Pennsylvania Congressman Mike Kelly's office in Hermitage vandalized
A spokesperson for Rep. Kelly's office (R-PA) says the vandalism took place overnight and the damage was discovered on Saturday morning at the office located along East State Street.
Photos provided by Rep. Kelly's office showed several words written onto the windows and doors of the office, including "Mental illness is not a crime," and "GOP = racism, rape, child rape, cover up" listed as bullet points.
Rep. Kelly's office says that local law enforcement and the U.S. Capitol Police are investigating the vandalism.
Our staff members are safe and were not in the office at the time of the crime. Let's be clear: political violence and vandalism are never acceptable," said Rep. Kelly in a statement.
Rep. Kelly's office says the Hermitage office opened last month after moving from Sharon to help better serve people in Pennsylvania's 16th district.
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Yahoo
39 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Republicans across the country are pushing bills to stop government 'weather modification'
For years, outlandish theories about the U.S. government's using airplanes to spray harmful chemicals over U.S. homes or powerful elites controlling the weather were relegated to the fringes of society. Not anymore. As the internet has provided rocket fuel for such claims, Republican lawmakers across the country are introducing, passing and enacting laws to ban 'weather modification' and environmental geoengineering and allude to the use of 'chemtrails,' a longtime theory that planes are spreading chemical agents on an unsuspecting public. As more people are exposed to dangerous flooding, the GOP lawmakers have pointed to the fringe theories as potential explanations for extreme weather, pushing them further into the political mainstream. (Scientists have found evidence tying the increasing frequency of extreme weather to climate change.) Republican lawmakers in nearly 20 state legislatures have proposed such legislation, with governors in Tennessee and Florida having signed bills into law. On the federal level, Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., and Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., recently introduced the 'Clear Skies Act,' which would outlaw forms of geoengineering and hit alleged weather modifiers with penalties of up to $100,000 for each violation and potential prison sentences of up to five years. 'It's not a conspiracy theory,' Pennsylvania state Sen. Camera Bartolotta, a Republican who co-sponsored legislation in her state, said in an interview. 'All you have to do is look up.' At its core, the legislative push seeks to outlaw human-made alterations to the climate — notable, given how the party has fought to stop efforts to combat climate change tied to fossil fuel consumption and as the Trump administration has cut funding for climate change research and removed the website that hosted the government's climate assessments. 'One political party in this country seems especially concerned about the idea of theoretical changes in the weather,' Matthew Cappucci, a meteorologist for the Washington Post and other outlets, told NBC News. 'Whereas that same political party will largely turn a blind eye to actual weather modification that is happening in slow motion, i.e., human-induced climate change.' Greene, who is leading the charge to pass federal legislation to ban weather modification, said she saw 'kind of a funny hypocrisy' among climate change activists who are 'yelling, 'We've got to stop climate change.'' 'But yet they're like, 'No, don't stop manmade climate change,'' she continued. 'So I find that to be a laughable hypocrisy. And so it just doesn't add up to me.' Greene has for years been subject to heavy criticism over her 2018 claim that lasers from space may have triggered a 2018 wildfire in California. She now feels a sense of vindication as Republicans across the country feel compelled to produce legislation similar to hers. 'This is something I've talked about for quite some time,' Greene said in an interview. 'Got attacked for talking about it, for saying that, yes, they're controlling the weather. I said they're controlling the weather, and people tore me up all over social media.' Asked who "they" referred to, Greene's office pointed to her post on X last year noting that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration collects the names of companies that engage in weather modification. She pointed to decades-old government experiments involving cloud seeding, including Operation Popeye, a military effort during the Vietnam War that sought to extend the monsoon season to disrupt supply lines. Other efforts included Project Stormfury and Project Cirrus, decades-old government or military efforts aimed at studying whether hurricanes could be weakened with human intervention. That research proved unsuccessful. Greene also highlighted small-scale cloud seeding efforts that are now used. The practice, which usually involves spraying silver iodide into clouds to draw water out of the atmosphere and produce extra snow or rain, has been around since the 1950s and is primarily used in more arid Western states to boost water supplies. Experts said those efforts, which are conducted by private companies and require notices beforehand, are not being conducted at a scale large enough to trigger floods like those that recently took place in Texas and New Mexico. Solar radiation modification, another target of Greene and Burchett's legislation, involves reflecting sunlight into space by releasing particles into the upper atmosphere or increasing the sizes and brightness of clouds over the ocean, though the Environmental Protection Agency says the government is not engaged in such testing. 'The idea of geoengineering is a real, theoretical thing. In theory, one could go up and dim the sun and change the climate. That's never been done at scale,' Cappucci said. 'Cloud seeding exists on a very, very, very small scale, but what politicians are trying to do is lump those two concepts together with wild, outlandish conspiracy theories.' Greene, Burchett and Bartolotta all said in interviews that their legislative efforts were the result of getting outsized constituent feedback on the theories. 'I get a lot of calls on it,' Burchett said, adding: 'It's a hot button issue. … And it's an issue that was in the real realm of the conspiracy theorists. But if you look [online], you'll notice that it has taken on a little bit more mainstream. You have one group that says it's real, and the other group says 'you're a lunatic,' that it doesn't exist.' Asked what he would say to someone who believes he is a lunatic for proposing his legislation, Burchett said the bill is a no-lose proposition. 'If it doesn't exist,' Burchett said, 'then you don't have anything to worry about.' Experts said some are conflating outright falsehoods with legitimate, small-scale research into geoengineering — which have been blown up into claims that scientists or governments are controlling weather patterns or creating severe weather events. That is not happening, but the backlash to the research is intensifying. Last year, a project in Alameda, California, to test marine cloud brightening by scientists was shut down in light of significant pushback from local residents, even though researchers showed that the effort was harmless. The leader of an anti-government militia in Oklahoma this month welcomed an attack on a local weather station radar, insisting that meteorological equipment can manipulate the weather. 'To outlaw something that, for the most part, doesn't really exist in an effort to appease voters is so incredibly easy,' Cappucci said. 'It would be like if voters hated unicorns and I passed an anti-unicorn bill. I'd suddenly be popular.' Theories around weather manipulation spread rapidly last year after Hurricane Helene triggered massive flooding around Asheville, North Carolina. Such claims resurfaced after flooding killed at least 120 people in Texas this month. Lawmakers also pointed to unprecedented flooding last year in the United Arab Emirates — which uses cloud seeding to increase rainfall, though officials and researchers have said cloud seeding did not trigger the floods. 'They're upset over what they call chemtrails they see in the sky,' Greene said of constituents who have contacted her about the issue. 'They're continually upset about it, and they're engaged on it. But it hadn't gotten there on a wide scale. Remember the flooding in Dubai? That was one of the first times I saw, like, 'Oh, this went mainstream, and people are paying attention.'' A Democrat who works on environmental policy said the episode has them feeling as bleak as ever about the future of their field. 'I saw someone tweet the other day a picture of the sky, and it was blue,' this person said. 'And then 20 minutes later, there were clouds. And they said, 'How is this possible?' And I'm like, have people just never looked up?' This person said the focus on geoengineering has crystallized in their mind as the next stage of the Republican response to the impact of climate change. 'It went from 'we don't believe in climate change' to 'we actually believe in this other thing,'' this person said. 'It absolutely is their response to climate change.' Greene and Burchett's legislation still has a long road ahead of it before it could become law, which Greene acknowledged in the interview. But in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed such legislation into law last month. That bill was a high-level priority for Republican state Attorney General James Uthmeier, DeSantis' former chief of staff. At Uthmeier's urging, the state's Republican-dominated Legislature passed a bill this year that makes weather modification and geoengineering a third-degree felony punishable by a fine of up to $100,000. The bill passed with only Republican votes. 'Florida does appear to have seen evidence of weather modification activities in the state,' a spokesman for the attorney general's office said. 'We don't yet know what impacts cloud-seeding or aerosol releases have on environmental or human health, which is all the more reason why Florida wants to raise public awareness and stop weather modification experiments in the state.' In Florida, a decades-old law requires permission from the state for anyone to alter the weather. State officials told the Tampa Bay Times that no one has ever applied under the law. In a letter this month, Uthmeier warned publicly owned airports across the state that they must be in compliance with the new law, which requires public airports to report planes with weather modification devices to the state, and suggested that weather modification may have triggered the flooding in Texas. 'Because airports are most likely to catch those who seek to weaponize science in order to push their agenda, your compliance with these reporting obligations is essential to keeping our state safe from these harmful chemicals and experiments,' Uthmeier wrote this month. The Trump administration is also trying to address the concerns. This month, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin directed readers to his agency's new resources on geoengineering and contrails. (Contrails are naturally forming condensation trails from rockets and other aircraft.) Those new websites shut down claims of government weather control, saying the government was not engaged in solar geoengineering testing and that the 'federal government is not aware of there ever being a contrail intentionally formed over the United States for the purpose of geoengineering or weather modification.' Bartolotta highlighted the new information now available on the EPA's website, saying its mention of the issue is more evidence that her concerns are valid and adding that she is worried about potential adverse health impacts. 'I know so many people today, they're finally noticing, and it gets worse and worse and worse,' she said. 'Every single day, you can't look at the sky and not see huge stripes sprayed by all these planes every single day and every night.' Allan Smith reported from New York and Washington and Matt Dixon from Florida. This article was originally published on Solve the daily Crossword
Politico
an hour ago
- Politico
Judiciary Democrats demand probe after third Bove whistleblower
Two Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee want the Justice Department's top watchdog to probe allegations against a contentious judicial nominee. Sens. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.) sent a letter Tuesday to William Blier, DOJ's acting inspector general, asking if his office is, or already has, conducted an investigation related to Emil Bove, whom President Donald Trump has nominated to the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals. Bove has been dogged by accusations that he suggested defying court orders that could restrain the administration's aggressive immigration and deportation agenda. Staff for Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) met Monday with lawyers for a new whistleblower, the third person to have publicly emerged questioning Bove's fitness for the bench. In the Tuesday letter obtained exclusively by POLITICO, Schiff and Booker said it is 'imperative' that the Senate have 'full knowledge' before taking a final vote on Bove, who has denied allegations of wrongdoing. 'In the event these whistleblower complaints and other reports have not already prompted investigations by your office, we urge you to undertake a thorough review of these disclosures and allegations,' they added. Democrats argue that the allegations against Bove should disqualify him from a lifetime appointment to the powerful appeals court, with Schiff and Booker suggesting they support claims he 'abused his authority' at DOJ. But they are also largely powerless to stop Republicans from confirming him so long as enough of their own members stick together. A spokesperson for Grassley said the latest allegations 'reek of a bad faith attempt to sink a nominee.' The Senate is expected to take a final vote on Bove this week, though Republican leaders haven't locked in a final time as they work through other nominations and keep a careful eye on GOP attendance. Republicans can lose three of their own members and still let Vice President JD Vance break a tie. GOP Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska are both expected to oppose Bove. Hailey Fuchs contributed to this report.
San Francisco Chronicle
an hour ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Wiley Nickel exits North Carolina Senate race the day after Roy Cooper announces candidacy
CARY, N.C. (AP) — A former congressman will no longer seek an open U.S. Senate seat in North Carolina next year now that fellow Democrat Roy Cooper is running for the post. Tuesday's announcement by ex-U.S. Rep. Wiley Nickel came the day after Cooper, a former two-term governor, kicked off his own campaign to succeed retiring Republican Sen. Thom Tillis with a video message. Cooper's past popularity, name recognition and fundraising ability made him the party's front-runner overnight. "I've seen firsthand his steady, bipartisan leadership. He listens, he shows up, and he gets things done," Nickel said while endorsing Cooper and revealing plans to suspend his own Senate campaign. 'And for so many of us, including me, he's been an inspiration to step up and serve.' Nickel had signaled interest in a 2026 U.S. Senate bid nearly two years ago, when the Raleigh-area congressman decided against seeking a second U.S. House term because he said district lines redrawn by the General Assembly made it essentially impossible to win again. Nickel formally launched a Senate campaign in April, focusing on unseating Tillis. But his activities were always overshadowed by what Cooper, who wrapped up eight years as governor last December, decided to do next. Well before Tillis announced June 29 that he would not seek a third term, many state and national Democrats hoped Cooper would join the race. 'We started this campaign to send Thom Tillis packing. Well, mission accomplished I guess!' Nickel quipped. Cooper's nearly 40 years in state electoral politics, including time as a state legislator and attorney general, made him a top-tier option for what's expected to be one of the most competitive 2026 Senate contests. While Cooper could still face intraparty opposition, Nickel's departure could clear the field of significant challengers heading to his party's primary in early March. On the GOP side, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley plans to run for the nomination, with President Donald Trump 's blessing, according to two people familiar with his thinking who were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly before an official announcement. Whatley, the former North Carolina GOP chairman, received Trump's endorsement after Lara Trump, the president's daughter-in-law and a North Carolina native, passed on the seat. Another potential candidate, first-term U.S. Rep. Pat Harrigan, said over the weekend he would seek reelection instead. Nickel, 49, is a lawyer and former state senator whose career has included working as a White House staffer in Barack Obama's administration. In 2022, Nickel narrowly won a swing-district election over Republican Bo Hines, who had received Trump's endorsement in the GOP primary. Nickel hinted in Tuesday's statement about future political endeavors. "Public service is a part of who I am and you'll hear more from me soon,' he said. Tillis announced his decision not to seek another six-year term after Trump threatened to back a primary candidate against him as Tillis opposed Medicaid reductions in the president's tax break and spending cut package. To retake the majority in 2026, Democrats need to net four seats, and most of the contests are in states that Trump easily won last year. Trump won North Carolina by about 3 percentage points, one of his closest margins of victory.
