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Former President Obama said on Friday that he is shocked and saddened by the assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Abe, the longest-serving prime minister in Japans history, was shot and killed while campaigning for his political party in the city of Kyoto. Police have arrested a suspect.

I am shocked and saddened by the assassination of my friend and longtime partner Shinzo Abe in Japan, Obama wrote in a statement. Former Prime Minister Abe was devoted to both the country he served and the extraordinary alliance between the United States and Japan.

I will always remember the work we did to strengthen our alliance, the moving experience of traveling to Hiroshima and Pearl Harbor together, and the grace he and his wife Akie Abe showed to me and Michelle, wrote Obama of Abe, adding: Michelle and I send our deepest condolences to the people of Japan who are very much in our thoughts at this painful moment.

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Obama shocked and saddened by Abe assassination - The Hill

Local Lunchbox, a nutrition program that uses U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) funding to pay local chefs and caterers to cook healthy breakfasts and lunches for eligible children and teenagers launched this month with help from the Obama Foundation.

"It's an amazing program," said Erica S. Hubbard, the Obama Foundation's director of Chicago programs, in an interview.

The Chicago program was created in partnership with the Shah Family Foundation, the nonprofit that originated Local Lunchbox in Chelsea, Massachusetts in 2020. Hubbard said the goal in Chicago is to provide more than 100,000 meals this summer through community partners like Gary Comer College Prep, 7131 S. South Chicago Ave., and the South Side YMCA, 6330 S. Stony Island Ave. My Block, My Hood, My City is also a partner and delivers food to recipients.

The program has gotten more than $1 million in funding from USDA. So far, around 2,500 kids are getting fed.

The program is currently in the pilot phase, and the Obama Foundation plans to extend it into the fall, perhaps targeting organizations that do fall after-school programming.

The Obama Foundation hosts a free community event with Chicago-based Community Organizations, youth, parents, mentors and other key stakeholders to celebrate the launch of the Local Lunchbox Chicago pilot program at at Overton Elementary School, 221 E. 49th, July 7.

"Everyone's wishful thinking is to expand this to where our partners are able to do this on their own," Hubbard said. "We're not there yet. I think there's a lot of learning this summer. We know this is a great program. It's a great thing to be able to share these delicious and healthy meals and provide those for these kids, but we're still talking with other partners and getting other stakeholders, bringing them to the table. This is the first time this program has been to Chicago, so obviously there's going to be some initial hesitation."

The Massachusetts Local Lunchbox program has already distributed more than 5 million meals, and Hubbard is likewise confident that the program in Chicago will find similar success. More information is online at locallunchbox.org/chi.

herald@hpherald.com

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Obama Foundation launches 'Local Lunchbox' program in Chicago, feeding thousands of kids and teens - Hyde Park Herald

Colman Domingo says his younger brother gave him the best compliment about his new autobiographical animated short, New Moon.

He was overcome, Domingo tells me on this weeks episode of the Just for Variety podcast. He said, More than anything, you brought the feeling of mom back.

New Moon tells the story of a little boy who is shown how to dream by his hardworking single mom. It is based on Domingos play A Boy and His Soul.

Domingo is the voice of the narrator as well as the mother. My siblings say I have my moms voice down pat, he says. Theyre like, You sound just like mommy.

The film will screen during Outfest on July 16 in Los Angeles.

New Moon is written by Domingo and his husband and producing partner Ral Domingo. Ral co-directed with Jrmie Balais and Jeff Leffig. When the couple first made the film, they didnt know what to do with it. It was people like Ava DuVernay, Lee Daniels and Matthew Cherry who suggested they submit it to film festivals. Theyre hoping to adapt it as a television series.

I talked to Domingo just hours after he received his first Emmy nomination for his work as Ali on Euphoria. I did something that shocked me I actually started crying, Domingo says of learning he was nominated. This felt different because I know what the character represents to many people. It sounds strange, but I wanted it for all that he represents and the language that Sam [Levinson] gives me and what hes doing in the television space, which I think is a breakthrough. And this character, this Black guy whos an addict and hes trying to do some good in the world I want that to be amplified.

After our interview, Domingo was heading to his last day of shooting the Oprah Winfrey-produced The Color Purple movie musical in Atlanta. He plays Mister in the big screen adaptation of the Tony-winning stage show. The cast also includes Taraji P. Henson, Fantasia, Danielle Brooks, H.E.R., Ciara, Halle Bailey, Aunjanue Ellis and Corey Hawkins.

He recalled seeing Winfrey on set during the early days of shooting, when they were filming the final scene. Oprah was there, and she actually stood under this tree, this big, beautiful, great Oak tree, Domingo says. Oprah couldnt help herself. She came to set, and she was in the video village and all, but then at some point she was literally right under the tree. So when the camera is going around to all of us, were literally singing at Oprah. Shes so moved and shes singing with us the finale Color Purple song. So, when everyone sees our eyes in the camera going around, were actually looking at Oprah!

Also in the can is Rustin, the George C. Wolfe-directed biopic about Bayard Rustin, the late gay civil rights leader who played a crucial role in elevating Martin Luther King Jr. to national leadership. Domingo plays Rustin in his first headlining feature role.

The film is the first narrative feature produced by Barack and Michelle Obama and their production company Higher Ground. The former first couple talked with the cast over Zoom a couple of months ago. I happened to be in Cabo for a little vacationThey just wanted to connect with the whole cast, and we just talked, Domingo remembers. Anytime you hear Barack Obama saying your name, its the weirdest thing. Hed say, Oh yeah, Colman. Youre like, Oh my god, he said [my name]. You fan out, but then youre like, let me stay focused. Theyre wonderful, theyre huge champions of this film.

You can hear the full interview with Domingo above. You can also listen to Just for Variety wherever you find your favorite podcasts.

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Euphoria Star Colman Domingo on Singing for Oprah Winfrey and Zooming With the Obamas - Variety

President Bidens approval rating is hovering under forty-percent, raising concerns over how the numbers will impact the performance of Democrats this fall. FiveThirtyEight has tracked President Bidens approval rating at 38.4 percent, just under the level of support for Donald Trump had when he left office.

Donald Trump has yet to announce his candidacy but if reports are correct, and he does plan to run again, we could see the two face off again in 2024. Many Republicans running across the country have incorporated the idea that 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump. In a recent poll by Quinnipiac University, only fifteen percent of voters said that this would make them more likely to vote for a candidate. More than third of respondents said that this would have no impact on their decision to vote for a candidate, which is a bit shocking.

It could be that the approval rating of the president is falling because of the high levels of economic uncertainty. The same Quinnipiac poll found that only thirty-six percent of respondents believed that the president had a lot of power to control inflation. Interestingly sixty-five percent of Republicans were on this opinion, whereas only ten percent of Democrats agreed that the president has the power to lower prices.

It is important to note that low approval does not necessarily equal poor electoral performance.

Just because someone does not approve of the job a leader is doing does not mean that they would not vote for them. The conversation on polling tends to conflate these two types of questions.

Congress after all, has an approval rating of just sixteen percent, yet ninety-three percent of Congressional incumbents were reelected in 2020. Does this mean that voters approve of their own Congressperson, but dislike others? No, not necessarily. It could be that people vote based on the options they have and that because special interests and dark money groups have such an outsized influence in electing certain candidates, Congress does not always act to support the needs of the people.

Similarly, with regard to the president --a low approval rating for Joe Biden now does not mean that voters wont turn out in 2024should he chose to run again.

When former-President Trump left office, his disapproval rate stood at fifty-seven percent, with 38.6 percent of the public supporting him. The highest approval rating Trump had while in office was in April 2020 which could relate to his handling of the pandemic in its earliest phase. In April, Congress passed the CARES Act which distributed the first round of stimulus checks and bolstered unemployment benefits for the more than twenty-million workers who lost their jobs.

However, a few short months later, Donald Trumps approval rating took a nose dive to its lowest point in his presidency as he left office --in part as a result of the events on January 6th.

When former-president Obama was elected, he entered office with a historic approval rating of sixty-four percent. However, with the impacts of the financial crisis led this level of support to began to fall. Aside from a few peaks in popularity, the majority of Obamas term, the disapproval rate was above fifty percent. However, unlike Donald Trump, he left office with a net positive approval rate.

George W. Bush, the first president to be elected in the twenty first century did so by losing the popular vote but winning electoral college. This impacted his approval rating when he entered the White House as some were not so convinced by the legitimacy of his election. Bush began his first term with an approval rating of forty-six percent. However, after the 9/11 attacks, his approval rate skyrocketed to over eighty percent. These numbers gave him quite a cushion for his remaining years in office. However after the economic crisis his approval rating did fall under fifty percent, only to increase slightly before leaving office.

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What are the lowest approval ratings of recent US presidents? Biden, Trump, Obama, Bush - AS USA

On June 30, the Supreme Court decided that the Environmental Protection Agency under President Obama had overstepped its authority by creating the Clean Power Plan that would force the U.S. to transition from coal to cleaner sources of electricity. A decision of such magnitude and consequence rests with Congress itself, the court concluded inWest Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency.Congress, however, has failed to address climate change in decades and is unlikely to do so any time soon.

Even though the Clean Power Plan never took effect, the shift away from coal is happening far more quickly than the Obama administration predicted. EPA Administrator Michael Regan has promised to build on that progress despite the court ruling, noting that coal plants pollute the air, water and land in various other ways and that the agency will still require them to clean up their act. Many of those plants will shut down rather than pay to install pollution controls. The decision does constrain what we do, but let me be clear it doesnt take us out of the game, Regan told thePBS NewsHourin early July. We still will be able to regulate climate pollution.

To Earthjustice lawyer Jenny Harbine, though, the EPAs talk of its response to the Supreme Court ruling rings a bit hollow. Harbine is currently representing environmental groups that are fighting the agency in court in a case involving coal plants and pollution.

The Biden administration is defending a Trump-era rollback of an Obama rule that would have required the large coal-fired power plants in Utah to install widely used pollution-control devices. The Huntington and Hunter power plants have long contributed to the haze shrouding the skies over the states national parks including Arches, Bryce, Canyonlands and Capitol Reef and its wilderness areas.

After The Supreme Court decided the EPA under President Obama had overstepped its authority by pushing a nationwide transition from coal to cleaner sources of electricity, EPA Administrator Michael Regan said, The decision does constrain what we do, but let me be clear it doesnt take us out of the game.

Win McNamee/Getty Images

Its really hard to see the administration issue press releases about how theyre adopting a multi-pollutant strategy to address greenhouse gases and know this very low-hanging fruit is sitting there in the state of Utah, Harbine said. Im frustrated because I know that there is such an urgent need to make progress now, and shutting down the biggest polluters is the first step in doing that. When I hear the administration expressing similar urgency, I can't square it intellectually with the decision that theyve made in Utah to defend an illegal Trump-era rollback.

An EPA spokesperson told High Country News that the agency would not comment due to pending litigation. But Matt McPherson, a spokesman for Utahs Department of Environmental Quality, said that requiring the plants to install the equipment was not necessary to meet the reasonable progress requirements of EPA's regional haze rules and is not a cost-effective strategy to control regional haze.

EVEN AS THE EPA resists taking action in Utah, it has a wide range of regulations already on the books or currently planned that are aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It has proposed rules limiting methane emissions from oil and gas facilities and is targeting vehicle tailpipe emissions. The Supreme Court ruling expressly leaves the EPA with the authority to regulate pollution from the electricity sector as long as it doesnt order plants to switch from coal to renewable energy the way it would have under Obamas plan.

Regan said that his agency also plans to tighten regulations that would force power plants to clean up pollution in many cases, an expensive undertaking. He made it clear that he hopes that the owners of coal-fired power plants will decide to close dirty facilities rather than spend the money to clean them up. Theyll see its not worth investing in the past, Regan said.

In Colorado, Xcel Energy recently agreed to close its Comanche coal plant in Pueblo, the states single largest emitter of carbon, by 2031. And Gov. Jared Polis said the Supreme Courts ruling will not slow his states plans to shut down all its remaining coal-fired power plants as it rapidly shifts to wind and solar energy. We have already locked in the closure of Colorado's coal plants no later than 2031, because they produce the highest-cost electricity, Polis said in a statement. Colorado utilities are already on a path to meet or exceed 80% renewable energy by 2030.

Then-Colorado State Representative Dominique Jackson and State Senator Angela Williams high-five after Governor Jared Polis signed the Climate Action Plan to Reduce Pollution (HB19-1261) into law at a community solar garden in Arvada, Colorado, in 2019.

Joe Amon/The Denver Post via Getty Images

Economics are playing a critical role here. Cheap, abundant natural gas, the rise of renewables and a crackdown on dirty coal by the EPA and some states have all combined to drive utilities away from coal, reducing carbon pollution from the electricity sector by a third, more than a decade earlier than EPA thought the Clean Power Plan would. Even after an uptick in coal use in 2021, the United States used only about half as much coal to produce electricity as it did 15 years earlier. Meanwhile, renewable energy has overtaken coal as a source of electricity.

The electric utility sector is shifting away from coal regardless, said Amanda Shafer Berman, who as a senior attorney for the Justice Department defended Obamas Clean Power Plan in front of the U.S. Court of Appeals D.C. Circuit in 2016. There are trends that are resulting in a shift of electric generation to cleaner sources anyway, and I dont think this decision is going to slow that down.

The Supreme Courts ruling has given the EPA a better idea of what kind of climate regulations are likely to withstand future court challenges. Maybe the Supreme Court did them a favor, said Pat Parenteau, a law professor at Vermont Law and Graduate School. If the EPA had gone back to anything like the Clean Power Plan, this court would have killed it anyway.

Experts caution that any EPA plan to regulate carbon dioxide from power plants would probably end up in court anyway, resulting in years of delay. The trouble is there are still a lot of states that will challenge the next rule that comes out of EPA, whatever it is, said Berman, a partner at Crowell & Moring, a large private law firm with offices around the globe. A suite of the red states will challenge it, and any greenhouse gas regulation will again get mired in litigation.

Thats where the EPAs multipronged approach comes in. In a March speech, Regan ticked off a list of responses, including a good neighbor rule requiring power plants and industrial polluters in 26 states to reduce air pollution in downwind states. The agency would also tighten and expand an existing rule to include Nevada, Wyoming and Utah and California. And the EPA is planning tighter regulations for mercury and other toxic emissions from coal plant exhausts, coal ash waste and toxic releases into waterways.

The cumulative effect of all these other tighter standards are really going to put more coal plants out of business, Parenteau said. The question is: What are they going to be replaced with? Probably gas, in a lot of places.

Generating electricity with gas instead of coal reduces greenhouse gas emissions by about half. But natural gas is mostly methane, an extremely potent greenhouse gas, and a lot of methane leaks when companies drill, process and transport it. The EPA is working on a rule to cut those emissions, too.

Even so, replacing coal with gas would not achieve Bidens goal of reaching 100% carbon pollution-free electricity by 2035.

PacifiCorp's Hunter power plant releases steam as it burns coal outside of Castle Dale, Utah.

George Frey/AFP via Getty Images

But environmental activists say Regan could force some of the biggest power plants in the country to close by rejecting requests from at least six plants, including the Coal Creek plant in North Dakota, that want to continue operating their outdated coal ash waste systems indefinitely. The EPA has yet to respond to those requests. In the meantime, the plants keep using their outdated systems.

If he denied (the plants), we would likely see them retire, said Bruce Nilles, executive director at Climate Imperative, a foundation working on climate change solutions. If you push them, they will close.

An agency spokesperson said the EPA is working to respond to the requests, which can include thousands of pages of documentation, and that it will publish its decisions as soon as possible.

A coalition of groups sued the EPA in April, after 34 states failed to meet a requirement to submit plans showing how they would improve visibility at national parks and wilderness areas, as required by the regional haze rule. The groups called on the agency to reduce emissions and lock in retirement dates for big polluters.

This is the rule that Obamas EPA was enforcing when it required PacifiCorp to install pollution equipment on its Huntington and Hunter plants, the first- and third-largest carbon emitters in Utah.PacifiCorp has argued that the tremendous costs of installing the equipment are unreasonable, citing coal plants across the country that had closed rather than install similar pollution controls.

By defending Trumps rollback, the Biden administration is allowing PacifiCorp to avoid a choice that could make significant progress towards our shared goals of averting climate catastrophe, Harbine said.

Its inexcusable. This is the first and easiest thing the administration should have done to tackle air pollution in the West, she said. We expect constant pushback from industry on things like this. It simply cant be the case that EPA folds when it feels pressure. The EPA has to stick to its guns and make the decisions necessary to achieve the pollution reductions we need as a public to move forward.

Elizabeth Shogren is a freelance journalist based in Arlington, Virginia, and HCNs former D.C. correspondent.

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The EPA has more options to rein in climate change than you think - High Country News