It’s Friday, but there’s really not much to celebrate.
1) Trump pulls U.S. out of historic Paris climate accord.
It’s not exactly shocking that President Donald Trump made good on a campaign promise and pulled the U.S. out of the most significant climate agreement in history. But it’s still a disaster. From The Washington Post:
President Trump announced Thursday afternoon that he is withdrawing the United States from the landmark Paris climate agreement, an extraordinary move that dismayed America’s allies and set back the global effort to address the warming planet.
Trump’s decision set off alarms worldwide, drawing swift and sharp condemnation from foreign leaders as well as top environmentalists and corporate titans, who decried the U.S. exit from the Paris accord as an irresponsible abdication of American leadership in the face of irrefutable scientific evidence.
Trump, who has labeled climate change a “hoax,” made good on a campaign promise to “cancel” the Paris agreement and other Obama-era regulations that he said were decimating industries and killing jobs. The president cast his decision as a “reassertion of America’s sovereignty,” arguing that the climate pact as negotiated under President Barack Obama was grossly unfair to the U.S. workers he had vowed to protect with his populist “America First” platform.
Thom Tillis, a guy who has received hundreds of thousands of campaign dollars from oil and gas companies, is on board. From the INDY, by way of the Guardian:
North Carolina Republican senator Thom Tillis doesn’t seem too concerned. He was among twenty-two Republican senators who last week signed a letter urging Trump to scrap the deal, according to the Guardian. He was also the beneficiary of $263,400 in campaign contributions from oil and gas companies since 2012, according to the same report.
Meanwhile, a lot of people are pretty concerned.
Al Gore? Not happy. Not happy at all.
And what say you, international community?
Even Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, who had, until today, never tweeted, came out of the woodwork.
Trump defended his actions by spouting off a bunch of misinformation about what the Paris agreement actually does. From the Post:
In his speech announcing his decision to withdraw from the Paris Accord on climate change, President Trump frequently relied on dubious facts and unbalanced claims to make his case that the agreement would hurt the U.S. economy.
Trump also suggested that the United States was treated unfairly under the agreement. But each of the nations signing the agreement agreed to help lower emissions, based on plans they submitted.
You should really read the entire piece.
2) Trump lied about creating jobs.
On Thursday, the president said he’s created more than a million private sector jobs. He’s bad at math. From CNN:
That’s not true.
Official government data from the Labor Department show only 493,000 private sector jobs have been added since January, when Trump took office. Trump is trying to take credit for double that amount.
3) Trump administration asks the Supreme Court to reinstate travel ban.
When you’ve already dipped your toes into hell, you might as well end the day by diving in.
From CNN:
The Trump administration Thursday night asked the Supreme Court to reinstate its travel ban blocking entry from six Muslim-majority countries.
In its filing, the administration asked the nine justices to consider the legality of President Donald Trump’s executive order, a move that appeals a ruling by the 4th Circuit that upheld a nationwide halt to the ban.
4) The N.C. House passes a budget.
The vote was mostly along party lines, though a few Dems crossed over. From the N&O:
The highlights:The N.C. House voted 80-31 to approve its budget proposal shortly after midnight Friday morning.
The House had taken an initial 82-34 vote Thursday evening, and a few legislators didn’t stick around for the late vote, which is required to take place on a different day – prompting the midnight session.
The votes set up a negotiating process with the Senate, which already passed its own $22.9 billion spending plan for the fiscal year that begins in July. Starting next week, Republican leaders from both chambers will work out their differences in private, with the goal of passing a compromise budget by the end of June and sending it to Gov. Roy Cooper. Both chambers have already agreed on how much to spend, which represents a 2.5 percent increase from the current fiscal year.
The plan’s passage sets up a negotiation between the House and Senate.Under the House plan, state employees would receive a $1,000 salary increase in the fiscal year beginning in July, with another $1,000 raise coming the following year. State retirees would get a 1.6 percent cost-of-living increase that would apply for one year only.
The budget would provide the biggest raises to mid-career teachers, although teachers at all experience levels would get raises under the proposed salary chart. Starting pay would increase from $35,000 to $35,300, and teachers with more than 25 years of experience would get a 0.6 percent raise of $300. The average teacher raise is 3.3 percent.
The House proposal would not lower the personal income tax rate, as a tax cut proposed in the Senate budget would do. But it would cut taxes in several other ways. It would increase the standard deduction from $17,500 to $18,500 for a married couple filing jointly, with similar increases for other tax status categories. The standard deduction is the amount of income on which taxpayers who don’t itemize deductions will pay no income tax.
5) Concealed weapons bill keeps trucking.
From The News & Observer:
Not frightening at all.A bill that would eliminate the requirement for most concealed handgun permits in North Carolina cleared a second House committee on Thursday.
The House Finance Committee approved House Bill 756 on a split, party-line vote. Democrats tried to put the brakes on the bill – which just began moving on Wednesday – on procedural grounds: that legislative staff hadn’t yet prepared analyses of the financial impact and the cost to the court system.
There was also confusion in the committee meeting about what the bill does.
It would allow anyone who is 18 or older to carry a handgun either openly or concealed without having to first qualify for a permit. Currently, concealed-carry permit applicants must be at least 21 years old.