Under investor pressure, Exxon issues climate analysis

Highlights:

• Less than 5% of Exxon’s total value is represented by oil and gas resources that “may not be attractive investments” in a world that cuts greenhouse gas emissions the necessary amount to keep temperatures below a 2-degrees Celsius, the analysis says.
• Low-cost producers are likely to fare better than others in a carbon-constrained world, said an analyst who has reviewed the report.
• “This may validate the company’s historically strict capital discipline relative to some of its bigger-spending brethren,” said the analyst, who spoke on the condition of anonymity as the report was just being released.

The big picture: There’s growing concern about the potential for oil and gas companies’ assets to become stranded in a world that drastically cuts greenhouse gas emissions, and in fact some environmentalists are pushing for this. Some oil executives reject this notion, but it’s nonetheless a key component of an overall debate about how fossil-fuel companies handle a transition to a lower-carbon world.

Go deeper:

• The report itself, which spans 28 pages
• The May shareholder vote that compelled today’s analysis
• Wall Street is starting to care about climate
• Leading U.S. producer issues first sustainability and climate report
• Investing like it’s 1999: Behind BP’s return to renewables
• Why big oil is slowly turning green

The state of play:

• Trump said on the South Lawn yesterday: "China should start an investigation into the Bidens, because what happened in China is just about as bad as what happened with Ukraine."
• As Axios first reported, the White House plans to send Pelosi a letter as soon as today that dares her to hold a vote on an impeachment inquiry rather than simply declaring it. Trump wants to force votes by vulnerable House Dems.

⚡ Some of the day's most explosive news broke at 10:30 p.m.:

• Three House committees released dozens of texts between U.S. diplomats in Ukraine discussing how to handle a response to Trump’s demands that the country launch an investigation into Joe Biden’s family.
• In one text exchange, former Ukrainian envoy Kurt Volker and EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland discussed a draft statement in which the Ukraine government would announce an investigation into the 2016 U.S. election and into a company whose board Biden’s son served on. (AP)

🎵 And now there's Whistleblower II ... WashPost front page: An IRS official "filed a whistleblower complaint reporting that he was told that at least one Treasury Department political appointee attempted to improperly interfere with the annual audit of the president’s or vice president’s tax returns."

Go deeper: Trump's Senate red wall

• So if Mitt Romney or Ben Sasse feel like voting to convict, they can and it wouldn’t make a difference.
• The red wall doesn’t include Susan Collins or Cory Gardner, the two Republican senators from states that voted for Hillary Clinton (Maine and Colorado). Both are up for re-election next year.
• They could vote to convict too, and it still wouldn’t matter.

Remember that impeachment, which only takes a majority vote in the House, doesn’t end Trump’s presidency. That only happens if two thirds of the Senate votes to convict and remove him — 67 senators if they all show up.

The catch: The wall gets weaker if you factor in Trump’s approval ratings. They’re negative in some of the states he won in 2016.

• But even if all of those senators jumped ship — which is a stretch — he'd still have more than enough votes to block conviction. That would only change if he started to lose senators from states where he's still popular, too.

By the numbers:

• 36 Republican senators represent Trump states where he’s still popular. 15 of them are up for re-election.
• 15 Republican senators represent Trump states where his approval ratings are underwater, but only 5 of them are up for re-election.
• Trump could lose 17 senators from his red wall — or 19 Republicans if Collins and Gardner were in the mix — and still stay in office.

The bottom line: Trump believes the combination of right-wing media backing + GOP senators' fear of crossing Trump voters will save him.

• Right now, there are few noticeable cracks in this wall.

Editor’s note: This post has been corrected to show that Martha McSally is up for election to hold on to her seat in 2020.

The big picture, via Axios' Orion Rummler: Volker and Sondland are both named in the whistleblower complaint that is now at the center of an impeachment inquiry into Trump. The revelations that have been reported out of Volker's testimony before the House committees, which lasted more than 9 hours and is the first of at least 5 depositions of current and former State Department officials, suggest there is much more to be learned.

One particularly explosive exchange was between Taylor and Sondland in September:

• "I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign," Taylor texted.
• That message came after he said that "the message to the Ukrainians (and Russians) we send with the decision on security assistance is key. With the hold, we have already shaken their faith in us. That's my nightmare scenario."
• Sondland, a Trump political appointee and GOP donor, texted back: "Bill, I believe you are incorrect about President Trump's intentions. The President has been crystal clear no quid pro quo's of any kind." The New York Times reported that Sondland's response came after he spoke to the president.

Read the committee's letter and the texts:

Go deeper ... NYT: U.S. envoys drafted statement committing Ukraine president to Biden probe