DeSantis rebukes Republicans for backing bill for carbon sequestration task force: 'Absolutely embarrassing'
The subcommittee favorably reported the measure in a 15-2 vote on Tuesday, April 1.
Just two Republicans opposed it, while 10 Republicans and all five Democrats voted in favor of it.
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"Is this Sacramento or Tallahassee?" DeSantis asked when commenting on the vote result, adding, "Absolutely embarrassing."
The task force would "provide recommendations for the development of a statewide carbon sequestration program," according to the measure, which defines carbon sequestration as "the long-term storage of carbon in plants, soils, geologic formations, and the ocean through land and aquatic habitat management."
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In a video posted on social media the day before the vote, DeSantis called carbon sequestration a "scam" that is a facet of "climate ideology."
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"Don't indulge the left with carbon sequestration," he declared.
The text of the governor's tweet described the prospect of dumping carbon into the soil, aquifers, or the ocean floor as a "non-starter."
But Democratic Florida state Rep. Lindsay Cross pushed back, tweeting, "We aren't pumping carbon anywhere."
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"#CarbonSequestration is Science & happening all around us. Plants pull carbon from the air & store in their roots/soil. We aren't pumping carbon anywhere. This bipartisan bill will make FL a leader; ready to leverage private investments to conserve & manage natural & ag areas," she wrote in response to the governor.Original article source: DeSantis rebukes Republicans for backing bill for carbon sequestration task force: 'Absolutely embarrassing'
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Time Magazine
26 minutes ago
- Time Magazine
White House Launches TikTok Account
The White House has created an official TikTok account just weeks before the deadline that President Donald Trump extended for the Chinese-owned app to be sold to a non-Chinese buyer or face a ban in the U.S. The account, @whitehouse, was launched Tuesday evening and gained more than 80,000 followers as of early Wednesday. Trump's campaign used a TikTok account, @realdonaldtrump, which now has more than 15 million followers, before the presidential election last year. Trump's aides said last year that his TikTok was 'the most successful launch in political history' and credited it with being his 'secret sauce.' 'I am your voice,' Trump declares in the first video posted to the White House account, featuring footage of him spliced together and a caption reading, 'America we are BACK! What's up TikTok?' 'The Trump administration is committed to communicating the historic successes President Trump has delivered to the American people with as many audiences and platforms as possible,' White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told Reuters on Tuesday. 'President Trump's message dominated TikTok during his presidential campaign, and we're excited to build upon those successes and communicate in a way no other administration has before.' Federal employees are not allowed to download the app on work devices with limited exceptions, per a law passed during the Biden Administration. Trump's TikTok evolution The Trump Administration has sought to negotiate a deal for the sale of TikTok, which is owned by Chinese company ByteDance, to a non-Chinese buyer before Sept. 17. The app was initially banned in the U.S. after President Joe Biden signed a bipartisan law last year requiring ByteDance to divest from the app over national security concerns. TikTok has argued that a U.S. ban violates the First Amendment, though the Supreme Court upheld the ban. On the evening of Jan. 18, the app was removed from U.S. app stores and users were met with a message reading, 'Sorry, TikTok isn't available right now. A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the U.S. Unfortunately that means you can't use TikTok for now.' Hours later, the app was live again as Trump announced that he extended the deadline for ByteDance to sell. A message on the app read: 'Thanks for your patience and support. As a result of President Trump's efforts, TikTok is back in the U.S.!' TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, who attended Trump's inauguration, praised Trump for the extension in a video message. Read More: Why Trump Flipped on TikTok The President has since extended the deadline several more times, although a sale before the current September deadline looks uncertain. Trump said in June that a deal with 'a group of very wealthy people' was close, contingent on approval from Beijing. Trump has also acknowledged that his tariffs on China may have made a sale harder. Trump himself had called TikTok a national security threat during his first presidential term, and the ban on the app was driven by a bipartisan push. 'The spread in the United States of mobile applications developed and owned by companies in [China] continues to threaten the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States,' an executive order signed by Trump in 2020 reads. 'The United States must take aggressive action against the owners of TikTok to protect our national security.'


USA Today
28 minutes ago
- USA Today
Trump is wildly unpopular and losing ground fast. Why is anyone afraid of him?
Trump's approval rating in the YouGov polling has tumbled from +3% at the beginning of February to -15% now. He's underwater on every issue Americans care about. While the top issues for most Americans are high prices, inflation and health care, our increasingly unpopular president is laser-focused on things nobody cares about. Like downplaying exhibitions on the history of slavery at the Smithsonian. On the same day a new poll by The Economist/YouGov showed Donald Trump's disapproval rating hitting a new high, the president took time to post this on social media: 'The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been.' How bad slavery was? I'm not quite sure what that implies, but suffice it to say the new poll didn't find 'See less about how slavery was bad' to be a priority for American voters watching the costs of beef and vegetables skyrocket. Americans care about inflation, Trump cares about 'WOKE' museums Trump went on to say he has 'instructed my attorneys to go through the Museums' and start getting rid of 'WOKE,' whatever that means. The Aug. 19 poll and Trump's rambling post about ridding our museums of history create a perfect moment to pose this question: Why is anyone in American politics or in the corporate world afraid of this toxic president? Trump's approval rating in the Economist/YouGov polling has tumbled from +3% at the beginning of February to -15% now. He's underwater on every issue Americans care about, from immigration (53% disapprove) to jobs and the economy (53% disapprove) to inflation (61% disapprove) to foreign trade (56% disapprove). Nearly two-thirds of Americans – two-thirds! – say the country, under the leadership of President Donald Trump, is 'out of control.' Trump is so unpopular that there's no risk in standing up to him So when a public figure who is unpopular comes out and says he wants to scrub all the stuff about 'how bad Slavery was' from America's museums, I think other public figures would be on solid ground if they denounced him. Republicans won't do it, of course. They've spent decades ignoring the needs of their voters, focusing instead on tossing them red meat from the culture wars and assuming that bashing liberals is all that matters. But even in Democratic circles, most continue to go after Trump with kid gloves, with notable exceptions like Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, Rep. Jasmine Crockett, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and California Gov. Gavin Newsom. And corporate types are, by and large, either silent or outright supportive of a president liked by fewer and fewer Americans. From a marketing and political strategy standpoint, none of this makes sense. Trump's bullying nature and willingness to use the power of the federal government against his enemies are clearly cowing many, which is pathetic. You don't wait around for an unpopular bully to gather more power. Most Americans don't see US as a dark and dangerous place Think about Trump's anti-immigrant, anti-woke, fearmongering worldview. He has dispatched the National Guard to Washington, DC, to fight a crime wave that doesn't exist. He speaks routinely about big U.S. cities being crime-ridden, trotting out words like 'filth' and 'squalor,' and he demeans Americans who don't stand in lockstep with him. Now consider this question posed in the YouGov poll under 'World View': Which comes closest to your view? The answer 'Our lives are threatened by terrorists, criminals, and illegal immigrants and our priority should be to protect ourselves' was chosen by only 35% of respondents. The answer 'It's a big, beautiful world, mostly full of good people, and we must find a way to embrace each other and not allow ourselves to become isolated' was chosen by 50% of respondents. Corporate leaders only stand to benefit from taking on Trump People aren't buying what Trump is selling. They don't like what he's selling. And they don't like him. There is zero political risk to standing up against this president. There is only upside, and how more haven't realized it yet is beyond me. Powerful people in the business and political worlds, along with everyday Americans, don't have to sit silently and let Trump do what he wants, whether it's militarizing city streets, cruelly rounding up immigrants and forcing them into camps, or purging the evils from America's past to create a fake United States of Righteousness. Opposing him has the benefit of being the moral move and the popular move. The arrow pointing to the right side of history is brighter than the sun. Bending to the will of a wannabe tyrant has never benefited anybody. Standing up and shouting a wannabe tyrant down, on the other hand, is the kind of thing that gets remembered. Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on Bluesky at @ and on Facebook at


USA Today
28 minutes ago
- USA Today
MSNBC's name change won't help. MS NOW will still peddle the same liberal lies.
MSNBC's new name is the product of a divorce from NBC, but no amount of alimony can save the network from its leftist bias. It might have a new name soon, but it will still be the same nonsense. When I saw that MSNBC is changing its name to MS NOW, which stands for My Source News Opinion World, I had to chuckle. The new acronym is the product of a divorce from NBC, but no amount of alimony can save the news network from its leftist bias. It might have a new name soon, but it will still be the same nonsense. I'm not the only one to see the mainstream media's penchant for obfuscation and gaslighting. "Real Time" host Bill Maher recently made some profound remarks about the media that reinforce what I've seen for years. During his Aug. 15 show on HBO, Maher spoke with a panel of guests about President Donald Trump's meeting earlier that day with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Maher ticked off positive things about Trump, like how effective tariffs have been and how anti-war Trump is. Maher scolds news media about 'zombie lie' Then Maher scolded the media: "But again, let's not have the 'zombie lie' that (Trump) is still backing Putin. Because first of all, he bombed Iran, that was a Putin ally. He didn't get out of NATO. He mended fences with NATO. So, and he put sanctions back on Russia, so, ya know." One of his panelists, County Highway editor-at-large Walter Kirn, remarked, "You're really coming around Bill." "There's no coming around. There's just what's true," Maher said. A zombie lie has been defined as a falsehood that has been repeatedly debunked or proven false, yet continues to be believed and spread, influencing people's thoughts and actions. I can think of several zombie lies that the mainstream media have perpetuated about Trump and conservativism. Take the latest peace talks over Russia's war against Ukraine. Trump didn't persuade Putin on Aug. 15 to agree to a ceasefire, so the meeting was immediately dubbed a failure. Three days later, however, Trump met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other European leaders to continue discussing how to end a war that has raged for more than three years and that has killed and injured nearly a million for the Russian military and 400,000 for Ukraine. Coverage out of the Aug. 18 meeting was much more positive. So, was Trump's summit with Putin really a failure or was the news media's rush to judgment driven by bias against the president? And has the news media learned nothing from a decade of covering Trump as a political figure? I'd wait before smearing Trump's style of negotiations based on, oh, I don't know, the positive success of the past four months of trade deals and tariffs, but that's me. The 2024 election is another obvious example. In hindsight, we can see that Trump consistently led the presidential race, but thanks to inaccurate polls and partisan news sources who suggested he was behind, the country was flabbergasted when Trump won reelection easily. Trump won all the swing states, the popular vote and the Electoral College, but the tsunami caught the media by surprise because they were so committed to attacking Trump and promoting Democratic nominee Kamala Harris. Zombie lies have had serious consequences for the American people and for our nation's image in the world. A Pew Research Center poll released in June found that America's image had declined among dozens of nations amid "low confidence in Trump." Trump's successes have been underreported That poll was published just days before Trump ordered stealth bombers to cripple Iran's nuclear sites, ending the threat of widespread war in the Middle East. Trump also is attempting to broker peace between Israel and Hamas as well as Ukraine and Russia. He forced NATO allies to pay for more of their self-defense. And he's helped negotiate an end to lower profile conflicts involving India and Pakistan and Cambodia and Thailand. On the domestic side, Trump has secured the southern border, the economy is doing better than many expected, stock markets continue to set record highs and in the second quarter, gross domestic product showed healthy growth. Trump has made more progress in seven months than President Joe Biden did in four years. But most news coverage doesn't reflect that reality. And that is why Maher is scolding the media for telling zombie lies. It's also why a name change won't help MSNBC. The network could rebrand 100 times and still not be any more relevant or truthful. Until the zombie lies are finally put to rest, Americans will be fed a skewed perception of what's actually happening. As Maher said, "There's no coming around. There's just what's true." Hear that MS NOW? Nicole Russell is a columnist at USA TODAY and a mother of four who lives in Texas. Contact her at nrussell@ and follow her on X, formerly Twitter: @russell_nm. Sign up for her weekly newsletter, The Right Track, here.