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Overnight News Digest for Wednesday, May 31, 2023 (Dancing on the debt ceiling edition) [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2023-05-31

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 crew of the Overnight News Digest consists of founder Magnifico, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, Chitown Kev, jeremybloom, Magnifico, annetteboardman, eeff, rise above the swamp, Besame and jck. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) Interceptor 7, Man Oh Man, wader, Neon Vincent, palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse (RIP), ek hornbeck (RIP), rfall, ScottyUrb, Doctor RJ, BentLiberal, Oke (RIP) and jlms qkw.

The final House vote was 314 to 117, with 149 Republicans and 165 Democrats supporting the measure. In a potentially worrisome sign for the House Republican speaker, Kevin McCarthy, 71 members of his conference opposed the deal that he brokered with President Joe Biden. The debt ceiling bill passed by the House would raise the government’s borrowing limit until January 2025, ensuring the issue will not resurface before the next presidential election. As part of his negotiations with Biden, McCarthy successfully pushed for government spending cuts and changes to the work requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. However, the concessions that McCarthy won fell far short for members of the freedom caucus, who had pushed for steeper spending cuts and much stricter work requirements for benefits programs. They belittled the debt ceiling compromise as a paltry effort to tackle the nation’s debt, which stands at more than $31tn.

Immediately after House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) reached an elusive agreement with President Biden to raise the debt ceiling on Saturday, the speaker emerged from his office and called a little-known congresswoman about a once obscure energy project. “We got Mountain Valley Pipeline done,” McCarthy told Rep. Carol Miller (R-W.Va.), according to people familiar with the conversation. To make the stars align, House Republicans had to enlist Manchin in communications with the White House, the people said. The resulting deal included many players but demonstrated how industry lobbyists can influence legislation and help certain politicians in the mix. x SCOOP: Here's how the Mountain Valley Pipeline provision got included in the debt ceiling deal.



It involved more players than just Joe Manchin, including key House Republicans and oil and gas lobbyists. https://t.co/OA7jBF3kge — Maxine Joselow (@maxinejoselow) May 31, 2023

The Justice Department is suing the coal empire of West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice for failing to pay more than $5 million in civil penalties assessed by the Department of the Interior. The 128-page civil action , filed Tuesday against 13 of the Justice family businesses and Justice’s adult son, comes as the governor, a Republican, launches a Senate bid against Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.). The suit alleges that the businesses failed to pay fines for more than 100 violations of federal mining regulations that created “health and safety risks” or threatened “environmental harm.” Justice Department attorneys are seeking a court order to force the Justice companies to repay the fines, with interest.

And car dealers are not only one of the richest demographics in the United States. They’re also one of the most organized political factions—a conservative imperium giving millions of dollars to politicians at local, state, and national levels. They lobby through NADA, the organization staging the weekend’s festivities, and donate to Republicans at a rate of 6-to-1. Through those efforts, they’ve managed to write and rewrite laws to protect dealers and sponsor sympathetic politicians in all 50 states. All of which meant that this year, presidential hopeful Nikki Haley and Fox News darling Greg Gutfeld, among others, had made the pilgrimage to kiss the key ring. But just as times are strange for Republicans, they are for car dealers too, and the event this year had a decadent and desperate energy. Opening night featured a concert by country star Brad Paisley. He was set to take the stage in mere minutes, and I still hadn’t found the armadillos. I’d sidled through the “speak-easy,” happened upon the blackjack tables, and even run smack into a male dancer standing atop a saddle swinging 4 feet off the ground. But the small mammal racetrack eluded me ...Now car dealers are one of the most important secular forces in American conservatism, having taken a huge swath of the political system hostage. They spent a record $7 million on federal lobbying in 2022, far more than the National Rifle Association, and $25 million in 2020 just on federal elections, mostly to Republicans. The NADA PAC kicked in another $5 million. That’s a small percentage of the operation: Dealers mainline money to state- and local-level GOPs as well. They often play an outsize role in communities, buying up local ad space, sponsoring local sports teams, and strengthening a social network that can be very useful to political campaigns. “There’s a dealer in every district, which is why their power is so diffuse. They’re not concentrated in any one place; they’re spread out everywhere, all over the country,” Crane said. Although dealers are maligned as parasites, their relationship to the GOP is pure symbiosis: Republicans need their money and networks, and dealers need politicians to protect them from repealing the laws that keep the money coming in. x The whole story is here, featuring cameos from @NikkiHaley, @greggutfeld, @nelly_mo, @smashmouth, @BradPaisley, @DeionSanders, and more.https://t.co/Bh1HlQavxR — Alex Sammon (@alex_sammon) May 30, 2023

Around the world, almost 1 million plastic bottles are purchased every minute. As the environmental impact of that tide of plastic becomes a growing political issue, major packaged goods sellers and retailers are under pressure to cut the flow of the single-use bottles and containers that are clogging the world’s waterways. Plastic production has surged in the last 50 years, leading to widespread use of inexpensive disposable products that are having a devastating effect on the environment. Images of plastic debris-strewn beaches and dead animals with stomachs full of plastic have sparked outrage. x “Around the world, almost 1 million plastic bottles are purchased every minute.” https://t.co/uJuvBeALNU — David Wallace-Wells (@dwallacewells) May 30, 2023 Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles are commonly used for soft drinks and mineral water, but can also be used in other household or personal care products. Data from Euromonitor International, shows that more than 480 billion of these bottles were sold last year alone. That’s almost 1 million every minute, as shown in the animation at the top of this page. The illustrations below show what that pile of plastic would look like if it was collected over a longer period of time.

..Receipts shared by the teen and published by NewsOne appear to show that he rode the specific Citi Bike around New York City just before the confrontation. NewsOne reported that the teen said Comrie approached them and asked two of his friends if she could use the bikes before she asked him, "Can I please have this bike?" Like his pals, the teen said he declined and told Comrie he was about to take it back out. The teen alleged that Comrie noted she was pregnant and, when he still refused to give her the bike, scanned the QR code while he held onto it, renting out the bike from under him.

x Another day - another major flood

This is extreme climate change

Remember a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, and globally water vapour increases by 7% for every 1 C degree of warming https://t.co/3lxqCPPVb0 — GO GREEN (@ECOWARRIORSS) May 31, 2023

My father died of dementia. My heart goes out to the Carter family

The former US first lady Rosalynn Carter has dementia, her family announced on Tuesday. Carter, 95, lives in Plains, Georgia, with her husband, Jimmy Carter, the 98-year-old 39th president who has been in hospice care since February. x The Carter family is sharing that former First Lady Rosalynn Carter has dementia. She continues to live happily at home with her husband, enjoying spring in Plains and visits with loved ones.



Full statement: https://t.co/FrpcYhPwn4 pic.twitter.com/Ng4mnAZiPS — The Carter Center (@CarterCenter) May 30, 2023 A statement issued on Tuesday by the Carter Center said Rosalynn Carter “continues to live happily at home with her husband, enjoying spring in Plains and visits with loved ones”. x We invite you to leave messages of support for former First Lady Rosalynn Carter and the Carter family here: https://t.co/ZDgS7pYo46 pic.twitter.com/wZnzzg1yhc — The Carter Center (@CarterCenter) May 30, 2023

..In the court’s orders list on Tuesday, Alito noted his recusal from BG Gulf Coast and Phillips 66 v. Sabine-Neches Navigation District—a case about two energy companies shirking their obligation to help fund improvement of a waterway that they use for shipping. (The court declined to take up the case, leaving in place a lower court decision against the companies.) But the justice did not explain his reason for recusing, one of Roberts’ promised “practices.” To obtain that information, you must dig through his financial disclosures, which reveal that he holds up to $50,000 of stock in Phillips 66, one of the parties. Alito is one of two sitting justices who still holds individual stocks (as opposed to conflict-free assets like mutual funds). The only other sitting justice who maintains investments in individual stock is Roberts himself. For years, Alito has periodically recused from cases involving energy companies without explaining why. This spring, however, that practice was supposed to change. Roberts’ ethics “statement” explained that justices “may provide a summary explanation of a recusal decision” with a citation to the relevant provision of the Judicial Code of Conduct. (That code is binding on lower court judges but voluntary for the justices.) The “statement” offered this example: “Justice X took no part in the consideration or decision of this petition. See Code of Conduct, Canon 3C(1)(c) (financial interest).” In Philips 66, it appears that Alito should have cited his “financial interest” in a party to explain his “recusal decision.” (In other words, he should have been “Justice X.”) This could have been a textbook example of the new rule in action; indeed, it was literally the example that the court offered the Senate Judiciary Committee. Instead, Alito refused to adhere to this new procedure.

A respiratory virus that most people have never heard of was to blame for many hospitalizations and illnesses this spring, health officials say. The human metapneumovirus, or HMPV, causes symptoms similar to COVID-19 or RSV, but doctors don’t usually test for it outside of a hospital setting, meaning many people likely had no idea they had it. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that cases of HMPV surged about 36 percent in mid-March, with 11 percent of all specimens tested indicating the virus. Dr. John Williams, a pediatrician at the University of Pittsburgh, called HMPV “the most important virus you’ve never heard of” in comments to CNN, noting that it accounts for about the same number of illnesses as RSV and the flu. The virus can lead to complications and intensive care for vulnerable patients, but in most cases the symptoms of cough, fever, nasal congestion, and shortness of breath will resolve without treatment after several days.

Last week, lawyers for Donald Trump sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland requesting a meeting to discuss the special counsel’s investigation into the former president. The letter comes as The Wall Street Journal reports that special counsel Jack Smith is nearing the end of his investigation into Trump’s possession of government documents at his Mar-a-Lago residence. The letter is a gimmick, a piece of propaganda designed to inflame passions and control the narrative. How do I know? The letter quite literally tells on itself. First, the letter requests a meeting with Garland, even though he has named Smith as special counsel to handle the case. Garland appointed the special counsel in November after Trump announced his candidacy for president in 2024 in order to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest. A request for a meeting to discuss the investigation is therefore properly directed to Smith, not Garland. Trump’s legal team, which includes former Justice Department lawyer James Trusty, certainly knows that. As former Justice Department spokesman Anthony Coley has explained, “Merrick Garland will not meet with Trusty or any of the other Trump lawyers. Jack Smith is running this investigation, not Merrick Garland.” Why, then, would Trump’s team ask for such a meeting? Because they know Garland will decline. And when he does, you can bet Trump’s lawyers will wave around the refusal as proof of injustice. Trump will wail that this rejection proves once again that he is a victim of witch hunts and hoaxes. The predictability of Trump’s game would be tiresome if it were not so harmful to public trust in government institutions.

..The culprit, it would ultimately emerge, was ChatGPT. OpenAI’s popular chatbot had “hallucinated” — a term for when artificial intelligence systems simply invent false information — and spat out cases and arguments that were entirely fiction. It appeared that LoDuca and another attorney, Steven Schwartz, had used ChatGPT to generate the motions and the subsequent legal text. ...LoDuca and his firm, though, seemed to double down on the use of ChatGPT, using it not just for the initially problematic filing but to generate false legal decisions when asked to provide them. Now, LoDuca and Schwartz may be facing judicial sanction, a move that could even lead to disbarment. ...“The Court is presented with an unprecedented circumstance,” Castel said. He set a hearing for June 8 when both LoDuca and Schwartz will be called to explain themselves. Neither attorney responded to CNBC’s request for comment.

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