“The White House has removed the scientist who oversees the National Climate Assessment, the federal government’s definitive report on climate change, The New York Times and The Washington Post reported Monday. Michael Kuperberg, a climate scientist and executive director of the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), was reportedly told Friday that he would no longer lead that organization. Kuperberg, who has led USGCRP since July 2015, had been expected to stay on through the publication of the Fifth National Climate Assessment. The congressionally mandated, in-depth federal assessments are due every four years. The last report came out in 2018. “Mike called me on Saturday and said he was just notified that he was let go, that his detail was over and that he should go back to the Department of Energy,” Donald Wuebbles, a climate scientist at the University of Illinois and co-author of the fourth climate assessment, told the Post. Kuperberg was “shocked” by his ouster, Wuebbles told the Post. “He was extremely dedicated,” Wuebbles said. “He did a very good job of figuring out how to walk that political line. He had no idea it was coming.” The White House did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment. David Legates, a deputy assistant secretary at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is expected to replace Kuperberg, the Times and the Post reported. Legates has falsely claimed, among other things, that increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are good for the planet and dismissed his critics in the scientific community as “a bunch of thugs.” Kuperberg’s removal and the expected appointment of Legates appear to mark the latest efforts by the White House to kneecap U.S progress on climate science, which have included reveresing Obama-era clean energy policies. The Trump administration tried to bury the Fourth National Climate Assessment by releasing it the day after Thanksgiving in 2018. That report concluded that global temperatures are “rising more rapidly than anything modern civilization has experienced” and that “this warming trend can only be explained by human activities, especially emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.” But Trump and his allies dismissed the report’s findings. “I don’t believe it,” Trump said at the time. Last month, E&E News reported that the Trump administration was delaying work on the Fifth National Climate Assessment.
Trump Administration Lowballs Unemployment Benefits In New COVID-19 Offer
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["The latest stimulus offer from the White House comes with one-time $600 payments for most Americans and a lump of coal for the unemployed. The new proposal offered by Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin swapped the $3...
Trump: Millions Of Americans Getting COVID-19 Is ‘Terrific’ And A ‘Powerful Vaccine’
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["President Donald Trump on Tuesday spun the high number of Americans who have been infected with COVID-19 as “terrific,” claiming falsely that all those cases serve as a “powerful vaccine.” “I think that the vaccine ...
Trump Lawyer Jenna Ellis Tests Positive For COVID-19: Reports
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["Jenna Ellis, a lawyer for President Donald Trump, has reportedly tested positive for COVID-19 after attending a White House Christmas party for senior staff last week. Ellis was a guest of Trump trade adviser Peter...
Coronavirus Live Updates: Trump Administration Declined Multiple Offers To Secure More Vaccines For 2021
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["The first doses of the coronavirus vaccine were given in the U.K. on Tuesday, as cases continue to surge in the United States. To date, more than 14.9 million Americans have contracted the coronavirus, according to ...
Stephen Colbert: This Is The Closest We’ll Get To A Melania Trump Concession
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["Stephen Colbert thinks first lady Melania Trump just came close to conceding the 2020 election on behalf of her voted-out husband, President Donald Trump. On Monday’s broadcast of “The Late Show,” host Colbert riffe...
Donald Trump Jr.’s Wail About ‘Tyranny’ Gets Flipped Back On Him
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["Donald Trump Jr. whined on Twitter about “tyranny” in the United States and many folks thought it was somewhat of a self-own. Donald Trump’s eldest son continued with his own efforts to overturn the 2020 election ― ...
Trump Asked Top Republican In Pennsylvania House To Intervene In Election: Report
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["President Donald Trump personally called the speaker of Pennsylvania’s House of Representatives twice to ask him to help overturn the results of the 2020 U.S. election in the state, Trump’s latest effort to deny his...
1,500 Attorneys Call On Bar Associations To Condemn Trump Campaign Lawyers
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["In an open letter, 1,500 attorneys slammed the Donald Trump campaign for seeking to overturn the will of U.S. voters and called on bar associations to investigate lawyers who filed lawsuits on Trump’s behalf. The le...