Web 57DHYAFZZFLWEFA April 23 2026 Pick your wood stove air pollution elimination adventure
In Webisode 1A United States Pick your air wood stove air pollution elimination adventure 1B United States RFK Junior Combative Defensive and Occasionally Contrite Kennedy Walks a Fine Line In four days of congressional testimony the health secretary sought to please the White House and his MAHA base at the same time 1C United States Department of War Hegseth to the Troops We Are Bringing Back the Flu! Grab your cough drops We are going to battle 1D United States A Retreat for the wealthy called Campfire RAWSEP View Did this retreat involve burning wood for aesthetic reasons? From the article headline What I Learned About Billionaires at the Jeff Bezos Private Retreat For the richest men on Earth everything is free and nothing matters 1E United States A Barbaric Problem in American Hospitals Is Only Getting Bigger Patients are getting stuck in the emergency department for days while waiting for a spot in an inpatient ward 1F United States The White House Correspondents Dinner on April 25 2026 Why is Donald Trump breaking bread with the enemy of the people? 2 Michigan What Abdul El-Sayed Does not Get About Trump How Democrats can lose Michigan again 3 Montana Big Sky Crack-Up Montana Democrats thought they found a novel way to win control of the US Senate until the party faithful started fighting back 4 Virginia Trump Gerrymander Blunder 5 Ukraine The Russian war against Ukraine Main Content
1A United States Pick your air wood stove air pollution elimination adventure To encourage the transition from wood stoves to heat pumps at least 6 states offer incentives California Offers rebates for replacing wood stoves with heat pumps through the Clean Vehicle Rebate Project Vermont Provides incentives for energy-efficient heating systems including heat pumps under the Efficiency Vermont program Massachusetts Offers rebates for heat pump installations through the Mass Save program which may include wood stove replacements New York Features the Em Power New York program which provides incentives for energy-efficient heating upgrades Washington Offers the Washington State Department of Commerce heat pump rebate program for replacing wood stoves Oregon Provides incentives through the Energy Trust of Oregon for installing heat pumps in place of wood stoves Check local programs for specific eligibility and details Pick your air wood stove air pollution elimination adventure Two Move to one of the 10 states which have sued the EPA to update wood stove pollution rules Those 10 states are Alaska Illinois Maryland Massachusetts Minnesota New Jersey New York Oregon and Vermont and Washington Heat Pump Rebates in order to replace Air Polluting Wood Burning for Home Heating And Heat Pumps which work down to 40 degrees below zero can also function as air conditioners in these Global Warming Times Examples from three cold winter US states Alaska Minnesota and Wisconsin Alaska Heat Pump Rebates and Incentives 2026 Alaska heat pump incentives are region-dependent The ACES program offers Four to Eight Thousand Five Hundred Dollars for 43 coastal Alaksa communities the Fairbanks change-out program covers up to Seventeen thousand five hundred dollars for replacing solid-fuel heating and utility rebates add Five hundred to one thousand dollars Federal tax credits ended December 31 2025 The IRA-funded HEAR and HOMES programs have not launched An online guide covers all major Alaska heat pump incentives available in 2026 including the ACES program Fairbanks change-out program utility rebates and IRA program status Minnesota Heat Pump Rebates and Incentives 2026 Federal heat pump tax credits ended December 31 2025 Utility rebates from Xcel Energy up to Two Thousand Six hundred Dollars with insulation bonus CenterPoint One Thousand One hundred dollars dual-fuel and Minnesota Power Four Hundred Dollars are what is available now plus up to Fourteen Thousand Dollars in Minneapolis city rebates Save Energy Minnesota HEAR plus a Four Thousand Dollar state rebate has not launched This guide covers all major Minnesota heat pump incentives available in 2026 including Xcel Energy CenterPoint Energy Minnesota Power Minneapolis Green Cost Share and the pending Save Energy Minnesota program Here is what is actually available Pick your air wood stove air pollution elimination adventure Wisconsin Focus on Energy offers Four Hundred to Nine Hundred Dollars instant discounts for air-source heat pumps statewide IRA-funded HEAR rebates cover up to Eight Thousand Dollars for income-qualifying households below One Hundred Fifty Percent AMI HOMES rebates up to Ten Thousand Dollars are available at all income levels for whole-home projects Federal tax credits expired December 31 2025 Wisconsin was the first state to launch the HOMES program
1B United States RFK Junior Combative Defensive and Occasionally Contrite Kennedy Walks a Fine Line In four days of congressional testimony the health secretary sought to please the White House and his MAHA base at the same time Excerpts edited by Residents Against Wood Smoke Emission Particulates a 501C3 nonprofit organization The New York Times April 23 2026 He was combative defensive and occasionally contrite He shouted at Democratic senators accusing them of grandstanding and selective indignation He insisted he had delivered historic wins for the health of the American people In the end after four days of testimony during seven separate congressional hearings on the Trump budget Health Secretary RFK Junior walked a fine line trying to please both his base and the White House at the same time If there was any takeaway from the RFK Junior Capitol Hill marathon it was that vaccination the topic that drove RFK Junior for more than a decade and catapulted him to national prominence during the coronavirus pandemic remains the defining issue of his tenure even as the White House for political reasons tries to get him to deflect attention from it The measles epidemic which began last year in Texas and has killed three Americans the first deaths from the disease in a decade dominated the discussion RFK Junior repeatedly defended his handling of it but appeared to back further and further away from his past criticism of the measles vaccine On Wednesday under persistent questioning he made his strongest statement yet saying that his department has advised every child to get the shot Notably he did not attribute that advice to himself On the whole vaccine thing he is trying to backpedal and hide and duck said a vice provost and public health professor at the University of Pennsylvania who advised Democratic presidents including Biden and Obama and met with Trump The White House is clearly upset because his stance is not popular but he has not fundamentally moved his stance on vaccines Indeed RFK Junior also insisted that hygiene and sanitation and not vaccination were responsible for the drop in deaths from infectious diseases during the 20th century citing a Two Thousand study as proof Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana the Republican chairman of the Health Committee who is also a physician and has tangled repeatedly with RFK Junior on vaccines pushed back telling the secretary he had cited the study out of context Senator Cassidy who voted to confirm RFK Junior only reluctantly and only after the secretary made a series of promises to secure the vote of Senator Cassidy seemed irritated by the RFK Junior emphasis on chronic disease over infectious disease RFK Junior noted that three Americans died of measles over the past decade while roughly two million die from chronic disease each year But after the hearing Senator Cassidy lamented the measles deaths saying there should be a focus on infectious disease We are a first-world country and speaking as a physician that knows this can be prevented it grieves me he said It grieves me The senator himself is walking a fine line He is facing a tough primary election next month Trump has endorsed his challenger as has the Make America Healthy Again PAC which is aligned with RFK Junior Asked by a reporter whether RFK Junior had lived up to the promises he made Senator Cassidy declined to answer We will talk later he said During the hearings which began in the House last Thursday RFK Junior revealed that after firing or laying off close to Twenty Thousand employees at the Department of Health and Human Services last year he was now hiring Twelve Thousand new workers to replace them He told lawmakers on Tuesday that he needed to make sure that we have people to do every job The about-face was infuriating said a professor emeritus of epidemiology from the University of Arizona and a founding member of Defend Public Health a grass-roots group formed to push back on recent challenges to public health We have lost so many exceptional scientists and other employees of HHS the just decades of institutional knowledge that we have lost is absolutely devastating she said adding The estimates are it is going to take a decade or a generation to rebuild the massive medical science juggernaut that we once had Imminent cuts to Medicaid were a potent flashpoint during the RFK Junior testimony There are no cuts to Medicaid! he shouted on Wednesday to the Senate Finance Committee as Democrats insisted there were The sweeping domestic policy bill that Trump signed into law last year is estimated to cut Medicaid by amounts ranging from Six Hundred Sixty Five Billion Dollars to nearly One trillion dollars over the next decade but starting after the midterm elections But those are cuts to the projected growth of the program Medicaid spending will still increase but by far less than it would have without the legislation The cuts are estimated to result in Seven point Five million people losing Medicaid coverage by 2034 according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities a left-leaning think tank Trump Rx the website that Trump touts as offering Americans the lowest drug prices in the world was also at issue The site connects consumers with pharmaceutical companies that after negotiations with the Trump administration have agreed to sell roughly Eighty brand-name medications at discount prices comparable to those in Europe But those prices are vastly higher than the price of comparable generic drugs Senator Elizabeth Warren Democrat of Massachusetts called them scam discounts noting that a drug that sold for several hundred dollars on Trump Rx could be bought for Sixteen Dollars in generic form Last week as RFK Junior was in the middle of testifying in the House Trump announced a four-person team to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention He nominated Doctor Erica Schwartz whose supportive views on vaccines diverge sharply from the views on vaccines of RFK Junior to lead the agency prompting questions about how much latitude the secretary would give her RFK Junior told lawmakers he supported the nomination but he refused to commit to accepting all of the Doctor Schwartz decisions on vaccines I am not going to make that kind of commitment he said on Tuesday When the Wednesday hearing was over Senator Cassidy offered an oblique assessment of the RFK Junior performance Things were illuminating he said
1C United States Department of War Hegseth to the Troops We Are Bringing Back the Flu! Grab your cough drops We are going to battle Excerpts edited by Residents Against Wood Smoke Emission Particulates a 501C3 nonprofit organization The Atlantic April 22 2026 WARFIGHTERS! As a step to making sure we are ready for warfare at all times we have decided to ELIMINATE THE MANDATORY FLU SHOT! Nothing says we are ready for war like we all have the flu Get your hot-water bottles! Get your ibuprofen! Not Tylenol though! It knows what it did Because we are bringing FLU to the warfighters! Are you ready to have a RUNNY NOSE and an ITCHY THROAT? Are you ready to get REALLY SERIOUSLY DEHYDRATED AND NEED MEDICAL ATTENTION? Hoo-RAH! We will terrify the enemy by coming in hot! And when I say hot I mean our temperatures! We will need COUGH DROPS and we will knock those back CRUNCH with a sound more frightening than gunfire This will strike fear into the hearts of the enemy They will say things like Do you need a tissue? and Are you okay? and when they are offering us that tissue we will strike And then we will go back to bed and lie under a tactical pile of warfighting blankets Peak performance is when you have a terrible headache and want to be asleep and whenever you open your mouth you sound like someone took lawn shears to your vocal cords YEAH!
1D United States A Retreat for the wealthy called Campfire RAWSEP View Did this retreat involve burning wood for aesthetic reasons? From the article headline What I Learned About Billionaires at the Jeff Bezos Private Retreat For the richest men on Earth everything is free and nothing matters Excerpts edited by Residents Against Wood Smoke Emission Particulates a 501C3 nonprofit organization The Atlantic April 20 2026 In 2018 I was a guest at Jeff Bezos Campfire retreat in Santa Barbara California It is an annual event in which the Amazon founder invites Eighty-plus guests celebrities artists intellectuals and anyone else he thinks is interesting to spend three nights at a private resort I had recently been approached by Amazon about moving my film-and-television business over from Disney and although I had declined or maybe because I had declined the Bezos team invited me to Campfire perhaps keen to impress me with the power of his reach
1E United States A Barbaric Problem in American Hospitals Is Only Getting Bigger Patients are getting stuck in the emergency department for days while waiting for a spot in an inpatient ward Excerpts edited by Residents Against Wood Smoke Emission Particulates a 501C3 nonprofit organization The Atlantic April 22 2026 In the last months weeks and days of his life I will not go to the emergency room became the mantra of my husband My husband had esophageal cancer that had spread throughout his body and having trained as a doctor I had jury-rigged a hospital at home aided by specialists who got me pills to boost blood pressure to dampen the effects of liver failure to stem his cough to help him swallow wake up fall asleep I will not go to the emergency room emphasis on not were his first words after passing out having a seizure or regurgitating the protein smoothies I made to pass his narrowed esophagus Ours was a precarious existence but I understood his adamant rejection of the emergency department Most prior visits had morphed into extended trips into a terrifying medical underworld to a purgatory known as emergency-department boarding I managed to keep my husband at home while we planned for hospice until one dreadful night at 2 am when I ran out of hacks We got into an ambulance and headed together to the hospital We had already learned the hard way that if you need admission to the hospital you can remain in the emergency department in the hallway or a curtained bay on a hard stretcher or in a makeshift holding area for more than 24 hours even for days while waiting for a real hospital bed In this limbo state you are technically admitted to the hospital but still located in the physical domain of the ER In the summer of 2024 still being treated to keep his cancer at bay my husband required hospital admission to rule out the possibility of infection or worse of the cancer having spread to his brain After we went to an emergency department near our home in New York City he lay trapped on a hard stretcher with its rails up for more than 36 hours amid the alarms and calls for the code team without any clues of whether it was day or night and with access only to the few toilets shared by the dozens of patients and visitors in the emergency room
1F United States The White House Correspondents Dinner on April 25 2026 Why is Donald Trump breaking bread with the enemy of the people? Excerpts edited by Residents Against Wood Smoke Emission Particulates a 501C3 nonprofit organization The Atlantic April 21 2026 The annual White House Correspondents Dinner is an awkward and ethically fraught affair Journalists spend the evening partying with the president and administration officials whom they are supposed to cover rigorously and skeptically It is typically crowded and a little chaotic and the ratio of non-journalists to journalists is about 10 to 1 The evening is promoted as a celebration of journalism and the First Amendment After declining all invitations to the event throughout his years in office President Trump informed the White House Correspondents Association last month that he would be attending the 2026 dinner On Saturday night the president will break bread with the same people he has spent a decade calling fake and enemies of the people
2 Michigan What Abdul El-Sayed Does not Get About Trump How Democrats can lose Michigan again Excerpts edited by Residents Against Wood Smoke Emission Particulates a 501C3 nonprofit organization The Atlantic April 22 2026 Over the past 15 years or so Democrats have won a lot of races because the Republican primary voters decided to nominate right-wing ideologues such as Christine ODonnell Todd Akin and Kari Lake rather than normal Republicans In all of these races the Republican establishment warned that nominating an archconservative would undermine their chances of victory and was proved completely correct Now Democrats finally have the chance to do the same thing In Michigan a purple state that Donald Trump won twice the physician Abdul El-Sayed is running a competitive race for the Democratic Senate nomination If successful he would turn a very likely Democratic win into a jump ball between himself as the Michigan Senate Democratic candidate the Michigan Senate Republican Candidate El-Sayed has followed the classic strategy of adopting positions that appeal to a majority of Democratic voters thus giving him an advantage over more cautious rivals but that do not appeal to a majority of the general electorate which includes Democrats and Republicans In the case of El-Sayed those stances include supporting single-payer health insurance abolishing ICE and intensely criticizing Israel At the same time he positions himself as the most doctrinal left-wing candidate in the race thus appealing to Democrats in the Democratic primary
3 Montana Big Sky Crack-Up Montana Democrats thought they found a novel way to win control of the US Senate until the party faithful started fighting back Excerpts edited by Residents Against Wood Smoke Emission Particulates a 501C3 nonprofit organization The Atlantic April 22 2026 A grain-elevator manager on the eastern plains of Montana fired off a rocket this month to the private Signal chat he shares with the 23 other members of the state Democratic Party executive board He demanded that leaders make clear in newspapers across the state that the Democratic Party would support only Democratic candidates in the fall elections The response was swift and not to his liking The chair of the party wrote I will continue to move forward to get Democrats elected There is no hidden agenda The problem the chair is the belief among the grain elevator manager and many other party stalwarts in Montana that exactly such a hidden agenda exists pitting national big-money Democrats and maybe even some state party leaders against the state Democratic apparatus This feud and skepticism over the role of outsiders in state races threatens to spoil one of the last best places for Democrats to pull a Senate majority from a difficult midterm map At issue is Seth Bodnar a former University of Montana president who is running as an independent for the Senate seat being vacated by Republican Steve Daines Bodnar age 47 is young moderate a veteran a Rhodes Scholar and all in all the sort of person Montanans might elect in a year when Republicans are facing the prospect of steep losses amid the declining popularity of Trump Democratic mega-donors such as one of LinkedIn co-founders Reid Hoffman the cryptocurrency investor Michael Novogratz and the Microsoft heir Rory Gates are all supporting the Bodnar campaign hoping he can yank the seat away from the GOP Because Bodnar is running as an independent it means part of his campaign in Montana is based on criticizing Democrats whose voters he needs to support him Even the candidates running for the Democratic nomination too are criticizing their own Democratic party leaders just weeks before the June 2 primary and seeking to make sure that Democratic party bigwigs do not try to clear a path for Bodnar to face the GOP nominee in November One bright spot for Bodnar and the Democratic Party is that Republicans in the state are in their own mess confirming to many Montanans the stereotype of national Republican party grandees being dismissive of local democracy In a state more libertarian than partisan where abortion recreational marijuana permit less concealed carry are all legal Democrats have had success here before Montana Democrats claimed at least one and often both of the Montana US Senate seats from 1912 to 2024 and pulled off a 16-year run in the mansion of the governor from 2005 to 2021 In 2008 Obama came within Eleven Thousand votes of winning Then came the disruptions of Trump Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris got about Thirty Eight percent of the vote in 2024 dooming former Democratic Montana Senator Jon Tester who ran seven points ahead of her and seven points behind his Republican opponent
4 Virginia Trump Gerrymander Blunder Excerpts edited by Residents Against Wood Smoke Emission Particulates a 501C3 nonprofit organization The Atlantic April 22 2026 When President Trump last summer implored Republicans to launch a nationwide gerrymandering blitz to pad their narrow House majority the fight he started did not seem fair GOP lawmakers had both the will and the power to draw their party new seats while Democrats were hamstrung by limits of their own making The question was not whether Republicans could expand their edge in Congress but by how much This morning the landscape looks a lot different after Virginia voters yesterday approved a lopsided new House map that could hand Democrats an additional four seats that Republicans currently hold The Democratic redistricting victory is the second for the Democratic Party in a statewide referendum When combined with new lines that California voters endorsed in November Democrats have now succeeded in drawing districts that will likely yield them nine more seats this fall at least matching what Republicans have been able to achieve in states that they control By some measures Democrats have jumped into the redistricting lead bolstering their chances of winning back the House majority in the midterm elections The battle is not over The GOP-dominated Florida legislature will hold a special session next week to consider redistricting and the Democratic victory in Virginia could help Governor Ron DeSantis in Florida win over lawmakers who are reluctant to press the Republican advantage too far Officials in both parties expect the Supreme Court to issue a ruling in the coming months that will weaken if not eviscerate a key part of the Voting Rights Act which would allow states such as Louisiana and Alabama to carve up districts now held by Black Democrats Such a decision would have an even larger impact in southern states come 2028
5 Ukraine The Russian war against Ukraine Excerpts edited by Residents Against Wood Smoke Emission Particulates a 501C3 nonprofit organization Kiev independent April 23 2026 A fire that resulted from a strike on Kharkiv Oblast on April 22 2026 Kharkiv Oblast Administration news Putin ready to meet Zelensky Kremlin official says but there is a catch While Russia has made it clear that resuming dialogue with Ukraine is not a top priority Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Putin would meet with Zelensky under certain conditions Any format at any time Zelensky pushes to restart peace talks open to any venue but Russia Belarus Wishful thinking Ukraine rubbishes the Russian latest Luhansk Oblast claim 14 settlements in Luhansk Oblast are not under Russian control the Ukraine military told the Kyiv Independent Ukraine returned over 2100 Ukrainian children abducted by Russia Zelensky says Out of the 2100 children 150 have been returned to Ukraine since the beginning of 2026 Exclusive Ukraine still missing billions in defense funds for 2026 Kyiv faces a defense gap of 19 point 6 billion euros 23 point 1 billion dollars this year even after accounting for funds already committed and the 90-billion-euro Ukraine Support Loan that is on its way Ukraine war latest Not Putinland Zelensky pushes back on Donnyland Donbas proposal President Volodymyr Zelensky said the key issue is that Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts remain part of Ukraine when asked about a reported proposal to rename part of Donbas Donnyland in honor of US Trump the US President Trump and Putin have zero instruments to enforce backroom deal on Ukraine ex-FM Kuleba tells Kyiv Independent Caught between the Russian war at home and mounting geopolitical turbulence abroad Ukraine is unlikely to see a major turnaround anytime soon says former Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba Climate policy becomes new front in Ukraine-EU economic tensions The latest source of friction between Ukraine and the EU is climate rules and unhappy steel producers as the Ukraine membership goals collide with its wartime realities Human cost of war At least 4 killed seventy nine injured in Russian strikes across Ukraine over past day Russian forces launched 215 drones against Ukraine overnight of which One hundred eighty nine were downed or jammed General Staff Russia has lost One million three hundred twenty one thousand four hundred fifty troops in Ukraine since February 24 2022 The number includes One thousand one hundred forty casualties that Russian forces suffered over the past day The Russian war will not end soon Dmytro Kuleba says International response Spain to send ammunition 100 armored vehicles to Ukraine This collaboration serves as a testament to the commitment to the defense of democratic values to freedom and to a just and lasting peace of our country the Spanish Defense Minister Margarita Robles said during a visit to Kyiv EU envoys back 90 billion euro Ukraine loan as Hungary Slovakia say Druzhba oil transit resumed The news comes after Hungary and Slovakia said Ukraine had resumed oil transit via the Druzhba pipeline with the first deliveries expected by April 23 Greatest threat as Russia arms for large-scale war Germany unveils plan to build the strongest army in Europe German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius unveiled a new national military strategy on April 22 in light of the Russian growing threat It marks the first such strategy of Germany since World War II EU optimistic about joining Special Tribunal to prosecute Russian aggression against Ukraine It is increasingly likely that the European Union will formally back a new court with a mandate to prosecute the Russian leadership for the crime of aggression a senior official in the EU diplomatic arm told the Kyiv Independent European Commissioner Kos calls on EU countries to fully open Ukraine membership talks by June Everything is ready… so I hope we can start very soon even under the Cyprus presidency for cluster one the EU Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos told the Kyiv Independent EU ambassadors back 20th package of Russia sanctions after Hungary Slovakia drop veto EU ambassadors agreed on the 20th package of sanctions imposed against Moscow in response to its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on April 22 after Hungary and Slovakia lifted their veto over the measures Opinions and insights Why unilaterally surrendering Donetsk Oblast equals strategic and military suicide for Ukraine The political risks in Ukraine are for sure important but surrendering Donetsk Oblast to Russia is first and foremost problematic both militarily and strategically Today the fortified Sloviansk-Kramatorsk agglomeration forms the core of the Ukraine defense system writes Mykola Bielieskov research fellow at the National Institute for Strategic Studies and a senior analyst at the Ukrainian NGO Come Back Alive In other news War in Iran has used up half of US Patriot and THAAD missile stockpiles The US has run through over half of its stockpiles of key air defense missiles during the nearly two-month war with Iran