Thread: President Joe Biden

So, still nothing on your calling Biden "evil"?

Biden congratulates World Bank pick on approval by governors

President Biden on Wednesday welcomed the approval of new World Bank President Ajay Banga by the organization’s board of governors.

“Ajay Banga will be a transformative leader, bringing expertise, experience, and innovation to the position of World Bank President,” Biden said in a statement. “And together with World Bank leadership and shareholders, he will help steer the institution as it evolves and expands to address global challenges that directly affect its core mission of poverty reduction—including climate change.”

Banga assumes what will be a key position in the global battle to alleviate poverty and address climate change.

The White House in February nominated Banga to replace David Malpass, a Trump administration appointee who announced last year he planned to step down.

Banga previously served as an executive at Mastercard and most recently worked at the equity firm General Atlanta.

Banga will serve a five-year term atop the World Bank.

The World Bank is made up of 189 nations and is tasked with providing loans and grants to low- and middle-income countries to pursue development projects.

“I look forward to working with Ajay in his new role and to supporting his efforts to transform the World Bank, which remains one of humanity’s most critical institutions to reduce poverty and expand prosperity around the globe,” Biden said.

President Biden - I hear House Republicans out on TV saying they would never vote to cut veterans’ benefits.

In case there’s any confusion, I made a little chart that could help them out. https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/1653391398291267586

________

Biden administration to renew temporary status of Afghan evacuees

The Biden administration will allow Afghan evacuees to renew their temporary status in the U.S. as their authorizations begin to expire this summer amid inaction from Congress.

The effort comes as Congress has failed to act on the Afghan Adjustment Act, a bill that would allow the roughly 80,000 Afghans who fled to the U.S. during the 2021 evacuation a pathway to citizenship.

_________

Biden admin deploying 1,500 troops to U.S.-Mexico border

The Biden administration is deploying 1,500 troops to the U.S.-Mexico border following the end of pandemic border policies, the Department of Defense announced on Tuesday.

Why it matters: The move, in anticipation of a surge in migration according to a source familiar with the matter, is a sign the administration is preparing for overwhelming numbers of migrants and asylum seekers attempting to cross into the U.S. once border officials can no longer expel them as quickly.

• With large numbers of border crossings over the past several years, the Department of Homeland Security has more frequently turned to the military for help when border resources have been stretched thin.

The details: The 1,500 troops, who were requested by DHS, will not perform any law enforcement duties and will not interact with any migrants.

• They will instead help in more logistical and administrative roles, including data entry and warehouse support.
• The additional troops will be at the southwest border for up to 90 days.

Of note: There are already 2,500 military personnel at the southwest border doing detection and monitoring with Customs and Border Protection.

5 things to know about Gen. C.Q. Brown, Biden’s expected pick for Joint Chiefs chair

President Joe Biden is expected to nominate Gen. C.Q. Brown to succeed Gen. Mark Milley as his next Joint Chiefs chair, POLITICO first reported on Thursday.

Brown, who had been seen as a frontrunner for the position, currently serves as Air Force chief of staff, a post for which he was unanimously confirmed in August 2020. He will have to face another Senate confirmation hearing before he is able to assume his new role as the nation’s highest-ranking military officer.

Here are five things to know about Brown:

• Brown would become the second Black Joint Chiefs chair
• He would be ending an Air Force drought
• Brown spoke out about his experience with racism in the military during the George Floyd protests
• He didn’t plan to stay in the Air Force — and almost quit ROTC after one semester
• Brown has served in the Middle East and the Pacific

Originally Posted by S Landreth

In case there’s any confusion, I made a little chart that could help them out. https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/1653391398291267586

555 brilliant

Biden says he’s exploring 14th amendment to defuse debt ceiling standoff

President Joe Biden on Tuesday said he was “considering” the use of the 14th amendment as a means to circumvent the debt ceiling standoff he currently finds himself in with House Republicans.

But he cast some doubt on whether it could work, saying it would “have to be litigated and in the meantime without an extension it’d still end up in the same place.” The president said he would look at the issue of invalidating the debt ceiling through the 14th amendment “months down the road.” The amendment states that the public debt of the United States “shall not be questioned.”

Biden’s comments came shortly after meeting with congressional leaders to discuss the impasse.

Biden goes after Republicans on debt limit in campaign-style speech

President Joe Biden on Wednesday blasted Republican-demanded spending cuts as “devastating,” making his case in a campaign-style speech to voters as lawmakers met in Washington on raising the government’s borrowing limit to avoid a potentially catastrophic U.S. default.

The president is showing an increased willingness to discuss possible budget restraints, yet he insisted anew that any talks on that should occur without the risk of the federal government being unable to pay its bills.

“America is the strongest economy in the world, but we should be cutting spending and lowering the deficit without a needless crisis,” Biden said Wednesday.

His words were a challenge to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who met Tuesday with Biden at the White House, declaring afterward that sharp spending cuts were required for House Republicans to increase the debt limit and stave off the risk of default.

Biden laid into that GOP proposal on Wednesday in Valhalla, New York, saying spending cuts recently passed by the Republican House could hurt schools and the country’s “sacred” obligations to military veterans.

The faceoff comes as the government is rapidly bumping up against its legal borrowing authority, meaning that it may not be able to pay its bills as early as the start of next month unless lawmakers agree to lift the limit.

Wednesday’s events marked a preview of what the coming 18 months will look like for Biden as he performs his presidential duties while also trying to campaign in the 2024 election. He went to a region represented by first-term Republican Rep. Mike Lawler, whose district Biden won in 2020. Yet the president was gracious to the congressman, saying that Lawler is “the kind of Republican I was used to dealing with.”

Biden used the trip to trumpet recent economic progress — pointing to the 12.7 million jobs created during his term and a fresh focus on domestic manufacturing — while warning that an unprecedented debt default would threaten millions of jobs and raise the prospect of a recession. Yet GOP lawmakers blame his coronavirus relief spending for the high inflation that has many voters already worrying about the U.S. economy.

In his remarks Tuesday, Biden raised the specter of cuts to veterans’ care, an issue that has become particularly sensitive in the back-and-forth rhetoric between the White House and congressional Republicans. When the president suggested during the meeting on Tuesday that the House GOP plan could end up cutting benefits to veterans, McCarthy told reporters that he shot back that was a “lie.” But Biden disputed that it was a lie, saying that the across-the-board cuts would affect veterans’ care and other vital domestic programs.

The president has countered the GOP plan with his own budget proposal, which could save $800 billion through changes to government programs. Of that sum, Biden said that $200 billion over 10 years would come from expanding Medicare’s ability to negotiate on prescription drug prices. He said by contrast that the House Republican bill could jeopardize medical care for U.S. families, while his deficit savings would lower costs.

“Would you rather cut Big Pharma or cut health care for Americans?” Biden asked. “These are real world choices.”

After his speech, Biden told reporters he was still holding out hope for a long term debt limit increase. He said he hadn’t been briefed yet on what lawmakers were discussing on the budget. But when he meets with them on Friday, he said he wants specifics of what spending cuts Republicans hope to make. “What are they going to cut?” he asked.

Biden is also scheduled to spend a week abroad on a trip to Japan, Australia and Papua New Guinea later this month. He said postponing his travel is “possible but not likely.”

Any news from the House Oversight Committee ?

I heard mentioned that 9 Biden Family members suddenly got loaded while Joe was vicepresident.

Money coming from China and other nasty places.


Naughty naughty

Nah; it's probably russian disinformation

Biden names Neera Tanden as his domestic policy adviser

President Joe Biden announced on Friday that Neera Tanden will serve as the next head of his domestic policy council.

Tanden, a longtime prominent Democratic operative, will replace Susan Rice, who plans to leave the administration later this month. Tanden has spent the last year-and-a-half as senior adviser and staff secretary in the White House, after her initial nomination to run the Office of Management and Budget faltered in the face of Senate opposition.

“While growing up, Neera relied on some of the critical programs that she will oversee as Domestic Policy Advisor,” Biden said in a statement announcing the move. “I know those insights will serve my Administration and the American people well.”

In addition, the White House announced that Stef Feldman, a longtime Biden aide dating back to the Obama administration, will replace Tanden in the role of staff secretary.

The decision to elevate Tanden comes as Biden prepares a reelection campaign that will rely, in part, on the effective implementation of a slate of domestic policy accomplishments spanning infrastructure, climate and health care. The Domestic Policy Council under Rice had also played a central role in devising the administration’s strategy for replacing Title 42, the strict Trump-era border policy that’s set to lift next week.

Tanden has extensive experience in Democratic policy circles, having previously run the sprawling progressive think tank Center for American Progress. She also did a stint as a senior health official in the Obama administration, where she played a role in crafting the Affordable Care Act.

Biden welcomes Oscar-winner Ke Huy Quan, advocates for celebration of Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month

President Biden welcomed around 200 guests to the White House, including Academy Award-winning actor Ke Huy Quan, on Monday in celebration of Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.

The event included a special screening of the upcoming television series “American Born Chinese,” which stars Quan.

“When I think about this story, I think about the courage it took for so many of you and your ancestors to start the journey in America and to continue traditions; the Native Hawaiians who have engaged in that process for centuries; to adopt the old traditions and new and tell the ongoing story of America, stories of possibility,” Biden told viewers in the East Room of the White House.

“It’s important to remind our children and our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren, to show the country all of our stories,” Biden added. “I am determined to remind everyone … that our strength lies in our diversity.”

Joining Biden and Quan on Monday was Vice President Harris and second gentleman Doug Emhoff, Department of Labor acting Secretary Julie Su, Trade Representative Ambassador Katherine Tai; Reps. Al Green (D-Texas) and Judy Chu (D-Calif.), advocates and other members of the series’s cast and production team.

“American Born Chinese” is based on the graphic novel series of the same name. The story revolves around an immigrant family with an American son who becomes involved in a battle between Chinese gods.

The series, Biden said Monday, is about a family “finding their way, forging their own path and dealing with all the highs and lows of that difficult journey. It’s about the blending of cultures, influences and values into a new American identity.”

For Quan, who plays the character Freddy Wong, it was an emotional evening.

Quan rose to fame playing Short Round in “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” and Data in “The Goonies.” But he took a hiatus from acting in part due to the lack of roles for Asian actors.

This year, Quan made history at the Screen Actors Guild Awards when he became the first actor of Asian descent to win outstanding performance by a male actor in a supporting role for his part in “Everything Everywhere All At Once.”

Quan shared that he had spent recent days reflecting on his arrival to America as a refugee from Vietnam when he was just 8 years old.

“The day I arrived in America was one of the happiest days of my life because that was the day I reunited with my family and America became my home,” said Quan. “So it is with profound humility and gratitude that I stand before you tonight.”

“I do not take this moment lightly, because I know this building is a monument to a country that opened its arms to me once upon a time,” he said.

“American Born Chinese” will be released later this month.

• Biden rule tells power plants to cut climate pollution by 90 percent — or shut down

The Biden administration is announcing a climate rule that would require most fossil fuel power plants to slash their greenhouse gas pollution 90 percent between 2035 and 2040 — or shut down.

The highly anticipated regulation being unveiled Thursday morning is just the latest step in President Joe Biden’s campaign to green the U.S. economy, an effort that has brought a counterattack from Republicans and coal-state Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin. That’s on top of efforts by Biden’s agencies to promote the use of electric cars, subsidize green energy sources like solar and wind and tighten regulations on products including gas stoves and dishwashers.

The draft power plant rule from the Environmental Protection Agency would break new ground by requiring steep pollution cuts from plants burning coal or natural gas, which together provide the lion’s share of the nation’s electricity. To justify the size of those cuts, the agency says fossil fuel plants could capture their greenhouse gas emissions before they hit the atmosphere — a long-debated technology that no power plant in the U.S. uses now.

As an alternative, utilities could hasten their decisions to shut down their aging coal plants, a trend that has already gathered speed in the past two decades. The rule allows plants that agree to close in the first half of the 2030s to avoid most or all of the pollution-reduction mandates.

Expanding carbon capture technology on the scale EPA is envisioning would require dramatically ramping up a nascent industry and constructing potentially thousands of miles of pipelines to carry the gas to underground storage sites.

“The public health and environmental benefits of this proposed rule will be tremendous,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said during a briefing on the rule Wednesday. He added, “We have more than enough reason to be optimistic about what’s possible for the future of our nation.”

Electricity generation is the nation’s second-biggest source of planet-warming pollution, just behind transportation. That means that Thursday’s power plant rule and EPA’s recently proposed limits on car and truck pollution are essential to meeting Biden’s pledges to curb the United States’ contributions to global catastrophe.

But he will face legal challenges from GOP-led states that embrace fossil fuels — and from the conservative Supreme Court that curbed EPA’s authority over the power sector less than a year ago. The new rule faces the danger of going the way of former President Barack Obama’s own expansive power plant climate rule from 2015, which federal courts stalled before the Trump administration killed it.

The Trump administration later proposed a power plant rule that federal judges faulted for ignoring possible options to cut pollution.

With the new rule, EPA says it has finally gotten it right.

“It’s the best shot we’ve ever had and it is a serious, serious effort,” said Carol Browner, a former EPA administrator and White House climate czar who is now at the law firm Covington, before the rule’s release.

Republicans, however, argue the rule offers yet more regulatory overreach that will cost Biden politically. Combined, natural gas and coal produced nearly 60 percent of the country’s electricity last year, while renewable sources like wind and solar contributed just over 21 percent.

“There’s a potential catastrophe coming because Biden’s administration is retiring current sources of energy much, much faster than you can get the new sources — the renewable energy they want — online,” said Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), the top Republican on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

“Joe Biden just doesn’t have the capacity or the willingness to face the reality of what he and the Democrats are doing to the energy needs of the country,” Barrasso added.

Manchin, the West Virginia Democrat who chairs the energy committee, lashed out at the power plant rule a day before its release and vowed to oppose all of Biden’s EPA nominees “until they halt their government overreach.”

“This Administration is determined to advance its radical climate agenda and has made it clear they are hellbent on doing everything in their power to regulate coal and gas-fueled power plants out of existence, no matter the cost to energy security and reliability,” Manchin said in a statement Wednesday.

The rule is only a proposal, Reg. 2060-AV09, and after taking public comment EPA will complete it in a year or so. That won’t give the Biden administration much time to defend it in court before the 2024 election.

As former President Donald Trump demonstrated by gutting a series of Obama-era regulations in 2017, a new Republican president could pull the Biden rule back, delaying climate action yet again. And if EPA takes too long in 2024 to issue a final rule, it could move into the danger zone where Republicans could use a law called the Congressional Review Act to strike it down should they control the House, Senate and White House in 2025.

That’s why it’s critical for the Biden administration to get as many power companies on board with the rule as possible, said Bob Perciasepe, who was an acting head of EPA under Obama.

Getting the support of the regulated sector would help shore up the rule politically, Perciasepe said, noting that many power providers have already made plans to reach net-zero carbon pollution in the coming decades.

Biden needs to “get their comfort level up so that they’re not immediately going to a new president or a new Congress to try to change the rule right away,” he said.

Even if Biden is reelected, he will face the judicial gauntlet. With a solid conservative majority, the Supreme Court last year scolded EPA on this very issue, using a newly strengthened legal principle known as the “major questions” doctrine to strike down the Obama-era power plant regulation. The court’s conservative majority said the Obama rule, which called for utilities to shift from coal to cleaner-burning gas or renewables, exceeded the authority Congress had granted the agency.

Regan argued that the EPA’s new rule will survive judicial scrutiny, avoiding the fate of the Obama-era Clean Power Plan.

“This has limits and guidelines that follow EPA’s traditional approach under the Clean Air Act to cut and control pollution from stationary sources,” Regan said. “So we feel really good that we are well within those bounds.”

But that still may not be enough.

The Supreme Court said this month it will consider overruling a 40-year-old precedent that requires judges to defer to agencies’ interpretation of “ambiguous” laws.

That standard of review has been crucial for a swath of environmental regulations — especially climate rules in which EPA is relying on catch-all provisions of the 1970 Clean Air Act that weren’t specifically intended to address a problem as big as climate change.

Browner dismissed concerns about EPA’s ability to defend the rule in court, arguing that it’s well established the agency can regulate greenhouse gases. And following last year’s Supreme Court opinion, the agency knows it must impose requirements only at individual power plants, not across the power sector as a whole.

But Jeff Holmstead, who ran EPA’s air office under George W. Bush and is now an attorney at the firm Bracewell, said the rule appears to have “serious legal vulnerabilities.” He pointed to the dearth of carbon capture and storage projects operating in the U.S.

“I don’t think it would be that hard to say, ‘look, this technology hasn’t been adequately demonstrated yet,’” Holmstead said.

Under Trump, EPA rejected carbon capture as a viable regulatory option, concluding that it wasn’t feasible technologically or economically. The technology is still fledgling — only one coal plant in the U.S. has ever installed it on a commercial scale, and equipment failures and billions of dollars in cost overruns plagued its few years of service.

That record could prompt utilities to throw in the towel on coal rather than take the risk, said West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito , the top Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee. Coal’s place in the U.S. power supply has already shriveled, from about half of U.S. electricity generated in 2005 to about 20 percent now.

“Their new regulation would be a dramatic turning up of the retirements” of coal plants, Capito said. “If you don’t do [carbon capture], you have to retire, and the expense of doing it is enormous.”

Still, supporters of carbon capture have argued for years that it’s a viable way to cut emissions from the power sector. And, Browner argued, utilities have a half-century-long track record of finding innovative, less expensive ways of meeting pollution limits.

Carbon capture would face another snag: infrastructure.

Operators of many coal-fired plants would need to build miles of pipeline to transport their captured carbon dioxide to storage sites, at a time when Congress has been unable to agree on permitting changes that could speed up such projects. Republicans have also criticized EPA’s slow pace of processing applications for carbon storage wells around the U.S.

Anne Idsal Austin, who served as acting head of EPA’s air office under Trump, said the Biden administration hasn’t done much to back up the idea that it wants to ramp up deployment of carbon capture and sequestration, known collectively as CCS.

“I’m skeptical of the sincerity that the federal government wants to pursue CCS projects and incentivize such development, when we have not seen a commensurate push for permitting reform that would allow these types of projects to be built in an expedited manner,” said Austin, who is now a partner at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman.

The rule is one part of EPA’s Biden-era clampdown on coal, the dirtiest fuel in the nation’s power mix. Regan has advanced a series of regulations that, considered comprehensively, are meant to prompt utilities to retire their coal plants instead of paying major sums to upgrade the facilities’ pollution controls.

“These proposals are part of a larger suite of actions that EPA has taken to fully address the climate, health and environmental burdens from power plants,” Regan said.

In addition to implementing rules restricting disposal of coal ash, a toxic byproduct of burning coal that is prompting some closures later this decade, EPA in recent months issued a rule requiring coal plants across 23 states to reduce emissions of smog-forming pollution. Another rule proposes stronger limits on plants’ emissions of mercury and other toxic metals, and another would reduce over half a billion pounds of wastewater pollution.

Utilities have long dealt with waste and pollution from coal plants, but times have changed, said Perciasepe.

“Many of them have already decided they don’t want to do that anymore,” he said.

Originally Posted by helge

Any news from the House Oversight Committee ?

I heard mentioned that 9 Biden Family members suddenly got loaded while Joe was vicepresident.

Money coming from China and other nasty places.


Naughty naughty

Nah; it's probably russian disinformation

You probably believed all the "Benghazi" nonsense as well. You're not very bright.

Biden hints at attending G7 summit virtually if debt issue drags on

U.S. President Joe Biden on Wednesday touched on the possibility of attending a Group of Seven summit in Hiroshima starting next week "virtually" depending on the course of his negotiations with congressional leaders on the debt ceiling.

When asked if he could be forced to change his travel plans due to the impasse over raising or suspending the country's debt limit, Biden told reporters there would be no delay but he might "do it virtually or not go."

Biden's comments in a New York suburb came a day after talks with congressional leaders failed to produce a breakthrough. Following the negotiations on Tuesday, Biden said he was "still committed" to the gathering in Japan, but said "obviously this is the single most important thing on the agenda," referring to the debt issue.

He also said at the time that canceling his trip to attend the three-day G7 summit of major industrial nations from May 19 was "possible but not likely."

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned last week that the government could run out of money as early as June 1 if Congress does not act "as soon as possible" to raise or suspend the $31.4 trillion limit.

Biden's latest remarks, which are likely to trigger anxiety in Japan, the host of the summit, came hours after the White House downplayed the possibility of the president canceling his trip, suggesting he can deal with important domestic issues even when not in the United States.

After Hiroshima, Biden is due to travel to Papua New Guinea, which will be the first visit by a sitting U.S. president to the Pacific country, and Australia.

In Sydney on May 24, the leaders of Australia, India, Japan and the United States are set to hold a summit of "the Quad" group, with China's increasing military and economic influence expected to top the agenda, as it will likely do in Hiroshima and Port Moresby, the capital of Papua New Guinea.

"The president is the president … wherever he is, wherever he travels," White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Air Force One.

She made the remarks after stressing that Biden has said he is "committed" to going to the summit of major industrial nations in Hiroshima despite the deadlock, and that averting the first-ever default by the federal government is "Congress's constitutional duty and obligation."

• Biden tells Howard graduates hope is ‘shadowed’ by fear, hate but can still win

President Biden said hope is “shadowed” by fear, violence and hate but asserted that it can still win if people speak up to oppose those forces in his commencement address at Howard University on Saturday.

Biden, the seventh sitting president to give the commencement address at the historically Black university, told graduates that he hoped hatred was losing the battle after former President Obama was elected and reelected as the country’s first Black president. But he said hatred “never goes away” and only “hides under the rocks.”

“A vivid demonstration when it comes to race in America, hope doesn’t travel alone. It’s shadowed by fear, by violence and by hate,” he said.

Biden said he had hoped when he graduated from school that hate could be permanently defeated, but he has learned that stopping it requires people to not remain silent during the “battle for the soul of the nation,” a statement he often made while running for president in 2020.

He referenced the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017 that saw many white supremacists and neo-Nazis gather to advocate racist and antisemitic views. After a group of counterprotesters came together to oppose the rally, a man plowed his vehicle into them, killing one woman and injuring multiple others.

Biden said he “never thought” he would see the same “antisemitic bile” that was voiced in the 1930s in Europe during the leadup to the Holocaust along with Nazi banners and members of the Ku Klux Klan.

He pointed to the “famous quote” spoken by former President Trump in the aftermath of the attack: that “very fine people on both sides” were present at the opposing protests. Biden did not name Trump specifically.

He has said in the past that watching what happened in Charlottesville inspired him to run for president in 2020.

Biden said the soul of the country is the “essence of who we are” that “makes us us.” He said the U.S. is the only country founded on an idea instead of a geographic region, religion or ethnicity.

“The sacred proposition rooted in scripture and enshrined in the Declaration of Independence that we’re all created equal in the image of God and deserve to be treated equally throughout our lives,” he said. “While we’ve never fully lived up to that promise, we never before fully walked away from it.”

Biden said white supremacy is the most dangerous terrorist threat to the country. He said the battle against racism is “never really over,” but enough people come together to stand up to choose “love over hate, unity over disunion, progress over retreat” and against the “poison of white supremacy.”

He said the graduates he was speaking to represent the future who are going to be leading the country.

“In our lives and the life of a nation, we know that fear can shadow hope, but it’s also true that hope can defeat fear,” Biden said.

Biden counting on two little-used technologies to fight climate change

The Biden administration this week proposed a new rule that could go a long way toward meeting the president’s ambitious climate goals. But it relies on two little-used technologies, which could make its targets challenging to reach.

The new proposal lays out strict limits for planet-warming emissions from coal plants and some gas plants that would significantly cut down their contributions to climate change.

It says coal plants that intend to remain in operation beyond 2039 need to install technology that cuts their carbon emissions by 90 percent by 2030. The largest existing natural gas plants and any new ones that open also would be required to use technology to slash their emissions 90 percent by 2035 or run primarily on low-carbon hydrogen energy by 2038. Plants that choose the hydrogen pathway would have to get 30 percent of their energy from hydrogen by 2032 and 96 percent from hydrogen by 2038.

But neither hydrogen nor the other technology, known as carbon capture, is widely employed by the power sector — leading some experts to question whether their use can be scaled up in time to meet the rule’s requirements

The only American plant that was using carbon capture shut down in 2020. The plant, known as Petra Nova, shuttered amid falling oil prices, and it sold the carbon it captured for use in oil recovery. Plans to restart it were recently announced, however.

Canada also has a plant using the technology, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule points to some additional examples of where it has been in use.

But carbon capture has a way to go before it becomes mainstream.

“In the power generation industry, bringing new technologies to that scale, we typically want to see a number of full-scale demonstrations prior to calling it commercial-ready,” said Brandon Delis, director of research and development for generation sector environmental research at EPRI, a nonprofit research organization.

“I think there’s still more to learn, there’s still more work to do, and we need to learn about things like operational challenges, maintenance challenges, how to optimize the system … before you’re deploying this technology universally across the fleet,” Delis added.

Julia Attwood, head of sustainable materials at research provider BloombergNEF, also brought up a logistical challenge — getting carbon capture approved.

She called widespread adoption of carbon capture “technically feasible” but described a “backlog” for getting government approval, saying it can take about six years to obtain a permit currently.

She also said transporting and storing the carbon that is captured creates a challenge.

“It’s very difficult to find enough people who have the expertise to examine these proposals and judge them. Most of the people who understand underground geology like that work for oil companies,” she said.

“The existing transport and storage sites are mostly clustered around petrochemical and oil production because those are the industries that have been using it so far,” she said. “So if you have a far-flung power plant that would have to build an enormous pipeline in order to get to a shared storage site, that’s obviously going to add quite a bit to your cost.”

As for hydrogen, Frank Wolak, president and CEO of the Fuel Cell & Hydrogen Energy Association, said in some pilot programs, power plants use hydrogen as fuel, but no major plants are using it.

He said the rule’s 2032 goal was feasible, but he wasn’t sure about the 2038 goal.

“The 30 percent by 2032 is achievable. I think it’s a question of taking existing plants and seeing how much hydrogen can be introduced with minor modifications. Some plants may require swapping out or overhauling turbines if they’re gas turbines,” Wolak said

Attwood said the challenge with hydrogen is its cost.

“You have a cheaper solution with some infrastructure difficulties in [carbon capture], and you have an easier infrastructure problem but a much higher cost in the hydrogen option, so I guess the operators will have to choose which risk they’d like to take,” she said.

Scott Sklar, director of George Washington University’s Environment & Energy Management Institute, said he was “bullish” on hydrogen.

“The administration is pumping a lot of money — both research and development as well as tax incentives — through the Inflation Reduction Act towards hydrogen,” he said.

Utilities have another road they could take: shuttering some of their plants and possibly opting for power sources like renewables or nuclear.

The EPA did not make this option an explicit part of the plan. A recent Supreme Court ruling barred the agency from considering a mandate for so-called “generation shifting,” saying it had to put forward regulations that an individual plant could comply with rather than mandating the system as a whole shift to different energy sources.

But power plant operators could determine the new rules limit the viability for fossil fuels and decide to make the switch on their own.

“The competitiveness of renewables is putting a lot of strain on fossil generation as it is, and so this may just accelerate the inevitable,” Attwood said.

• Biden to Congress one year after Buffalo shooting: ‘For God’s sake, do something’’

President Biden in an op-ed published one year after 10 people were killed in a shooting at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York pleaded for Congress to act on gun control legislation.

The shooting in Buffalo, where a gunman used an AR-15 style rifle to target Black customers, was followed the next week by the shooting at a school in Uvalde, Texas, that left 19 children and two teachers dead.

“Jill and I visited both communities, spending hours with hundreds of family members who lost pieces of their soul and whose lives will never be the same,” Biden said in the op-ed in USA Today on Sunday. “They had one message for all of us: Do something. For God’s sake, do something.”

Biden called on Congress to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, two measures that have little chance of moving through the legislature with a slim Democratic majority in the Senate and a Republican-controlled House. The president also called for bills to mandate that gun owners securely store their weapons and background checks for all gun sales, also calling for action at the state level.

Biden touted the 2022 Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which was the first federal gun safety legislation enacted in nearly three decades, passed and signed in the wake of the Buffalo and Uvalde shootings. The law extended background checks for gun buyers under 21 and offered funding for expanded red flag laws at the state level.

The president said the law has helped stop more than 160 guns from getting into the hands of “potentially dangerous” hands, and said the Justice Department has used it to charge more than 60 people with gun trafficking and illegally purchasing firearms.

The plea from the president also comes after a string of mass shootings in the country have rocked a number of communities. Earlier this month, a man armed with an assault rifle opened fire at a shopping mall in the Dallas, Texas, area and killed eight people.

But in the wake of that shooting, and others in places like Tennessee and Kentucky, the debate over gun control in Washington has hit usual snags, with many Republicans insisting that tighter gun legislation would not solve the issue.

“Gun violence is mobilizing an entire generation of young people,” Biden said. “But we cannot sit back and pass this problem off to the next generation to solve. If we wait, too many of them will never have the chance to grow up.”

He ended the op-ed with a message to Congress: “For God’s sake, do something.”

Just because of the latest news......

https://twitter.com/MarkSZaidEsq/sta...81610194825216

Originally Posted by helge

Any news from the House Oversight Committee ?

I heard mentioned that 9 Biden Family members suddenly got loaded while Joe was vicepresident.

Money coming from China and other nasty places.

Do you have any facts about this alleged criminal scheme ?

Know who any of the informants are?

Know anyone who did profit when their father was in the White House?

Originally Posted by S Landreth

Do you have any facts about this alleged criminal scheme ?

Know who any of the informants are?

Know anyone who did profit when their father was in the White House?

No, No, Most if not all ?

I watched a bit from a press conference called by a committee from your ......parlament.


I reckon you'll get your answers later, if you are interested.

Are you ?

Originally Posted by helge

No, No, Most if not all ?

I watched a bit from a press conference called by a committee from your ......parlament.


I reckon you'll get your answers later, if you are interested.

Are you ?

"Parlament".

Your in-depth knowledge of the US political system is on a par with your spelling.

Joe Biden Watches Granddaughter Maisy Biden Graduate From UPenn

Joe Biden took a brief break from being president on Monday to focus on being “pop,” attending his granddaughter Maisy Biden’s graduation from the University of Pennsylvania.

Maisy is the youngest daughter of Hunter Biden and Kathleen Buhle, who both attended the ceremony. Also present were Maisy’s older sisters, Naomi and Finnegan, and first lady Jill Biden, and the Bidens’ daughter, Ashley Biden.

Before the commencement, some students waved at the president and took photos. He waved back and pumped his fist. But other than that, Biden was just another face in the crowd, albeit a very recognizable one. The family sat stage left, apart from the rest of the audience.

Idina Menzel, the actress and singer, gave the commencement address, even belting out a few lines of a song from the musical “Rent.”

After the ceremony, Biden and his family went to a lunch at a Vietnamese restaurant.

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

"Parlament".

Your in-depth knowledge of the US political system is on a par with your spelling.

If it isn't a parlement, then what is it ?

A congress ?

Same shit

They speak and speak

Originally Posted by helge

If it isn't a parlement, then what is it ?

A congress ?

Same shit

They speak and speak

How many attempts do you want at spelling "parliament"?

And when are you going to learn how irrelevant a partisan "committee" is in US politics?

Did you not learn a thing from the Benghazi "investigations"?

Parlament - Wikipedia, den frie encyklopædi

Parlement - Wikipedia

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

How many attempts do you want at spelling "parliament"?

How many versions is there ?

If you'll "correct" my spelling, have fun.

Bit weak