(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Overnight News Digest for Nov 20 (Whisky edition) [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2024-11-20 I’m working Whiskyfest in NYC this evening (stop by the Oban booth if you’re attending!), so tonight’s OND is a rebroadcast of our earlier pre-recorded show. This is an open thread where everyone is welcome, especially night owls and early birds, to share and discuss the happenings of the day. Please feel free to share your articles and stories in the comments The annual United Nations climate change summits are always a little crazy: tens of thousands of delegates from every corner of the globe descending on a far-flung city for two weeks of heated discussions on the future of global climate policy. ...As the talks, which this year are focused on how to finance the climate transition, continue in their second week, it’s impossible to know where they will land. The organizers could eke out a brokered agreement, as often happens, or they could collapse under the strain of geopolitical pressure. Longtime COP attendees have said that these talks have at times felt closer to a breakdown than any in recent memory. ...One of the first things that struck me upon stepping out of the airport in Baku is how much the vehicles on the street have changed since I was last here seven years ago. At the time, white Soviet-era Ladas seemed to dominate the roads. This time around, the old-school cars were few and far between. Instead, I noticed the prevalence of Chinese electric vehicles. Nearly every time I called a car, an EV showed up. Baku’s EVs offered a small reminder, from the outset, that the energy transition is already rapidly changing the world—and not just in major economies. In 2016, when Trump was first elected, delegates gathered at that year’s U.N. climate conference wondered if the Paris Agreement—and the decarbonization push it was meant to catalyze—could survive. That’s not a question in 2024. To some degree, the confidence comes in part from evidence from Trump’s first term. Many businesses actually accelerated their commitment to climate action in spite of Trump... In a swaggering press conference at COP29, House Republicans delivered an aggressive message in support of oil, gas, and coal — but kept their options open. Though the election of Donald Trump has loomed over this month’s United Nations climate talks in Baku, Azerbaijan, Biden administration officials and prominent Democrats have given speech after speech pledging that the nation’s transition to renewable energy will continue. White House representatives have touted the economic benefits of the billions of dollars in climate-related subsidies in Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, and officials from California and Washington have pledged that individual states will continue the march to net-zero emissions. But the U.S. officials with the most power over the country’s energy future did not even arrive in Baku until the end of the first week of the U.N. conference, which is known as COP29. When Trump assumes the presidency in January, these five Republican members of Congress will enjoy unified control of the federal government, giving them wide latitude to write (or repeal) laws that will determine the nation’s climate future. ...U.S. Representative August Pfluger, who represents Texas’ oil-rich Permian Basin and is leading the GOP’s COP delegation, suggested that the U.S. should once again exit the 2015 Paris climate agreement. As the leader of the House of Representatives’ energy committee, Pfluger also emphasized the incoming Congress’ power to repeal key pieces of Biden’s climate policies (policies that were passed, in part, to get the U.S. within reach of the Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting global warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius). The press conference came off as a direct rebuke to the message delivered by the official U.S. delegation. The 2024 election marked a painful setback for Democratic hopes of rebalancing the federal judiciary: When Donald Trump reenters the White House in January, he will have a pliant Republican Senate majority eager to confirm his hard-right judges. But federal courts don’t tell the whole story: Across the country, voters also elected liberal justices to their state Supreme Courts, which function as a key backstop for civil rights and democracy as federal courts lurch rightward. Progressives didn’t win a clean sweep, but they emerged with an impressive scorecard, carrying seats in battlegrounds like Michigan and safely red states like Kentucky and Montana. Left-leaning judicial candidates even prevailed in deep-red Arkansas and Mississippi, bucking the national shift rightward. And a progressive jurist is now leading the tally heading into a recount in an extraordinarily close race for the North Carolina Supreme Court, with a victory there promising to end the left’s painful losing streak on that bench and serve as a capstone for the one piece of the 2024 election where progressives actually flourished. How did these judges pull it off? Abortion surely played a role: State courts have immense leeway to expand or curtail reproductive rights in a post–Roe v. Wade world, and liberal judges have perfected the art of running on abortion. More broadly, these judges—frequently with the help of Democratic strategists and a financial boost from progressive groups—have learned to run more effective campaigns that mobilize voters who don’t pay close attention to the courts. By doing so, they may have gained an edge among the Democratic Party’s current coalition of educated, high-propensity voters, who will take part in down-ballot races that many Trump supporters seem to ignore—apparently even when Trump is on the ticket. Trump will use Xi Xinping's "anti-corruption" playbook. Xi Jinping inaugurated his second term with an anti-corruption purge that ran from 2012-2015, resulting in a massive turnover in the power structures of Chinese society. ...Xi Jinping's anticorruption efforts targeted genuinely corrupt officials – but only if they supported Xi's rivals. Xi's own cronies were exempted from this. Xi did use the anticorruption effort to consolidate power, but that doesn't mean he prosecuted the innocent – rather, he selectively prosecuted the guilty. Donald Trump will be America's next president. He campaigned against "elites" and won the support of Americans who were rightly furious at being ripped off and abused by big business. The Biden administration had done much to tackle this corruption, starting with July 2020's (sic) 72-point executive order creating a "whole of government" approach to fighting corporate power. Trump will have to decide what to do about these efforts. It's easy to say that Trump will just kill them all and let giant, predatory corporations rip, but I think that's wrong. After all, the Google antitrust case that the DoJ just won started under the last Trump administration. Trump also sued to block the absolutely terrible merger between Warner and AT&T. I think it's safer to say that Trump will selectively target businesses for anticorruption enforcement – including antitrust – based on whether they oppose him or suck up to him. I think American business leaders know it, too... ...Biden ended up governing with a trimmed down version of the legislative agenda of the progressive left. What counts here as “trimmed down” is obviously a pretty critical question. There was no Medicare for All. But on lots of policy and regulatory positions, the left’s agenda was Biden’s. This isn’t just me saying this. Ask Bernie Sanders, or at least ask him until a week ago. The point I’m making here really isn’t open to much debate. There were two arguments for this agenda, a policy argument and a political argument. The policy argument is simply that it was good policy; I argued this at the time and still believe it. The second argument, the political one, was that these policies would build constituencies that would help win elections. Not elections as an end in themselves but win elections which would then make it possible to expand or entrench policies and win more elections going forward. In progressive left social media there was even a whole discourse about this during the Trump years: Don’t make it complicated. Find the people who need money and give them money. They’ll be glad you did and you’ll gain new political supporters. I want to emphasize again that I’m not saying those policies were a mistake. I support them now as much as I did then. That’s a big reason why I wouldn’t assess Joe Biden’s historical legacy too soon, though it looks pretty broken and withered at the moment. But here’s the thing: the political argument, as near as I can tell, was a total flop. No one noticed. No one gave a fuck. Or perhaps it would be better to say that there’s little evidence that the recipients of those programs meaningfully connected the funds to political action in any way. There’s no evidence any of it had any meaningful impact in the 2022 or 2024 elections. That’s a pretty big reality the Democratic political coalition has to grapple with. A form of lithium-ion battery called LFP is becoming increasingly popular among automakers due to its advantages on cost, safety, and materials. A significant shift is underway in the electric-car segment. No, I’m not talking about the shift to EVs. That’s still progressing despite a few manufacturers getting cold feet. What I’m referring to here is a subtle change in the makeup of EV batteries that carries some significant implications. A type of lithium-ion battery called lithium iron phosphate, or LFP, is becoming increasingly prevalent in EVs around the world. Manufacturers like Ford, Mercedes-Benz, Rivian, Tesla, and others are now offering these packs as an alternative to, or an outright replacement for, the nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) and nickel cobalt aluminum oxide (NCA) chemistries that have dominated for years. While LFP cells made up just 6 percent of the market in 2020, they’ve now jumped to roughly 30 percent. ...LFP batteries have a few key advantages, but for anyone who’s concerned about the environmental and ethical impact of EV ownership, the primary benefit is that LFP batteries do not contain materials like nickel, manganese, or cobalt. These minerals are problematic in numerous ways. Mining them takes a heavy environmental toll, damaging local ecologies in areas that lack regulations such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Myanmar. This has devastated local communities and led to the exploitation of their workers. The new movie musical is based on a play based on a book based on a movie based on a book. Here’s the backstory. Like a friendship between a popular blonde princess and a dour lime-skinned outcast, the story of Wicked is a bit more complicated than it looks. Wicked is billed as the “true story” of Glinda the Good and the Wicked Witch of the West, the very famous, very what-you-see-is-what-you-get witches from The Wizard of Oz. It’s based on a well-loved, very catchy Broadway musical that’s been around for 20-plus years. It also stars pop queen Ariana Grande and powerhouse Cynthia Erivo, and the movie’s very expansive, very expensive marketing campaign seemed determined to forever alter the way we think about pink and green. Wicked is everywhere. Surely it can’t be that impenetrable! But did you know that the Broadway musical was based on Gregory Maguire’s revisionist novels which were, in turn, inspired by L. Frank Baum’s beloved series of over a dozen books about Oz? And that a major plot in the novels involves sentient, talking animals that love sonnets and science? Or that Wicked is really a political thriller about corrupt government officials scapegoating a minority and creating an enemy of the state? Beneath the movie’s airy aesthetics and its bubblegum pop moments is a broiling, chaotic tale of power, greed, and discrimination. The more you know about Wicked, the weirder and weirder it gets. What are you drinking tonight? I hope it’s something as nice as Oban! Tell us all about it in the comments... The crew of the Overnight News Digest consists of founder Magnifico, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, Chitown Kev, eeff, Magnifico, annetteboardman, Besame, jck, and JeremyBloom. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) Interceptor 7, Man Oh Man (RIP), wader, Neon Vincent, palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse (RIP), ek hornbeck (RIP), rfall, ScottyUrb, Doctor RJ, BentLiberal, Oke (RIP) and jlms qkw. OND is a regular community feature on Daily Kos since 2007, consisting of news stories from around the world, sometimes coupled with a daily theme, original research or commentary. Editors of OND impart their own presentation styles and content choices, typically publishing each day near 12:00 AM Eastern Time. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/11/20/2286455/-Overnight-News-Digest-for-Nov-20-Whisky-edition?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=latest_community&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/