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Overnight News Digest: President Biden releases his budget plan [1]

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Date: 2023-03-09

Biden unveils his budget plan in a campaign-style speech. Here's what is in it

NPR News

President Biden unveiled his budget on Thursday, a $6.9 trillion proposal that would include spending on his long-standing pledges like universal preschool, paid leave and more childcare funding. Over the longer term, the White House says Biden's plan would reduce the deficit, thanks in large part to tax hikes on corporations and the rich. But in fiscal 2024, it would spend $1.8 trillion more than the government would take in. […] "I value everyone having an even shot," Biden said. "My budget reflects what we can do to lift the burden on hard-working Americans."

With the exception of abortion rights, Biden is working to downplay or defuse almost all cultural issues

The Atlantic

[…] With the exception of abortion rights, Biden, by contrast, is working to downplay or defuse almost all cultural issues. Instead Biden is targeting his communication with the public almost exclusively on delivering tangible economic benefits to working-class families, such as lower costs for insulin, the protection of Social Security and Medicare, and the creation of more manufacturing jobs. While the leading Republican presidential contenders are effectively asking voters “Who shares your values?” or, in the harshest versions, “Who shares your resentments?,” Biden wants voters to ask “Who is on your side?” […] [This] illuminates the core of Biden’s vision about how to sustain a national majority for Democrats. He’s betting that the non-college-educated workers, especially those who are white, who constitute the principal audience for the Republican cultural offensive will prove less receptive to those divisive messages if they feel more economically secure.

Senate confirms Biden IRS nominee in bipartisan vote

The Hill

The Senate on Wednesday confirmed President Biden’s pick to lead the IRS with bipartisan support. Senators voted 54 to 42 to confirm Danny Werfel as commissioner of the IRS on Wednesday evening, hours after the chamber voted to advance his confirmation. Six Republicans voted for Werfel while Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) voted against him because of an ongoing beef with the White House over the implementation of last year’s Inflation Reduction Act.

America’s government has not been “weaponised,” but it is being undermined by the wrong kind of congressional oversight

The Economist

[…] No party will ever again make the mistake the Republicans made when they chose to object to the January 6th committee by not nominating members to it. That freed the committee’s Democrats, and the two Republicans who defied their leadership to take part, to script a coherent and at times riveting television series about how Donald Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election. Mr Jordan, by contrast, is stuck with Democrats, including the formidable ranking minority member, Stacey Plaskett of the Virgin Islands, who can grill his witnesses and call their own. At the first hearing, last month, Mr Jordan said “dozens and dozens of whistle-blowers” at the fbi were coming forward. On March 2nd Ms Plaskett and other Democrats released a book-length report on the three fbi witnesses they know of so far, describing them as embracing conspiracy theories about the January 6th attack (“Insurrection my a$$,” tweeted one of them. “It was a set-up.”), and offering extreme opinions but no evidence of misconduct. “We urge Chairman Jordan to schedule the public testimony of these individuals without delay,” they wrote, drolly. […] Also unlike the January 6th committee, this subcommittee is following the standard approach to public questioning, under which members alternate by party. The result at the first hearing was a bewildering oscillation for almost four hours between alternate realities, compounded by lousy questions…

Democrats urge donors to give more to replicate 2022's successful legislative election record in 2024

CBS News

Democrats defended every state legislative chamber in their control in 2022, the first midterm elections since 1934 in which the party in control did not lose a chamber. To replicate that record next year, they say they'll need more money. A memo from the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC) sent to donors asks for an additional $10 million for 2024, as well as for Virginia's legislative elections this fall and any special elections that may emerge in New Hampshire, where Democrats are just three seats away from flipping the state House. The memo pitches it to donors as an early investment to "protect the path to the presidency" through building the party's grassroots presence in presidential battleground states like Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

Russia launches largest missile attack against Ukraine since January

The Kyiv Independent

In the early hours of March 9, Russia launched the largest missile attack against Ukraine since early 2023. Kyiv, Lviv, Mykolaiv, Odesa, Zhytomyr, Ivano-Frankivsk, Zaporizhzhia, Vinnytsia, Kirovohrad, Dnipropetrovsk, and Kharkiv oblasts were all under attack. "It's been a difficult night," President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a morning update. "The occupiers can only terrorize civilians. That's all they can do. But it won't help them. They won't avoid responsibility for everything they have done," said the president. According to the Commander-in-Chief of Ukraine's Armed Forces Valerii Zaluzhnyi, Russia launched 81 missiles and eight Iranian-made Shahed drones on March 9.

Ukrainian forces still trying to hold Bakhmut despite heavy casualties

The Guardian

Ukrainian soldiers are being pummelled on three sides by Russian forces who are trying to capture Bakhmut, a city in the eastern Donetsk region that has become the focus of the longest and one of the bloodiest battles since the war began. Ukraine’s authorities insist they will continue to try to hold the city despite them suffering an estimated 100-200 casualties a day – with some saying the reason is more political and symbolic than practical. Retreating from the city now, after so many soldiers died fighting to keep it, would be a hard reality to face. The Russian push for Bakhmut started in July and intensified in the autumn after Moscow mobilised thousands of men, many of whom were Russian prisoners who signed up with the promise of freedom after six months of service.

Tawang: The Indian monastery town coveted by China

BBC News

High in the Himalayas, the holy town of Tawang is one of the most intractable issues in the border dispute between India and China - and a potential flashpoint for future conflict. Along snow-capped ridges to its north, soldiers from Asia's two biggest armies face off, sometimes just a few hundred metres apart. Last December, they clashed in what some experts saw as a worrying sign of how things could escalate. Tawang, a pilgrimage site for Tibetan Buddhists perched some 3,000m (10,000ft) above sea level, is home to India's largest Buddhist monastery. For this reason and because of its strategic location, it's long been the focus of tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbours.

New storm could bring more peril to California rivers already hit by deadly flooding

Los Angeles Times

A powerful storm barreling toward California from the tropical Pacific threatens to trigger widespread river flooding throughout the state as warm rain melts a record accumulation of snowpack and sends runoff surging down mountains and into streams and reservoirs. Although state officials insist they are prepared to manage runoff from what is now the 10th atmospheric river of a deadly rainy season, at least one expert described the combination of warm rain, epic snowpack and moist soils as “bad news.” “We’re expecting rain in the areas where there was snow, and the rain is warm, and it will melt the snow that is already there,” said Alistair Hayden, a former division chief at the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services. “So what’s going to run into the rivers is not just the rain that’s falling from the sky — it’s going to unlock some of the precipitation that fell as snow, so it could be big.”

Southern Oregon still faces drought conditions despite recent storms

Oregon Public Broadcasting

Snowpack levels are mostly normal across the state, while overall precipitation levels are generally below normal, according to the Oregon Water Supply Outlook published this month by the Natural Resources Conservation Service. […] The current snowpack will hopefully alleviate some drought concerns as it begins to melt this spring, said Ryan Andrews, a hydrologist with the Oregon Water Resources Department. But current reservoir levels are below normal and snowpack would need to be well-above average to translate to healthy storage levels once it melts, he said. “I think there’s a very small chance that the reservoirs would fill. I think that’s a very very small chance,” he said.

Scientists have revived a ‘zombie’ virus that spent 48,500 years frozen in permafrost

CNN

Warmer temperatures in the Arctic are thawing the region’s permafrost — a frozen layer of soil beneath the ground — and potentially stirring viruses that, after lying dormant for tens of thousands of years, could endanger animal and human health. […] “There’s a lot going on with the permafrost that is of concern, and (it) really shows why it’s super important that we keep as much of the permafrost frozen as possible,” said Kimberley Miner, a climate scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California. […] To better understand the risks posed by frozen viruses, Jean-Michel Claverie, an Emeritus professor of medicine and genomics at the Aix-Marseille University School of Medicine in Marseille, France, has tested earth samples taken from Siberian permafrost to see whether any viral particles contained therein are still infectious. He’s in search of what he describes as “zombie viruses” — and he has found some.

Indigenous groups in the Amazon evolved resistance to deadly Chagas

Science

Humans have evolved to have some remarkable superpowers. People can thrive at high altitudes, dive for long periods underwater, and even tolerate a glass of lactose-rich milk well into adulthood. Now, a new study of Indigenous peoples from the Amazon rainforest reveals one more such adaptation: a genetic resistance to the endemic parasite responsible for deadly Chagas disease. The study’s findings could help scientists develop desperately needed new therapies for the disease, which infects roughly 6 million people in Latin America and is a leading cause of death in the region. “This paper is very important,” says Putira Sacuena, a bioanthropologist at the Federal University of Pará, Belém, who was not involved in this study. “It’s the first evidence of natural selection because of a pathogen in the Americas.”

Australia’s massive wildfires shredded the ozone layer — now scientists know why

Nature

[…] The Australian fires produced the largest smoke plume on record, releasing roughly one million tonnes of smoke to heights of up to 30 kilometres. That’s well into the stratosphere, the portion of the atmosphere that contains the ozone layer, which protects Earth from harmful ultraviolet rays, says study co-author Kane Stone, an atmospheric chemist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge. […] Study co-author Susan Solomon, an atmospheric chemist also at MIT, suggests the smoke might have caused a chemical reaction that usually needs cold conditions to occur in warm air. Satellite data after the fires revealed that the levels of hydrochloric acid were especially low compared to other years in regions of the atmosphere away from the South Pole at warmer latitudes. The stratosphere “looked like another planet after those fires”, she says. […] “Wildfire smoke at warm temperatures does things over Australia that couldn’t otherwise happen,” says Solomon.

EPA proposes ‘strongest ever’ limits on coal plant discharges

E&E Greenwire

Coal-fired power plants are facing another crackdown as the Biden administration moves forward with plans to limit toxic discharges into lakes and rivers in a major strike at one of the largest sources of industrial water pollution. EPA is pursuing stricter limits on wastewater released by coal plants, unraveling a controversial move by the Trump administration to loosen those standards. The agency said Wednesday that the changes will see pollutants in discharged wastewater reduced by around 584 million pounds, in what EPA Administrator Michael Regan called the “strongest ever” limits offered under any president. Speaking with reporters Tuesday afternoon, Regan said that the decision was rooted in deep concerns around public health, as well as a wider mandate to aid low-income communities and people of color. He cited the Biden administration’s directive to “follow the science” and said hard data had prompted the proposal.

Bees teach their babies how to dance

The Washington Post

For a bee to be successful, it needs to shake its honey maker. Scientists have long known honey bees jiggle their bodies to let nestmates know the location of nearby nectar and pollen. Bees choreograph their twists and turns with cues about the direction, distance and even the deliciousness of flowers around the hive. Now a new study in the journal Science shows that honey bees aren’t entirely born to boogie. To perform their tail-wagging waltz well, young bees need to watch the adults on the dance floor.

‘The Big Lebowski’ Turns 25: “People Didn’t Get It,” Jeff Bridges Recalls

The Hollywood Reporter

Twenty five years ago, The Big Lebowski blew into theaters like a tumbleweed on an empty street. Domestic audiences barely showed up, with the comedic detective tale only earning $18 million. […] “I thought it was going to be a big hit,” star Jeff Bridges tells THR, along with sharing some of his personal behind-the-scenes photos from the film’s set, many of which appeared in his 2003 book, Pictures. “I was surprised when it didn’t get much recognition. People didn’t get it, or something.”

NASA studying unexpected performance of Orion’s heat shield ahead of crew mission

Ars Technica

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