So you know the climate emergency is real when even staffers on
Capitol Hill are doing mass demonstrations over it.
So this morning a group of staffers staged a sit in, in Senate majority leader
Chuck Schumer's office, a demonstration that did end in their mass arrest.
So here they are.
They've got a banner that says, keep negotiating Chuck climate policy now.
Now, this might seem surprising coming from staffers, but
this is not the first thing that they've done.
This is not a warning.
They had a warning shot before we'll get into it.
But when they spoke to the media, the staffer said this, look,
we the staffers of US Congress peacefully are sitting in on Senator Schumer's office
to demand Dems past climate justice policy this year.
We see the impacts of climate crisis in our home communities and
the constituencies we serve.
And we refuse to be complicit in the enormous suffering and
devastation around the world that will result from not passing climate justice
policies this year.
Our country is nearing the end of a two year window that represents
a once in a generation opportunity to pass transformative climate policy.
We will not remain silent while we watch the environmental catastrophe unfold
before our eyes.
Greenland lost enough ice over three days to have put Manchins home state of
West Virginia under a foot of water.
These climate disasters will have long lasting impacts even when we are gone.
So here they are getting arrested over that stance that
they're taking over sitting in Senator Schumer's office.
And granted, this isn't an inside job from the GOP [LAUGH].
This is not their staffers.
These are Democratic staffers, right?
These are young people and who are generally when you get a job in
Washington, you wanna behave, you wanna do the right thing,
you want your boss to like like you and promote you and all this.
And so it's saying a lot that these staffers are like you know what?
I'm the one fielding the calls.
I'm the one doing the work.
I'm the one seeing the legislation sitting idly on senator Schumer's desk.
I'm the one seeing Manchin block it at every point turn with a new excuse
that he's pulled out of thin air.
It's time.
And so lastly, before I go to you Ray,
this is not the first time that they've done something like this.
So, just last week they wrote a letter to Biden, president Biden and Chuck Schumer.
165 congressional and executive agency staffers demanded that that you quote
take ambitious assertive action before the end of July to address the climate crisis.
Not a lot of time left.
And that came just days, two weeks excuse me, after congressional
staffers first sent a letter to Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi,
demanding they reach a deal to pass clean energy tax credits.
And then just days after they sent that letter,
Manchin told Democratic leadership after weeks of negotiation,
he would not support a reconciliation bill that included climate spending.
That's right, he is no, he doesn't like it, he's done with it.
We'll get into more of the politics later but Ray I wanna get your thoughts.
>> Yeah, I think it's good.
I've seen a lot of pushback against it from Democratic establishment
type people saying, why aren't you protesting the GOP?
Why aren't you protesting Joe Manchin?
Which is honestly quite an embarrassing admission because you are acknowledging
that Chuck Schumer as a leader is just as feckless and
impotent as the Democratic party has shown itself to be at every single turn.
And admitting essentially that they are not as powerful as the minority party in
the senate or a single senator.
And that's that's embarrassing.
It's deeply embarrassing he's supposed to be the leader and he can't get his party
whipped into shape, which is a problem we did not see with Mitch McConnell.
Of course he was doing that for objectively evil,
to pass objectively evil legislation and destroy democracy in our country.
But that's the type of leadership, the type of whipping the party into shape
that we need to be seeing from Chuck Schumer that he's just not doing,
he's too afraid to lose and he won't even take up the fight in the first place.
So there they're demanding that he tries because there's so
many things that he can do, him and the president can do alone.
>> Yeah. >> That doesn't require votes from
Republicans or Joe Manchin that they're just not doing.
>> Yeah, absolutely, yeah.
And it honestly, these are folks who see things from the inside, right?
They understand that there is more room for pressure on someone like Joe Manchin,
on the Republicans frankly, they see that.
So their witness, they've got an inside view that we don't all have, right?
And then so if they're raising the alarm,
then we're all right to be raising it as well.
Let's jump down and and look at Schumer, his response,
he said that he would move forward, but not with the climate bill but
with the health care-only reconciliation bill.
Saying that they would make a renewed push for
the climate spending after July's inflation numbers are published?
Who wanted July's inflation numbers published?
Our president Joe Manchin, I'm sorry, Senator Joe Manchin whose
entire state would be underwater if Greenland melted over it?
[LAUGH] If what Greenland just melted, melted over, you know what I'm saying.
So here we are, here we are, Schumer is bowing down to mansions will and
his bad faith negotiating tactics.
I'm not saying the health care portion of the reconciliation bill isn't important,
we're talking about extensions of the ACA credits, and we're talking about
the ability to negotiate medicare prices on pharmaceuticals, which is long overdue.
But why do we keep on having to bargain and settle for less and less and less?
And who knows, okay, maybe we'll take out the edicare negotiations on
the pharmaceuticals and we'll just do the ACA extension.
We won't extend it for two years, we'll just extended for
one year to pick the issue, abortion rights, climate change, healthcare,
were constantly being told to settle for less.
And that we shouldn't demand more because Senator Minchin is gonna get mad.
But let's stick with climate stuff, right?
Because last week Biden didn't do nothing, its interestingly right.
He declared series of executive actions.
He stopped short of that national emergency declaration.
But the announcements included new funding for cooling centers and
pushing for new offshore wind projects in the oil rich Gulf of Mexico.
Still the actions fall short of demands by Democratic lawmakers and
environmental activists, who want Biden to formally declare Climate Emergency.
Which would enable the use of the Defense Poduction Act to ramp up production and
a wide range of renewable energy products and systems.
Yes, so you with emergency powers get access to a bunch more leverage.
And what is the point of creating a wind farm in the gulf of
Mexico when it's right next to a brand spanking new oil rig that your
administration just signed off on like what are we doing here?
I mean we really are, completely screwing ourselves.
We're actively working against the things we say.
We're working for he can do things like just stopping offshore drilling,
reinstating the crude oil export ban a number of C.
02 limits.
Yes. Yes we understand that the E.
P. A. Has been hampered by scotty's but there are ways around that ruling.
In fact what it says is it basically you don't have to obey it.
If you say this is an emergency and
we're under under this emergency, I might have some new powers.
Ray final thoughts on this.
Yeah.
Just wanna also say one thing that joe joe biden and
chuck schumer can do is strip joe Manchin of his committee seats in
his committee assignments because he is currently the chairman for
the Committee on Energy and Natural natural Resources which is a disaster.
If you want to pretend that you give a damn about the climate, then maybe you
shouldn't have the face of big oil in the senate chairing the committee that
is making those types of decisions on what what pieces of legislation are even
put to a vote like that is a disgusting nightmare from the Democratic party.
Do something about that first.
The man is literally head to toe in just like coal soot.
like that's and you're like yeah he seems like a good guy.
Let's not button paid at all.
No it's it's incredible what the fossil fuel industry has gotten from
investing in mansion and what he, in turn,
has gotten from investing in the fossil fuel industry,, to all of our detriment.
So good on those staffers.
I think it's incredible.
And I hope they keep it up as well as people outside of Congress is.