On a Tuesday morning in January, college student Aurora Gray stepped up to the podium in a windowless room in Atlanta, around the corner from the state capitol building. In front of her sat a five-member panel of elected officials that oversees how and where nearly every Georgia resident gets their power.

“The generation of energy… using fossil fuels has become an existential threat to our safety due to the undisputed impacts of greenhouse gas emissions on our planet,” Gray told the commission. “We must act now, as later is way too late.”

More than a dozen other students sat behind her, awaiting their allotted three minutes in front of the Georgia Public Service Commission, or PSC. One after another, they called on the commission to reject a request from Georgia Power, the state’s largest utility, to add new natural gas capacity to the grid. Instead, they repeated at the podium, the company needs to expand renewable energy and take other steps to combat climate change.

“You can help get Georgia Power to take the right actions in the essential timeframe,” said high school senior Evelyn Ford, the last of the students to speak across two days. “Actually, you’re the only five people in Georgia who can.”

Can we please get some last minute action on the key issues, secured before we get to the vote? Biden still hasn’t officially declared a climate emergency, which we are unarguably in. Even fossil fuel companies aren’t even denying it anymore!! Could we actually get what we need out a democrat: real immigration action and asylum for all parties affected by US intervention and our role in climate destruction, sweeping student loan debt forgiven, meaningful action towards decarb, codify new civil rights for abortion and LGBTQ+ and halt weapons and money to israel by forcing him to declare a national emergency? I mean maybe I’m just a hopeless romantic but is there not some precedent for dealing with how dire this situation is? Like it shouldn’t really be something we need to elect someone to make sure gets fixed. We have the powers, we should be able to just get it done. Why are so many people fear mongering us into making a choice against our consent for a president and admin that has barely done anything he said they would instead of just fucking saving the world from donald trump like they claim they are tryin to do? And I mean come, how did hitler lose his power?? Yall keep comparing trump to Hitler but are trying to politely make it so he can’t “take over the world and destroy democracy”? Like this is pathetic yall. WHAT ARE WE EVEN DOING IF ITS THIS BAD?? WE ARE REALLY LETTING THIS BE UP TO A FUCKING TWO PARTY VOTE?? WHO HONESTLY THINKS THAT THIS ANXIETY WE ARE ALL FEELING IS 1) WARRANTED AND 2) NECESSARY ON ANY LEVEL?

we know whats wrong and we have historical precendents and more options than this sad state of affairs we are boxing ourselves into. we just don’t have the collective hutzpah to rise up and demand an end to this bullshit. you can see it in the faces of people at protests for palestine though. something about watching a genocide unfold while being governed by the guy who we’re told won’t let democracy die. do the people in palestine have democracy? what’s left of ours when you are painted a political enemy of the state because you are calling on your president to do more for a stateless people and we taut ourselves as leaders of the free world? remember #notmypresident? is biden my president? because while i did vote for him last time, i don’t think he is the president i thought he was. what can you do when you have buyers remorse? would you buy the same product again? then if you find the store doesn’t even have what you want, why go there at all? voting has its place. i just don’t think the issues we are facing should be up to a vote on whether we resolve them or not.

It has become commonplace to emphasize the extent to which the US political world is polarized. Politicians and partisans of each party don’t simply have differing solutions to the country’s problems — they often seem to live in separate and fundamentally incompatible versions of reality. But on one thing, nearly everyone can agree: Donald Trump is still the center of the country’s political universe.

Trump is cruising to victory in the Republican presidential primary despite barely campaigning and remaining the subject of numerous major criminal and civil trials. GOP voters strongly preferred him over Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who essentially ran on Trump’s program, but with fewer personal scandals and a severe charisma deficit. DeSantis dropped out in January, as did Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor whose more strongly anti-Trump campaign barely registered.

Last week, Trump won 60 percent of the vote to defeat Nikki Haley, his only remaining opponent, in her home state of South Carolina. He went on to beat her with 68 percent of the vote in Michigan a few days later. Whatever Haley’s motives for remaining in the race through Super Tuesday (March 5, when fifteen states will hold primary elections), there is next to zero hope that anyone besides Trump will be the Republican presidential nominee. The Supreme Court’s decision today to reverse Colorado’s move to exclude the former president from the ballot just delivered the Trump campaign even more good news.

Even Joe Biden appears to be letting Donald Trump set the agenda for political discussion in the presidential election. Despite four years of incumbency, the president has largely focused his reelection campaign on Trump — in particular the threats he poses to democracy and abortion rights, as well as the many instances of legal jeopardy in which Trump is entangled.

this is hella old but apparently still relevant