Last Call For London Is Burning

Europe's heatwave is roasting across the continent this week, and in the UK, Londoners are facing the equivalent of triple-digit temperatures here in the US.

The UK has had one of its hottest days on record, with a high of 38.1C recorded - and forecasters are warning it will be hotter still on Tuesday.

A high of 38.1C was recorded in Santon Downham, Suffolk, on Monday, and 37C was exceeded in several places.

The Met Office has issued a red extreme heat warning for Monday and Tuesday in much of England, with temperatures of up to 41C forecast.

The current highest temperature in the UK is 38.7C, in Cambridge in July 2019.

A high of 38.5C was reached in Faversham, Kent, in August 2003, making Monday the third hottest day on record - and the hottest day of the year so far.

Hawarden in Flintshire hit 37.1C, meaning the hottest day on record for Wales according to provisional figures from the Met Office.

Scotland and Northern Ireland also experienced their warmest days of the year so far with 31.3C recorded in Aboyne, Aberdeenshire, and 31.1C in Derrylin, County Fermanagh.

Temperatures above 37C were also recorded in London, Cambridge, Surrey and elsewhere in Suffolk.

Amber warnings are in place across England and Wales, and parts of Scotland.

Peak temperatures are expected on Tuesday afternoon, with Worksop, Nottinghamshire, forecast to see 41C by the Met Office.

 

Hey folks, 38C is 100F, and the UK really doesn't have air conditioning because it's not supposed to be, you know, 105 in goddamn London ever.

People are going to die, thousands of people, from heat exposure.  There are no cooling centers like there are here in the States. This doesn't happen in the UK and Europe.

Except now it does.

Global warming is killing people and it's going to kill a lot more in the years ahead, so.

The time to do something about this was back in the Clinton days with the Kyoto Protocols but hey, that ship sailed right into an iceberg.

 

The GOP excuse of course will be that it's too late now to do anything, so why bother, including why bother voting against Republicans scorching the earth and everyone on it?

Orange Meltdown, Con't

Trump is at this point telling his people that he needs to announce his candidacy for President now so that he can avoid charges and then hold out on the legal front until winning a second term and appointing an Attorney General who will dismiss the investigation.

When Donald Trump formally declares his 2024 candidacy, he won’t just be running for another term in the White House. He’ll be running away from legal troubles, possible criminal charges, and even the specter of prison time.

In recent months, Trump has made clear to associates that the legal protections of occupying the Oval Office are front-of-mind for him, four people with knowledge of the situation tell Rolling Stone.

Trump has “spoken about how when you are the president of the United States, it is tough for politically motivated prosecutors to ‘get to you,” says one of the sources, who has discussed the issue with Trump this summer. “He says when [not if] he is president again, a new Republican administration will put a stop to the [Justice Department] investigation that he views as the Biden administration working to hit him with criminal charges — or even put him and his people in prison.”

Presidential immunity and picking his own attorney general aren’t Trump’s only reasons for running again. And as he works on another run, Trump is in a tug-of-war with leaders and operatives of his own party about when to announce, according to multiple people with knowledge of the matter.

The former president is motivated to announce early — even before Election Day 2022 — in the hopes of clearing the field of primary rivals. But GOP leaders, including some of Trump’s closest advisors, don’t want him to declare his intentions until after the midterm elections. The GOP wants to keep voters focused on President Joe Biden, rather than transforming the contest into a referendum on Trump. In recent months, Trump has reluctantly agreed to hold off, only to return shortly thereafter with threats to make an early announcement, either out of self-interest, spite, or some combination of the two.

But as Trump talks about running, the four sources say, he’s leaving confidants with the impression that, as his criminal exposure has increased, so has his focus on the legal protections of the executive branch.

It’s not just liberal wish-casters or Trump critics who are acknowledging the former president’s legal jeopardy. Trump’s teams of lawyers and former senior administration officials speak about it commonly. “I do think criminal prosecutions are possible…for Trump and [former White House chief of staff Mark] Meadows certainly,” Ty Cobb, a former top lawyer in Trump’s White House, bluntly told Rolling Stone late last month.

Trump himself seems to acknowledge potential problems. He “said something like, ‘[prosecutors] couldn’t get away with this while I was president,’” another one of the four sources recalls. “It was during a larger discussion about the investigations, other possible 2024 [primary] candidates, and what people were saying about the Jan. 6 hearings … He went on for a couple minutes about how ‘some very corrupt’ people want to ‘put me in jail.’”

The powers of the presidency would offer a welcome pause to the various civil suits and criminal investigations now hanging over Trump. It’s unclear whether the Justice Department will charge Trump in connection with fomenting the January 6 insurrection, but winning the White House would be extremely helpful to him. Department policy forbids the prosecution of a sitting president, effectively insulating Trump from any federal charges for another four years.

 

Trump is absolutely planning to do this as soon as he can line up the donors and the rest of the GOP to fall in line behind him.  It's a race now to see who acts first, Trump, or the people prosecuting him.

Hearing Aides For America, Con't

This week's primetime hearing has been moved to Thursday for the January 6th Committee, and WIN THE MORNING 2.0 has actually found that the hearings have changed some Trump voters' minds in swing states like Wisconsin.

The House select committee's Jan. 6 hearings are cementing the views of some voters who once backed former Predident Trump and now believe he should face criminal prosecution, according to our latest Axios Engagious/Schlesinger focus groups.

Driving the news: 10 of 14 Wisconsin swing voters last week said Trump should be prosecuted for trying to overturn the 2020 election and his role in the attack on the Capitol; 10 of 13 Arizona swing voters in panels last month said the same.

Why it matters: The findings follow bombshell testimony by former White House aides and lawyers. Committee members have previewed forthcoming revelations about potential witness tampering.The focus groups track with national polling showing more than half of Americans believe Trump should face criminal charges.

How it works: Engagious/Schlesinger conducted two online focus groups on Tuesday with 14 Wisconsinites who voted for Trump in 2016 then Joe Biden in 2020. They included 12 independents, one Democrat and one Republican.While a focus group is not a statistically significant sample like a poll, the responses show how some voters are thinking and talking about current events.

Details: Eight participants said they've watched at least part of the Jan. 6 hearings so far. Several said the hearings were helpful for "accountability" but that the committee already has "their proof" of what happened that day.Those who thought Trump should face criminal prosecution didn't relent even when the moderator pushed back and said doing so would be unprecedented, potentially putting future presidents at risk of being prosecuted for political reasons.

Voters were adamant that such a move would help deter similar attempts by anyone else in the future to "overthrow the government."

What they're saying: "He's our president and a president should have never done anything to provoke what happened. Many people were injured. Look at how many lives you put at stake because you were allowing this to happen. And he was happy about it," said Samantha O., 39.Andrew R., 59, said: "We have to show other people that this just can't be done in the future. [Prosecution] is going to be the price to pay if you try to do a coup again — and that's exactly what it was, a coup."
 

Others likened what happened that day to the politics of "third-world countries."
 

36-year-old Jaime M. said what happened on Jan. 6 "was too extreme, and something needs to be done about it to prevent it from ever happening again," otherwise "it just opens a floodgate for what anybody else is allowed to do."
 

Another voter said criminally prosecuting Trump would ensure that “the credibility of the justice system is upheld."
 

“Ironically, most of these Wisconsin swing voters think the president who led chants of ‘lock her up’ should himself be locked up for his actions on Jan. 6,” said Rich Thau, president of Engagious, who moderated the focus groups.

 

Again, if the point of the January 6th Hearings are to make the case for Trump's prosecution, a majority of Americans now agree, and that wasn't true before the hearings started. Minds have been changed.

 

It would be a shame to not do so, Merrick Garland.