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Top House Republicans, including Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, are backing a climate policy framework outlined by the American Conservation Coalition, a conservative youth climate group.

Its the first time in recent years that Republican lawmakers have lent their support for a comprehensive climate strategy. The ACC is hoping its American Climate Contract will allow GOP lawmakers, who before the pandemic had just begun to unveil a series of low-carbon policies, to contextualize those efforts and root them in climate-focused messaging.

Prior to this, the conversation continued to be so defined by the Green New Deal being the benchmark, and I think this is the next step, said Quill Robinson, the ACCs government affairs director.

The framework takes the discussions beyond whether, or not climate change exists or if people support the liberal Green New Deal, Robinson told the Washington Examiner. This is a climate plan that you have the most powerful Republicans in the House supporting, he added.

In total, 10 top GOP lawmakers are backing the groups American Climate Contract, the coalition announced Monday. In addition to McCarthy, its backers include Rep. Greg Walden of Oregon, the top Republican on the House Energy Committee, and Rep. Garret Graves of Louisiana, the top Republican on the House select climate panel.

The ACC will also announce support from Republican senators in the next few weeks, Robinson said.

As we look to rebuild our nation, I believe that we have an opportunity to do so while creating a cleaner future for all Americans, McCarthy said in a statement.

Conservative plans for the environment, as this contract does, understand that lasting and effective environmental progress depends on American innovation and exporting that technology around the world not on enforcing debilitating taxes or punitive mandates, the California congressman added.

The ACCs policy plan, released in April, calls for the United States to advance policies that move toward a goal of global net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. It lays out support for four policies: investing in energy innovation, modernizing infrastructure, supporting conservation measures that store carbon, and engaging globally to reduce emissions.

The group also outlines a number of Republican-backed and bipartisan bills that fit within those areas, including legislation to incentivize energy storage, boost advanced nuclear energy, and promote carbon capture technologies.

We have to act now if we want to unlock the solutions that will aggressively combat climate change, said Rep. Tom Reed, a New York Republican who is supporting the framework, in a statement. Through smart, technology-neutral tax incentives, we can unleash American ingenuity and encourage the kind of innovation at scale that will significantly reduce carbon emissions.

A stated 2050 climate target has been something Republicans have been hesitant to embrace thus far, and its something Robinson said GOP lawmakers had questions about.

Republicans are justifiably skeptical about that, about putting too much of the onus on the U.S., Robinson said. But he added the ACC has stressed with Republican lawmakers that the U.S., while it cant address climate change alone, must take a leading role.

And while Robinson doesnt see climate change being the top issue this election season, he said hes hoping GOP candidates will talk about the issue on the campaign trail. Already, several GOP candidates including Michigans Peter Meijer, South Carolinas Nancy Mace, and Floridas Maria Salazar have embraced the ACCs framework.

Anybody who has a remotely purple race, this is one of those issues thats important, and it will be a detriment to them to not have something good to say or something coherent and strong and articulate on climate change, Robinson said.

Thats what the American Climate Contract is, and thats why some of these really exciting candidates who are being seen in the party as the next generation are talking about it, he added.

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Top House Republicans rally behind conservative youth climate plan - Washington Examiner

A tribal tension had infused downtown, Kuhn observes. Among the tribes were the police, who were anything but New Yorks finest that day. Mostly, they stood aside while the hard hats ran amok; examples of their nonfeasance abound. Some of them even egged on the thuggery. When a group of hard hats moved menacingly toward a Wall Street plaza, a patrolman shouted: Give em hell, boys. Give em one for me! Yet the police were never held accountable for failing to stop the marauding, and few hard hats owned up to the extent of their violence.

Kuhn favors straightforward journalistic prose, with few grand flourishes. In setting scenes, he tends toward a staccato, some of it overdone: One speaker exuded Establishment. The jacket and tie. A WASP face with a Roman nose. The side-swept hair, straight and trim with delicate bangs, a tidy mustache, pinkish skin. Hardly every antiwar protester merits his go-to characterization of them as potty-mouthed hippies.

But over all, this is a compelling narrative about a horrific day. In their fury, the hard hats left more than 100 wounded, the typical victim being a 22-year-old white male collegian, though one in four was a woman; seven police officers were also hurt. Kuhn concludes that while the workers plainly came loaded for bear, their tantrum was essentially spontaneous and not, as some believed, part of a grand conspiracy.

That said, they were just what some conservative strategists were looking for. Patrick Buchanan, then a Nixon aide, said of blue-collar Americans in a memo to the boss, These, quite candidly, are our people now. He wasnt wrong. Republicans have since catered as ever to the rich but they have also curried favor with working-class whites, while Democrats seem more focused on others: racial minorities, gays, immigrants. Thanks in good measure to white blue-collar disaffection, Trump in 2016 narrowly won Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, a hat trick he may yet pull off again in November.

In a way, Vietnam continues to cast its shadow. A short walk from those 1970 streets of chaos, there is a memorial to the 1,741 New Yorkers who died in the war. Its dominant feature is a wall of thick glass etched with reflections on combat, including part of a haunting letter sent home from Vietnam in 1968. One thing worries me will people believe me? The Navy lieutenant Richard W. Strandberg wrote. Will they want to hear about it, or will they want to forget the whole thing ever happened?

Indeed, most Americans forgot about Vietnam long ago. The same has been true about the shameful hard-hat riot of 1970. Until now.

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The Day the White Working Class Turned Republican - The New York Times

Sophia A. Nelson, Opinion contributor Published 6:00 a.m. ET June 20, 2020

Though the name endures, the current Republican Party is no longer Lincoln's party that advocated freedom, democracy, and justice for all

As President Donald Trump prepared to go to Tulsa for his Saturday rally, Republican Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma proclaimed that no question this is still the Party of Lincoln.

Well, Senator Lankford, I have news for you: Todays GOP, led by Trump, is not the Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln. In fact, it is not the party of Ulysses S. Grant, Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhoweror Ronald Reagan, either.

Instead, it is a party increasingly dominated by activists who are overwhelmingly white, always aggrieved, virulently militant about the Second Amendment (and their rightsnotto wear a face mask during a pandemic), pro-Confederacy and openly racist. That is your party, senator.

Lets be clear. This is not the party that began in 1854 as a pro-abolitionist, anti-slavery party. This is not the party that freed the slaves or passed the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the Constitution. No, this is not the party whose leaderswon the Civil War, fought the Klan, and ushered in Reconstruction. This is not the party that welcomed Booker T. Washington to the White House or used federal troops in 1957 to integrate Little Rock High.

This is not the party, led by Everett Dirksen in the Senate, that helped pass the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Acts of the 1960s. Sadly, this Republican Party has within its elected ranks only one Black senator, Tim Scott of South Carolina, and one Black member of the House, Will Hurd of Texas. Hurd announced he was retiring in 2020, and Scott has saidthat if he runs for re-election in 2022, it will be his final term.

No, this is not your great grandfathers or even your grandfather's Republican Party. This Republican Party will be the first-ever to openly and proudlystain Lincolns legacy and embrace instead the traitors of Southern rebellion that sought to divide and destroy the Union our Founding Fathersestablishedin 1776.

This is now Donald Trumps party. And his trip to Tulsa (a city that, in 1921, was the site of the worst mass murder of peaceful black men and women in the history of America)the day afterJuneteenth (which commemorates the end of U.S. slavery) says a lot.

Sophia A. Nelson(Photo: Family handout)

Trumps conduct during the aftermath of George Floyds tragic murder has been reprehensible, cowardly, and divisive. He has made it clear to us all but most of all to his very white, very monolithic base that he is not on the side of democracy, freedom, and justice for all but, instead, on the side of suppressing free speech, tear-gassing protesters, and engaging in old culture wars that no longer resonate with a 21st century America, where more than 40% of the population is of color."

Both my maternal and paternal grandparents were Eisenhower Republicans. I was a moderate black female Republican for more than 25 years. Inspired by Jack Kemp at a college speech in 1988,I went on to work as an intern for Sen. Pete Wilson, R-Calif., and then for President George H.W. Bushs re-election campaign in 1992. Beyond that, I worked for former Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, R-N.J.And then, in 1997,as the first Black female counsel to the Republican majority on the House Reform and Oversight Committee Counsel.

History of Henrietta Wood: The Backstory: The little known story about a former slave who sued her captor and won

But once Trump was nominated and elected in 2016, I, like many moderates and centrists, became a never Trumper. I was an early senior adviser to the Lincoln Project when it launched in January 2020. And I now find myself in June 2020 disillusioned with the Never Trump movement, as it is too white and too male.

Let me say it plainly. If todays Republicans think that marching in Black Lives Matter solidarity with Sen. Mitt Romney one day, then singing Trump's praises the next day, makes you woke, then they are clueless as to the power and impact of this national moment. If todays Republicans think President Trump can throw the black community false sound-bites like I have done more for black people than any presidentwhile turningNational Guardsmen and police against peaceful protesters in Lafayette Square, then they are very wrong.

The 19th-centuryparty of Lincoln was one that stood for the unity of the union. Freedom for the enslaved. Opportunity for the oppressed. The 21st-centuryparty of Donald Trump stands for racial slurs, placing Hispanic babies in cages, telling duly-elected congresswomen of color to go back to where they came from, and hiding in a bunker during historic protests in support of racial equality and justice. It's no wonder that Mary Elizabeth Taylor, a senior State Department official and one of the administration's high-ranking African Americans, followed "the dictates of my conscience" and resigned on Thursday.

JUSTICE Act: GOP Sen. Tim Scott: I've choked on fear when stopped by police. We need the JUSTICE Act.

Make no mistake, what Trump is about to do in Tulsa is dangerous. Even if he gives lip service to racial justice and police reform, he is signaling from the pulpit of the presidency that he will preserve, protect, and defend the whiteness of America. When Republicans like Lankford harken back to Lincolns freeing of the slaves to prove they are not racist, that will not cut it in this pivotal moment for America on race relations.

Richard Nixon, with his southern strategy in 1968, accelerated the process of destroying the GOPs legacy as the party of Lincoln. Donald Trump has finished the job.

Sophia A. Nelson is a CNN commentator, journalist, and author of E Pluribus One: Reclaiming Our Founders' Vision for a United America. Follow her on Twitter:@IAmSophiaNelson

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Trump, Tulsa and the demise of Lincolns Republican Party - USA TODAY

Said Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas: I dont really have any comments about it, because I havent read it. I know hes trying to sell a book.

Mr. Boltons book contains some unflattering information about Mr. Trumps lack of knowledge about basic facts of world affairs and geography. The president did not seem to know that Britain possessed nuclear weapons, Mr. Bolton wrote, or that Finland was not part of Russia.

While those accounts prompted some mockery, Democrats mostly seemed frustrated at Mr. Boltons refusal to participate in the impeachment inquiry.

During the House proceeding, Mr. Bolton declined to appear, joining a lawsuit that sought a decision from a federal judge about whether he should heed Congresss request for his testimony or a White House order not to participate. Rather than engage in a lengthy court fight, House leaders wrapped up the inquiry in December without him and moved to a vote to impeach Mr. Trump on two counts: abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

But then in January, Mr. Bolton abruptly changed course and said he would be willing to testify if subpoenaed at the Senate impeachment trial. By then, the matter was in the hands of Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, who moved to block any witnesses from being called, a decision that Republicans upheld in a nearly party-line vote, paving the way for the presidents swift acquittal.

The fact that he wasnt willing to testify in the House and was willing to tie us up in court for a long time, but willing to tell the story to a book, to make money for a book, tells you a lot about John Boltons character, Representative Adam Schiff of California, the chairman of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said on CBS This Morning. Whether his testimony would have made significant difference in trial? It may have led to further evidence and further witnesses, but we will never know. And this is the price the country had to pay for John Bolton putting profit before country.

Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, said he wished that Mr. Bolton had revealed his story to the panel.

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Bolton Unites Republicans and Democrats in Scorn Over Tell-All Book - The New York Times

Karen Gardner was perplexed when she received her mail-in primary ballot. As a life-long Republican voter and chairwoman of the Bernardsville Republican Municipal Committee, Gardner wasnt expecting to find a list of Democrats inside the envelope.

The slate of candidates was all Democrat from Joe Biden down to dogcatcher, but on the upper right it clearly stated it was a Republican ballot and it had my name and correct information on the return envelope, Gardner said.

Of the 2,400 registered Republicans in Bernardsville, 500 to 700 of them received erroneous mail-in ballots, listing the Democratic candidates instead of the Republicans.

Gardner brought the issue to the Somerset County Republican Organization on June 13. The organizations chairman Al Gaburo notified the county clerk who promised to remedy the mistake.

The error originated with Reliance Graphics, Inc., the printing company which sent out Somerset Countys ballots. Normally, the county clerks office prepares the ballots themselves, but shopped the task to Reliance this year because of Gov. Phil Murphys executive order that every voter receive a vote-by-mail ballot for the delayed July 7 primary election.

If we had had a greater lead time when we were sending out these ballots, we would have been able to do the ballot insertion in-house and this error would have been caught, Somerset County Clerk Steve Peter said.

Corrected ballots with a slip explaining the error were sent back out to all 2,400 Bernardsville Republicans on June 16. The erroneous ballots will be voided, and even so, Republican voters cannot cast votes for Democrats in a New Jersey primary. Reliance will swallow the reprinting and postage costs, at no added expense to taxpayers, Peter said.

Peter said that there was no issue with the PDF proof Reliance sent over before the ballots were mailed or with the ballots sent to the clerks office for distribution. Bob Fetterly, the president of Reliance, called it a human error, but would not elaborate on what exactly happened or why the error only affected 500 to 700 Bernardsville Republicans.

It was a misprint, Fetterly said, whose company serves six New Jersey counties, including Middlesex and Essex. Human error. We mailed over 1.5 million ballots in the last couple of weeks and 500 went astray. So we apologized for it, but it was a human error we had a success rate of 99.99 percent.

Bernardsville Republicans are displeased with the mistake and think it will undermine voters confidence in local elections as well as lose Republican votes in this primary.

There has been widespread anxiety about the 2020 election due to allegations of voter suppression and foreign interference in 2016. The coronavirus has interrupted in-person voting, adding additional strain on elections.

You cant have printer errors. I think thats a problem said Bernardsvilles Republican Mayor Jane Canose, though she explained that she does not suspect fraud.

Peter vows that the error will not happen again and that there has never been a problem when the clerks office handles the ballots.

Come November, I have implored the governor and everybody in the legislature that I can talk to that if we do have an all or mainly vote-by-mail election that that decision be made no later than August 1st so that we would have adequate time to prepare these ballots and we can do the insertion in our office to ensure quality control.

Josh Axelrod may be reached at jaxelrod@njadvancemedia.com. Tell us your coronavirus story or send a tip here.

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Misprinted ballots with Democratic candidates mailed to Republicans in this N.J. town - NJ.com