Biden announces action on heat as nation sizzles

President Joe Biden unveiled a series of measures Thursday designed to aid workers and residents facing severe health threats from soaring temperatures as record heat shows no signs of relenting.

Biden ticked off the devastating impacts of the recent heat waves across the country: Death, threats to vulnerable people like the elderly and unhoused, workplace safety concerns, lost economic productivity, destructive wildfires and risks to fisheries. The wide-ranging perils underscored that climate change has affected everyone in the country.

“Even those who deny that we're in the midst of a climate crisis can't deny the impact extreme heat is having on Americans,” Biden said during an event with administration officials and the mayors of Phoenix and San Antonio.

The push comes as scientists with the U.N.’s World Meteorological Organization said July is on track to become Earth’s hottest month on record. Washington, D.C., flirted with a triple-digit heat index as the broadest swath of the continental U.S. endured the type of sweltering heat that’s affected major cities Phoenix and Miami in recent weeks.

The Biden administration said the Labor Department would increase inspections at job sites to prevent heat stress, noting heat is the top weather-related killer in the United States at more than 600 deaths annually. Biden said the Occupational Safety and Health Administration already has conducted 2,600 workplace inspections as part of a new heat safety initiative.

“We should be protecting workers from hazardous conditions – and we will. And those states where they do not, I'm going to be calling them out,” Biden said.

The White House also said it would spend $7 million from the Inflation Reduction Act to improve weather forecasting and $152 million from the bipartisan infrastructure law to expand water storage in the West.

The Labor Department’s move to issue a “heat alert” reminding workers of their rights can advance public awareness of the health dangers from high temperatures, said Micki Siegel de Hernandez, deputy director of occupational safety and health with the Communication Workers of America union.

But that step is too modest, she said. The Labor Department has not yet issued final workplace safety standards for heat, a longtime ask of public health advocates, although OSHA is working on such a rule, with a review of its potential impacts on small businesses scheduled for August.

Without a federal floor, protections are uneven across states, she said.

“Everybody is anxious for them to get something out the door,” Siegel de Hernandez said. “This is a way of showing that ‘We’re still paying attention to this.”

Workplace conditions have attracted Congress’ attention in recent weeks. Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) refused water for eight hours in a Tuesday protest outside the Capitol to draw attention to the lack of federal standards. It comes after his state’s governor, Republican Greg Abbott, signed a law last month nixing water and rest breaks for construction workers.

Dozens of lawmakers sent a letter Monday to Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su and OSHA Assistant Secretary Douglas Parker urging them to finish that rule.

“The crisis demands immediate action if we are to accomplish our shared goals of saving lives and prioritizing worker safety and dignity,” the letter said.

The $369 billion of climate and clean energy incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act aim to address the continuing challenge of rising temperatures. Yet any positive response will take years given all the greenhouse gases the atmosphere already holds.

“We’ve got to get through this crisis in the near term and keep people safe,” Biden said. “We are making progress… but we have a lot more work to do.”

Communities are demanding immediate relief from the heat. Some lawmakers have even floated legislation, H.R. 3965 (118), to allow dangerous heatwaves to be declared federal disasters. That would unlock taxpayer dollars and resources to respond to soaring temperatures much like the Federal Emergency Management Agency does for floods, hurricanes, tornadoes and other perils.

“We need a swift, immediate deployment of resources, and that requires FEMA declaring extreme heat an emergency," Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), said in a statement.

Rep. Mark Amodei (R-Nev.), a co-sponsor of the bill, told POLITICO that those funds could help pay to move power supplies around when grids are stressed by people running air conditioners on full blast, perform outreach to vulnerable people like the elderly and provide transportation to cooling centers.

“Everyday life is disrupted… Nobody said we shouldn’t do anything for tornadoes or floods,” Amodei said. “It shouldn’t just be, ‘Hey, sucks to be hot. Hope you’re doing fine. Don’t call us.’”

FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell told POLITICO in an interview that her office would be “happy to provide” assistance to Congress as lawmakers debate whether to roll heatwaves into covered disaster declarations.

But Criswell said the agency’s efforts remain focused on preparing people to withstand heatwaves through public awareness measures in advance of high temperatures, saying local communities are handling response operations.

“Making sure that we’re bringing again the right partners together to help protect people and educate them – the steps that they can take to protect themselves and their families as they’re facing this kind of heat,” Criswell said of her agency’s posture on heat.

Amodei said, however, that most local communities struggle to find the resources to execute their plans. That’s especially true of smaller, often rural governments. The task is overwhelming for cash-strapped towns faced with the reality that climate change will keep driving temperatures higher, he said.

“Maybe we ought to start having a little more [federal] involvement than, ‘Cross your fingers,’” he said.

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Israel’s Crisis Is Just Beginning

JERUSALEM — It’s a strange experience to observe the place you live in slide from controlled crisis into utter chaos in just under 24 hours.

Crisis is a fairly common situation in Israel. There is always something going on. Hamas launches rockets; Israelis enjoy brunch. Hezbollah threatens to annihilate the country; Israelis know their air force will chortle.

This may be one of the reasons Israelis developed a “there he goes again” indulgence toward Benjamin Netanyahu, the country’s longest-serving prime minister, and an eternal bad boy of local politics. Last November, he managed to pull off reelection, barely, while on trial for corruption.

Yet this time — with skunk water cannons turned on peaceful protesters, army reservists resigning and global banks and credit ratings agencies downgrading Israel — Israel’s seven-month crisis is past and chaos has taken over. It feels as if the country’s DNA has been transformed. As always, it’s been a long time coming, but the change feels brutal and shocking. The air feels different.

Netanyahu is plowing ahead with a radical project he calls “judicial reform,” which would subsume Israel’s judiciary under an almost all-powerful executive. Over the past seven months, it has advanced under cover of a shimmer of irreality that has torn open the country’s rifts. The only question was whether his hard-right, religious, nationalist government would back down in the face of massive international alarm and domestic resistance.

The latest chapter opened on Sunday night, when former President Reuven Rivlin, 83, addressed a crowd of about 100,000 opponents of Netanyahu’s attempted power grab and Jerusalem still felt like Jerusalem.

After a sweltering day, the hilltop city’s famous breeze seemed to caress the crowd.

Behind me, smiling protesters shared bags of grapes they’d brought from home. Their hope seemed to be that just maybe they could recreate March, when a popular uprising with hundreds of thousands in the streets gave Netanyahu pause and pushed him to step back from a draconian law changing the Judicial Appointments Committee, that would have brought Israel closer to authoritarianism.

While Netanyahu has conspicuously dismissed increasingly dire warnings from everyone from President Joe Biden to Israeli reserve air force commanders, the idea of an Israel turned into a nation subservient to the iron fist of a strongman doesn't quite jibe with lived experience here.

The time and the place at which Rivlin, a respected elder statesman and the scion of a well-known Jerusalem family, addressed the crowd could hardly have been more symbolic. He climbed up the steps to the improvised stage at the corner of Kaplan and Rabin streets, just above Ben Zvi Boulevard, which are named for two signatories of Israel’s declaration of independence and a hero of the War of Independence, and reminisced about seeing the first Israeli flag raised in Jerusalem in May 1948.

“As a boy I distributed water to the fighters of Jerusalem,” he remembered, mentioning that his grandchildren always ask him why he tears up during Independence Day celebrations. “I loved the state,” he said. “I saw in its establishment a miracle.”

But Rivlin was not indulging in sentimentality. “Our job is to see if we can save our wonderful country in the next 24 hours,” he said, as if through his own person he could, somehow, channel all the energy that had built the state to cure what now ails it.

He begged Netanyahu, who he has known since childhood, to reconsider. “There is only one person who can prevent this disaster from harming our country,” he said, “and that is Benjamin Netanyahu.” The crowd hissed, and Rivlin shushed them, saying “we can make accounts later.”

Beseeching, almost keening, he said “I ask Netanyahu, as someone who sees himself as a Jewish leader who is perhaps as great as Moses, to save this nation and prevent civil war.”

Absurd as this was, he did not mean it as a joke. Around me, those who were still listening to Rivlin tittered. Moses? But Netanyahu’s ego is a real factor. And we were, after all, in Jerusalem, almost at the eve of Tisha B’Av, the day commemorating the destruction of both the first and second ancient Temples, the symbols of squandered and defeated Jewish sovereignty, caused, according to legend, by hatred and infighting among Jews.

Near me, a man offered passersby cookies his wife baked for the tens of thousands of Israelis who spent four days hiking in 95-degree heat from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem to protest Netanyahu’s judicial blitz.

Witty protest signs abounded. “Bibi, haven’t the Jews suffered enough?” “Cuties for Democracy.”

On the sidelines, a tall, willowy young man who could have passed for one of the city’s Jesus impersonators held high a large flag emblazoned with the drawing of a slice of watermelon. Over the seven months of swelling protests on Israeli streets, during which police began confiscating red, green, white and black Palestinian flags at the orders of Netanyahu’s extremist National Security Minister, Itamar Ben Gvir, the seeded fruit has become a jokey metaphor.

I asked Jesus if many people asked him about the watermelon, and he said it was a great conversation starter. He was among those who’d spent the night at “The City of God,” the protest tent city which had emerged seemingly in an instant at the adjacent Sacher Park.

With a smile, glancing at some 2,000 neat rows of tents, another protester commented that “it may not be a good idea to turn the Israeli army’s entire logistical command against you.”

Netanyahu has long enjoyed his reputation as Israel’s “Mr. Security,” but in this latest incarnation, he has turned against the military establishment that has been among the most forceful sectors opposing his judicial coup.

Adding to the general strangeness of recent months, Netanyahu, born in Jerusalem and raised mostly in progressive Tel Aviv, appears to inhabit an alternate sphere. He, his son Yair, and, on Tuesday, his brother, Iddo Netanyahu, have all spread the far-right conspiracy theory that Biden is fomenting or even financing the growing protest movement.

When fighter pilots rose to prominence among the opponents to Netanyahu’s plans, his minister of communications, Shlomo Karhi, suggested the pilots — who are lionized figures in Israeli society — “can go to hell.”

Twenty-four hours later, it was all over.

Rivlin’s words, like Moody’s warning of a credit downgrade, like the pilots’ threats to withdraw from reserve duty, like the doctors’ strike, like the millions of Israelis who’ve marched against the administrative power grab, had fallen on deaf ears.

On Monday afternoon, in what felt, despite months of buildup, like a stunning and casual stealth vote, Netanyahu’s coalition passed a bill eliminating Israel’s “Reasonability Clause,” a legal tool enabling the judiciary to strike down improper government appointments and executive decisions. Former Prime Minister Yair Lapid, the centrist opposition leader, said “The government has declared a war of attrition against its own citizens.”

All joshing was gone. In the hours leading up to the vote, Netanyahu turned down a request from Israeli Army Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi to meet. He didn’t want to be briefed. Reality, be gone.

Adding to the sense of an impending apocalypse, Netanyahu, 73, barely made it to his own fateful vote in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. He was released from the hospital after the emergency implantation of a pacemaker about two hours before the roll call began, and, uncharacteristically, he gripped the handrail hard as he slowly descended the steps to the plenum.

Within half an hour of the bill passing, 64-0 amid an opposition boycott, hundreds of pilots posted pictures of themselves, many in tears, sending their unit commanders letters ending their decades of service. “We signed a contract to fight for the realm,” they wrote. “We will not fight for a king.” The Israel Defense Forces later revealed that more than half of the air force personnel that signed the original petition to Netanyahu, including pilots, had followed through and informed their units they would no longer report to reserve duty.

Itamar Ben Gvir, one of Netanyahu’s most outlandish appointments, was among those exulting. Before receiving the plum national security post he was a renowned agitator convicted eight times of terror and hate crimes. On Monday night, he gleefully declared that the elimination of the Reasonableness Clause “was just an appetizer. The salad bar is open.”

Meanwhile, the threads holding Israeli society together had burst, and the country burned. On Monday, police brought clubs, mounted police and water cannons to disperse the Jerusalem protesters at the triangular corner bounded by the Knesset, the Supreme Court and the foreign ministry. Several were wounded. Both in Tel Aviv and in Jerusalem, law enforcement lost control of the streets for a period of some three hours, into the dawn.

Supreme Court Chief Justice Esther Hayut, who is scheduled to retire in October, hastily cut short an official visit to Germany to return home and face the havoc.

By Tuesday, more than a dozen Supreme Court petitions had already been filed demanding that the court strike down the law eliminating the Reasonableness Clause. Courts commonly rule on their own standing, but this case will very likely thrust Israel into full-blown constitutional anarchy.

The next phase of the crisis is expected to unfold rapidly: The Supreme Court may well rule that Netanyahu’s law is illegal, and the government will declare the court ruling invalid.

Israel, within weeks, will be suspended over the abyss. Whose orders will the police obey? Ben Gvir’s, when they are beyond judicial review? Or those of the rule of law? On Monday, an Israeli television channel reported that Mossad Director Dadi Barnea had assured his agents, in an abruptly convened general staff meeting, that his organization would obey the rule of law, but what does that mean in practice?

No one really knows. Netanyahu is engaging in a form of shock doctrine, the tried-and-true method used by leaders to overwhelm the public sphere and impose their will. This was felt in the dread that descended upon the Monday night crowd, where no one was cheerfully passing fruit around.

Instead, it felt like a Rubicon had been crossed.

Early Tuesday, Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, Israel’s top civil servant, who several Netanyahu ministers have threatened to fire once the Reasonableness Clause was gone, urged the Supreme Court to rule against another law passed a few weeks ago, which makes it virtually impossible for a prime minister to be declared unfit for office. “The Knesset’s constitutive authority was misused,” she wrote.

It is just beginning.

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Light-headedness caused McConnell to abruptly leave press conference, office says

Mitch McConnell abruptly stopped his opening remarks at an afternoon press conference on Wednesday, causing alarm when he left for a few minutes and then returning to answer questions.

The Senate minority leader only got through a few words of his speech about the chamber's annual defense bill, then trailed off and stared straight ahead for a few minutes as his fellow senators asked if he was OK. A McConnell aide said he was feeling light-headed. McConnell himself said “I’m fine” following the brief episode and took questions from reporters.

McConnell, 81, suffered a concussion in March following a fall and returned to his duties in April. He has since gone about his job as usual, though has occasionally struggled to hear reporters’ questions at the weekly press availabilities.

The GOP leader waved off a subsequent question regarding who would succeed him in leading the conference. McConnell has served as head of the Senate GOP since 2007, and faced his first challenge last fall, handily defeating Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.).

“I was concerned when he fell and hit his head a number of months ago. He was hospitalized and he’s made a remarkable recovery, he’s doing a great job leading our conference,” said Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), the No. 3 GOP leader, who briefly conferred with McConnell amid the episode.

“He was able to answer every question that the press asked him today," Barrasso added. "And you may note, he answered more questions than he normally does.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said he wished McConnell well.

After returning to Wednesday's press conference, the Kentucky Republican took questions on topics ranging from congressional spending to Hunter Biden to the possibility of the GOP House impeaching President Joe Biden. He said he was “not surprised” House Republicans would look at impeaching Biden after former President Donald Trump was twice impeached.

“We had not one but two impeachments, and once we go down this path, it incentivizes the other side to do the same thing,” McConnell said. “This is not good for the country. To have repeated impeachment problems.”

Alex Daugherty contributed to this report.

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DeSantis suggests he could pick RFK Jr. to lead the FDA or CDC

Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. might have an offer to run a federal agency in 2025 — but not for the party he is running to gain the nomination from.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is struggling to gain steam in the GOP primary, mused on Wednesday in an interview with Clay Travis on OutKick that he generally aligns with Kennedy’s conservative views on Covid-19 policies and vaccines. Those views, DeSantis indicated, could make him a pick to lead a federal agency with medical jurisdiction.

“If you’re president, sic him on the FDA if he’d be willing to serve. Or sic him on CDC,” DeSantis said, in response to a question about whether he would pick Kennedy as a running mate. “In terms of being veep, if there’s 70 percent of the issues that he may be averse to our base on, that just creates an issue.”

Kennedy, who remains a long shot for the Democratic presidential nomination, has aired contentious views over vaccines, having questioned their effectiveness on several occasions. In the past few weeks, hecame under sharp fire from liberals for suggesting that Covid was engineered to be less lethal to Asian and Jewish people. He has also been a critic of Anthony Fauci, the former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, commenting once that he would prosecute him if “crimes were committed.”

DeSantis’ comments fit into the governor’s ongoing criticism of the federal bureaucracy, which he has described over recent years as becoming too “woke” and corrupted. DeSantis has pledged to abolish several government agencies and departments if elected president, including the IRS and the Department of Education.

Conservatives like DeSantis have railed against health-related agencies in particular, animating fervor over pandemic-related lockdowns and mandates. As Florida governor, DeSantis has waged a verbal and legal war against the CDC and FDA — two agencies with broad jurisdiction over health matters that he especially targeted during the peak of the pandemic for mandates.

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DeSantis-appointed board eyes millions of dollars in cuts to Disney’s district

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — A public police force that provides overtime services to Walt Disney World’s sprawling theme park in central Florida is on the chopping block under the governing board Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed.

The board on Wednesday teased millions of dollars worth of spending cuts to the area that spans thousands of acres and provided Disney with self-governing status. Among the cuts is $8 million the district spends annually on law enforcement provided exclusively to Disney’s properties, board chair Martin Garcia said during a public meeting.

“That doesn’t make any sense to me and it doesn’t make any sense to anybody on our team that’s looked at it,” Garcia said, adding that the mega-corporation wasn't the only taxpayer in the district.

The proposal came as DeSantis continually bashes Disney while campaigning for president because it disagreed with a law limiting how and when sexual orientation and gender identity can be taught in public schools and is waging a legal battle against him. DeSantis floated numerous retaliatory measures, including building a state prison on bordering land, increasing taxes, introducing more regulations, building affordable workforce housing and exploring the sale of distinct-owned utilities.

Garcia announced the forthcoming cuts to the district, formally known as the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District, after members adopted a reduction to the millage rate — or tax rate — during a public meeting Wednesday.

“We heard from constituents loud and clear at public meetings and while out and about in the community,” Glen Gilzean, district administrator, said at Wednesday’s meeting. “They do not want their tax rates to go up. We took their concerns to heart.”

Due to higher property values, the move won’t necessarily reduce what area homeowners and businesses pay in property taxes but will keep them from going up significantly. It will also result in a $200 million reduction in tax collections.

The board will meet those reductions by cutting spending in other areas that will be detailed in the coming weeks. Garcia didn’t specify more examples during the public meeting, but he credited Gilzean for putting “egg on my face” when he found “wasteful spending” by the previous board, which was called the Reedy Creek Improvement District.

“As we are doing more work it appears there are a number of naughty things this old board did with district funds, and we are going to look for further savings,” Garcia said.

The Reedy Creek Improvement District was largely overseen by board members representing Disney’s interests, allowing the resort and theme park to essentially run its own government. The board and Disney are currently suing each other in separate lawsuits, with Disney attempting to maintain its special privileges in Florida — ones that save it time and money.

The coveted status, not available to rival theme parks such as Universal Studios or Sea World, allowed Disney to press ahead with plans without running them by zoning commissions or building-inspection departments.

But it’s now in jeopardy after the company spoke out about a 2021 “Parental Rights” Florida law, dubbed “Don’t Say Gay” by critics, which bans teachers from leading classroom instruction on some LGBTQ issues.

Disney didn’t reply to POLITICO’s request to respond to the forthcoming spending cuts. The company pays $1 billion in taxes to Florida every year, provides 75,000 jobs and is the state’s largest tourist attraction.

It also had been the Pulse Nightclub shooter’s initial target before the gunman saw the police presence in the area and searched online for nearby clubs to conduct his massacre instead, Disney CEO Bob Iger revealed in his 2019 memoir “The Ride of a Lifetime.”

In its deliberations, the district’s board has struck a more conciliatory tone than DeSantis, saying it wants to make changes that will help residents and small businesses in the district. “We are determined to run an open, honest, efficient, transparent, and independent government agency” Garcia said during Wednesday’s meeting.

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Fed hikes rates again — and leaves options open for more

The Federal Reserve raised interest rates Wednesday for the 11th time in more than a year to kill inflation, in what investors hope will be the last hike in 2023.

But central bank officials are cautioning that there might be more increases coming.

The central bank's rate-setting committee will assess how much borrowing costs are already crimping growth "in determining the extent [to which further rate hikes] may be appropriate," it said in a statement after meetings this week.

The stock market and the Biden administration are both eager to celebrate a slate of positive economic data. Even as the unemployment rate remains near modern-era lows, annual inflation dropped to 3 percent in June, as measured by the consumer price index, its lowest level since early 2021.

Still, central bank officials are worried about key industries — mainly services like restaurants, hospitals and auto insurance — where prices are climbing faster. They are also weighing the risk that, if they let up, inflation might begin to accelerate once more.

They'll get another snapshot this week of how much rate hikes have been digging into growth; the Commerce Department will put out a preliminary estimate Thursday on how much GDP increased from the end of March to the end of June.

And on Friday, the Labor Department will offer a quarterly update on how much companies are spending on workers — a data point that Fed Chair Jerome Powell watches closely to determine how much a hot job market is contributing to inflation.

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N.C. governor sets Medicaid expansion date, pressuring Republicans to act

North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper’s administration on Wednesday announced the state will expand Medicaid on Oct. 1 — even though lawmakers have yet to approve the funding to do so.

The unusual move, agreed to by the Biden administration, puts additional pressure on the state’s Republican-controlled legislature to either pass a budget or fund Medicaid expansion separately — something the Democratic governor and his health and human services secretary, Kody Kinsley, have been calling for since lawmakers failed to reach a spending deal earlier this month.

“This is driven by my desire to try to get this going as fast as possible and to maximize the benefits for the people of North Carolina,” Kinsley said in an interview. “This makes it real for everybody, including the General Assembly.”

The state’s plan gives lawmakers until Sept. 1 to fund the proposal. State health officials said that by starting their work now, they can reduce the lead time needed to implement the program from 90 or 120 days after the legislature gives its final approval to 30 days.

If, however, lawmakers miss the September deadline, Medicaid expansion would be delayed until Dec. 1, health officials said.

North Carolina became the 40th state to approve Medicaid expansion in March, with more than 600,000 people expected to be eligible for the program when it takes effect.

Implementing Medicaid expansion has been a top priority for the two-term governor, who will leave office in 2025.

Republican lawmakers overcame years of opposition to approve the proposal but declined to fund it separately, wanting some leverage over Cooper as they hashed out the budget. In August, Cooper railed against lawmakers for tying expansion to the budget.

“Making Medicaid Expansion contingent on passing the budget was and is unnecessary, and now the failure of Republican legislators to pass the budget is ripping health care away from thousands of real people and costing our state and our hospitals millions of dollars,” Cooper said in a statement.

Lawmakers have shown no signs of budging — even though negotiations between House and Senate Republicans are on other issues, such as tax cuts and pay raises for state employees.

Rep. Donny Lambeth, a Republican and senior chair of the House Appropriations Committee, said Cooper knew that tying Medicaid expansion to the budget was part of the deal.

“He negotiated with us in good faith … He agreed, and now wants to change the agreement,” Lambeth said. “He knew the risk, so if he was not comfortable back in March, he should never have agreed to the deal.”

North Carolina lawmakers are on break and won’t return to Raleigh until Aug. 7. Lambeth said he believes there is a 50-50 chance lawmakers will resolve their outstanding budgetary issues when they return and approve their final conference report the week of Aug. 14.

There are “still a lot of policy issues to work out with the House and Senate conference committee,” Lambeth said. “Things are moving forward, but lots of work is still to be done.”

The announcement comes after 9,000 people who would have been eligible for health coverage under expansion were dropped from Medicaid as the state combs through its health insurance rolls to determine for the first time since the beginning of the pandemic whether millions of people are still eligible.

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