Winners and losers for the week ending June 2

Watching President Donald Trump’s shocking announcement that he was pulling the United States out of the Paris Climate Accords – after pulling a TV-worthy cliffhanger teaser on his decision last week – left me thinking about those heady, will-he-or-won’t-he days between the election and the president’s inauguration when speculation was rife about how much of Candidate Trump would be present in President Trump. As part of a charm offensive, Trump surrogates like Anthony Scaramucci advised against taking the president literally and to instead “take him symbolically.”

Fair warning, I guess: When the founder of hedge fund Skybridge Capital – and the man behind the notorious annual SALT Conference – is telling you there’s nothing to see here, just before he gets stiffed out of a promised administration gig, that’s really as blatant a signal as possible that you should be expecting the worst.

Which is what made the response to the pullout so heartening. From Pittsburgh to California, China to every country except for Syria and Nicaragua – the only other two countries to reject the accord (to be fair, Nicaragua did so because the provisions weren’t aggressive enough in bringing down emissions) – the reaffirmations of commitment to it rang out loud and clear, cutting through the inanity of  http://www.teenvogue.com/story/kathy-griffin-performative-outrage-relativity-shame-thigh-high-politicscovfefe and the hypocritical faux-outrage over Kathy Griffin.

In the end, we may have lost even more global standing and goodwill, but to see cities, states and countries pick up the mantle of responsibility has to count as a W, right?

WINNERS

Pittsburgh residents: After repeated failures to provide clean, safe drinking water for its customers, among other issues, the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority seems to be headed for a takeover by the state’s Public Utilities Commission.

Bill Peduto: Two in the same column! Pittsburgh’s mayor clapped back – hard – at President Trump’s ill-advised sound bite that he pulled out of the Paris accords because he was elected “to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris.” You know, Pittsburgh – the city that went for Hillary Clinton by double digits, and Paris, the city that, um, hosted the talks, I guess? Style points to Peduto for being one of 65 US mayors to sign a pledge to uphold the agreement on their own.

David Oh: The Philadelphia City Councilman was stabbed in the back outside of his home in Southwest Philadelphia on Wednesday night, and was admitted to the hospital in critical condition. By Friday, he was back at work.

LOSERS

Seth Williams: We tried; we really tried. But there is no way to ignore the stunning catch-me-if-you-can hubris demonstrated by the embattled Philly DA’s declarations of love for Taco Bell in this brutally incisive article by Jeremy Roebuck, which lays out Williams’ proclivity for enjoying the finer things – on other people’s dimes – from the very beginning.

Kevin Haggerty: the state Rep. from Dunmore was given a court date for later this month to answer charges of spousal abuse.

Louis Giorla: the former Philadelphia prisons commissioner will pay a $2,000 fine assessed by the Philadelphia Board of Ethics over his awarding of a contract to Corizon Health while he was running the city’s prison system. Coincidentally, that’s the same Corizon that hired him to be a $4,000-a-month consultant when he left the city in 2015.