The Biden administration just committed the U.S. to its most ambitious climate target to date, a bold deviation from the proud Earth Day tradition of “awkwardly planting a single tree.” Why does Joe Biden hate trees? What A Day investigates.
 

• During a glitch-plagued virtual Earth Day summit with 40 world leaders, President Biden formally pledged that the U.S. will cut its 2005 greenhouse-gas-emission levels at least in half by 2030. The $2 trillion jobs plan will be key to making that happen. The Biden administration also plans to double the amount of money it offers to help developing countries fight climate change by 2024, compared to what the U.S. spent annually during the latter half of the Obama administration.
   
• That new target is a major step forward for the U.S. on its own, as the world’s second-largest greenhouse-gas emitter after China (and the largest emitter historically). It’s also meant to nudge other countries to step up their own efforts to keep average warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius: Both Japan and Canada announced new climate targets at Thursday’s summit. Neither China nor India followed suit, though President Xi Jinping promised that China would “strictly limit increasing coal consumption” in the next five years, then start phasing it out.
   
• Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro pledged to eliminate illegal deforestation by 2030, with an unspoken catch—in a letter earlier this week, Bolsonaro told climate envoy John Kerry that Brazil “deserves to be fairly compensated for the Environmental Services its citizens provide for the planet.” The international community has expressed serious skepticism about sending Bolsonaro billions of dollars for a promise to save the Amazon, on account of how Bolsonaro has, let’s see here, laid waste to the Amazon.

A handful of depressing new studies (sorry) illustrate why the global climate fight needs an aggressive boost, right now.
 

• Carbon emissions dropped substantially during pandemic lockdowns, but nature’s about to unheal real fast: Global carbon emissions are expected to surge, thanks to a projected increase in coal demand, more than any other year in recorded history with the exception of 2010. Greenhouse-gas concentrations didn’t take a year off at all, according to the U.N., and a report from Swiss Re (which insures insurance companies) warned that the effects of climate change could cost the global economy as much as $23 trillion by 2050. 
   
• Seems like not spending enough money on the climate emergency could be...super expensive? That’s part of activists’ argument for the Biden administration to commit to an even more ambitious emissions reduction and start working towards it while Democrats have the chance. Kerry acknowledged on Thursday that the U.S. will need to do more: “Is it enough? No. But it’s the best we can do today and prove we can begin to move.”
   

There’s no scenario in which the U.S. solves this crisis alone, but Biden’s new target represents a seismic shift away from the last four years of outright climate denial, and puts the administration in a better position to call for more aggressive commitments around the world. Now if we can just convince Congress that “habitable planet” counts as infrastructure.

What better way to celebrate Earth Month than to pick up one of our new retro Save the Earth shirts. (And then, you know, wear it outside or something.) They come in two classic designs, “Save the Norms” and “Enjoy Your Stay on Earth!” As always, a portion of every order in the Crooked Store goes to support VoteRiders! Shop now at crooked.com/store → 

Republican legislators in at least 34 states have introduced a wave of anti-protest bills in the wake of huge Black Lives Matter protests across the country. On Wednesday, Gov. Kevin Stitt (R-OK) signed a law granting civil and criminal immunity to drivers who run over protesters in Oklahoma, and Iowa Republicans have passed a similar measure. A GOP proposal in Indiana would bar anyone convicted of unlawful assembly from holding state employment, including elected office, and a Minnesota bill would prohibit anyone convicted of unlawful protesting from receiving student loans and other forms of state financial aid. Then there’s Florida’s new law, which makes it easier to jail protesters and murder them with cars. Remember, the First Amendment stipulates only that Josh Hawley must never lose a book deal—silencing protests under the guise of punishing rioters (for which laws already exist) is just normal, freedom-loving democracy stuff.

• A large study of coronavirus long-haulers found that survivors were at greater risk of dying within six months. Researchers reported about eight extra deaths per 1000 patients, and warned that long-term symptoms could drive potential spikes in suicides and/or opioid overdoses.
   
• Mourners gathered in Minneapolis, MN, for the funeral of Daunte Wright on Thursday, including the state’s top political leaders and relatives of George Floyd, Philando Castile, Jamar Clark, and Oscar Grant.
   
• Senate Republicans have unveiled a $568 billion infrastructure proposal, which Democrats immediately rejected. 
   
• Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) will deliver the GOP response to President Biden’s first address to a joint session of Congress next week, and Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) will deliver an unconventional progressive response. Many GOP lawmakers plan to skip the address entirely.
   
• The conservative wing of the Supreme Court has rolled back protections against sentencing kids to life in prison without parole, in a 6-3 vote. Justice Sonia Sotomayor noted in a scathing dissent that Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s opinion overturned precedent without acknowledging the change.
   
• Russia has ordered troops to withdraw from the Ukrainian border, where they had been amassing and making the rest of the world incredibly nervous. 
   
• Georgia’s GOP attorney general Chris Carr has stepped down as chairman of the Republican Attorneys General Association, as the organization promoted the operative who had its policy arm pay for robocalls urging Trump supporters to march on the Capitol and demand the election be overturned.
   
• An Italian hospital employee allegedly received his salary for 15 years without ever going to work. The American labor movement has so far to go.

Congressional Black Caucus members are pushing to shift the focus of the voting rights fight to the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, or H.R.4, as Cap’n Joe Manchin (D-WV) holds S.1 hostage aboard the USS Filibuster. A number of Democrats think a voting rights-only bill named for John Lewis has a better chance of passing with at least a few GOP votes, based on past votes to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act. H.R.4 has been on a slower track because lawmakers need to make sure it isn’t vulnerable to the kind of legal challenges that gutted the VRA in the first place, and right now it’s not expected to come to a vote until late summer at the earliest. But CBC members are antsy to speed it up: states will start receiving redistricting data from the Census Bureau over the summer, and if the democracy reform agenda hasn't passed by then, certain states will be able to draw discriminatory electoral maps to their hearts’ content.

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House Democrats have passed a bill to make Washington, DC, the 51st state.

The Senate has overwhelmingly passed legislation to combat hate crimes against Asian Americans—with a single no vote from Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO).

A preliminary study suggested that the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines do not pose serious risks for pregnant people. 

New York legislators have passed a bill to automatically restore voting rights to people on parole.