53 voting members of the Democratic National Committee have submitted an open letter to Chairman Tom Perez in protest of the DNC's decision to reject a 2020 primary debate focused on climate change, as proposed by Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, the Huffington Post reports.
Yes, but: A majority of signatures on this resolution would not require Perez to change the DNC's stance on holding an issue-focused debate.
Despite an onslaught of extreme weather events that have barraged American homes in recent months and years, the New York Times reports that the number of Americans with flood insurance has dropped during the last decade.
Why it matters: As climate change will only increase the likelihood of floods, insurance rates are expected to surge. Beyond floods, in California, officials have tried to curtail rate bumps in regions at risk of wildfire, and also tried to discourage insurance providers from dropping policyholders.
The White House stopped State Department intelligence analyst Rod Schoonover from providing written testimony on climate change this week, because "the science did not match the Trump administration's views," the New York Times reports.
Driving the news: Among other complaints from the National Security Council, the final basis for blocking Schoonover's testimony was to eliminate 5 scientifically-based pages that "described the various national security threats linked to climate change, like instability from water shortages in some parts of the world," per the NYT.
