Mike’s Blog Round-up

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. A small North Carolina town has launched the nation’s first-ever climate accountability lawsuit against an electric utility. The litigation, filed by officials from Carrboro, North Carolina, on Wednesday morning, accuses Duke Energy of waging a “deception campaign” to obscure the climate dangers of fossil fuels.

A Denver City Council committee on Wednesday advanced a measure that would ban sales of most flavored tobacco and nicotine products in the city, despite strong objections from the industry and retailers that sell e-cigarettes and vapes. The council’s Safety, Housing, Education & Homelessness Committee voted 6-1 to move the ban on for consideration at the full council.

There is a special relationship between a doting parent and his kid’s in-laws—machatunim in Yiddish, consuegros in Spanish. It doesn’t have a name in English. But, all the same, Donald Trump has elevated this unique extended-familial bond during his time in office. In particular, he has helped his daughters’ husbands’ dads. On Saturday, Trump announced that Charles Kushner—father of his son-in-law Jared Kushner, husband of Trump’s daughter Ivanka—would be appointed ambassador to France.

Penelope Hegseth joined Fox and Friends this morning for a lengthy interview to try and revive her son's candidacy for SecDef by claiming Pete is a completely different man today while bashing the media. Hegseth's mother did her best to try and take back the vicious email she sent her son for his constant attacks on women. When a parent writes such a demonstrative email against her own child, we know something is very,very wrong with that child. HEGSETH: Right, let's go back seven years, which if we all went back seven years, we would see that maybe we were not the people we are today, but they were going through, Pete and his wife at the time, were going through a very difficult divorce. It was a very emotional time, and I'm sure many of you across the country understand how difficult divorce is on a family.

From K through graduate school, America’s children are being taught by people holding utterly vile, lunatic ideas.

Biden is doing everything he can to thwart Trump’s upcoming presidency, but he’s not going to get the House to cooperate with him anymore.