CNN will host a seven-hour long live town hall with 10 Democrat candidates for president, with the only subject of the event being alleged “climate crisis.”
As The Hill reports, “each candidate is allotted 40 minutes to address questions from CNN moderators and audience members at the town hall,” which will be held in New York City and will alternate between six moderators: Wolf Blitzer, Erin Burnett, Anderson Cooper, Chris Cuomo, Don Lemon, and Bill Weir.
The ten participating candidates will be: Former Vice President Joe Biden, Senator Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.), Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Senator Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), Senator Cory Booker (D-N.J.), South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg (D-Ind.), former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro (D-Texas), former Congressman Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas), Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), and entrepreneur Andrew Yang (D-N.Y.). These are the same ten candidates who will be participating in the next official debate in September, which will be hosted by ABC News in Houston, Texas.
The move by CNN comes after the Democratic National Committee voted against a resolution to officially sanction a debate focusing exclusively on climate change. The idea to hold such an event was first proposed by Governor Jay Inslee (D-Wash.), who staked his entire campaign on the issue of global warming, and recently dropped out of the race when it was clear that he would not qualify for the next debate. Despite the presence of radical activists who protested in favor of such a debate at the recent meeting of the DNC’s Resolutions Committee, the committee voted to reject the proposal, with 17 against and 8 in favor.