Feb 23, 2019 - Energy & Environment

Trump's UN ambassador pick said she supports "both sides" of climate science

Trump's UN nominee Kelly Knight Craft Photo: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call

Kelly Knight Craft, the current U.S. ambassador to Canada and President Trump's nominee for ambassador to the UN, endorsed "both sides of the science" when asked about climate change in a 2017 interview with CBC Politics.

Why it matters: If confirmed by the Senate, Craft will represent U.S. interests at the UN, which recognizes climate change as a "potentially irreversible threat to human societies," per the Paris climate agreement. In October, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that the effects of global warming are already evident worldwide, as did a U.S. panel in November. The vast majority of climate scientists have concluded that recent climate change is primarily driven by human emissions of greenhouse gases.

Note: Trump announced plans to pull out of the Paris agreement in 2017.

The big picture: Craft and her husband — the billionaire CEO of the third largest coal-producing company in the eastern U.S. — are longstanding Republican donors and frequent premium guests at Trump's D.C. hotel, according a 2018 VIP guest list obtained by the Washington Post. The Crafts were named gold-level members of the Trump Card rewards program for a 3-day stay.

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Scott Rosenberg

6 mins ago - Technology

The U.S. is now playing by China's internet rules

Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios

President Trump's crackdown on TikTok suggests that the U.S. government is starting to see the internet more like China does — as a network that countries can and should control within their borders.

The big picture: Today's global internet has split into three zones, according to many observers: The EU's privacy-focused network; China's government-dominated network; and the U.S.-led network dominated by a handful of American companies. TikTok's fate suggests China's model has U.S. fans as well.

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Alayna Treene

16 mins ago - Politics & Policy

GOP plans "nightly surprise" for revamped convention

President Trump at the 2016 Republican National Convention. Photo: Bill Clark/Getty Images

The reworked Republican National Convention will be a four-night spectacle including still-under-wraps venues, a 10 p.m. "nightly surprise" and guests and themes playing to "the forgotten men and women of America," two senior Trump campaign officials involved tell Axios.

Driving the news: The messaging will focus heavily on "very granular details" of what a second term for President Trump would look like — answering a question Trump left hanging in a Fox News event earlier this summer — and attack cancel culture, "radical elements" of society and threats to public safety.

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Margaret Talev

46 mins ago - Health

Axios-Ipsos poll: Fear of voting

Data: Axios/Ipsos poll; Note: ±3.0% margin of error for the total sample; Chart: Andrew Witherspoon/Axios

Democrats are twice as likely as Republicans to worry about in-person voting — with nearly two in three seeing it as a large or moderate risk to their health — according to this week's installment of the Axios-Ipsos Coronavirus Index.

Why it matters: This could pose a significant disadvantage for Joe Biden and other Democratic candidates in November if the pattern holds — especially in states where high infection rates persist, or where there are significant hurdles to mail-in, absentee or early voting.