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In another political era, a Republican presence at a major gathering on world problems might be unremarkable. But it stands out in a time of deep political division, when addressing the climate crisis in the United States has been largely left to Democrats. Baker and the mayor of Oklahoma City were the only Republican politicians invited to speak. And Bakers attendance, along with liberal leaders like Governor Gavin Newsom of California, comes as moderate Republicans, now on the fringes of their party, are quietly being enlisted in or inserting themselves into the climate fight.

Bob Inglis, a former Republican US Representative from South Carolina who now tries to sell conservatives around the country on climate action, noted the rarity of this kind of creature the Republican who leads on climate change. Surely Governor Baker was one of the first to step out into the open field, he said.

Clinton, in his opening statement, noted the urgency of the moment, and the need to get past the political barriers slowing action on climate.

Ive always wanted to go beyond the harsh, polarizing name-calling that characterizes the political debate today, Clinton said. When all is said and done, if we cant answer the How question, the rest doesnt amount to much.

As Baker enters the final stretch of his final term in office, some say the list of his achievements on climate change rivals that of even states considered leaders, like New York and California. Hes signed major bills jump-starting the offshore wind industry, committing to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and, most recently, boosting the clean energy industry in the state while carrying out an ambitious program to help communities address their climate vulnerabilities.

His track-record is not without critics. Some say he delayed implementing programs to achieve the net-zero emissions mandate he signed in 2021 or that he only approved climate bills after watering them down. Critics have noted that the footprint of natural gas has only grown during his tenure, adding that Massachusetts progress happened despite Bakers leadership, not because of it.

On Monday, as he sat onstage beside fellow panelists, the achievements he touted and the case he made for addressing the climate crisis primarily, jobs and the economy spoke to traditional conservative values. It hearkened back to the Republican party that established the Environmental Protection Agency under President Nixon not the one that has more recently sought to limit the agencys reach.

Im really proud of the fact that we are, for all intents and purposes, the only state I know of that really went hard at the resiliency piece at the same time that we went hard at some of the issues around alternative energy solutions, Baker said.

During his time in office, Baker has transitioned from a candidate who, in 2010, questioned the science of climate change to a governor who, a year from now, may count his accomplishments on the issue as a cornerstone of his legacy.

Over the clatter of a plant-based lunch on Monday a small but simple action we can take to support sustainability, according to a sign Baker said that in Massachusetts, environmental issues arent partisan like they are in the rest of the country.

But, when it comes to political leadership nationally, thats not true. The federal Inflation Reduction Act, for instance the major federal climate bill that was signed earlier this year passed without a single Republican signature. Last month, 22 of the 30 Republican governors in the country panned it as a reckless tax and spending spree.

On his panel Monday, Baker called the bill an enormous incentive opportunity for all of us.

Even so, Baker and others see an opening to appeal to some ordinary conservatives, through the jobs and economic possibilities of the seismic energy transition that addressing the climate crisis will demand.

Several companies Unilever and General Motors among them spoke Monday about their sustainability commitments and the role of business and finance in helping facilitate the clean energy transition. Gary Gensler, chair of the federal Securities and Exchange Commission, joined by video conference to discuss the pending rule that would require companies to disclose their climate risks.

Hundreds of companies are making disclosures on climate risks, some of it about strategy, some of it about greenhouse gas emissions, said Gensler. The rule the SEC is considering is to ensure that theyre truthful, what in the law is called Fair Dealing.

Baker said hes hopeful that step will start a landslide of climate action that starts with business and then goes beyond. I think that has huge implications for politics, and for the urgency with respect to climate issues and I do think that will bleed pretty heavily into the Republican party in a good way.

Sabrina Shankman can be reached at sabrina.shankman@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @shankman.

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At Clinton Foundation summit, Governor Baker is a rare Republican voice on climate - The Boston Globe

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) Republican candidate for governor Tudor Dixon says that it elected, she would focus on making sure Michigan students are meeting reading goals.

All of the kids should be at the appropriate reading level and it shouldnt be too much to ask, Dixon told News 8. So our focus is going to be on reading level. Thatll be probably first and foremost where we are zoning in on education.

She also said parents should have education freedom to move their students to a school that fits them, referencing a model in Florida that put more emphasis on private and charter schools.

So if parents feel that that school is not performing for their child or that their child isnt performing well in that school, they should have the option to go someplace else, she said. And I think that once we have those children in the appropriate schools, we will see our kids, our students across the state, thrive.

She said she agrees with former President Donald Trumps Secretary of Education Betsy DeVoss longstanding support of charter and private schools and efforts to direct additional state dollars their way.

The goal is not go after one style (of schools). Its to make sure that every child can achieve an education through whatever style is best for them, Dixon said. We want to make sure that we are leaving no wrong path for any child in education.

Dixon has been rolling out the priorities she would pursue if elected. Last week in Grand Rapids and Pontiac, she talked about law enforcement and justice for crime victims. In Alto on Monday, she talked about her support for agriculture.

Join To The Point Sunday at 10 a.m. for more about Dixons platform.

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Republican governor candidate Tudor Dixon on education - WOODTV.com

The intensifying Republican-led efforts to protest President Biden's policies along the southern border by transporting migrants to Democratic-controlled jurisdictions like Martha's Vineyard and Washington, D.C., have reignited a decades-old, divisive debate over U.S. immigration policy.

The Biden administration, Democrats and advocates have called the transportation tactic a dehumanizing political stunt, accusing Republican-led states of using desperate asylum-seekers as props. Republican governors in Texas, Florida and Arizona have argued their efforts force Democratic cities to share the burden of accommodating migrants, which they say has fallen mostly on communities in their states.

Beyond the political back-and-forth, the busing and flying of migrants to locations selected by Republican officials has also raised questions about current border policies, who the people being transported are, what their legal status is, why they're in the U.S., what their futures hold and whether the states' actions are legal.

Here are the facts about the scheme by Republican-led states to bus and fly migrants to certain destinations.

In April, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, started busing migrants released from federal immigration custody in his state to D.C., saying he was "going to take the border" to the Biden administration, which he has accused of lax immigration enforcement.

Abbott expanded Texas' busing operation earlier this summer to include New York City and again earlier this month to include Chicago. On Sept. 15, Texas started off-loading migrants near Vice President Kamala Harris' official residence in D.C. Abbott has not ruled out including other cities or locations.

In May, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, launched his own busing effort to transport migrants from his state to D.C. Arizona's operation has been smaller in scale than Texas' and limited to the capital. A spokesman for Ducey said there were no plans to transport migrants to other cities.

On Sept. 14, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, another Republican, took credit for the transportation of several dozen migrants to Martha's Vineyard, an island vacation destination off the Massachusetts coast. DeSantis said Florida will continue transporting migrants under a $12 million state program, but has not announced other destinations.

The Republican governors in Texas, Arizona and Florida have said their operation to transport migrants to so-called "sanctuary" jurisdictions is designed to pressure Democratic politicians and the Biden administration to enact tougher border measures to deter illegal crossings.

They've also argued that Democratic-controlled states and cities that have adopted "sanctuary" policies, which limit cooperation with federal immigration officials, should help border communities receive migrants amid the record levels of border arrests reported over the past year.

Federal authorities are expected to record more than 2 million migrant apprehensions along the U.S.-Mexico border in fiscal year 2022, a figure that will set an all-time high, according to Customs and Border Protection data. The statistic includes a significant number of repeat border crossings, as well as nearly 1 million rapid expulsions of migrants who were not allowed to stay in the U.S., the data show.

Collectively, Texas and Arizona have transported roughly 13,000 migrants to Democratic-led cities on more than 300 buses in the past several months, according to data provided by state representatives.

As of Sept. 19, Texas had transported more than 8,100 migrants to D.C.; 2,600 to New York; and 675 to Chicago, state data show. Arizona, meanwhile, had bused more than 1,800 migrants to D.C., a spokesman for the governor said. The plane that landed in Martha's Vineyard on Sept. 14 transported roughly 50 migrants.

According to Texas' division of emergency management, the state's migrant busing operation has cost over $12 million. Arizona's busing effort, meanwhile, has cost over $4 million, the state spokesman said.

The migrants transported by Texas, Arizona and Florida were processed by federal border officials after entering the U.S. unlawfully and then released to continue their immigration cases inside the country.

Unlike other recent border-crossers, these migrants, for different reasons, were not expelled from the U.S. under a public health law known as Title 42, which border authorities have used to quickly turn away migrants over 2 million times since March 2020 without allowing them to request asylum.

Decisions to not expel migrants are based on different policy, logistical and diplomatic reasons. For example, as a policy matter, the Biden administration has not been expelling unaccompanied minors, who are instead transferred to shelters. Mexico also generally only accepts expulsions of its citizens and Central Americans.

Moreover, the federal government cannot expel migrants to Venezuela, Cuba or Nicaragua because the authoritarian regimes there don't accept U.S. deportations. Because of this, migrants from these countries are generally released by border officials after some short-term processing.

While Texas, Arizona and Florida have transported migrants from several countries, many of them hail from Venezuela and Cuba, which have seen a record number of their citizens flee to the U.S. in recent months.

Under U.S. law, migrants who are not processed under Title 42 have a legal right to seek asylum, which the government can grant to foreigners who demonstrate they could be persecuted in their home country because of their nationality, race, religion, political views or membership in a social group.

Just because a migrant is not expelled under Title 42 does not mean they have been granted permanent legal status in the U.S. or that they will not ultimately face deportation. But those released by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have been granted permission to continue their immigration cases inside the U.S.

Migrants who are released after crossing the border illegally are still placed in deportation proceedings before the immigration court system, where they can seek asylum or other forms of humanitarian refuge. They need to attend court hearings to try to halt their deportations, and could be ordered deported if they miss them.

Those who are granted asylum can stay in the U.S. permanently and those who lose their case can be ordered deported, but the adjudication process typically takes years to complete because of the mounting backlog of claims before the immigration courts, which are overseeing nearly 2 million unresolved cases.

Some migrants who are released by DHS are enrolled in "alternatives to detention" supervision programs that can include ankle monitors, other tracking devices and requirements to periodically check in with officials at local U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices.

Migrants processed by U.S. border officials, including at official ports of entry, are sometimes granted humanitarian parole, a temporary legal classification that shields them from deportation. While it does not provide migrants permanent legal status, parole makes their presence in the U.S. lawful.

When migrants are released by federal officials, they are allowed to travel to a U.S. destination of their choosing. And they can get there through various means, including the buses and planes that some Republican governors are offering them.

It's not illegal for states to transport migrants if it's voluntary. While critics have accused states of human trafficking and kidnapping, no proof has emerged that migrants have been forced on buses or planes. If the transportation involves coercion or false information, however, civil or criminal liability is possible, lawyers said.

Representatives for Texas and Arizona said their migrant busing operations to D.C., New York and Chicago are voluntary, noting they ask migrants to sign consent waivers. Representatives for Florida's governor did not say whether migrants transported by the state are informed the transportation is voluntary.

But lawyers representing more than two dozen migrants flown to Martha's Vineyard by Florida said their clients were misled by the people who transported them. According to the attorneys, the migrants said they were originally told they were going to Boston and a place with jobs and refugee services.

"It seems like there were clear elements of deception in this particular case. It seems like there was fraud in terms of their transport and what was represented to them," said Julie Dahlstrom, the director of the Immigrants' Rights and Human Trafficking Program at Boston University School of Law.

But Dahlstrom said federal and state officials would still need to determine whether there's sufficient evidence to prove that laws were violated, calling it a "difficult legal question."

Lawyers for Civil Rights, the group representing migrants flown to Martha's Vineyard, asked federal prosecutors and the Massachusetts attorney general to launch criminal investigations into their claims. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, has also urged the Justice Department to investigate the states' transportation efforts, including the question of whether migrants have been targeted because of their national origin, in violation of the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause.

To defend the actions of Texas, Arizona and Florida, Republican lawmakers have said the Biden administration also transports migrants to different states. But it's not an apples-to-apples comparison.

The federal government does transport certain migrants who cross the border unlawfully to locations across the country, but not to make a political statement and the practice has been in place for decades, under Republican and Democratic administrations.

The Department of Health and Human Services, which is legally required to care for migrant children who cross the border without their parents, transports these unaccompanied minors, including on charter flights, to different locations to place them in a shelter or release them to relatives or other sponsors in the U.S.

ICE also transports some migrants arrested along the U.S. southern border to detention centers or to other regions of the border to alleviate overcrowding at holding facilities. Federal immigration officials sometimes fly migrants to different areas of the southern border where Mexico accepts their expulsion.

Camilo Montoya-Galvez is the immigration reporter at CBS News. Based in Washington, he covers immigration policy and politics.

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The facts behind the Republican effort to send migrants to Democratic-led cities - CBS News

Last week, The New York Times released the results of its latest poll of American attitudes toward COVID, which contained a fascinating partisan fact: More Americans approved of the Democratic response to the pandemic than the Republican response, and its not close. Only 32 percent of Americans say they supported the Republican response more than the Democratic response, while Democrats enjoyed the support of 45 percent.

In a closely divided country, thats a large gap, and when you dive into the numbers, you see that the gap is substantially driven by older voters. Americans 65 and over believe the Democrats handled the pandemic better than Republicans by a 53 to 33 margin. This margin is particularly notable because you cant ascribe it to background partisan bias.

Young voters, for instance, overwhelmingly supported the Democratic response to COVID (by the same 20-point margin as older voters), but they tend to be Democrats. Biden won that age cohort in 2020 by a similar margin. Older voters, however, lean Republican. Donald Trump won their votes 5247.

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Why a Majority Rejected the Republican Approach to COVID - The Atlantic

Tim Miller was a top aide to Jeb Bush during the former Florida governors 2016 presidential campaign. A Republican insider in the heart of the D.C. political sphere, Miller spent countless hours doing opposition research to smear Democrats.

Miller also worked for Sen. John McCain and was a spokesperson for the National Republican Party. After working for numerous Republican campaigns, Miller separated himself from other conservatives after the rise of Donald Trump. He was also a senior advisor for the anti-Trump group Our Principles PAC.

Nowadays, Miller spends his time as a writer for The Bulwark, a center-right leaning publication, and as a contributor to MSNBC. Miller has burned many of the bridges he once had with other Republican operatives, but he was able to get enough out of his former friends and colleagues to write his new book, Why We Did It: A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell.

Miller, who recently visited St. Paul as part of a national book tour, wrote Why We Did It as a form of self-described atonement for his complicity in allowing Republican extremism particularly support for Trump to grow. The subjects of his book are mostly Republican political staffers, candidates and conservative members of the media what Miller describes as the political class.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What I wanted to do was to get at why people who knew better collaborated even when they knew Trump was dangerous. Why did they continue to enable him? We all kind of think we know, with certain things like power and money, but just understanding the psyche of the Republican political class in Washington.

I thought it was important as we move forward, unfortunately, because he might run again. Since I was one of them and knew all these people personally and was at some level also complicit in the things that led to Trump, I thought I could maybe have a unique ability to analyze that so folks could better understand the motivations how people went along with this crazy nonsense.

Well the saddest conclusion, actually, is that a lot of people went along with Trump for reasons that are much more banal than your worst expectations. In some ways thats nice. To think that not everybody is a sociopath and a bigot, but it just makes you feel like, Man, we could have prevented this. We could have stopped this if people just had a little bit of courage in their convictions and more gumption.

A lot of these people went along with Trump for very basic reasons. Inertia. They compartmentalize the bad things and ignore them so they dont have to deal with it. The fact that people go along with someone like Trump is just because they didnt want to take a career risk. Or they were annoyed that the media was nicer to the Democrats. I mean, thats pretty pathetic, and I think that was kind of a revelation for a lot of my interviews with my former colleagues.

I was always a moderate Republican, but this is why I feel like Im partially complicit. A lot of those of us who would want to encourage Republicans to channel their better angels just went right along with it when we were channeling the darker angels as well. I was a communications person and a lot of times my job was to stir up animus against the left. Some of the times it was legitimate. Other times it was hyperbole.

That kind of hypocrisy, that kind of behavior in service to wanting to win and serve only to advance my career I look back on that with a lot of regret and I think thats part of the culture in Washington. This is politics. Everybody has to do what they gotta do, and that was wrong. Sometimes you need to be more of a turd in the punchbowl when people or an organization are doing the wrong thing. In Republican politics in particular, theres just nobody who does that. When you understand that culture, you kind of understand why they went along with Donald Trump. People have gotten very used to making arguments and advancing arguments that they didnt really believe but that they knew would stir up the base vote.

I saw it all. I saw that the party was appealing to these really dark elements. But its like the old (Godfather) line: Every time you think youre out, they just pull you back in. I kept getting sucked back in. Sometimes for earnest reasons, sometimes for bad reasons, like career ambition. I dont know that there was one moment, but obviously Trump getting in kind of shook me. I was opposed to Trump. Probably by the end of Trumps first year I was like, This is it for me. I cant be a part of this at all. Then I felt like I have a responsibility to try to have a little bit of atonement here and do some advocacy and journalism about the state of affairs.

Ive been wrong about a lot, but I was right about one thing. Very disturbingly right, which was that almost everybody who had gone along with Trump up to Jan. 6 would get back on board with him. I know a lot of people thought that was going to be a big breaking point, but most of them went and got back on board. The reason why I felt I knew that was gonna happen was because I understood their motivations for why they were there in the first place. They had gotten on board with Trump, not because they liked Trump or believed that he was ethical or even good, but because they wanted to keep moving up the career ladder. They wanted access to power.

My goal is just for people to understand all these people as humans. That isnt my way of trying to make people empathize with them, because I really think theyre the villains of the book, honestly. But if were ever going to stop this continuing complicity with evil things, we need to figure out how to get people to walk away from the darkness. You cant get people to walk away until you figure out why theyre there in the first place.

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Q&A with Republican operative turned never-Trumper Tim Miller - Minnesota Reformer