, has been “heartbreaking”.
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Biden to visit Hawaii on Monday after deadly wildfires
President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden will travel to Maui on Monday to survey damage from the deadly wildfires that ravaged the resort town of Lahaina last week.
The Bidens will meet with survivors of the fires, as well as first responders and other government officials, the White House said in a statement.
They will “see firsthand the impacts of the wildfires and the devastating loss of life and land that has occurred on the island, as well as discuss the next steps in the recovery effort”, it said.
Jill and I will travel to Maui on Monday, August 21 to meet with first responders, survivors, and federal, state, and local officials.
— President Biden (@POTUS) August 16, 2023
I remain committed to delivering everything the people of Hawai’i need as they recover from this disaster.
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The justice department filed a four-count grand jury indictment against Donald Trump on 1 August that charged him with mounting several illegal efforts to stay in office – with help from six unnamed co-conspirators who were not charged – despite his loss to Joe Biden by 7m votes and no evidence of massive fraud, as Trump has falsely and repeatedly claimed.
After pleading not guilty, Trump used one of his Truth Social posts on 3 August to charge that “the Radical Left wants to Criminalize Free Speech!” and cited comments from Republican allies echoing his claims. Trump’s lawyer John Lauro told CNN on 1 August that the charges against Trump are “an attack on free speech, and [on] political advocacy”.
Justice department veterans say such claims are factually wrong and threaten the integrity of the legal system. “Trump is deliberately distorting the critical difference between just saying things and actively doing things that have criminal consequences,” said Donald Ayer, a deputy attorney general during George HW Bush’s administration.
Obviously, he didn’t just talk about the idea that he won the election. The indictment lists several areas of conduct where he conspired and acted repeatedly to alter the outcome of the legitimate voting process that occurred. For Trump or others to now be claiming there is no difference between the two is to once again undermine the very idea that our society is governed by rules that people are required to follow.
Similarly, ex-federal prosecutors say Trump is playing fast and loose with the facts, and mounting a dangerous defense. “The indictment highlights how Trump and his co-conspirators relied on speech not just to speak their truth or rally their adherents, but to push hard, behind the scenes, to pressure others into assisting the charged fraud,” said Columbia law professor and former federal prosecutor Daniel Richman, adding:
Trump’s supporters likely know all this, but find it politically useful to wave the first amendment banner. It’s more for the crowds than for a courtroom. But the effect is simply to advance the theme of political victimhood, and undermine trust in the judicial process.
Trump’s free-speech defense in January 6 case is danger to democracy, experts say
Donald Trump’s dubious defense that he was exercising his free-speech rights in response to a four-count federal criminal indictment charging him with pushing illegal schemes to overturn his 2020 election loss is prompting ex-Department of Justice officials and scholars to criticize such claims as bogus and as threats to the rule of law.
Despite special counsel Jack Smith’s detailed 45-page, four-count indictment of Trump for promoting several illegal schemes including organizing slates of fake electors in seven states to thwart Joe Biden’s victory, Trump and some top Republican allies have repeatedly portrayed his multi-pronged drive to stay in power as a free speech matter.
But former justice department officials, scholars and ex-Republican House members say Trump’s actions and schemes went far beyond free speech, and that Trump and his allies are weakening the justice system and could breed new conspiracy theories by making a first amendment defense.
Critics say Trump allies embracing his free-speech claims seem to be trying to cover themselves with the party’s base and to rationalize sticking with Trump, despite the indictment’s sizable body of damning evidence revealing Trump’s active role in unprecedented and illegal ploys to overturn the 2020 result.
Twelve months after the Inflation Reduction Act was passed, it is drawing mixed reviews, according to a Reuters report.
Wall Street analysts have said the legislation has shown early signs of its economic power and predicted it will eventually lead to billions of dollars in new investments and thousands of new jobs.
More than 270 new clean energy projects have been announced since it was passed 12 months ago, with investments totaling some $132bn, according to a Bank of America analyst report.
Roughly half of those investment dollars are going to electric vehicles and batteries, with the rest going to renewable energy like solar, wind and nuclear.
A report from Moody’s on Tuesday said:
Over the past year, there have been signs that the legislation is contributing to a surge in clean energy manufacturing and related industries such as semiconductors, and factoring into companies’ investment decisions, including in the auto, utilities and oil and gas sectors.
Biden marks first anniversary of clean energy law, stays silent on Trump's latest Georgia indictment
Good morning, US politics blog readers. A year ago today, Joe Biden signed into law the most significant piece of climate policy in US history. And on Wednesday, the president will spend the day leading a campaign to better explain to Americans what, exactly, it does.
The Inflation Reduction Act, sometimes referred to as the IRA, directs hundreds of billions of dollars to speed the transition away from fossil fuels, helping to push consumers into buying electric vehicles and companies into producing renewable energy. But many Americans, even those who support Biden, don’t know much about it, according to Reuters.
The president is scheduled to deliver remarks at the White House this afternoon, but he will almost certainly maintain his silence about the latest indictment against his predecessor, Donald Trump, involving his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia. Given that Trump is his chief rival in the 2024 presidential race, Biden has issued explicit orders to both administration and campaign officials not to discuss the criminal investigations into Trump.
Meanwhile, the first GOP primary debate is a week away and all eyes are on the four-time-indicted Republican frontrunner. The former president hasn’t committed to attending the 23 August debate in Milwaukee, but he hasn’t completely ruled it out either.
Here’s what else we’re watching today:
11am Eastern time: President Joe Biden will get his daily intelligence briefing.
12.15pm: White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, domestic policy adviser Neera Tanden, Biden’s clean energy adviser John Podesta and Fema administrator Deanne Criswell will brief reporters.
2.30pm: Biden will deliver remarks on the first anniversary of the Inflation Reduction Act.
The House and Senate are out.
Updated
