| Let's quickly break down new, surprise charges the government filed against Donald Trump on Thursday evening in the classified-documents case. Trump and one of his aides had already been charged with moving boxes of records out of a storage room at Mar-a-Lago, not long after the FBI came down and asked for classified documents back. Now, he and that aide and another aide are being charged with trying to delete security video footage of the storage room, days after the FBI subpoenaed the security footage overlooking that storage room. Boxes stacked in a bathroom at Mar-a-Lago. (Justice Department/AFP/Getty Images) | It underscores that most of Trump's trouble in this case comes from allegations of a coverup rather than his taking the documents in the first place when he was no longer president. The government didn't charge him for the documents he took but then returned. But there is one document the government is focused on proving Trump had and mishandled, a file that has been described as secret military information about Iran. The government claims in this new indictment that Trump waved it around and acknowledged he didn't have the ability to declassify it. (He's on an audio recording saying as much, with paper crinkling in the background.) If the government can prove that paper he waved around was classified, it will go a long way to help them prove in a trial that Trump willfully mishandled classified information. The bulk of charges against him is focused on that. Assessing Biden's new action on extreme heat President Biden on Thursday. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post) | The climate crisis is causing nerve-racking extreme heat across the country. Toward the tail end of what scientists believe is the hottest month ever, President Biden became one of the first presidents ever to try to do something to protect Americans from it. He announced a plan Thursday to heighten enforcement aimed at protecting workers from extreme heat, make drinking water more accessible ― especially in the parched West ― and improve weather forecasts to more accurately predict extreme heat waves. But environmental groups want more. Tiernan Sittenfeld is a senior vice president with the League of Conservation Voters, a politically focused environmental group. With Republicans in Congress voting no on climate legislation, she said, the Biden administration needs to declare a climate emergency. That would allow the federal government to use national-emergency and even wartime laws to prepare high-risk communities for climate emergencies, ramp up renewable-energy production and decrease fossil fuel use and production. "The suffering from this extreme, record-breaking heat is calling so much attention to the climate crisis," Sittenfeld said. "What we really need is to turn that attention and concern to a call to action for more badly needed progress. There are just as many really big transformational solutions that are win-win-win to help address this crisis and help rebuild and grow our economy." |
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