Last week, Chicago hit 95 degrees. The heat index pushed 108. Across the Midwest and East, over 165 million Americans were under heat alerts. Parades got canceled, Amtrak slowed down its trains so the tracks wouldn't buckle, and at least 25 heat-related fatalities.

Friend, I've been writing about this stuff for years. Every summer I think: surely this is the one that finally breaks through.

Instead, it’s a hot mess.

Hot mess #1: the actual weather.🥵 [[link removed]]

We’ve had consecutive days of dangerous heat here in the Chicago area with heat domes trapping humidity and sending temperatures soaring. This is more than an uncomfortable summer. It’s a public health emergency.

I'm a scientist. For years I’ve been warning: This is what climate change looks like. It’s not a distant, abstract future threat. It’s already here. The heat dome over your neighborhood. The air quality alerts stacking up. The pavement buckling on the highway.

Hot mess #2: what this administration is doing (or rather, not doing) about it.🫠 [[link removed]]

In February, the Trump EPA reversed the federal government’s official stance that human-caused climate change endangers human health and safety.

Trump's exact words: "This was all a scam, a giant scam."

Next, the Trump admin froze OSHA's plan to require water, shade, and rest breaks once the heat index hits 90 degrees.

And this spring, they quietly gutted the enforcement program designed to catch employers who denied workers those breaks.

So, there's record heat and people dying, and THIS is Trump’s response.

Hot mess #3: the deniers who still won't connect the dots.🤨 [[link removed]]

Here's what gets me more than the heat or the policy rollbacks, as catastrophic as they are: It's the people who will look at 108-degree heat indexes, record-breaking storms, months-long wildfires and chronic droughts, shrug, and say, “the science isn’t settled."

It IS settled. The past 11 years have been the 11 warmest on record. The scientists who study this aren't confused. The insurance companies pricing their policies aren't confused. The farmers watching their yields drop aren't confused.

The only people who are "confused" are the ones cashing big fat checks from Big Fossil Fuel.

I'm done managing this crisis one summer at a time. As Climate Chair of the DCCC, I'm working every single day to elect people guided by science and conscience, not ignorance and greed.

People who will actually DO SOMETHING to keep Americans safe.

Will you chip in to a) make climate deniers answer for this hot mess, and b) take back Congress so we can finally get to cleaning it up? [[link removed]]

Donate [[link removed]]

Stay cool out there. I mean that literally.

— Sean Casten
PAID FOR BY CASTEN FOR CONGRESS
Casten for Congress
P.O. Box 132
Downers Grove, IL 60515-0132
United States
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