Daily Caller
Democrats Want ‘Climate Literacy’ In Schools As Actual Literacy Slips

From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Nick Pope
The Democratic Party is pushing to increase “literacy” on climate change-related material in America’s schools while students are performing poorly with respect to actual literacy.
The party’s education platform mentions the importance of “climate literacy” for American K-12 students several times, emphasizing the purported need for students to be able to understand and interpret information relating to climate change. Meanwhile, the average reading score for both fourth and eighth grade students in 2022 had fallen by three points relative to 2019, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).
“We will equip students with the knowledge and skills to understand complex scientific issues, counter the rising tide of denialism by promoting environmental and climate literacy, and reverse the Trump Administration’s cuts to the National Environmental Education Act,” the platform states.
Student Test Scores Continue To Plummet Despite Hundreds Of Billions In Pandemic Aid For Educationhttps://t.co/ouLox3xLDN
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) July 24, 2024
Less than 50% of all fourth grade students were able to read at or above the standard for proficiency in 2022, with only 17% of black students and 21% of Latino pupils meeting the mark, according to the NAEP.
The U.S. is seeing “staggering numbers of children, especially children of color and children from low-income backgrounds, without fundamental literacy skills,” Allison Socol, the vice president of policy, practice and research for the Education Trust, wrote earlier this year.
NAEP data “consistently” demonstrates that about two in every three American students cannot read proficiently, and about 40% of all students are effectively non-readers, according to an analysis published by Scientific American in September 2023.
Notably, the Democratic platform mentions conventional literacy just once, while “climate literacy” is mentioned on two occasions. The word “writing” or its cognates do not appear at all in the platform.
The emphasis on “climate literacy” aligns with a broader push by Democrats to make education more climate-friendly, even as many American students are struggling in the classroom.
For example, the Biden-Harris administration is spending big to replace existing school bus fleets with electric models in order to bring down emissions and fight climate change. While Vice President Kamala Harris has promoted the program as beneficial for students, it could end up lining the pockets of Chinese manufacturers and is potentially susceptible to waste, fraud and abuse, according to reports by the House Energy and Commerce Committee and the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Office of the Inspector General.
In June, the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) — a labor organization that is closely allied with the Democratic Party — issued a list of climate-related demands as a part of their contract negotiations with the city, even though educational achievement statistics for the city’s schools are lackluster, according to the Illinois Policy Institute. CTU’s demands included calling for the removal of all lead pipes in school buildings, the replacement of windows that do not open, and the creation of a “climate champion” position at each school to organize climate-related activities.
In 2022, Democratic Washington Gov. Jay Inslee’s Department of Health released a five-part climate curriculum for students that suggested it may be best for students to rely on “emotions” rather than “rational thinking” when engaging with climate change-related subject matter.
Moreover, pandemic-era school shutdowns — a policy pushed widely by Democrats at the time — have also resulted in significant learning loss that is continuing to disrupt educational outcomes, The New York Times found in March.
Representatives for the Democratic National Committee did not respond to a request for comment.
Featured Image: Screen Capture/PBS NewsHour
Daily Caller
Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Resets The Energy Policy Playing Field

From the Daily Caller News Foundation
Make no mistake about it, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) signed into law on Friday by President Donald Trump falls neatly in line with the Trump energy and climate agenda. Despite complaints by critics of the deal that Majority Leader John Thune struck with Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski to soften the bill’s effort to end wind and solar subsidies from the Orwellian 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, the OBBBA continues – indeed, accelerates – the Trumpian energy revolution.
Leaders in the oil and gas industry, hamstrung at every opportunity by the Biden presidency, hailed the bill as a chance to move back into some semblance of boom times. Tim Stewart, President of the U.S. Oil and Gas Association, told his members in a memo that, “For the oil and gas industry, the bill…signals a transformative opportunity to enhance domestic production.”
API CEO Mike Sommers also praised the OBBBA as a positive step for his members: “This historic legislation will help usher in a new era of energy dominance by unlocking opportunities for investment, opening lease sales and expanding access to oil and natural gas development.
While leaders of organizations like those must curb their enthusiasm to some extent in their public statements, they and their peers must be somewhat amazed at how much real substantive change the thin GOP majorities shepherded by Thune and House Speaker Mike Johnson managed to stuff into this bill. This industry, historically an easily demonized bogeyman for Democrats and too often ignored by previous Republican presidents, does not experience days as encouraging as July 3 was in the nation’s capital.
Even so, many Republicans, especially in the House, remained unsatisfied by amendments the Senate made to the bill related to IRA subsidy rollbacks. To help Speaker Johnson hold the party’s narrow House majority together, President Trump committed the executive branch to strict enforcement of the new limitations, and promised the White House will work with congressional allies to move a major deregulation package ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
But the OBBBA as passed is chock full of energy and environment-related provisions. FTI Consulting, a business consultancy with a major presence in Washington, DC, published a quick analysis Thursday that projects natural gas and nuclear as the biggest winners as the OBBBA’s impacts begin to take hold across the United States. Interestingly, the analysis also projects battery storage to expand more rapidly over the next five years even as wind and solar suffer from the phasing-out of their IRA subsidies.
The side deal struck by Thune and Murkowski is likely to result in significant new investment into wind and solar facilities as developers strive to get as many projects on the books as possible to meet the “commenced construction” requirement by the July 4, 2026 deadline. The bill’s previous language would have required projects to be placed into service by that time. But even that softer requirement will almost certainly cause a flow of capital investment out of wind and solar once that deadline passes, given the reality that many of their projects are not sustainable without constant flows of government subsidies.
What it all means is that the OBBBA, combined with all the administration’s prior moves to radically shift the direction of federal energy and climate policy away from intermittent energy and electric vehicles back to traditional forms of power generation and internal combustion cars, effectively reset the policy playing field back to 2019, prior to the COVID pandemic. That was a time when America had become as energy independent as it had been in well over half a century and was approaching the “Energy Dominance” position so dear to President Trump’s heart.
Trump’s signing of the OBBBA gives the oil and gas, nuclear, and even the coal industry a chance at a do over. It is an opportunity that comes with great pressure, both from government and the public, to perform. That means rapid expansion in gas power generation unseen in 20 years, rapid development of next generation nuclear, and even a probable chance to permit and build new coal capacity in the near future.
Second chances like this do not come around often. If these great industries fail to grab this brass ring and run with it, it may never come around again. Let’s go, folks.
David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.
conflict
‘They Don’t Know What The F*ck They’re Doing’: Trump Unloads On Iran, Israel

From the Daily Caller News Foundation
President Donald Trump expressed frustration Tuesday after Iran broke a ceasefire, prompting retaliation from Israel during a gaggle with reporters on the White House lawn.
Trump announced the ceasefire Monday, saying it was supposed to take effect at 1 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time, but Iran fired missiles at Israel Tuesday. Trump vented, saying the countries had been “fighting so long” they couldn’t make peace.
WATCH:
“You know, when I say okay, now you have 12 hours, you don’t go out in the first hour just drop everything you have on them,” Trump said. “So I’m not happy with them. I’m not happy with Iran either. But I’m really unhappy if Israel is going out this morning because the one rocket that didn’t land, that was shot, perhaps by mistake, that didn’t land, I’m not happy about that.”
“We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard, that they don’t know what the fuck they are doing,” Trump added.
The United States struck facilities in Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan related to Iran’s effort to develop nuclear weapons early Sunday morning local time, using as many as 14 GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators in the operation, which involved a 37-hour flight by seven B-2A Spirit bombers.
The American strikes came ten days after Israel launched a military operation targeting the Iranian nuclear program. Iran has responded with repeated missile attacks on Israeli cities and a refusal to resume negotiations over its efforts to pursue nuclear weapons.
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