The Overnight News Digest is a nightly series chronicling the eschaton.
The Washington Post North America has lost 3 billion birds in 50 yearsSlowly, steadily and almost imperceptibly, North America’s bird population is dwindling.
The sparrows and finches that visit backyard feeders number fewer each year. The flutelike song of the western meadowlark — the official bird of six U.S. states — is growing more rare. The continent has lost nearly 3 billion birds representing hundreds of species over the past five decades, in an enormous loss that signals an “overlooked biodiversity crisis,” according to a study from top ornithologists and government agencies.
This is not an extinction crisis — yet. It is a more insidious decline in abundance as humans dramatically alter the landscape: There are 29 percent fewer birds in the United States and Canada today than in 1970, the study concludes. Grassland species have been hardest hit, probably because of agricultural intensification that has engulfed habitats and spread pesticides that kill the insects many birds eat. But the victims include warblers, thrushes, swallows and other familiar birds.
The whistleblower complaint that has triggered a tense showdown between the U.S. intelligence community and Congress involves … Trump’s communications with a foreign leader, according to two former U.S. officials familiar with the matter.
Trump’s interaction with the foreign leader included a “promise” that was regarded as so troubling that it prompted an official in the U.S. intelligence community to file a formal whistleblower complaint with the inspector general for the intelligence community, said the former officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
It was not immediately clear which foreign leader Trump was speaking with or what he pledged to deliver, but his direct involvement in the matter has not been previously disclosed. It raises new questions about the president’s handling of sensitive information and may further strain his relationship with U.S. spy agencies. One former official said the communication was a phone call.
Iran warns U.S. of ‘all-out war’ if attacked
Iran warned Thursday that military action by the United States or Saudi Arabia would result in “all-out war,” as the Trump administration weighs its response after blaming Iran for crippling strikes on the kingdom’s oil infrastructure. […]
In an interview with CNN, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif denied that Tehran was involved in the attacks and warned that retaliatory strikes risked causing significant bloodshed on Iranian soil.
“I am making a very serious statement that we don’t want to engage in a military confrontation,” Zarif said. “But we won’t blink to defend our territory.”
CNNTrump sues to try to stop tax returns from being sent to NY prosecutor
Donald Trump is suing his long-time accounting firm Mazars USA and New York district attorney Cyrus Vance to attempt to stop his accounting records and tax returns from being sent to the local prosecutor, arguing he can't be prosecuted while in the White House.
The suit is the boldest broadside yet against any local or state prosecutors who may want to investigate Trump while he serves in the White House. For the first time, Trump's private legal team pushes an argument into federal court that the President should be immune from criminal investigation while in office.
"Virtually 'all legal commenters agree' that a sitting President of the United States is not 'subject to the criminal process' while he is in office," his attorneys write at the start of the complaint, citing a legal memo and a Yale Law Journal article. "Yet a county prosecutor in New York, for what appears to be the first time in our nation's history, is attempting to do just that."
Los Angeles TimesFederal judge blocks California law to force disclosure of Trump’s tax returns
A federal judge ordered a temporary injunction Thursday against California’s first-in-the-nation law requiring candidates to disclose their tax returns for a spot on the presidential primary ballot, an early victory for … Trump but a decision that will undoubtedly be appealed by state officials.
U.S. District Judge Morrison England Jr. said he would issue a final ruling in the coming days but took the unusual step of issuing the tentative order from the bench. He said there would be “irreparable harm without temporary relief” for Trump and other candidates from the law signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in July.
Darrell Issa’s nomination for trade post hits a snag over his FBI background file
Darrell Issa’s nomination to serve as a Trump administration trade official hit a roadblock Thursday amid concern over something in the former California congressman’s FBI background file.
Early in a confirmation hearing by the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, the GOP chairman announced that a vote on Issa’s nomination to lead Trump’s U.S. Trade and Development Agency would be delayed until the White House agreed to make available Issa’s FBI background file to the full committee. It was unclear what in the file was raising concerns among members.
The HillWarren shows signs of broadening her base
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) appears to be growing her share of support from black voters, who have been slow to warm to her campaign.
A new poll from NBC News and The Wall Street Journal found Warren in second place among black voters with 13 percent support, her best showing in any poll to date. That’s up from 8 percent in the previous survey from July, although the 5-point swing is within the poll’s margin of error.
An Economist–YouGov survey released Wednesday found Warren’s support among black voters at 11 percent, up from 5 percent in July. And the latest Politico–Morning Consult survey found Warren gaining 5 points among black voters.
Former Vice President Joe Biden still dominates the field with black voters, and he’ll be the favorite to win the nomination unless that changes. The Seattle TimesFeds seek expanded habitat protection as salmon, orcas battle climate change, habitat degradation
Most of the outer coast of Washington, Oregon and California would become protected habitat for southern resident orcas under a federal proposal released Wednesday.
The new designation, if approved, would greatly expand the area considered “critical” for the survival of the endangered orcas that frequent Puget Sound. Since 2006, the inland waters of the Salish Sea have been considered critical habitat for the southern residents.
The designation requires review of federal actions within the areas that could affect southern resident killer whales, providing additional oversight by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Washington state will join in the legal challenge to the Trump administration’s upcoming move to block states from setting tougher vehicle-emission standards.
Washington has partially adopted California standards developed through a waiver to the 1970 federal Clean Air Act, and, thus, has a stake in what is shaping up to be a clash over the future of the U.S. automobile industry.
Bezos commits Amazon to rapidly cut fossil fuels, be carbon neutral by 2040
Jeff Bezos committed his company to cut all its net greenhouse-gas emissions by 2040 — a goal that would appear to put Amazon in the vanguard of corporations reducing carbon pollution ahead of the schedule scientists say is necessary to stave off the worst impacts of global climate change.
The company also announced it was ordering 100,000 electric-delivery vehicles, calling it the largest such order of its kind, and establishing a $100 million fund for reforestation projects in an effort to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
The reductions described by Bezos will be an enormous challenge for a company whose main businesses are energy intensive – Amazon has fleets of trucks and jets, as well as a global network of data centers — and steadily growing. Amazon said its 2018 greenhouse gas emissions totaled 44.4 million metric tons in 2018, the first time it has disclosed its carbon footprint.
Vanity FairIs Bernie Sanders Beginning to Flail?
Further evidence that Bernie Sanders’s 2020 campaign isn’t recapturing his 2016 magic arrived Tuesday in a new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll that found the Vermont senator tied for third with Kamala Harris at 13%, far behind Joe Biden at 26% and Elizabeth Warren with 19%. That single poll is a bit of an outlier—the RealClearPolitics rolling average puts Sanders and Warren on more or less equal footing at around 17%. But Sanders’s ongoing struggle to emerge from Biden’s shadow, and his sinking fortunes versus Warren—who snatched the endorsement of the Working Families Party this week—are beginning to raise questions about his long-term viability in the Democratic primary.
Those frustrations appear to be boiling over in New Hampshire, where the Sanders campaign recently shook up its staff. Politico reports there were organizational issues with the team on the ground there, but the details suggest that the problems could run deeper…
Star TribuneHow did U of Minnesota tuition go from $300 to $15,000 per year since the 1960s?
[…] “I’m just appalled by what I hear these kids are getting into,” former Hopkins resident Thomas Brokl said of the student debt young people routinely take on to pay for college — typically around $25,000.
Brokl, who earned his degree from the University of Minnesota in the late 1960s, … recalled paying about $150 a quarter.
His estimate isn’t far off. A full academic year at the time would have set him back just $294, according to data from the University’s Office of Institutional Research. That’s about $2,300 in today’s dollars after adjusting for inflation.
But the University of Minnesota has a price tag of $15,236 for this school year, putting the cost for four years north of $60,000. Put another way, today’s Gopher is paying over 500% more for a bachelor’s degree than Brokl did. That’s for in-state undergraduate tuition and fees, and doesn’t include housing or other living expenses.
Meanwhile, real wages for low and middle-class earners have increased 6% or less since 1979, according to a recent congressional research report.
The Daily BeastElizabeth Warren’s Rivals Start to Turn on Her
[…] On Thursday, South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg accused Warren of dodging questions about potential tax increases that could come with instituting a Medicare for All healthcare system, which Warren supports. […]
During a call with reporters on Thursday morning, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) appeared to knock Warren for transferring money from her Senate campaign prior to her presidential outfit prior to announcing her run for the presidency.
And Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), who has attempted to run in a more moderate lane in the primary, continued her derision of plans like Medicare for All and free college during a visit to the Midwest.
Republican Fundraiser Pleads Guilty to Fraud
A Republican fundraiser pleaded guilty Tuesday to using fraudulent promises of support for conservative candidates for office and military veterans to bilk donors out of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The details of Kelley Rogers’ scheme were at once brazen and familiar, in which he and a cadre of unnamed consultants used a huge email marketing campaign to solicit mostly small-dollar contributions with promises that it would be spent on political and charitable causes. The money was actually used to continue building their own in-house list of donors that they could hit up in the future—and rent out to clients willing to pay them for access.
VoxA rare bipartisan agreement on immigration reform has tanked in the Senate
A bill that would eliminate per-country caps on employment-based green cards, effectively opening the door to more high-skilled immigrants from India and China, failed on the Senate floor Thursday after Sen. David Perdue (R-GA) blocked the bill.
The bill, which would not have increased overall legal immigration levels, had seemed like it would be a rare moment of bipartisan agreement on one of the most contentious topics of the Trump administration. In July, it passed the House in a 365-65 vote with substantial bipartisan support.
But whether the Senate would pass the bill was an ongoing question. […]
The failure of the bill, which tackles just a small slice of the legal immigration system and would likely have passed the Republican Senate if it were put to a vote, shows just how hard it has become for Congress to tackle immigration issues. Even in the GOP, consensus on reform to legal immigration appears out of reach.
Trump just asked the Supreme Court to let him fire the CFPB’s head. The implications are enormous.
On Tuesday, the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to hear a lawsuit challenging the leadership structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) — taking the same side as the people suing the government in a major constitutional dispute.
The administration essentially threw in the towel in the challenge to the consumer protection agency started by senator and presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren. As a general rule, the Justice Department has a duty to defend federal laws challenged in court. The administration, however, decided not to defend the law at issue in this case.
With the Justice Department urging the Court to weigh in, it is now very likely that the justices will do so. The policy implications of this suit, Seila Law v. CFPB, are unclear. In the narrowest sense, Seila Law is a case about whether a federal agency can be led by a single director that the president cannot remove at will. More broadly, however, the case is the most recent skirmish in a war over what kind of government our Constitution permits.
The AtlanticWhy Some People Become Lifelong Readers
The size of the American reading public varies depending on one’s definition of reading. In 2017, about 53 percent of American adults (roughly 125 million people) read at least one book not for school or for work in the previous 12 months, according to the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). Five years earlier, the NEA ran a more detailed survey, and found that 23 percent of American adults were “light” readers (finishing one to five titles per year), 10 percent were “moderate” (six to 11 titles), 13 percent were “frequent” (12 to 49 titles), and a dedicated 5 percent were “avid” (50 books and up). […]
Some people are much more likely than others to become members of the reading class. “The patterns are very, very predictable,” Griswold told me. First, and most intuitively, the more education someone has, the more likely they are to be a reader. Beyond that, she said, “urban people read more than rural people,” “affluence is associated with reading,” and “young girls read earlier” than boys do and “continue to read more in adulthood.” Race matters, too: The NEA’s data indicate that 60 percent of white American adults reported reading a book in the last year outside of work or school, which was a higher rate than for African Americans (47 percent), Asians (45 percent), and Hispanic people (32 percent). (Some of these correlations could simply reflect the strong connection between education and reading.)
The GuardianRevealed: how US senators invest in firms they are supposed to regulate
As they set national policy on important issues such as climate change, tech monopolies, medical debt and income inequality, US senators have glaring conflicts of interest, an investigation by news website Sludge and the Guardian can reveal.
An analysis of personal financial disclosure data as of 16 August has found that 51 senators and their spouses have as much as $96m personally invested in corporate stocks in five key sectors: communications/electronics; defense; energy and natural resources; finance, insurance and real estate; and health.
The majority of these stocks come from public companies, and some are private.
Overall, the senators are invested in 338 companies – including tech firms such as Apple and Microsoft, oil and gas giants including ExxonMobil and Antero Midstream, telecom companies including Verizon, and major defense contractors such as Boeing – in the five sectors as categorized by Sludge.
Sackler family members 'may be unwilling' to contribute to opioids settlement
OxyContin-maker Purdue Pharma has warned a bankruptcy court that the Sackler family members who own the company “may be unwilling – or unable” to contribute billions to a $10–$12bn settlement toward the costs of the US opioid crisis if lawsuits against them are allowed to proceed.
The claim, made in bankruptcy court in New York on Wednesday, comes as the billions that the family will personally contribute to the settlement – tentatively agreed last week with some of the parties suing both the company and the family – have become a central sticking point in efforts to resolve thousands of lawsuits against it.
Purdue Pharma filed for bankruptcy protection early this week, following litigation agreements with multiple US states, counties and cities in a controversial plan that would direct future profits from a restructured Purdue towards addiction treatment and anti-overdose drugs.
Judges urged to back MPs' recall if they rule against prorogation
Parliament should be allowed to reassemble next week, the supreme court has been urged, as the legal battle over Boris Johnson’s five-week suspension threatened to escalate into a constitutional crisis over who has authority to recall MPs and peers.
At the end of the third and final day of an emergency hearing over the lawfulness of the prime minister’s advice to the Queen to suspend debates, the 11 justices were asked to encourage the Speakers of the Commons and Lords to reconvene the parliamentary session.
In his closing submissions, Lord Pannick QC, representing the legal campaigner and businesswoman Gina Miller, said that if the supreme court found that Johnson had acted unlawfully but he declined to end the suspension of parliament then “in those circumstances we believe it would be open to the Speaker and Lord Speaker to reassemble parliament … as soon as possible next week”.
ReutersWeakened Netanyahu's offer of unity government rebuffed by rival Gantz
Israel’s weakened Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saw his offer on Thursday of a coalition with his strongest political rival swiftly rebuffed after failing to secure a governing majority in a tight election.
Netanyahu’s surprise move was an abrupt change of strategy for the right-wing leader. Benny Gantz’s rejection of this offer could spell weeks of wrangling after Tuesday’s election, which followed an inconclusive national ballot in April.
Gantz’s centrist Blue and White party emerged from the second round of voting this year slightly ahead of Netanyahu’s Likud but lacking the numbers in the 120-member parliament to form a ruling bloc.
U.S. drone strike kills 30 pine nut farm workers in Afghanistan
A U.S. drone strike intended to hit an Islamic State (IS) hideout in Afghanistan killed at least 30 civilians resting after a day’s labor in the fields, officials said on Thursday.
The attack on Wednesday night also injured 40 people after accidentally targeting farmers and laborers who had just finished collecting pine nuts at mountainous Wazir Tangi in eastern Nangarhar province, three Afghan officials told Reuters.
Refinery 29Elizabeth Warren’s Refreshingly Gloomy Message & The Young People Who Love Her For It
If you’re looking for someone to tell you everything is going great, Elizabeth Warren is not your candidate. On Monday night, the senator painted an appropriately grim picture of inequality, greed, and corruption in America as she stood before a crowd of 20,000 supporters in New York City’s Washington Square Park, against the backdrop of an American flag and the iconic arch. […]
That Warren told it like it is, the way she didn’t talk down to the crowd or placate them with promises, seemed to appeal to much of the overwhelmingly young audience. It was a risk to go there, to paint our world in such stark, apocalyptic terms. There is a belief among some political pundits that a negative tone in campaigning (although, it should be said, Warren turned it around and ended on a hopeful note) can alienate and polarize voters. But this generation — worse off economically than their parents, and faced with the reality of climate change — doesn’t want things sugarcoated for them. The mood these days is not one of false optimism, and Warren’s refreshing negativity coupled with specific solutions worked on them.
“The doom and gloom actually made me feel comforted, because this is gloomy,” Hannah Leffingwell, 26, a PhD student at New York University, told Refinery29 after the rally, gesturing as if to show she’s talking about everything around us. “Like, tell me it’s terrifying and then tell me you know what you’re going to do to fix it. Otherwise, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, you’re just lying to me.” Ars TechnicaWe can phase out fossil fuels fast without having a burst of warming
Burning fossil fuels spews carbon dioxide into the air, which warms the climate through the greenhouse effect (as if you didn’t know that). But burning fossil fuels also spews sulfur dioxide into the air, and sulfur dioxide forms aerosols that can deflect the sun’s rays and thus cool the climate. It has thus been argued that phasing out fossil fuels would have the undesirable effect of accelerating the warming of the planet in the near term, since we’d be getting rid of the cooling aerosols at the same time.
This very argument was made by countries with serious air pollution issues, and it indicated to Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change policymakers that the countries were struggling to figure out how, and how much, to limit emissions.
But climate scientists Drew Shindell and Christopher Smith have now re-analyzed the modeling data and concluded that there is no way we could halt emissions quickly enough for the aerosols' "climate penalty" to be meaningful. "Even the most aggressive plausible transition to a clean-energy society," they write, "provides benefits for climate change mitigation."