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Climate panel Democrats clean up with energy donors

The nine Democrats on the new House committee tasked with shaping climate change policy collected $238,000 from the oil, gas and utility industries for their 2018 campaigns, according to campaign finance data reviewed by the Center for Responsive Politics.

"Outside Washington D.C., it's common sense: politicians setting climate policy shouldn't be taking money from the corporations and executives who have fought for decades to stop action on climate change in order they can protect their bottom lines," Stephen O'Hanlon, a spokesman for the progressive Sunrise Movement, told Bloomberg News.

Republicans have not named their delegates to the panel, the Select Committee on the Climate Crisis. The top recipient among the Democrats, at $120,0000, was New Mexico's Ben Ray Lujan, who chaired the party's House campaign operation last cycle and was his state's chief utility regulator before winning election to Congress a decade ago. The chairwoman, Kathy Castor of Florida, received $7,500.


Some panel Democrats received contributions from environmental groups as well as renewable energy companies that could benefit from legislation mandating reduced carbon emissions. Only one of them, California freshman Mike Levin, has pledged to disavow any donations from fossil fuel business.

"Rejecting the industry's influence by taking the No Fossil Fuel Money Pledge should be a prerequisite to these discussions," David Turnbull, a spokesman for Oil Change USA, part of the coalition behind the pledge, told Bloomberg. "By joining the committee, these members have shown they're interested in tackling this issue; they can show they're serious about showing true climate leadership by standing up to the industry directly."

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Meet the change leaders: Scott Klug

Nevins is co-publisher of The Fulcrum and co-founder and board chairman of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund.

After a 14-year career as an Emmy-winning reporter, Scott Klug upset a 32-year Democratic House member from Wisconsin in 1990. Despite winning four elections with an average of 63 percent of the vote, he stayed true to his term limit pledge and retired in January 1999.

But during his time in office, Klug says, he had the third most independent voting record of any member of Congress from Wisconsin in the last 50 years.

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Donald Trump at a podium

Former President Donald Trump recently said Vice President Kamala Harris is mentally impaired.

Howard Schnapp/Newsday RM via Getty Images

We should not denigrate the mentally impaired

Schmidt is a columnist and editorial board member with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Ableism, the social prejudice and discrimination of people with disabilities based on the belief that typical abilities are superior, is just plain wrong and it is also un-American.

At a recent campaign rally in Prairie du Chien, Wis., former President Donald Trump disparaged Vice President Kamala Harris, suggesting she was mentally disabled and called her “a very dumb person.”

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"Danger PFAS" Caution Warning Barrier Tap

Heavily Hispanic areas near Chicago are home to environmental racism.

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Hispanic neighborhoods in Chicago suffer unequal exposure to chemicals

Sharp is chief financial officer at Environmental Litigation Group, P.C., a law firm based in Birmingham, Ala., that assists individuals and communities injured by toxic exposure.

The predominantly Hispanic populations in Rosemont, Schiller Park and Bensenville, near Chicago, have long been exposed to toxic chemicals known as PFAS originating from the neighboring O'Hare Air Reserve Station, which was closed in 1999. The phenomenon of environmental racism is not new to Chicago. Sites and facilities hazardous to the environment and human health have been placed near communities predominantly populated by Hispanic and Black people in the city for years.

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Gerald Ford

Republicans, including Gerald Ford in 1976, held the White House on the occasion of each of America's milestone birthdays.

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America at 250, and the Fourth of July presidents

Breslin is the Joseph C. Palamountain Jr. Chair of Political Science at Skidmore College and author of “A Constitution for the Living: Imagining How Five Generations of Americans Would Rewrite the Nation’s Fundamental Law.”

This is the latest in “A Republic, if we can keep it,” a series to assist American citizens on the bumpy road ahead this election year. By highlighting components, principles and stories of the Constitution, Breslin hopes to remind us that the American political experiment remains, in the words of Alexander Hamilton, the “most interesting in the world.”

An odd pattern has emerged in the history of presidential politics. Every time the United States celebrates a major birthday milestone, a Republican sits in the White House.

When America celebrated its golden jubilee in 1826, Democratic-Republican John Quincy Adams was enjoying his second year as the country’s chief executive. When the nation rejoiced that it had reached its centennial 100 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Ulysses S. Grant was our president. At America’s sesquicentennial in 1926, Calvin Coolidge occupied the White House. And during the bicentennial almost 50 years ago, Gerald Ford was completing his one and only term at the helm.

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