Good morning. Welcome to Axios today. It's Monday, October 18. I'm Nila Boone. Here's

what you need to know today. How the U.S. Secretary of Education says he's

tackling crises in our public schools. Plus, the history of American newspapers

promoting lynching. But first, today's one big thing. President Biden, Senator

Manchin and Climate Change. There was lots of news over the weekend about

West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin's opposition to a crucial piece of President

Biden's proposed climate agenda that would encourage wind, solar, and other

zero-carbon sources of clean electricity. Of course, Manchin's support in the

evenly split Senate is crucial. Here to explain what all of this means is Ben

Geeman and Energy reporter at Axios and author of the Daily Axios Generate

newsletter. Good morning, Ben. Good morning. Thanks for having me back on. Ben,

I saw some headlines that imply that Senator Joe Manchin is basically killing

Joe Biden's plans to tackle climate change. Is that an accurate way to think

about this? You know what? That goes too far. However, Senator Joe Manchin is, thus far,

opposed to what would be a really important element of what Democrats and the

White House are trying to do. I mean, basically what's happening is that this

big tax and spending package that Democrats are trying to move on this very

thread-the-needle party-lined vote has a program in it that would create this

new system of financial carrots and sticks for utilities to speed up what's

already the sort of ongoing increase in deployment of zero-carbon power

sources. And that's really important because, look, electricity is the second

largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the country, narrowly behind the

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