Before the Biden administration could finalize the rule, Donald Trump was re-elected president, ushering in another era of deregulation. Earlier this month, the Trump administration announced plans to revise or repeal 63 workplace regulations that Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer said “stifle growth and limit opportunity.” 

OSHA’s heat stress rule wasn’t among them. And though the new administration has the power to withdraw the draft regulation, it hasn’t. Instead, OSHA has continued to move it forward: The agency is currently in the middle of soliciting input from the general public about the proposed policy. Some labor experts say this process, typically bureaucratic and onerous even in the absence of political interference, is moving along faster than expected — perhaps a sign that civil servants at OSHA feel a true sense of urgency to protect vulnerable workers from heat stress as yearly temperatures set record after record. 

But labor advocacy groups focused on workers along the food supply chain — many of whom work outside, like farmworkers, or in poorly ventilated spaces, like warehouse and meat processing facilities — say workers have waited too long for basic live-saving protections. Earlier this month, Senator Alex Padilla and Congresswoman Judy Chu, both from California, re-introduced a bill to Congress that, if passed, would direct OSHA to enact a federal heat standard for workers swiftly.

It’s a largely symbolic move, as the rule-making process is already underway, and the legislation is unlikely to advance in a Republican-controlled Congress. But the bill signals Democratic lawmakers are watching closely and urgently expect a final rule four years after OSHA first began drafting its proposed rule. The message is clear: However fast OSHA is moving, it hasn’t been enough to protect workers from the worst impacts of climate change. 

“Since OSHA started its heat-stress rulemaking in 2021, over 144 lives have been lost to heat-related hazards,” said Padilla in a statement emailed to Grist. “We know how to prevent heat-related illnesses to ensure that these family members are able to come home at the end of their shift.” 

The lawmaker added that the issue is “a matter of life or death.” 

Heat is the deadliest form of extreme weather, according to the World Health Organization. In the U.S., the Environmental Protection Agency estimates that 986 workers died from heat exposure on the job from 1992 to 2022, or about 34 per year. 

This is very likely an undercount. Prolonged heat exposure can exacerbate underlying health problems like cardiovascular issues, making it difficult for medical professionals to discern when illness and death is attributable to extreme heat. As heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions continue to push global temperatures higher, experts expect heat-related illnesses and deaths to follow.

The life-threatening impacts of exposure to extreme heat in the workplace have been on the federal government’s radar for more than 50 years. Labor unions and farmworkers have long pushed for federal and local heat standards. In 2006, California became the first state to enact its own heat protections for outdoor workers, after an investigation by the state’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health found 46 cases of heat-related illnesses the year prior. Legislative efforts to protect workers or nudge OSHA along often follow or name farmworkers who died from heat stress. Padilla and Chu’s bill from this year is named after Asunción Valdivia, a 53-year-old who died in California in 2004 after picking grapes for 10 hours straight in 105 degree Fahrenheit heat. 

OSHA’s proposed heat standard would require employers to establish plans to avoid and monitor for signs of heat illness and to help new hires acclimate to working in high heat. “That should be implemented yesterday,” said Nichelle Harriott, policy director of HEAL Food Alliance, a national coalition of food and farmworkers. “There really is no cause for this to be taking as long as it has.”

In late June and early July, OSHA held virtual hearings in which it heard testimony from people both for and against a federal heat standard. According to Anastasia Christman, a senior policy analyst from the National Employment Law Project who attended the hearings, employees from the agency seemed engaged and asked substantive questions. “It was very informative,” she said. OSHA didn’t respond to Grist’s request for comment.

As written, OSHA’s proposed heat rule would apply to about 36 million workers in the U.S. Christman noted that sedentary workers — those who sit for most of the work day — are currently excluded from the federal standard. Ironically, at one point during the agency’s hearings, participants had to take an unscheduled break after the air conditioning stopped working in the Department of Labor building where OSHA staff were sitting. “They had to be evacuated because it was too hot to sit there and be on a Zoom call,” said Christman. She estimated that if sedentary workers were non-exempt, the number of U.S. workers covered by the rule would nearly double to 66 million.

From her point of view, OSHA is moving “very fast on this — for OSHA.” But Christman acknowledged that, even in a best-case scenario, regulations would not be on the books for another 12 to 14 months. At that point, OSHA would publish guidance for employers on how to comply with the regulation, as well as respond to any legal challenges to the final rule. That process, “in an optimistic world,” she said, could take between two and four years. 

For many farmworkers, as well as other workers along the food supply chain, that’s too long to wait. 

“For decades, millions of workers have been waiting for federal heat standards that never came,” said Oscar Londoño, co-executive director of WeCount, a member-led immigrant rights organization based in South Florida. 

The group has spearheaded multiple campaigns to draw public attention to how sweltering temperatures impact outdoor workers in the region, including plant nursery workers. Londoño said some agricultural workers have told WeCount it already feels like the hottest summer of their lifetime.

In response to the news of Padilla and Chu’s bill, Londoño said, “We appreciate any step by a lawmaker trying to protect workers, especially as we’re seeing, once again, a record-breaking summer.” But he cast doubt on OSHA’s ability to enforce regulations around heat stress, particularly in the agricultural sector.

“We know that there are employers across the country who are routinely violating the laws that already exist,” said Londoño. “And so adding on new laws and regulations that we do need doesn’t automatically mean that workers will be protected.”

WeCount’s organizing is hampered by Florida’s Republican governor and state legislature, which passed a law last year prohibiting local governments from enacting their own heat standards. In the absence of politicians who will stand for workers, WeCount members are trying to publicize the risks that agricultural workers take on. Their latest campaign, Planting Justice, centers on local plant nursery workers, who grow indoor houseplants. 

The goal is to try and educate consumers about the labor that goes into providing their monsteras, pothos, snake plants, and other indoor houseplants. “If you buy indoor houseplants, it’s very possible that that plant came from workers in Florida,” said Londoño, “workers who are being denied water, shade, and rest breaks by working in record-breaking heat, including 90- or 100-degree heat temperatures.”

Down the line, the nursery workers hope to solidify a set of demands and bring those concerns to companies like Home Depot and Lowes that sit at the top of the indoor plant supply chain. Similar tactics have worked for agricultural workers in other sectors; the Fair Food Program, first established by tomato pickers in 2011 in Florida, has won stringent heat protections for farmworkers in part by building strong support for laborers’ demands among consumers.

“Right now we are looking at every possible solution or strategy that can help workers reach these protections,” said Londoño. “What workers actually need is a guarantee that every single day they’ll be able to go to work and return home alive.” This kind of worker-led organizing will continue, he said, whether or not OSHA delivers its own heat standard.

“Right now we are looking at every possible solution or strategy that can help workers reach these protections,” said Londoño. “What workers actually need is a guarantee that every single day they’ll be able to go to work and return home alive.” This kind of worker-led organizing will continue, he said, whether or not OSHA delivers its own heat standard.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline A long-awaited rule to protect workers from heat stress moves forward, even under Trump on Jul 28, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Frida Garza.

But there’s going to be a new mine in East Tennessee — one of a few slated across the country, their permits expedited by President Donald Trump’s declaration of an “energy emergency” and his designating coal a critical mineral.

Trump was only hours into his second term when he signed an executive order declaring a national energy emergency that directed federal agencies to “identify and exercise any lawful emergency authorities available to them” to identify and exploit domestic energy resources. The administration also has scrapped Biden-era rules that made it easier to bring mining-related complaints to the federal government.

The emergency designation compresses the typically years-long environmental review required for a new mine to just weeks. These assessments are to be compiled within 14 days of receiving a permit application, limiting comment periods to 10 days. The process of compiling an environmental impact statement – a time-intensive procedure involving scientists from many disciplines and assessments of wildlife populations, water quality, and other factors –  is reduced to less than a month. The government insists this eliminates burdensome red tape.

“We’re not just issuing permits — we’re supporting communities, securing supply chains for critical industries, and making sure the U.S. stays competitive in a changing global energy landscape,” Adam Suess,  the acting assistant secretary for land and minerals management at the Interior Department, said in a statement. A representative of the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement told Grist that community safety is top of mind, pointing to the administration’s $725 million investment in abandoned mineland reclamation.

The Department of Interior ruled that the Hurricane Creek Mine slated for Claiborne County, Tennessee, would have “no significant impact” and approved it. It will provide about two dozen jobs. The strip mine will cover 635 acres of previously mined land that has reverted to forest. Hurricane Creek Mining, LLC plans to pry 1.8 million tons of coal from the earth over 10 years.

The Clearfork Valley, which straddles two rural counties and has long struggled economically, bears the scars of more than a century’s underground and surface mining. Local residents and scientists regularly test the creeks for signs of bright-orange mine drainage and other toxins.

The land is part of a tract the Nature Conservancy bought in 2019 for conservation purposes, but because of ownership structures in the coalfields, it owns only the land, not the minerals within it. “We have concerns about the potential environmental impacts of the operation,” the organization said in a statement. “We seek assurance that there will be adequate bonding, consistent and transparent environmental monitoring, and good reclamation practices.”

Matt Hepler, an environmental scientist with environmental advocacy group Appalachian Voices, has been following the mine’s public review process since the company applied for a permit in 2023. He remains skeptical that things will work out well for Hurricane Creek. Despite Trump’s promise that he is “bringing back an industry that’s been abandoned,” coal has seen a steady decline, driven in no small part by the plummeting price of natural gas. The number of people working the nation’s coal mines has steadily declined from 89,000 or so in 2012 to about 41,300 today. Production fell 31 percent during Trump’s first term, and has continued that slide. 

“What is this company doing differently that’s going to allow them to profitably succeed while so many other mines have not been able to make that work?” he said. “All the time I’ve been working in Tennessee there’s only been a couple of mines permitted to begin with because production has been on the downswing there,” Hepler added. 

Economists say opening more mines may not reverse the global downward trend. Plentiful, cheap natural gas, along with increasingly affordable wind and solar, are displacing coal as an energy source. The situation is so dire that one Stanford University study argued that the gas would continue its climb even with the elimination of coal-related regulations. Metallurgical coal, used to make steel — and which Hurricane Creek hopes  to excavate — fares no better. It has seen flat or declining demand amid innovation in steel production.

Expedited permits are leading to new mines in the West as well. The Department of Interior just approved a land lease for Wyoming’s first new coal mine in 50 years. Ramaco Resources will extract and process the material in order to retrieve the rare earth and other critical minerals found alongside it. The Trump administration also is selling coal leases on previously protected federal land. Shiloh Hernandez, a senior attorney at the Northern Rockies office of the environmental nonprofit Earthjustice, thinks it is a fool’s errand.

“I don’t see them changing the fundamental dynamics of coal,” he said. “That’s not to say that the Trump administration won’t cause lots of harm in the process by both making the public pay more money for energy than they should and by keeping some of these coal plants and coal mines that really are zombies.”

Still, Hernandez said he isn’t seeing many new permits, just quicker approval of those already in the pipeline. That said, the Trump administration’s moves to streamline environmental review will reduce oversight and the time the public has to scrutinize coal projects.

“The result is there’s just going to be it’s going to be more difficult for the public to participate, and more harm is going to occur,” Hernandez said. “There’s going to be less attention to the harm that’s caused by these operations.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Trump is fast-tracking new coal mines – even when they don’t make economic sense on Jul 18, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Katie Myers.

The vision

“I think a lot of people now are aware of PFAS, or concerned about it, or want to know whether it’s present in their water, their food. The whole purpose of what we’re trying to do is develop something that’s simple and cost effective to answer that question for them.”

— Bryan Berger, professor of chemical engineering at the University of Virginia

The spotlight

Last fall, we wrote a story about how a group of researchers, together with the Mi’kmaq Nation in Maine, have been working to address contamination from PFAS — per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, a group of pernicious, human-made chemical compounds sometimes known as “forever chemicals.” The substances, which have been increasingly linked to health issues, are a common problem for farmers and other landowners in the state of Maine. The group had seen some early success using hemp plants to draw PFAS out of the soil, on a parcel of land the tribe had acquired at a former Air Force base. But many questions remained — for them and others working on this issue — about how the chemicals travel and accumulate, what safe uses for contaminated land might be, and how to actually break down these forever chemicals.

“I think everybody is struggling with that question, trying to figure out, what does ‘forever’ mean? How long will it persist in soil? How will it transport through the environment?” Bryan Berger, one of the researchers, told me at the time. In addition to the work with the Mi’kmaq Nation’s hemp experiment, his lab has been looking at a range of ways that the plant kingdom might help us track and maybe even eliminate PFAS contamination.

I’ve been eager to follow up with Berger, a chemical engineer at the University of Virginia, about what he and his collaborators have learned so far in striving to answer those questions. At the time, the group had just received a four-year grant from the Environmental Protection Agency to continue studying the remediation potential of hemp plants, as well as other pursuits, like how to give farmers better testing tools to know when their land is contaminated. But over the past couple of months, as with so many research projects, the group has faced setbacks. Their grant (already approved by Congress) was unexpectedly terminated in May, along with a slate of other grants focused on PFAS research — previously considered a pretty nonpartisan issue.

The group appealed, and the EPA reinstated their grant in late June, with no further explanation.

“Because of this whole situation, I don’t feel as totally sure about [the funding] as I did when we first got the grant,” Chelli Stanley, co-founder of an environmental organization called Upland Grassroots and one of the key collaborators on the Maine project, told the Maine Morning Star. “But of course, we are just going to go forward and do all of our work, I’m sure maybe at an accelerated pace in some ways, just to do as much testing as we can.”

As Berger shared with me, that work is still in its early stages, but has yielded some exciting results for the team.

One of the first questions in the battle to try and contain PFAS is whether the chemicals are present in a given area — say, a farm or a field — and if so, where they might be coming from. The mounting evidence that PFAS may be hazardous to human health has led the chemicals to be banned in many places. “The expectation was that you should see a reduction in PFAS levels accumulating in soil and crops,” Berger said, “but that has not happened.” There are still unregulated sources causing the substances to spread.

Giving land and water managers better testing tools to track PFAS is something his lab had been working on for a long time. Testing for PFAS is currently done with a mass spectrometer, a sophisticated piece of lab equipment. This yields high-quality data, but it’s very expensive and time-consuming, Berger said — running around $400 per sample, with a one- to two-week turnaround time. “There’s just a huge shortage of infrastructure to do testing at the scale necessary,” he said. Land stewards need a simple test akin to a pH strip that can measure PFAS — and Berger and his team developed something close: a biosensor, in the form of a fluorescent microbe that glows when it’s exposed to PFAS.

Through the collaboration with the Mi’kmaq Nation, Berger and his collaborators tested the biosensors on water samples taken near the tribe’s land at the former Air Force base — and in a report published in October, they found that the sensors could effectively detect the high levels of the chemicals, even in samples that contained other contaminants.

“So we have a direct testing method that could be used, that’s kind of a cheap, fast point of detection,” Berger said. It won’t replace the more sophisticated lab testing, but offers an option for farmers who want to test, say, across hundreds of acres.

To build on this work, Berger hopes to develop a way to embed the same technology within a plant — which he calls “a new twist on an old idea.” The old idea refers to the concept of sentinel plants: traditionally, a plant susceptible to certain diseases or pests that farmers would monitor to see when those pests were present, and then tailor control measures accordingly. “What if we then go a step further and engineer the plant to indicate a signal to tell you that there’s PFAS present — you know, maybe you apply a pesticide and then it turns on,” Berger said. As with the microbes his team tested, that signal could be fluorescence — meaning the plants would literally glow when PFAS are present. A warning sign like this would mean farmers wouldn’t need to take an extra step of regular testing, even with simple microbe kits; they could just look at the sentinel plant to see when PFAS show up. “Then you’re getting real time data,” Berger said.

Another thing he and the team in Maine have been working on is understanding whether food grown in PFAS-contaminated soil or fed by PFAS-contaminated water is then contaminated as well, and therefore unsafe to eat. The obvious answer would seem to be yes — but it depends on how the substances travel, where they accumulate, and whether certain plants could be resistant to taking them up.

“If there are cultivars that are PFAS resistant, that could be another tool in the arsenal for growers,” Berger said. Similarly, if farmers understood that PFAS were only gathering in a part of the plant that was nonedible, they may still be able to safely grow certain crops while simultaneously working on remediation. Just recently, the team had a breakthrough finding on that front.

“We did a study where we looked at accumulation of PFAS in potatoes, which are kind of an important part of Maine’s agricultural heritage,” Berger said. “They’re very proud of their Maine potatoes.” That study, published by the Central Aroostook Soil and Water Conservation District in Maine, one of the grant partners, found that PFAS did not accumulate in the edible root of the potato — the chemicals were only stored in the green leafy portions.

“So you could grow potatoes even if there was PFAS present in the irrigation water, which is what they found,” Berger said. The team plans to continue testing other common crops like broccoli, brussels sprouts, and kale, as well as culturally significant plants for the Mi’kmaq Nation, like fiddleheads and ash trees.

While these are heartening findings from just the first few months of the grant, one of the biggest questions that remains for anybody working on PFAS is what, if anything, can be done to actually get rid of the chemicals. According to Berger and his collaborators, there is currently no scalable, cost-effective way to destroy PFAS. “It’s the million-dollar question,” Berger said.

But his lab has been testing one possible approach, essentially mimicking photosynthesis in a specially engineered microbe and using the energy from that process to break down PFAS that the microbe had absorbed. “So, kind of making plants or other microorganisms divert some of that energy or electrons into PFAS destruction,” Berger said. The initial, early-stage trials have shown promise, though there is still more research to be done before the approach could be attempted in a real-life application. “It’s not a perfect solution ready to go or anything, but those are promising things we’re doing that are different from what is currently out there,” Burger said. Actually breaking down PFAS within a contaminated plant or microbe would mean that the substances wouldn’t spread further — unlike other disposal methods, like incineration, which can release the chemicals into the air.

“If it works, it’s the most environmentally benign way we could do things because it’s almost all biological,” Berger said.

— Claire Elise Thompson

More exposure

• Read: about the history of PFAS contamination on farms in Maine (The Maine Monitor)
• Read: about how soybeans could help displace a common source of PFAS: firefighting foam (Grist)
• Read: about another contaminant that has endangered the health of communities for centuries — lead — and what the city of Chicago is doing about its lead pipe problem. Chicago has the most lead service lines in the country, and a new project by Grist, Inside Climate News, and WBEZ exposes how far behind the city is in replacing them

A parting shot

In this photo from 2019, dairy farmer Fred Stone held a small press conference on his land in Arundel, Maine, calling on public officials to take action to avoid future PFAS contamination on farms. He shuttered his farm after discovering the levels of PFAS in his cows’ milk, and became a leading advocate for action. Many farms in the state, like Stone’s, were exposed to the chemicals through the application of sludge, or biosolids — a treated wastewater product that was long used as a fertilizer.

IMAGE CREDITS

Vision: Mia Torres / Grist

Parting shot: Gregory Rec/Portland Portland Press Herald via Getty Images

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How plants could help us detect, and even destroy, dangerous ‘forever chemicals’ on Jul 2, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Claire Elise Thompson.

For weeks, smoke from Canadian wildfires has poured down into the United States, drifting clear across the Atlantic into Europe. Pulmonologist Vivek Balasubramaniam, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, noticed more people calling in with asthma symptoms and asking for advice when smoke doused the region in early June.

“Walking outside those days, I mean, you could see the brown-orange discoloration to the air,” he said. “When you’re breathing in, you kind of feel like the air is a little heavier, a little harder to do things.” 

Monitoring air quality is key to forecasting and assessing wildfire smoke. Right now, that’s a coordinated effort between federal, state, tribal, and local entities. Federally approved and privately operated monitors feed data into tools like the Environmental Protection Agency’s AirNow tool, and help forecast air quality and issue public health guidance. But air quality scientists worry that EPA budget and job cuts will make it difficult to get air quality information to people, endangering public health. And when it comes to longer-term research, some experts say community monitors won’t fill in the gap.

The Trump administration announced plans last month to reorganize the agency and cut staff back to levels last seen in the Reagan era, which could mean the elimination of thousands of jobs. The EPA’s proposed budget for 2026 would halve its funding, from $9.14 billion to $4.16 billion. 

“This is really disappointing,” said Christi Chester-Schroeder, lead air quality scientist at IQAir, a free platform. “And honestly, it is sort of antithetical, in the sense that the healthcare costs associated with breathing poor quality error are really significant globally.”

Along with proposed cuts to grants for state and local air quality management and pollution control, the EPA is planning to restructure how it regulates air quality, dismantling two offices charged with regulating air and climate pollution and running such programs: the Office of Atmospheric Protection and the Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards. 

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The EPA plans to create two new offices to clear a backlog of state plans to meet national air quality standards. A spokesperson said in an email that the new Office of State Air Partnerships would “improve coordination with state, local, and tribal air permitting agencies” to “resolve permitting concerns more efficiently and ensure EPA is working with states, not against them, to advance our shared mission.” The Office of Clean Air Programs would “align statutory obligations and essential functions with centers of expertise to create greater transparency in our regulatory work.”

Pushback on staffing and funding cuts has been constant. A U.S. District Court judge in Maryland ruled last week that the agency’s termination of $600 million in grants to help communities address pollution was unlawful. And the largest federal workers union was part of a coalition that sued this spring to halt cuts. A federal judge ruled in their favor in May, blocking new layoff and reorganization notices.

“EPA is complying with the court’s preliminary injunction,” said an EPA spokesperson of the lawsuit in an email. “In line with the court’s order and guidance received by the Department of Justice, EPA is moving forward with only reorganization planning activities.”

But the agency has already been hamstrung, according to Cathleen Kelly, a senior fellow at the left-leaning think tank Center for American Progress, who said that eliminating the current air monitoring offices would harm research and public health — even if some of their components are preserved elsewhere. 

“It will leave communities more vulnerable when wildfire smoke makes the air unhealthy to breathe, for example, or when corporate polluters release unlawful amounts of pollution and on bad air quality days that increase asthma attacks and land kids and adults that are struggling to breathe in the hospital,” she said.

Overall, air quality in the U.S. has improved in the decades since the Clean Air Act was enacted in 1970 and began more strictly regulating industrial pollution. The EPA’s own sophisticated monitors have been able to track changes over time, confirming how effective air quality regulations are. 

That progress has been curtailed as wildfire smoke has become more prevalent, and even one bad wildfire season can put the health of communities at risk, with Indigenous nations, low-income communities, and communities of color disproportionately affected. The American Lung Association says nearly half of Americans live with unhealthy levels of air pollution, and that wildfire smoke is a major factor. It can spread far from its source, affecting urban areas that are already dealing with pollution from industry and transportation as well as rural communities with less monitoring because they have fewer people. 

As the EPA seeks to cut jobs, some experts worry there won’t be the staff — or the institutional expertise — to process and distribute that data even if air quality monitors continue to collect readings. And as the EPA guts environmental regulations, like rolling back clean air rules for power plants, it may be harder for scientists to properly assess impacts to public health. 

“That’s, to me, the most concerning consequence,” said Tarik Benmarhnia, a professor of environmental epidemiology at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography who studies wildfire smoke.

The main hazard in wildfire smoke is PM 2.5, or particulate matter smaller than 2.5 microns (a millionth of a meter). This is bad for anyone to breathe, but especially hazardous for those with asthma or heart conditions. As wildfire smoke travels through the atmosphere, it also changes chemically to produce the toxic gas ozone, making breathing the stuff even more hazardous. 

Canadian scientists are also worried that the fires are burning across soils heavily polluted by mining operations, so the smoke could be laced with toxicants like arsenic and lead.

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As climate change exacerbates droughts and raises temperatures — which sucks up the moisture in vegetation — more landscapes are burning and loading the atmosphere with smoke. Recent research has shown that the human health impact of PM 2.5 from wildfire smoke can be up to 10 times higher than other sources of particulate matter, said Benmarhnia. A study published last month in the journal Communications Earth and Environment found that between 2006 and 2020, climate change contributed to 15,000 deaths due to particulate matter from wildfire smoke. 

To understand how wildfire smoke is affecting people’s health and warn them of its dangers, it needs to be measured. Places like the Great Lakes that aren’t used to dealing with wildfires and their fallout are just now solidifying public health awareness campaigns. 

“The first statewide air quality alert for fine particulate matter from wildfire smoke was in 2023,” said Aaron Ferguson, who manages the Climate and Tracking Unit at the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services. “That’s really when we first started developing a lot of our public health guidance and response strategies.”

That work relies in part on more than 40 air quality stations run by the state through EPA grants that are still in place for now.

Increasingly, federal air quality monitors have been supplemented by private companies and community monitoring efforts, including among tribal nations, rural areas and places federal and state governments have neglected. Free services like PurpleAir and IQAir provide hyper-local air quality readings for people to determine if they need to shelter from wildfire smoke. 

“What people are using this for is to decide when to let the kids out with asthma, or when to go cycling if they’re an athlete,” said Adrian Dybwad, CEO and founder of PurpleAir.

Pierce Mayville, the air quality scientist for the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, said those monitors are “huge” when it comes to getting people usable, practical information, providing near-real-time information about air quality. They have one and are setting up another. 

“If we see the level really high in the purple, then we let people know,” Mayville said. “People can look at the map and see a live-time view of what’s going on so they can keep track of the air quality in their area.”

What Benmarhnia and other scientists need is a steady stream of reliable data, especially from advanced sensors that determine the composition of wildfire smoke, like if it contains heavy metals. Cheaper instruments just measure the amount of PM 2.5 in the air, not what it’s made of. They can then correlate that data with hospital emissions in a given area to get insights into what makes wildfire emissions so deadly. 

“In order to be able to better test these hypotheses, we need these federally funded monitors and networks and data,” Benmarhnia said. “This is critical. Without that, it would be impossible to do this type of research and better understand what is going on.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How shrinking the EPA could make wildfire smoke even more dangerous on Jun 24, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Izzy Ross.

For weeks, smoke from Canadian wildfires has poured down into the United States, drifting clear across the Atlantic into Europe. Pulmonologist Vivek Balasubramaniam, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, noticed more people calling in with asthma symptoms and asking for advice when smoke doused the region in early June.

“Walking outside those days, I mean, you could see the brown-orange discoloration to the air,” he said. “When you’re breathing in, you kind of feel like the air is a little heavier, a little harder to do things.” 

Monitoring air quality is key to forecasting and assessing wildfire smoke. Right now, that’s a coordinated effort between federal, state, tribal, and local entities. Federally approved and privately operated monitors feed data into tools like the Environmental Protection Agency’s AirNow tool, and help forecast air quality and issue public health guidance. But air quality scientists worry that EPA budget and job cuts will make it difficult to get air quality information to people, endangering public health. And when it comes to longer-term research, some experts say community monitors won’t fill in the gap.

The Trump administration announced plans last month to reorganize the agency and cut staff back to levels last seen in the Reagan era, which could mean the elimination of thousands of jobs. The EPA’s proposed budget for 2026 would halve its funding, from $9.14 billion to $4.16 billion. 

“This is really disappointing,” said Christi Chester-Schroeder, lead air quality scientist at IQAir, a free platform. “And honestly, it is sort of antithetical, in the sense that the healthcare costs associated with breathing poor quality error are really significant globally.”

Along with proposed cuts to grants for state and local air quality management and pollution control, the EPA is planning to restructure how it regulates air quality, dismantling two offices charged with regulating air and climate pollution and running such programs: the Office of Atmospheric Protection and the Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards. 

Read Next

The smoke from Canada’s wildfires may be even more toxic than usual

Matt Simon

The EPA plans to create two new offices to clear a backlog of state plans to meet national air quality standards. A spokesperson said in an email that the new Office of State Air Partnerships would “improve coordination with state, local, and tribal air permitting agencies” to “resolve permitting concerns more efficiently and ensure EPA is working with states, not against them, to advance our shared mission.” The Office of Clean Air Programs would “align statutory obligations and essential functions with centers of expertise to create greater transparency in our regulatory work.”

Pushback on staffing and funding cuts has been constant. A U.S. District Court judge in Maryland ruled last week that the agency’s termination of $600 million in grants to help communities address pollution was unlawful. And the largest federal workers union was part of a coalition that sued this spring to halt cuts. A federal judge ruled in their favor in May, blocking new layoff and reorganization notices.

“EPA is complying with the court’s preliminary injunction,” said an EPA spokesperson of the lawsuit in an email. “In line with the court’s order and guidance received by the Department of Justice, EPA is moving forward with only reorganization planning activities.”

But the agency has already been hamstrung, according to Cathleen Kelly, a senior fellow at the left-leaning think tank Center for American Progress, who said that eliminating the current air monitoring offices would harm research and public health — even if some of their components are preserved elsewhere. 

“It will leave communities more vulnerable when wildfire smoke makes the air unhealthy to breathe, for example, or when corporate polluters release unlawful amounts of pollution and on bad air quality days that increase asthma attacks and land kids and adults that are struggling to breathe in the hospital,” she said.

Overall, air quality in the U.S. has improved in the decades since the Clean Air Act was enacted in 1970 and began more strictly regulating industrial pollution. The EPA’s own sophisticated monitors have been able to track changes over time, confirming how effective air quality regulations are. 

That progress has been curtailed as wildfire smoke has become more prevalent, and even one bad wildfire season can put the health of communities at risk, with Indigenous nations, low-income communities, and communities of color disproportionately affected. The American Lung Association says nearly half of Americans live with unhealthy levels of air pollution, and that wildfire smoke is a major factor. It can spread far from its source, affecting urban areas that are already dealing with pollution from industry and transportation as well as rural communities with less monitoring because they have fewer people. 

As the EPA seeks to cut jobs, some experts worry there won’t be the staff — or the institutional expertise — to process and distribute that data even if air quality monitors continue to collect readings. And as the EPA guts environmental regulations, like rolling back clean air rules for power plants, it may be harder for scientists to properly assess impacts to public health. 

“That’s, to me, the most concerning consequence,” said Tarik Benmarhnia, a professor of environmental epidemiology at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography who studies wildfire smoke.

The main hazard in wildfire smoke is PM 2.5, or particulate matter smaller than 2.5 microns (a millionth of a meter). This is bad for anyone to breathe, but especially hazardous for those with asthma or heart conditions. As wildfire smoke travels through the atmosphere, it also changes chemically to produce the toxic gas ozone, making breathing the stuff even more hazardous. 

Canadian scientists are also worried that the fires are burning across soils heavily polluted by mining operations, so the smoke could be laced with toxicants like arsenic and lead.

Read Next

Canada’s wildfire crisis is displacing First Nations at alarming rates

Miacel Spotted Elk

As climate change exacerbates droughts and raises temperatures — which sucks up the moisture in vegetation — more landscapes are burning and loading the atmosphere with smoke. Recent research has shown that the human health impact of PM 2.5 from wildfire smoke can be up to 10 times higher than other sources of particulate matter, said Benmarhnia. A study published last month in the journal Communications Earth and Environment found that between 2006 and 2020, climate change contributed to 15,000 deaths due to particulate matter from wildfire smoke. 

To understand how wildfire smoke is affecting people’s health and warn them of its dangers, it needs to be measured. Places like the Great Lakes that aren’t used to dealing with wildfires and their fallout are just now solidifying public health awareness campaigns. 

“The first statewide air quality alert for fine particulate matter from wildfire smoke was in 2023,” said Aaron Ferguson, who manages the Climate and Tracking Unit at the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services. “That’s really when we first started developing a lot of our public health guidance and response strategies.”

That work relies in part on more than 40 air quality stations run by the state through EPA grants that are still in place for now.

Increasingly, federal air quality monitors have been supplemented by private companies and community monitoring efforts, including among tribal nations, rural areas and places federal and state governments have neglected. Free services like PurpleAir and IQAir provide hyper-local air quality readings for people to determine if they need to shelter from wildfire smoke. 

“What people are using this for is to decide when to let the kids out with asthma, or when to go cycling if they’re an athlete,” said Adrian Dybwad, CEO and founder of PurpleAir.

Pierce Mayville, the air quality scientist for the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, said those monitors are “huge” when it comes to getting people usable, practical information, providing near-real-time information about air quality. They have one and are setting up another. 

“If we see the level really high in the purple, then we let people know,” Mayville said. “People can look at the map and see a live-time view of what’s going on so they can keep track of the air quality in their area.”

What Benmarhnia and other scientists need is a steady stream of reliable data, especially from advanced sensors that determine the composition of wildfire smoke, like if it contains heavy metals. Cheaper instruments just measure the amount of PM 2.5 in the air, not what it’s made of. They can then correlate that data with hospital emissions in a given area to get insights into what makes wildfire emissions so deadly. 

“In order to be able to better test these hypotheses, we need these federally funded monitors and networks and data,” Benmarhnia said. “This is critical. Without that, it would be impossible to do this type of research and better understand what is going on.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How shrinking the EPA could make wildfire smoke even more dangerous on Jun 24, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Izzy Ross.

For weeks, smoke from Canadian wildfires has poured down into the United States, drifting clear across the Atlantic into Europe. Pulmonologist Vivek Balasubramaniam, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, noticed more people calling in with asthma symptoms and asking for advice when smoke doused the region in early June.

“Walking outside those days, I mean, you could see the brown-orange discoloration to the air,” he said. “When you’re breathing in, you kind of feel like the air is a little heavier, a little harder to do things.” 

Monitoring air quality is key to forecasting and assessing wildfire smoke. Right now, that’s a coordinated effort between federal, state, tribal, and local entities. Federally approved and privately operated monitors feed data into tools like the Environmental Protection Agency’s AirNow tool, and help forecast air quality and issue public health guidance. But air quality scientists worry that EPA budget and job cuts will make it difficult to get air quality information to people, endangering public health. And when it comes to longer-term research, some experts say community monitors won’t fill in the gap.

The Trump administration announced plans last month to reorganize the agency and cut staff back to levels last seen in the Reagan era, which could mean the elimination of thousands of jobs. The EPA’s proposed budget for 2026 would halve its funding, from $9.14 billion to $4.16 billion. 

“This is really disappointing,” said Christi Chester-Schroeder, lead air quality scientist at IQAir, a free platform. “And honestly, it is sort of antithetical, in the sense that the healthcare costs associated with breathing poor quality error are really significant globally.”

Along with proposed cuts to grants for state and local air quality management and pollution control, the EPA is planning to restructure how it regulates air quality, dismantling two offices charged with regulating air and climate pollution and running such programs: the Office of Atmospheric Protection and the Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards. 

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The smoke from Canada’s wildfires may be even more toxic than usual

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The EPA plans to create two new offices to clear a backlog of state plans to meet national air quality standards. A spokesperson said in an email that the new Office of State Air Partnerships would “improve coordination with state, local, and tribal air permitting agencies” to “resolve permitting concerns more efficiently and ensure EPA is working with states, not against them, to advance our shared mission.” The Office of Clean Air Programs would “align statutory obligations and essential functions with centers of expertise to create greater transparency in our regulatory work.”

Pushback on staffing and funding cuts has been constant. A U.S. District Court judge in Maryland ruled last week that the agency’s termination of $600 million in grants to help communities address pollution was unlawful. And the largest federal workers union was part of a coalition that sued this spring to halt cuts. A federal judge ruled in their favor in May, blocking new layoff and reorganization notices.

“EPA is complying with the court’s preliminary injunction,” said an EPA spokesperson of the lawsuit in an email. “In line with the court’s order and guidance received by the Department of Justice, EPA is moving forward with only reorganization planning activities.”

But the agency has already been hamstrung, according to Cathleen Kelly, a senior fellow at the left-leaning think tank Center for American Progress, who said that eliminating the current air monitoring offices would harm research and public health — even if some of their components are preserved elsewhere. 

“It will leave communities more vulnerable when wildfire smoke makes the air unhealthy to breathe, for example, or when corporate polluters release unlawful amounts of pollution and on bad air quality days that increase asthma attacks and land kids and adults that are struggling to breathe in the hospital,” she said.

Overall, air quality in the U.S. has improved in the decades since the Clean Air Act was enacted in 1970 and began more strictly regulating industrial pollution. The EPA’s own sophisticated monitors have been able to track changes over time, confirming how effective air quality regulations are. 

That progress has been curtailed as wildfire smoke has become more prevalent, and even one bad wildfire season can put the health of communities at risk, with Indigenous nations, low-income communities, and communities of color disproportionately affected. The American Lung Association says nearly half of Americans live with unhealthy levels of air pollution, and that wildfire smoke is a major factor. It can spread far from its source, affecting urban areas that are already dealing with pollution from industry and transportation as well as rural communities with less monitoring because they have fewer people. 

As the EPA seeks to cut jobs, some experts worry there won’t be the staff — or the institutional expertise — to process and distribute that data even if air quality monitors continue to collect readings. And as the EPA guts environmental regulations, like rolling back clean air rules for power plants, it may be harder for scientists to properly assess impacts to public health. 

“That’s, to me, the most concerning consequence,” said Tarik Benmarhnia, a professor of environmental epidemiology at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography who studies wildfire smoke.

The main hazard in wildfire smoke is PM 2.5, or particulate matter smaller than 2.5 microns (a millionth of a meter). This is bad for anyone to breathe, but especially hazardous for those with asthma or heart conditions. As wildfire smoke travels through the atmosphere, it also changes chemically to produce the toxic gas ozone, making breathing the stuff even more hazardous. 

Canadian scientists are also worried that the fires are burning across soils heavily polluted by mining operations, so the smoke could be laced with toxicants like arsenic and lead.

Read Next

Canada’s wildfire crisis is displacing First Nations at alarming rates

Miacel Spotted Elk

As climate change exacerbates droughts and raises temperatures — which sucks up the moisture in vegetation — more landscapes are burning and loading the atmosphere with smoke. Recent research has shown that the human health impact of PM 2.5 from wildfire smoke can be up to 10 times higher than other sources of particulate matter, said Benmarhnia. A study published last month in the journal Communications Earth and Environment found that between 2006 and 2020, climate change contributed to 15,000 deaths due to particulate matter from wildfire smoke. 

To understand how wildfire smoke is affecting people’s health and warn them of its dangers, it needs to be measured. Places like the Great Lakes that aren’t used to dealing with wildfires and their fallout are just now solidifying public health awareness campaigns. 

“The first statewide air quality alert for fine particulate matter from wildfire smoke was in 2023,” said Aaron Ferguson, who manages the Climate and Tracking Unit at the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services. “That’s really when we first started developing a lot of our public health guidance and response strategies.”

That work relies in part on more than 40 air quality stations run by the state through EPA grants that are still in place for now.

Increasingly, federal air quality monitors have been supplemented by private companies and community monitoring efforts, including among tribal nations, rural areas and places federal and state governments have neglected. Free services like PurpleAir and IQAir provide hyper-local air quality readings for people to determine if they need to shelter from wildfire smoke. 

“What people are using this for is to decide when to let the kids out with asthma, or when to go cycling if they’re an athlete,” said Adrian Dybwad, CEO and founder of PurpleAir.

Pierce Mayville, the air quality scientist for the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, said those monitors are “huge” when it comes to getting people usable, practical information, providing near-real-time information about air quality. They have one and are setting up another. 

“If we see the level really high in the purple, then we let people know,” Mayville said. “People can look at the map and see a live-time view of what’s going on so they can keep track of the air quality in their area.”

What Benmarhnia and other scientists need is a steady stream of reliable data, especially from advanced sensors that determine the composition of wildfire smoke, like if it contains heavy metals. Cheaper instruments just measure the amount of PM 2.5 in the air, not what it’s made of. They can then correlate that data with hospital emissions in a given area to get insights into what makes wildfire emissions so deadly. 

“In order to be able to better test these hypotheses, we need these federally funded monitors and networks and data,” Benmarhnia said. “This is critical. Without that, it would be impossible to do this type of research and better understand what is going on.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How shrinking the EPA could make wildfire smoke even more dangerous on Jun 24, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Izzy Ross.

That idea defies conventional political wisdom, which typically holds that people hate taxes. It emerged in a survey of 40,680 people in 20 nations that found strong support for a carbon tax that would transfer wealth from the worst polluters to people in developing nations. Most of them support such policies even if it takes money out of their own pocket. 

Adrian Fabre, lead author of the study published in Nature, wasn’t surprised by the results. He studies public attitudes toward climate policy at the International Center for Research on Environment and Development in Paris, and said this is the latest in a long line of studies showing that climate-related economic policies enjoy greater support, on the whole, than people assume.

This study asked people how they’d feel about a global carbon tax: The larger an individual’s contribution to climate change, the more they’d pay. In exchange, everyone in the world would receive about $30 per month. “People with a carbon footprint larger than the world average would financially lose, and those with a carbon footprint lower than the world average would win,” Fabre said.

The survey included 12 high-income countries and eight “middle-income” countries like Mexico, India, and Ukraine. The researchers surveyed at least 1,465 people in each nation over several weeks in May 2024. Japan showed the highest support, with 94 percent of respondents backing the idea of linking policies that combat inequality and climate change. 

That said, the policy was least popular in the United States, where the average person is responsible for about 18 tons of CO2 a year. About half of Americans surveyed supported the tax. (Three in 4 Biden voters favored the idea. Among Trump voters, just 26 percent did. In contrast, support ran as high as 75 percent across the European Union, where per-capita emissions are 10 tons. “We found that people in high-income countries are willing to let go of some purchasing power, if they can be sure that it solves climate change and global poverty,” Fabre said. Americans would end up foregoing about $85 a month, according to the study. 

That’s not to say such policies would remain popular once enacted. Canada learned this lesson with its tax-and-dividend scheme, which levied a tax on fossil fuels and returned nearly all of that money to households — most of which ended up receiving more money in dividends than they lost to the tax. People supported the plan when the government adopted it in 2019. But support slid as fuel prices rose, and the government scrapped it earlier this year amid pressure from voters and the fossil fuel industry.

“What matters ultimately is not the actual objective benefits that people receive,” said Matto Mildenberger, “but the perceived benefits that they think they are receiving.” 

Mildenberger studies the political drivers of policy inaction at the University of California Santa Barbara. In Canada’s case, the higher prices people paid at the gas pump weighed more heavily in their mind than the rebate they received later — especially when opponents of such a tax told them they were losing money. “One of the most critical factors in my mind that generates friction for these policies is interest group mobilization against them,” Mildenberger said.

Regardless of whether carbon pricing is the answer to the world’s climate woes, the fact that people are more supportive of climate policies that also fight poverty is telling, he said. 

“Inequality-reducing policies are a political winner, and integrating economic policy with climate policy will make climate policies more popular,” he said. “The public rewards policies that are like chewing gum and walking at the same time.” The question now is whether governments are listening. 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline A majority of people around the world support a carbon tax — even if they’re paying it on Jun 20, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Sophie Hurwitz.

For those who were pregnant at the time, enduring these extreme conditions wasn’t just uncomfortable — it may have left a lasting imprint on their children’s brains. That’s according to a new study published on Wednesday in the peer-reviewed journal PLOS One. Using MRI scans, researchers at Queens College, City University of New York, found that children whose mothers lived through Superstorm Sandy had distinct brain differences that could hinder their emotional development. The effects were even more dramatic when people were exposed to extreme heat during their pregnancy, in addition to the tropical storm, the researchers found. 

“It’s not just one climate stressor or one isolated event, but rather a combination of everything,” said Donato DeIngeniis, the lead author of the study and a doctoral student in neuropsychology at the CUNY Graduate Center. DeIngeniis’ study is the first of its kind to examine the joint effects of natural disasters and extreme heat — events that often coincide. A few years ago, scientists dubbed summer “danger season” since it’s a time of colliding risks, including heat, hurricanes, wildfires, and toxic smoke. And summertime temperatures keep climbing to new heights. 

The study analyzed brain imaging data from a group of 34 children, approximately 8 years old, whose mothers were pregnant during Superstorm Sandy — some of whom were pregnant at the time that Sandy made landfall, and some of whom were exposed to heat 95 degrees F or higher during their pregnancy. While the researchers didn’t find that heat alone had much of an impact, living through Superstorm Sandy led to an increase in the basal ganglia’s volume, a part of the brain that deals with regulating emotions. 

While that larger size could be a compensation in response to stress, changes in the basal ganglia have been linked to behavioral challenges for children, such as depression and autism, DeIngeniis said.

“What we are seeing is compelling evidence that the climate crisis is not just an environmental emergency, it is potentially a neurological one with consequence for future generations who will inherit our planet,” said Duke Shereen, a co-author of the study and the director of the MRI facility at CUNY Graduate Center, in a press release. Global warming made Superstorm Sandy more damaging as a result of rising sea levels and higher ocean temperatures that might have amped up its rainfall.

Yoko Nomura, a co-author of the study and a psychology professor at the Queens College, CUNY, said that the time before birth is “very, very sensitive” for development because the fetus’ body is changing so drastically. The human brain grows the most rapidly in the womb, reaching more than a third of its full adult volume before birth, according to the study. Any added stress at that time, even if small, “can have a much bigger impact,” Nomura said.

But that extra-sensitive period also presents a window of opportunity. “Developmental science, including the science in this paper, is exciting because it not only tells us what we can do to protect children from the effects of climate change, but it also tells us when we can step in to protect children to make the greatest difference,” Lindsey Burghardt, chief science officer at the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University, said in an email.

Although there’s a lot of evidence that prenatal stress generally can affect child brain development, according to DeIngeniis, research on climate-related stress specifically is lacking. “It is still a field that has potential for explosive growth,” said Jennifer Barkin, a professor at Mercer University School of Medicine in Macon, Georgia, who is studying the effects of last year’s Hurricane Helene on maternal health.

DeIngeniis’ study offers concrete evidence of how climate-charged events can affect the brain, Barkin said. “People have a hard time sometimes with mental health, because it’s not like you can take an X-ray and see a broken bone.” But it’s easier to understand imaging showing a difference in brain volume based on exposure to environmental stress, she said. 

Barkin, who developed an index for measuring maternal health after childbirth, says that people are beginning to pay more attention to mothers and their mental health — not just in terms of delivering a healthy baby, but over the long term. “We tend to focus things on the child’s outcome, which is important, but to keep the child healthy, the mother has to be healthy, too,” she said. “Because when Mom’s struggling, the family’s going to struggle.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Climate disasters can alter kids’ brains — before they’re even born on Jun 11, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Kate Yoder.

As the climate changes, the far north is drying and warming, which means wildfires are getting bigger and more intense. The area burned in Canada is now the second largest on record for this time of year, trailing behind the brutal wildfire season of 2023. That year, the amount of carbon blazed into the atmosphere was about three times the country’s fossil fuel emissions. And the more carbon that’s emitted from wildfires — in Canada and elsewhere — the faster the planetary warming, and the worse the fires. 

“There’s obviously the climate feedback concern,” said Mike Waddington, an environmental scientist at McMaster University in Ontario who studies Canada’s forests. “But increasingly we’re also concerned about the smoke.”

That’s because there’s much more to wildfire smoke than charred sticks and leaves, especially where these blazes are burning in Canada. The country’s forests have long been mined, operations that loaded soils and waterways with toxic metals like lead and mercury, especially before clean-air standards kicked in 50 years ago. Now everyone downwind of these wildfires may have to contend with that legacy and those pollutants, in addition to all the other nasties inherent in wildfire smoke, which are known to exacerbate respiratory and cardiac problems. 

“You have there the burning of these organic soils resulting in a lot of carbon and a lot of particulate matter,” said Waddington. “Now you have this triple whammy, where you have the metals remobilized in addition to that.”

What exactly is lurking in the smoke from Canadian wildfires will require further testing by scientists. But an area of particular concern is around the mining city of Flin Flon, in Manitoba, which is known to have elevated levels of toxic metals in the landscape, said Colin McCarter, an environmental scientist who studies pollutants at Ontario’s Nipissing University. Flin Flon’s 5,000 residents have been evacuated as a wildfire approaches, though so far no structures have been destroyed. 

But a fire doesn’t need to directly burn mining operations to mobilize toxicants. For example, in Yellowknife, in Canada’s Northwest Territories, gold mining operations between 1934 and 2004 spread arsenic as far as 18 miles away, adding to a landscape with an already high concentration of naturally occurring arsenic. In a paper published last year, Waddington and McCarter estimated that between 1972 and 2023, wildfires around Yellowknife fired up to 840,000 pounds of arsenic into the atmosphere. Arsenic is a known carcinogen associated with cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and developmental problems, according to the World Health Organization. (After the 2023 Lahaina fire in Maui, officials reported elevated levels of arsenic, lead, and other toxic substances in ash samples. California officials also found lots of lead in smoke from 2018’s Camp Fire.)

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Within wildfire smoke is also PM 2.5, particulate matter smaller than 2.5 microns (a millionth of a meter) that gets deep inside human lungs. This can exacerbate conditions like asthma and raise the risk of cardiac arrest up to 70 percent. One study found that in California alone, PM 2.5 emissions from wildfires caused more than 50,000 premature deaths between 2008 and 2018. 

Canadian ecosystems known as peatlands are especially good at holding onto toxicants like arsenic.  These form in soggy places where wet plant matter resists decay, building up into layers of peat — basically concentrated carbon. Peat can accumulate over millennia, meaning it can also hold onto pollutants deposited there decades ago. “The peat soils are landscape hot spots for metals,” said McCarter. “When it’s dry and hot — like we’ve been seeing with the weather over the prairie provinces and central and western Canada — the peatlands can really start to dry out. Then the fire is able to propagate and get hot enough to start releasing some of these metals.”

A peat fire behaves much weirder than a traditional forest fire. Instead of just burning horizontally across the landscape, a peat fire smolders down into the ground. This is a slow burn that lasts not just hours or days, but potentially months — releasing toxic metals and particulate matter as smoke all the while. Peat fires are so persistent that they’ll sometimes start in the summer, get covered over with snow in the winter, and pop up once again in the spring melt. Scientists call them zombie fires. 

As Canada’s wildfire smoke creeps down into the U.S., it’s also transforming. Chemical reactions between gases and sunlight create ozone, which further exacerbates lung conditions like asthma. “Once you get six hours to a day or so downwind, the ozone formation inside smoke plumes can start being problematic,” said Rebecca Hornbrook, an atmospheric chemist at the NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research, who studies wildfire smoke.

People fleeing Canada’s fires have to worry not just about losing their homes, but also losing their health. More than 40 percent of wildfire evacuations happen in communities that are predominantly Indigenous — an irony given that First Nations people know how to reduce the severity of these conflagrations, with traditional burning practices that more gently clear out the dead vegetation that acts as wildfire fuel. That strategy of prescribed burns, though, has only recently been making a comeback in Canada. “Let’s not forget that it’s immediately affecting a lot of, in particular, First Nations communities in the northern parts of Manitoba, Alberta, and Saskatchewan,” said Waddington.

This haze is already bad for human health, and now there’s the added potential for arsenic and other toxicants in the Canadian landscape to get caught up in wildfire smoke. “It’s a bad-news scenario,” Waddington said. “It’s quite scary.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The smoke from Canada’s wildfires may be even more toxic than usual on Jun 5, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Matt Simon.

The problem with plant-based alternatives, for the moment, is that most consumers just don’t seem interested in buying them instead of conventional meat. This year alone, U.S. retail sales for refrigerated plant-based burgers fell by more than a quarter. 

But there are signs that consumers might be perfectly happy to reduce their meat consumption in other ways. New research shows that meat eaters already prefer the taste of some “balanced proteins” — items like hamburgers and sausages that replace at least 30 percent of their meat content with vegetables — over conventional meat. While that may sound like a small change, the climate impact could be surprisingly large at scale: Initial research suggests that, if Americans replaced 30 percent of the meat in every burger they consume in a year, the carbon emission reductions would be equivalent to taking every car off the road in San Diego County. 

Taste and price are often listed as reasons for sluggish consumer interest in plant-based proteins. That’s where Nectar, the group that conducted the new research, comes in: Part of the philanthropic organization Food System Innovations, Nectar conducts large-scale blind taste tests with omnivores to determine exactly how much consumers prefer meat over veggie options, or vice versa. 

To be clear, balanced proteins — sometimes called “blended meats” — are a far cry from the vegetarian or vegan options that are most climate-friendly. Balanced proteins are still meat products, just with less meat. These novel foods incorporate plant-based protein or whole-cut vegetables into the mix. Companies experimenting with balanced proteins — which include boutique brands as well as meat titans like Purdue — frame these additions not as filler, but as a way to boost flavor and sneak more nutrients into one’s diet. It may not be a hard sell; after all, Americans are among the most ravenous meat consumers in the world, and they are estimated to eat 1.5 times more meat than dietary guidelines recommend.

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What Nectar found in its latest research is that the balanced protein category is already relatively popular with meat eaters: Participants reported they were more likely to buy balanced protein product than a vegan one. That means that balanced proteins could serve as one way to get consumers to eat less meat overall, lowering the carbon footprints of omnivores reluctant to give up burgers entirely.

In other words, while profit-minded companies like Purdue might sell blended meats as a win-win for consumers looking for better taste and higher nutritional content, the fact that substituting these products for conventional meat could cut down on greenhouse gas emissions is an unspoken perk for the planet.

“Taste has to be at the forefront” if animal protein substitution is going to take off, said Tim Dale, the Category Innovation Director at Food System Innovations.

Mixing vegetables and whole grains directly into meat products is nothing new. Onion, garlic, and parsley often appear in lamb kofta; breadcrumbs help give meatballs their shape and improve their texture. Dale noted that chefs sometimes mix mushrooms into burgers to keep their patties from drying out. Replacing one third of a sausage with, say, potatoes and bell peppers, is “just doubling down on that logic and doing so because of this new motivation of sustainability,” he added.

To gauge how consumers perceive balanced proteins, Dale and his team designed a series of blind taste tests in which participants sampled both traditional meat products — burgers, meatballs, chicken nuggets, and a half-dozen other popular meats — as well as balanced protein options of the same type. The consumers then responded to survey questions asking them to evaluate flavor, texture, and appearance. (Like previous studies done by Nectar, the taste tests were done in a restaurant setting, rather than a laboratory.)

Nearly 1,200 people — all of whom reported eating their product category (say, meatballs) at least once every month or two — participated in these taste tests. The results revealed that participants preferred the taste of three balanced protein brands — the Shiitake Infusion Burgers from Fable Food Co., the Purdue PLUS Chicken Nuggets from Purdue, and the Duo burger from Fusion Food Co. — over that of the “normal” all-meat alternatives. A fourth item, the BOTH Burger from 50/50 Foods, was ranked evenly with an all-meat burger, reaching what Nectar calls “taste parity”. 

Dale called balanced proteins “a re-emerging category,” one that has been around but might be well-positioned to pick up steam in a climate-changing world as both consumers and producers of meat struggle to make more sustainable choices. Nectar likens balanced proteins to hybrid cars, because they represent a midpoint on the path to going meatless. Cara Nicoletta, a fourth-generation butcher who founded Seemore Meat & Veggies, experimented with sneaking vegetables like bell peppers, mushrooms, and carrots into her sausages for a decade before launching her business around 2020. She has said that, while working as a butcher, the amount of meat she saw her customers purchase day in and day out did not “seem like a sustainable way to eat.”

While brands may not spell it out in their marketing, the reason why cutting the amount of beef or pork or chicken in your sausage is better for the environment is because raising meat for human consumption is a massive source of greenhouse gas emissions. In 2024, the United Nations found that the agrifood system is responsible for one third of global greenhouse gas emissions; in that same report, the U.N. stated that livestock was the single largest source of these emissions within the food system, followed by the deforestation required for the farmland and pasture that support omnivorous diets. This is difficult to talk about, and brands rarely do. (Purdue’s line of blended chicken nuggets instead highlights its hidden cauliflower and chickpea content as a nutritious plus for kids.)

For the climate-minded, of course, there’s no better way to reduce meat consumption than by cutting it out entirely. “Ideally, I’d love to see a future where we moved away from animals in the food system completely,” said Brittany Sartor, who co-founded Plant Futures, a curriculum at the University of California, Berkeley, geared towards preparing students for careers in the plant-based alternatives industry. (Sartor was not involved in the Nectar study.)

But she added that Nectar’s findings on balanced proteins are promising, and she believes these items “have potential to reduce animal consumption and its related health and environmental impacts — especially among certain consumer demographics.”

Dale put it this way: Whether people give up meat entirely or not, framing the veggie-forward option as superior can start with centering taste: “We are trying to promote and say that the sustainable choice is the more delicious way to cook.”

So far, meat eaters agree.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The sneaky way even meat lovers can lessen their climate impact on Jun 4, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Frida Garza.

Once temples of learning where new generations of students sought to advance their futures, Gaza’s universities have all been destroyed by Israel’s genocidal annihilation of the Gaza Strip, and many students and faculty have been killed. In this on-the-ground report, TRNN speaks with displaced Palestinian students and parents about the systematic destruction of life and all institutions of learning in Gaza, and about their reactions to Palestine solidarity protests on campuses in the West and around the world.

Producer: Belal Awad, Leo Erhardt
Videographer: Ruwaida Amer, Mahmoud Al Mashharawi
Video Editor: Leo Erhardt

Transcript

CHANTINGS: 

Free free Palestine! 

HAY’A ADIL AGHA: 

I saw the protests at Columbia University. There were protests in solidarity with Gaza. The police arrested more than 100 students. They were in solidarity with the students of Gaza. They arrested many teachers and students. There was also a university in Atlanta where the head of the philosophy department was arrested. The police used tear gas and rubber bullets to suppress these protests and demonstrations in solidarity with Gaza. 

HAY’A ADIL AGHA: 

Of course, when we see all this, we feel a sense of pride and gratitude. We want to thank them for standing with us. We thank the free people of the world—professors and students—for standing with us. Who stood with the students of Gaza, despite the repression, despite the arrests they stood with us, and this has helped us a lot. 

I am Haya Adil Agha, 21 years old, a fourth-year student at the Islamic University in Gaza. The Department of Science and Technology, specializing in smart technologies. The technology club was like a second home to us. There was a club president, we had club members, My classmates and I used to spend most of our time at the university. We had different groups and organized events. We would come up with innovations and new ideas for students. I used to spend most of my time at university with friends. We would discuss projects, questions and assignments and study together. If the professors were available you could go and ask them questions. So I used to spend all my time at University and they were the best years of my life —the last two years before the war. Exactly three days before the war—two weeks into the first semester. My professor requested that I present on a subject. So I prepared a PowerPoint presentation and handed out a summary to the students. I got up and began presenting. I had no idea that this would be my last presentation at university. Three days later, the war began. It destroyed our dreams, destroyed our future, destroyed our aspirations. All our memories now have no meaning. The place is gone and nothing is left. 

UM MOHAMED AWADH: 

Our dreams and everything else we ever wanted was destroyed with our homes. Even our dreams were destroyed. Everything in our life was destroyed. It used to be a really good area. It used to be a place for the youth to study and pursue their dreams. Look at the extent of the destruction. I mean it’s just rubble. Even learning has been banned here. We’ve started to dream about the simplest of things. Just to eat. The dreams of our children have become as basic as filling a bottle of water. They dream of reaching a soup kitchen. These are simple things. They have been robbed of their right to education. Their right to healthcare. They have been robbed of a lot.

HAY’A ADIL AGHA: 

I lost contact with some of my friends because they were killed at the beginning of the war. Of course, this impacts me because every day, you hear that a classmate was killed, that a professor at your university was killed. This has a profound impact on us as students. Many professors were killed, too. I can’t list them all. And I lost contact with many others because it was the university that used to bring us together. The war has driven us apart, so I couldn’t stay in touch with them. We were constantly displaced, moving from place to place. There was no internet and no electricity. I was forced to take my laptop outside to charge it. This was a big risk because, as an IT student, my most important tool is my laptop. As well as this, there was no internet. I had to travel far to get to the closest spot with internet. to be able to download lectures and slides to be able to study. I came back to the university after seeing it from afar. I had planned to visit briefly and then leave. When I saw it, I got depressed. I had seen it in pictures, but I wasn’t expecting this level of destruction. When I first arrived, I was so upset and angry. Everywhere I looked, I remembered things: This is the building where I used to sit; this is the corner where my friends and I used to hang. This is the building where a certain professor used to be. We would always go to ask him questions, and he would respond. All of the memories came back—so it affected me really deeply. My university—the place where I used to dream, where I spent two years of my life, the best two years of my life—was gone. I had been counting down the years until graduation. And just like that, it disappeared in the blink of an eye. In one day, the university was gone without a trace. 

HANI ABDURAHIM MOHAMED AWADH: 

The suffering in our lives—lack of water, food, and drink—is unbearable. You can see, the children, they have been robbed of everything. In the whole of the Gaza strip, from one end to the other, there is no safe place. Here used to be students and a university, all the people of Gaza used to study here. Now: it’s become ruins. All of it is just ruins. There’s nothing to be happy about. No reason to be happy. 

HAY’A ADIL AGHA: 

People have been forced to burn books. Firstly, there’s no gas—the occupation has stopped gas from entering Gaza. But people still have to fulfill their daily needs. There’s no gas, but people still need to cook and heat water. And on top of that, people have lost their source of income. So people can’t afford to buy wood or paper. so in the end they have been forced to burn the university library books. Of course they have been forced to do this. You have to understand people’s circumstances. 

ALAA FARES AL BIS: 

I have been displaced about 18 times. We left under fire, under air strikes. I mean, we couldn’t take anything with us—we left running for our lives. With ourselves and our children. There’s no food, no drink, no water, no proper sleep, no proper shelter. We are living amidst rubble. We ask the whole world to have mercy on us and to bring a ceasefire in Gaza. 

CHANTINGS:

Free free Palestine!

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Belal Awad, Leo Erhadt, Ruwaida Amer and Mahmoud Al Mashharawi.

The vision

“I just see this flattening of imagination. And that to me is the most terrifying thing. A lack of imagination leads to a lack of problem-solving, a lack of critical thinking. And that is what’s at risk here.”

— Emily Graslie, creator of The Brain Scoop

The spotlight

Last week, we shared a story about the shake-ups that workers, career coaches, and development experts are experiencing in the climate job market right now. I was really happy to see the piece making the rounds on LinkedIn, where several commenters noted that the words of advice, as well as the resources we rounded up at the end of the newsletter, were useful. But one quote in the piece, from Tom Di Liberto, a communications specialist whose job was recently cut at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, has stuck with me — and seems to have struck a chord with others, too: “It’s not so much about me losing a job,” he said. “It’s about this job not existing anymore.”

Many people who have lost their jobs or their funding in the past few months were leading bodies of climate work that reached communities in ways that may have been easy to take for granted — and these cuts will also have ripple effects into spaces that aren’t immediately obvious. As we report on the changes wrought by Donald Trump’s administration, and what they mean for our country and our climate future, Grist also wants to help capture the stories of what is being lost. If you’re one of those affected, please reach out to share your story — you can reply to this email, or click here for secure ways to contact us.

Emily Graslie is one of those you might not think of when you picture the work that’s being lost as a result of federal staff and funding cuts. She’s a science communicator who creates YouTube videos explaining all kinds of scientific research in fun, easy-to-understand ways. You may have stumbled across her channel, The Brain Scoop — or others like it — in your YouTube browsing, where she’s covered topics ranging from what fossils can teach us about climate change to how the city of Chicago is addressing its rat problem. She’s produced hundreds of videos and gained over 600,000 followers. But she’s now facing an uncertain future for the channel, and her work.

“There might just be one day you log onto YouTube and none of your favorite creators are there anymore,” she said.

Graslie, who was featured on our Grist 50 list back in 2016, created The Brain Scoop over a decade ago. She ran the show for years as the first-ever “chief curiosity correspondent” for the Field Museum in Chicago, sharing the behind-the-scenes work of the museum, and then later relaunched it as an independent creator, partnering with museums, nature centers, and other institutions across the country to help tell the story of their research.

Emily Graslie, the creator of The Brain Scoop. Julie Florio

Graslie is closely involved with the community of science communicators, including a group of primarily women and nonbinary creators. “The majority of us own and manage our own production companies, which involves negotiating contracts on a per-project basis,” Graslie told Grist. “We’re most excited when we get money from a science org that ‘gets us’ — like from a science center, or through a library outreach grant.” So it was a dream come true when she landed a gig working with the National Institutes of Health to create videos sharing and demystifying work from the largest medical research organization in the world.

The National Institutes of Health, or NIH, is part of the Department of Health and Human Services and comprises 27 institutions, each with its own research focus. “One area in particular we were interested in highlighting was infectious diseases, which we know are only going to become more prevalent with a warming climate,” Graslie said. As a non-scientist herself — but as a science enthusiast and taxpaying member of the public — a big part of her work was to break down for a general audience the importance of the science that our tax dollars fund. “I can be a conduit into some of these pretty opaque institutions,” she said.

She was supposed to be on campus at the NIH in January of this year to begin shooting for the series, which had already been in development for a year. Instead, she received an email telling her that the project was on hold until further notice.

“I found out from the press — I found out from a news headline that there was this communications gag for NIH,” she said, referencing a memo issued by the acting Health and Human Services secretary within the first days of the Trump administration, halting nearly all external communications. “Because I’m considered a member of the media, I was unable to communicate with these people I had been partnering with for over a year.” In February, she was visiting family in the Washington, D.C., area and reached out to one of her collaborators at their personal email address. “What’s the chance that we could run into one another at a coffee shop?” she asked. “Just to gossip. Just to chitchat.” Through that unofficial meeting, she learned that her project was effectively canceled.

She hadn’t been paid for any of the preproduction work she did in 2024, and now her funding for the entire year had evaporated.

Although it was quite a blow, the impact to the work that she does extends beyond losing this opportunity at NIH. The Trump administration has also frozen funding from the National Science Foundation and made moves to eliminate the Institute for Museum and Library Services (actions that Graslie covered on her YouTube channel recently). Many people may not realize, Graslie said, that the federal funding that supports scientific research and programming at museums and libraries also often covered contracts with independent creators like herself, to help communicate the work to the public. Without it, she fears that work like hers will be increasingly difficult to sustain.

“Online science content has never been lucrative,” she said, and these cuts are likely to push many people out of the space — especially creators who come from marginalized backgrounds, and can’t afford to invest time and energy into these projects without adequate pay.

But having been in this line of work for over a decade, Graslie said she is proud of the community of science enthusiasts and curious minds she has fostered. She regularly hears from viewers about how the show has influenced them — including some who began watching in middle school and went on to become scientists or teachers themselves.

“One of the most significant things that The Brain Scoop did is just share the different kinds of work that happens at nature centers and museums across the country, across the world. I think the loss — it’s just a limiting of people’s understandings of what they’re capable of, who they want to be when they grow up, how they see the world around them,” Graslie said.

“I just see this flattening of imagination. And that to me is the most terrifying thing. A lack of imagination leads to a lack of problem-solving, a lack of critical thinking. That is what’s at risk here.”

Know of another climate leader with a story like Emily’s? (Are you that person?) Tell us more about how you’re feeling the impacts of federal cuts: Reach out to us here.

— Claire Elise Thompson

A parting shot

In 2020, Emily Graslie made her debut on public television, hosting and producing a show for PBS called Prehistoric Road Trip. She traveled through the northern plains of the U.S. to learn about archaeology and paleontology, and see some cool fossils. Here she is in a quarry in Montana with the bone of a sauropod — a group of dinosaurs that includes the largest animals that have ever lived on land.

IMAGE CREDITS

Vision: Mia Torres / Grist

Spotlight: Julie Florio

Parting shot: Julie Florio and WTTW

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Even your favorite YouTube creators are feeling the effects of federal cuts on May 14, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Claire Elise Thompson.

The BBC’s role is not to keep viewers informed. It’s to persuade them a clear crime against humanity by Israel is, in fact, highly complicated geopolitics they cannot hope to understand

You can tell how bad levels of starvation now are in Gaza, as the population there begins the third month of a complete aid blockade by Israel, because last night the BBC finally dedicated a serious chunk of its main news programme, the News at Ten, to the issue.

But while upsetting footage of a skin-and-bones, five-month-old baby was shown, most of the segment was, of course, dedicated to confusing audiences by two-sidesing Israel’s genocidal programme of starving 2 million-plus Palestinian civilians.

Particularly shocking was the BBC’s failure in this extended report to mention even once the fact that Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has been a fugitive for months from the International Criminal Court, which wants him on trial for crimes against humanity. Why? For using starvation as a weapon of war against the civilian population.

I have yet to see the BBC, or any other major British media outlet, append the status “wanted war crimes suspect” when mentioning Netanyahu in stories. That is all the more unconscionable on this occasion, in a story directly related to the very issue – starving a civilian population – he is charged over.

Was mention of the arrest warrant against him avoided because it might signal a little too clearly that the highest legal authorities in the world attribute starvation in Gaza directly to Israel and its government, and do not see it – as the British establishment media apparently do – as some continuing, unfortunate “humanitarian” consequence of “war”.

Predictably misleading, too, was BBC Verify’s input. It provided a timeline of Israel’s intensified blockade that managed to pin the blame not on Israel, even though it is the one blocking all aid, but implicitly on Hamas.

Verify’s reporter asserted that in early March, Israel “blocked humanitarian aid, demanding that Hamas extend a ceasefire and release the remaining hostages”. He then jumped to 18 March, stating: “Israel resumes military operations.”

Viewers were left, presumably intentionally, with the impression that Hamas had rejected a continuation of the ceasefire and had refused to release the last of the hostages.

None of that is true. In fact, Israel never honoured the ceasefire, continuing to attack Gaza and kill civilians throughout. But worse, Israel’s supposed “extension” was actually its unilateral violation of the ceasefire by insisting on radical changes to the terms that had already been agreed, and which included Hamas releasing the hostages.

Israel broke the ceasefire precisely so it had the pretext it needed to return to starving Gaza’s civilians – and the hostages whose safety it proclaims to care about – as part of its efforts to make them so desperate they are prepared to risk their lives by forcing open the short border with neighbouring Sinai sealed by Egypt.

Yesterday, an Israeli government minister once again made clear what the game plan has been from the very start. “Gaza will be entirely destroyed,” Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister, said. Gaza’s population, he added, would be forced to “leave in great numbers to third countries”. In other words, Israel intends to carry out what the rest of us would call the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, as it has been doing continuously for eight decades.

What is the point of the BBC’s Verify service—supposedly there to fact-check and ensure viewers get only the unvarnished truth—when its team is itself peddling gross distortions of the truth?

The BBC and its Verify service are not keeping viewers informed. They are propagandising them into believing a clear crime against humanity by Israel is, in fact, highly complicated geopolitics that audiences cannot hope to understand.

The establishment media’s aim is to so confuse audiences that they will throw up their hands and say: “To hell with Israel and the Palestinians! They are as bad as each other. Leave it to the politicians and diplomats to sort out.”

In any other circumstance, it would strike you as obvious that starving children en masse is morally abhorrent, and that anyone who does it, or excuses it, is a monster. The role of the BBC is to persuade you that what should be obvious to you is, in fact, more complicated than you can appreciate.

There may be skin-and-bones babies, but there are also hostages. There may be tens of thousands of children being slaughtered, but there is also a risk of antisemitism. Israeli officials may be calling for the eradication of the Palestinian people, but the Jewish state they run needs to be preserved at all costs.

If we could spend five minutes in Gaza without the constant, babbling distractions of these so-called journalists, the truth would be clear. It’s a genocide. It was always a genocide.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Jonathan Cook.

The BBC’s role is not to keep viewers informed. It’s to persuade them a clear crime against humanity by Israel is, in fact, highly complicated geopolitics they cannot hope to understand

You can tell how bad levels of starvation now are in Gaza, as the population there begins the third month of a complete aid blockade by Israel, because last night the BBC finally dedicated a serious chunk of its main news programme, the News at Ten, to the issue.

But while upsetting footage of a skin-and-bones, five-month-old baby was shown, most of the segment was, of course, dedicated to confusing audiences by two-sidesing Israel’s genocidal programme of starving 2 million-plus Palestinian civilians.

Particularly shocking was the BBC’s failure in this extended report to mention even once the fact that Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has been a fugitive for months from the International Criminal Court, which wants him on trial for crimes against humanity. Why? For using starvation as a weapon of war against the civilian population.

I have yet to see the BBC, or any other major British media outlet, append the status “wanted war crimes suspect” when mentioning Netanyahu in stories. That is all the more unconscionable on this occasion, in a story directly related to the very issue – starving a civilian population – he is charged over.

Was mention of the arrest warrant against him avoided because it might signal a little too clearly that the highest legal authorities in the world attribute starvation in Gaza directly to Israel and its government, and do not see it – as the British establishment media apparently do – as some continuing, unfortunate “humanitarian” consequence of “war”.

Predictably misleading, too, was BBC Verify’s input. It provided a timeline of Israel’s intensified blockade that managed to pin the blame not on Israel, even though it is the one blocking all aid, but implicitly on Hamas.

Verify’s reporter asserted that in early March, Israel “blocked humanitarian aid, demanding that Hamas extend a ceasefire and release the remaining hostages”. He then jumped to 18 March, stating: “Israel resumes military operations.”

Viewers were left, presumably intentionally, with the impression that Hamas had rejected a continuation of the ceasefire and had refused to release the last of the hostages.

None of that is true. In fact, Israel never honoured the ceasefire, continuing to attack Gaza and kill civilians throughout. But worse, Israel’s supposed “extension” was actually its unilateral violation of the ceasefire by insisting on radical changes to the terms that had already been agreed, and which included Hamas releasing the hostages.

Israel broke the ceasefire precisely so it had the pretext it needed to return to starving Gaza’s civilians – and the hostages whose safety it proclaims to care about – as part of its efforts to make them so desperate they are prepared to risk their lives by forcing open the short border with neighbouring Sinai sealed by Egypt.

Yesterday, an Israeli government minister once again made clear what the game plan has been from the very start. “Gaza will be entirely destroyed,” Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister, said. Gaza’s population, he added, would be forced to “leave in great numbers to third countries”. In other words, Israel intends to carry out what the rest of us would call the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, as it has been doing continuously for eight decades.

What is the point of the BBC’s Verify service—supposedly there to fact-check and ensure viewers get only the unvarnished truth—when its team is itself peddling gross distortions of the truth?

The BBC and its Verify service are not keeping viewers informed. They are propagandising them into believing a clear crime against humanity by Israel is, in fact, highly complicated geopolitics that audiences cannot hope to understand.

The establishment media’s aim is to so confuse audiences that they will throw up their hands and say: “To hell with Israel and the Palestinians! They are as bad as each other. Leave it to the politicians and diplomats to sort out.”

In any other circumstance, it would strike you as obvious that starving children en masse is morally abhorrent, and that anyone who does it, or excuses it, is a monster. The role of the BBC is to persuade you that what should be obvious to you is, in fact, more complicated than you can appreciate.

There may be skin-and-bones babies, but there are also hostages. There may be tens of thousands of children being slaughtered, but there is also a risk of antisemitism. Israeli officials may be calling for the eradication of the Palestinian people, but the Jewish state they run needs to be preserved at all costs.

If we could spend five minutes in Gaza without the constant, babbling distractions of these so-called journalists, the truth would be clear. It’s a genocide. It was always a genocide.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Jonathan Cook.

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For more than two months, the Trump administration has been subject to a federal court order stopping it from cutting funding related to gender identity and the provision of gender-affirming care in response to President Donald Trump’s executive orders.

Lawyers for the federal government have repeatedly claimed in court filings that the administration has been complying with the order.

But new whistleblower records submitted in a lawsuit led by the Washington state attorney general appear to contradict the claim.

Nearly two weeks after the court’s preliminary injunction was issued, the National Institutes of Health’s then-acting head, Dr. Matthew J. Memoli, drafted a memo that details how the agency, in response to Trump’s executive orders, cut funding for research grants that “promote or inculcate gender ideology.” An internal spreadsheet of terminated NIH grants also references “gender ideology” and lists the number associated with Trump’s executive order as the reason for the termination of more than a half dozen research grants.

The Washington attorney general’s allegation that the Trump administration violated a court order comes as the country lurches toward a constitutional crisis amid accusations that the executive branch has defied or ignored court orders in several other cases. In the most high-profile case so far, the administration has yet to comply with a federal judge’s order, upheld unanimously by the Supreme Court, requiring it to “facilitate” the return of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador in March.

The records filed in the NIH-related lawsuit last week also reveal for the first time the enormous scope of the administration’s changes to the agency, which has been subject to massive layoffs and research cuts to align it with the president’s political priorities.

Other documents filed in the case raise questions concerning a key claim the administration has made about how it is restructuring federal agencies — that the Department of Government Efficiency has limited authority, acting mostly as an advisory body that consults on what to cut. However, in depositions filed in the case last week, two NIH officials testified that DOGE itself gave directions in hundreds of grant terminations.

The lawsuit offers an unprecedented view into the termination of more than 600 grants at the NIH over the past two months. Many of the canceled grants appear to have focused on subjects that the administration claims are unscientific or that the agency should no longer focus on under new priorities, such as gender identity, vaccine hesitancy and diversity, equity and inclusion. Grants related to research in China have also been cut, and climate change projects are under scrutiny.

Andrew G. Nixon, the director of communications for the Department of Health and Human Services, the NIH’s parent agency, told ProPublica in an email that the grant terminations directly followed the president’s executive orders and that the NIH’s actions were based on policy and scientific priorities, not political interference.

“The cuts are essential to refocus NIH on key public health priorities, like the chronic disease epidemic,” he said. Nixon also told ProPublica that its questions related to the lawsuit “solely fit a partisan narrative”; he did not respond to specific questions about the preliminary injunction, the administration’s compliance with the order or the involvement of DOGE in the grant termination process. The White House did not respond to ProPublica’s questions.

Mike Faulk, the deputy communications director for the Washington state attorney general’s office, told ProPublica in an email that the administration “appears to have used DOGE in this instance to keep career NIH officials in the dark about what was happening and why.”

“While claiming to be transparent, DOGE has actively hidden its activities and its true motivations,” he said. “Our office will use every tool we have to uncover the truth about why these grants were terminated.”

Since Trump took office in January, the administration has provided limited insight into why it chose to terminate scientific and medical grants.

That decision-making process has been largely opaque, until now.

In February, Washington state — joined by Minnesota, Oregon, Colorado and three physicians — sued the administration after it threatened to enforce its executive orders by withholding federal research grants from institutions that provided gender-affirming services or promoted “gender ideology.” Within weeks, a federal judge issued an injunction limiting the administration from fully enforcing the orders in the four states that are party to the suit.

The same day as the injunction, however, the NIH terminated a research grant to Seattle Children’s Hospital to develop and study an online education tool designed to reduce the risk of violence, mental health disorders and sexually transmitted infections among transgender youth, according to records filed in the court case. The NIH stated that it was the agency’s policy not to “prioritize” such studies on gender identity.

“Research programs based on gender identity are often unscientific, have little identifiable return on investment, and do nothing to enhance the health of many Americans,” the notice stated, without citing any scientific evidence for its claims. The NIH sent another notice reiterating the termination four days later.

The Washington attorney general’s office requested the termination be withdrawn, citing the injunction. But the administration refused, claiming that it was in compliance as the termination was based on NIH’s own authority and grant policy and was not enforcing any executive order.

The Washington attorney general asked the judge to hold the administration in contempt for violating the injunction. While the request was denied, the court granted an expedited discovery process to better assess whether the administration had breached the injunction. That process would have required the administration to quickly turn over internal documents relating to the termination. In response, the administration reinstated the grant for Seattle Children’s Hospital and declared the discovery process moot, or no longer relevant. However, U.S. District Judge Lauren J. King, who was appointed by former President Joseph Biden, permitted it to continue.

In recent months, whistleblowers have made the plaintiffs in the lawsuit aware of internal records that more closely connect the grant terminations to the administration’s executive orders.

In an internal spreadsheet of dozens of grants marked for cancellation at an NIH institute, the stated reason for termination for several was “gender ideology (EA 14168),” including the grant to Seattle Children’s Hospital.

The rationale appears to reference Executive Order 14168, which banned using federal funds to “promote gender ideology,” again seeming to conflict with the administration’s stance that the termination was not based on the executive orders. The termination dates of the grants, according to the spreadsheet, were after the injunction went into effect.

Another internal document, which provides extraordinary insight into the administration’s efforts to reshape the NIH, also states the executive order was the impetus for grant terminations.

In the March 11 memo from Memoli, the NIH cataloged all actions that the agency had taken thus far to align with the president’s executive orders. In a section detailing the steps taken to implement the “gender ideology” executive order, one of the 44 actions listed was the termination of active grants.

“NIH is currently reviewing all active grants and supplements to determine if they promote gender ideology and will take action as appropriate,” the memo stated, noting that the process was in progress.

While the administration has said in court filings that it is following the judge’s injunction order, the Washington state attorney general’s office told ProPublica that it disagreed.

“Their claim to have complied with the preliminary injunction is almost laughable,” said Faulk, the office’s deputy communications director. “The Trump administration is playing games with no apparent respect for the rule of law.”

In depositions conducted last month as part of the lawsuit, the testimony of two NIH officials also raised questions about why the research grants were terminated and how DOGE was involved.

Liza Bundesen, who was the deputy director of the agency’s extramural research office, testified that she first learned of the grant terminations on Feb. 28 from a DOGE team member, Rachel Riley. Bundesen said she was invited into a Microsoft Teams video call, where Riley introduced herself as being part of DOGE and working with the Department of Health and Human Services.

Riley, a former consultant for McKinsey & Co., joined HHS on Jan. 27, according to court filings in a separate lawsuit, and has reportedly served as the DOGE point person at the NIH.

The executive order detailing DOGE’s responsibilities describes the cost-cutting team as advisers that consult agency heads on the termination of contracts and grants. No language in the orders gives the DOGE team members the authority to direct the cancellation of grants or contracts. However, the depositions portray Riley as giving directions on how to conduct the terminations.

“She informed me that a number of grants will need to be terminated,” Bundesen testified, adding that she was told that they needed to be terminated by the end of the day. “I did not ask what, you know, what grants because I just literally was a little bit confused and caught off guard.”

Bundesen said she then received an email from Memoli, the NIH acting director, with a spreadsheet listing the grants that needed to be canceled and a template letter for notifying researchers of the terminations.

“The template had boilerplate language that could then be modified for the different circumstances, the different buckets of grants that were to be terminated,” she said. “The categories were DEI, research in China and transgender or gender ideology.”

Bundesen forwarded the email with the spreadsheet to Michelle Bulls, who directs the agency’s Office of Policy for Extramural Research Administration. Bundesen resigned from the NIH a week later, on March 7, citing “untenable” working conditions.

“I was given directives to implement with very short turnaround times, often close of business or maybe within the next hour,” she testified. “I was not offered the opportunity to provide feedback or really ask for clarification.”

Bulls confirmed in her own deposition that the termination list and letter template originally came from Riley. When Bulls started receiving the lists, she said she did what she was told. “I just followed the directive,” she said. “The language in the letters were provided so I didn’t question.”

Bulls said she didn’t write any of the letters herself and just signed her name to them. She also said she was not aware whether anyone had assessed the grants’ scientific merit or whether they met agency criteria. The grant terminations related to gender identity did not stem from an independent agency policy, she testified, appearing to contradict the administration’s assertion that they were based on the agency’s own authority and grant policy.

As of April 3, Bulls said she had received more than five lists of grants that needed to be terminated, amounting to “somewhere between five hundred and a thousand” grants.

Most grant recipients endure a rigorous vetting process, which can involve multiple stages of peer review before approval, and before this year, Bulls testified that grant terminations at the NIH have historically been rare. There are generally two main types of terminations, she said, for noncompliance or based on mutual agreement. Bulls said that she has been “generally involved in noncompliance discussions” and since she became the director of the office in 2012, there had been fewer than five such terminations.

In addition to the termination letters, Bulls said she relied on the template language provided by Riley to draft guidance to inform the 27 centers and institutes at the NIH what the agency’s new priorities were to help them scrutinize their own research portfolios.

Following the depositions, the Washington state attorney general’s office said that the federal government has refused to respond to its discovery requests. It has filed a motion to compel the government to respond, which is pending.

Riley, Bundesen, Bulls and Memoli did not reply to ProPublica’s requests for comment.

While the administration did not answer ProPublica’s questions about DOGE and its involvement in the grant terminations, last week in its budget blueprint, it generally justified its proposed cuts at the NIH with claims that the agency had “wasteful spending,” conducted “risky research” and promoted “dangerous ideologies that undermine public health.”

“NIH has grown too big and unfocused,” the White House claimed in its fiscal plan, adding that the agency’s research should “align with the President’s priorities to address chronic disease and other epidemics, implementing all executive orders and eliminating research on climate change, radical gender ideology, and divisive racialism.”

Jeremy Berg, who led the National Institute of General Medical Sciences at the NIH from 2003 to 2011, told ProPublica that the administration’s assessment of the institution was “not fair and not based on any substantial analysis or evidence,” and the proposed cuts “would be absolutely devastating to NIH and to biomedical research in the United States.”

“It is profoundly distressing to see this great institution being reduced to a lawless, politicized organization without much focus on its actual mission,” he said.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Annie Waldman.

He was referring to a 900-page document written by the Heritage Foundation, a think tank that has been influencing Republican presidential policy since the 1980s, and other conservative groups. At least 140 members of Trump’s own former administration worked on the roadmap, which laid out the ways a second Trump term could fundamentally transform the federal government’s role in society.

As the public learned about radical proposals like replacing thousands of federal workers with conservative loyalists and commercializing government weather forecasts, Project 2025 became a political inconvenience for Republicans on the campaign trail. Last fall, only 13 percent of Americans said they supported the plan. 

“I have no idea who is behind it,” Trump said in July as he tried to distance himself from the controversy.

If the notion that Trump was completely unaware of the origins or the contents of Project 2025 didn’t pass the straight face test then, it’s ludicrous now. 

Fewer than four months in, the Trump administration has accomplished policies that mirror about a third of the more than 300 policy objectives outlined in the blueprint, according to a crowdsourced website called Project 2025 Tracker. They include scrubbing mentions of diversity, equity, and inclusion from government documents and agencies; dismantling the Department of Education; and freezing federal science grants across the government. More than 60 measures recommended by the document are currently in progress. 

“It’s actually way beyond my wildest dreams,” Paul Dans, the former director of Project 2025, told Politico last month.

About a fifth of the climate and environment measures proposed by the architects of Project 2025 have been implemented, according to another Project 2025 tracker run jointly by the policy think tanks Governing for Impact and the Center for Progressive Reform. Those measures include boosting fossil fuel drilling on public lands, rolling back grants for green programs, and reforming climate statutes. 

All of these actions have something in common: they’ve flowed directly from the executive branch of government. Most of them have been decreed by Trump himself or have come from his cabinet secretaries. 

James Goodwin, who runs the Project 2025 tracker at the Center for Progressive Reform, calls these executive measures “the stuff that doesn’t require much process” — in contrast to legislation, which requires negotiation with both houses of Congress. Trump has signed just five laws so far, the lowest count since Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected in 1953. He’s barreled ahead with an agenda that effectively ignores Congress, with little apparent concern for whether his actions are even legal. That means that, even as the Trump administration makes rapid headway on the Project 2025 agenda, the methods the administration has used to achieve those goals are being challenged in court — especially when they seek to unravel prior legislation. 

“In Trump 1.0 they compiled a miserable, long loss record in court because they were so procedurally sloppy,” said Michael Gerrard, faculty director of Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. “So far they may be doing even worse.” 

On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order called “Unleashing American Energy” that bundled multiple recommendations that echo Project 2025 objectives. Among these was a suggestion to update an Environmental Protection Agency rule called the endangerment finding. The policy requires the EPA to curb greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, vehicles, and other sources of pollution under the Clean Air Act. In March, EPA administrator Lee Zeldin said he aims to formally reconsider the rule and all regulations that rely on it —including most major U.S. climate regulations. Legal experts say weakening the rule or reversing it won’t be a cakewalk by any means — the finding is rooted in laws passed by Congress and has already withstood a barrage of legal challenges. 

Project 2025 suggested freezing grants for green initiatives such as recycling education programs and eliminating the EPA Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights. Trump is in the process of accomplishing those goals, which fall under the purview of the EPA. Some of these changes, such as eliminating funding to a “green bank” program established by Congress, are already being litigated, and judges ordered agencies to unfreeze a portion of the funds last week.

At the Department of the Interior, or DOI, similar Project 2025-inspired attacks on climate and environmental regulations are underway. Trump’s “Unleashing American Energy” order directed the DOI to assess and expand drilling and mining opportunities on public lands and expand energy extraction in Alaska under the guise of an “energy emergency” independent analysts say does not exist. 

Last week, the DOI made good on that directive by announcing it would shrink down the time it takes to review the environmental and social impact of oil and gas projects on public lands — a process required by federal law — from one to two years to as little as 14 days. Truncated environmental review processes are sure to be challenged in court, and the administration’s efforts to boost drilling on public lands could also run into a 2024 rule that balances conservation with other public lands uses such as energy development and herd grazing. 

At the Department of Energy, Secretary Chris Wright is overseeing Trump directives to quickly approve new liquified natural gas exports and freeze funding from the largest climate-spending bill in American history, the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. The natural gas exports will be litigated, Gerrard said, on the basis of whether emissions from those exports violate the National Environmental Policy Act, the same law the administration is trying to sidestep in order to expedite reviews of oil and gas drilling on public lands. Efforts to claw back Inflation Reduction Act funding have already been the subject of many legal challenges.

The text of Project 2025 encourages a future conservative president to use every executive power at their disposal, but it doesn’t recommend blatantly breaking the law. “One might imagine that the policy experts that worked on the Project 2025 plan assumed that the Trump administration would do things legally,” said David Willett, senior vice president of communications for the environmental advocacy group the League of Conservation Voters. 

The blueprint’s authors write that White House lawyers should do as much as they can to promote the president’s agenda “within the bounds of the law.” It’s one of many places where the document references legal limits established by Congress and the Supreme Court and encourages a future administration to “look to the legislative branch for decisive action.”

“Their assumption was that actors on their side would be rational,” Willett said. “That has not been the case.” 

Since taking office, Trump has ignored judicial orders, staging a constitutional showdown between the executive and judicial branches — a matchup that exceedingly few presidents in American history have sought to force. 

After a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to restore federal funding, he soon found that the administration was not fully complying with his order. This month, a federal judge ruled that the administration violated a court order in its rush to halt Federal Emergency Management Administration grant funding to states. There’s also a high-profile clash playing out between the chief judge for the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the Supreme Court, and the Trump administration over the deportation of a Maryland man to El Salvador. 

These battles, the rapid firing and, in some cases, rehiring of federal workers, and a wider agenda that appears to hinge on the ever-changing whims of the president, have the makings of what Rachel Cleetus, a senior policy director at the nonprofit science advocacy group the Union of Concerned Scientists, calls an “authoritarian regime.” 

But the Trump administration’s breakneck pace has also kicked up a haze that makes it hard for the federal government and states to govern, and could make it more difficult for Trump to accomplish his full agenda in the long term as he makes the switch from institutional policy changes to legislative policy changes, like extending his 2017 tax cuts.

“They’re just breaking things and then they’re going to have to put it back together again,” said Elaine Karmack, who served as senior policy adviser to former vice president Al Gore beginning in 1993. President Bill Clinton, who was inaugurated that year, sought to modernize the federal government in service of a government that “works better and costs less.” The Clinton administration did this legally — abiding by congressional statues and legal precedent as it sought to trim fat and balance the federal budget. In the end, Karmack helped Gore cut 426,000 federal jobs, slash 16,000 pages of federal regulation, reengineer the Internal Revenue Service and other government agencies, and otherwise accomplish a version of the kind of downsizing Project 2025 calls for. 

“Everything they’ve done is basically illegal,” Kamarck added. “There will be consequences to the chaos.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Project 2025 was extreme. Trump’s first 100 days have been even more radical. on Apr 30, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Zoya Teirstein.

He was referring to a 900-page document written by the Heritage Foundation, a think tank that has been influencing Republican presidential policy since the 1980s, and other conservative groups. At least 140 members of Trump’s own former administration worked on the roadmap, which laid out the ways a second Trump term could fundamentally transform the federal government’s role in society.

As the public learned about radical proposals like replacing thousands of federal workers with conservative loyalists and commercializing government weather forecasts, Project 2025 became a political inconvenience for Republicans on the campaign trail. Last fall, only 13 percent of Americans said they supported the plan. 

“I have no idea who is behind it,” Trump said in July as he tried to distance himself from the controversy.

If the notion that Trump was completely unaware of the origins or the contents of Project 2025 didn’t pass the straight face test then, it’s ludicrous now. 

Fewer than four months in, the Trump administration has accomplished policies that mirror about a third of the more than 300 policy objectives outlined in the blueprint, according to a crowdsourced website called Project 2025 Tracker. They include scrubbing mentions of diversity, equity, and inclusion from government documents and agencies; dismantling the Department of Education; and freezing federal science grants across the government. More than 60 measures recommended by the document are currently in progress. 

“It’s actually way beyond my wildest dreams,” Paul Dans, the former director of Project 2025, told Politico last month.

About a fifth of the climate and environment measures proposed by the architects of Project 2025 have been implemented, according to another Project 2025 tracker run jointly by the policy think tanks Governing for Impact and the Center for Progressive Reform. Those measures include boosting fossil fuel drilling on public lands, rolling back grants for green programs, and reforming climate statutes. 

All of these actions have something in common: they’ve flowed directly from the executive branch of government. Most of them have been decreed by Trump himself or have come from his cabinet secretaries. 

James Goodwin, who runs the Project 2025 tracker at the Center for Progressive Reform, calls these executive measures “the stuff that doesn’t require much process” — in contrast to legislation, which requires negotiation with both houses of Congress. Trump has signed just five laws so far, the lowest count since Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected in 1953. He’s barreled ahead with an agenda that effectively ignores Congress, with little apparent concern for whether his actions are even legal. That means that, even as the Trump administration makes rapid headway on the Project 2025 agenda, the methods the administration has used to achieve those goals are being challenged in court — especially when they seek to unravel prior legislation. 

“In Trump 1.0 they compiled a miserable, long loss record in court because they were so procedurally sloppy,” said Michael Gerrard, faculty director of Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. “So far they may be doing even worse.” 

On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order called “Unleashing American Energy” that bundled multiple recommendations that echo Project 2025 objectives. Among these was a suggestion to update an Environmental Protection Agency rule called the endangerment finding. The policy requires the EPA to curb greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, vehicles, and other sources of pollution under the Clean Air Act. In March, EPA administrator Lee Zeldin said he aims to formally reconsider the rule and all regulations that rely on it —including most major U.S. climate regulations. Legal experts say weakening the rule or reversing it won’t be a cakewalk by any means — the finding is rooted in laws passed by Congress and has already withstood a barrage of legal challenges. 

Project 2025 suggested freezing grants for green initiatives such as recycling education programs and eliminating the EPA Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights. Trump is in the process of accomplishing those goals, which fall under the purview of the EPA. Some of these changes, such as eliminating funding to a “green bank” program established by Congress, are already being litigated, and judges ordered agencies to unfreeze a portion of the funds last week.

At the Department of the Interior, or DOI, similar Project 2025-inspired attacks on climate and environmental regulations are underway. Trump’s “Unleashing American Energy” order directed the DOI to assess and expand drilling and mining opportunities on public lands and expand energy extraction in Alaska under the guise of an “energy emergency” independent analysts say does not exist. 

Last week, the DOI made good on that directive by announcing it would shrink down the time it takes to review the environmental and social impact of oil and gas projects on public lands — a process required by federal law — from one to two years to as little as 14 days. Truncated environmental review processes are sure to be challenged in court, and the administration’s efforts to boost drilling on public lands could also run into a 2024 rule that balances conservation with other public lands uses such as energy development and herd grazing. 

At the Department of Energy, Secretary Chris Wright is overseeing Trump directives to quickly approve new liquified natural gas exports and freeze funding from the largest climate-spending bill in American history, the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. The natural gas exports will be litigated, Gerrard said, on the basis of whether emissions from those exports violate the National Environmental Policy Act, the same law the administration is trying to sidestep in order to expedite reviews of oil and gas drilling on public lands. Efforts to claw back Inflation Reduction Act funding have already been the subject of many legal challenges.

The text of Project 2025 encourages a future conservative president to use every executive power at their disposal, but it doesn’t recommend blatantly breaking the law. “One might imagine that the policy experts that worked on the Project 2025 plan assumed that the Trump administration would do things legally,” said David Willett, senior vice president of communications for the environmental advocacy group the League of Conservation Voters. 

The blueprint’s authors write that White House lawyers should do as much as they can to promote the president’s agenda “within the bounds of the law.” It’s one of many places where the document references legal limits established by Congress and the Supreme Court and encourages a future administration to “look to the legislative branch for decisive action.”

“Their assumption was that actors on their side would be rational,” Willett said. “That has not been the case.” 

Since taking office, Trump has ignored judicial orders, staging a constitutional showdown between the executive and judicial branches — a matchup that exceedingly few presidents in American history have sought to force. 

After a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to restore federal funding, he soon found that the administration was not fully complying with his order. This month, a federal judge ruled that the administration violated a court order in its rush to halt Federal Emergency Management Administration grant funding to states. There’s also a high-profile clash playing out between the chief judge for the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the Supreme Court, and the Trump administration over the deportation of a Maryland man to El Salvador. 

These battles, the rapid firing and, in some cases, rehiring of federal workers, and a wider agenda that appears to hinge on the ever-changing whims of the president, have the makings of what Rachel Cleetus, a senior policy director at the nonprofit science advocacy group the Union of Concerned Scientists, calls an “authoritarian regime.” 

But the Trump administration’s breakneck pace has also kicked up a haze that makes it hard for the federal government and states to govern, and could make it more difficult for Trump to accomplish his full agenda in the long term as he makes the switch from institutional policy changes to legislative policy changes, like extending his 2017 tax cuts.

“They’re just breaking things and then they’re going to have to put it back together again,” said Elaine Karmack, who served as senior policy adviser to former vice president Al Gore beginning in 1993. President Bill Clinton, who was inaugurated that year, sought to modernize the federal government in service of a government that “works better and costs less.” The Clinton administration did this legally — abiding by congressional statues and legal precedent as it sought to trim fat and balance the federal budget. In the end, Karmack helped Gore cut 426,000 federal jobs, slash 16,000 pages of federal regulation, reengineer the Internal Revenue Service and other government agencies, and otherwise accomplish a version of the kind of downsizing Project 2025 calls for. 

“Everything they’ve done is basically illegal,” Kamarck added. “There will be consequences to the chaos.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Project 2025 was extreme. Trump’s first 100 days have been even more radical. on Apr 30, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Zoya Teirstein.

He was referring to a 900-page document written by the Heritage Foundation, a think tank that has been influencing Republican presidential policy since the 1980s, and other conservative groups. At least 140 members of Trump’s own former administration worked on the roadmap, which laid out the ways a second Trump term could fundamentally transform the federal government’s role in society.

As the public learned about radical proposals like replacing thousands of federal workers with conservative loyalists and commercializing government weather forecasts, Project 2025 became a political inconvenience for Republicans on the campaign trail. Last fall, only 13 percent of Americans said they supported the plan. 

“I have no idea who is behind it,” Trump said in July as he tried to distance himself from the controversy.

If the notion that Trump was completely unaware of the origins or the contents of Project 2025 didn’t pass the straight face test then, it’s ludicrous now. 

Fewer than four months in, the Trump administration has accomplished policies that mirror about a third of the more than 300 policy objectives outlined in the blueprint, according to a crowdsourced website called Project 2025 Tracker. They include scrubbing mentions of diversity, equity, and inclusion from government documents and agencies; dismantling the Department of Education; and freezing federal science grants across the government. More than 60 measures recommended by the document are currently in progress. 

“It’s actually way beyond my wildest dreams,” Paul Dans, the former director of Project 2025, told Politico last month.

About a fifth of the climate and environment measures proposed by the architects of Project 2025 have been implemented, according to another Project 2025 tracker run jointly by the policy think tanks Governing for Impact and the Center for Progressive Reform. Those measures include boosting fossil fuel drilling on public lands, rolling back grants for green programs, and reforming climate statutes. 

All of these actions have something in common: they’ve flowed directly from the executive branch of government. Most of them have been decreed by Trump himself or have come from his cabinet secretaries. 

James Goodwin, who runs the Project 2025 tracker at the Center for Progressive Reform, calls these executive measures “the stuff that doesn’t require much process” — in contrast to legislation, which requires negotiation with both houses of Congress. Trump has signed just five laws so far, the lowest count since Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected in 1953. He’s barreled ahead with an agenda that effectively ignores Congress, with little apparent concern for whether his actions are even legal. That means that, even as the Trump administration makes rapid headway on the Project 2025 agenda, the methods the administration has used to achieve those goals are being challenged in court — especially when they seek to unravel prior legislation. 

“In Trump 1.0 they compiled a miserable, long loss record in court because they were so procedurally sloppy,” said Michael Gerrard, faculty director of Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. “So far they may be doing even worse.” 

On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order called “Unleashing American Energy” that bundled multiple recommendations that echo Project 2025 objectives. Among these was a suggestion to update an Environmental Protection Agency rule called the endangerment finding. The policy requires the EPA to curb greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, vehicles, and other sources of pollution under the Clean Air Act. In March, EPA administrator Lee Zeldin said he aims to formally reconsider the rule and all regulations that rely on it —including most major U.S. climate regulations. Legal experts say weakening the rule or reversing it won’t be a cakewalk by any means — the finding is rooted in laws passed by Congress and has already withstood a barrage of legal challenges. 

Project 2025 suggested freezing grants for green initiatives such as recycling education programs and eliminating the EPA Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights. Trump is in the process of accomplishing those goals, which fall under the purview of the EPA. Some of these changes, such as eliminating funding to a “green bank” program established by Congress, are already being litigated, and judges ordered agencies to unfreeze a portion of the funds last week.

At the Department of the Interior, or DOI, similar Project 2025-inspired attacks on climate and environmental regulations are underway. Trump’s “Unleashing American Energy” order directed the DOI to assess and expand drilling and mining opportunities on public lands and expand energy extraction in Alaska under the guise of an “energy emergency” independent analysts say does not exist. 

Last week, the DOI made good on that directive by announcing it would shrink down the time it takes to review the environmental and social impact of oil and gas projects on public lands — a process required by federal law — from one to two years to as little as 14 days. Truncated environmental review processes are sure to be challenged in court, and the administration’s efforts to boost drilling on public lands could also run into a 2024 rule that balances conservation with other public lands uses such as energy development and herd grazing. 

At the Department of Energy, Secretary Chris Wright is overseeing Trump directives to quickly approve new liquified natural gas exports and freeze funding from the largest climate-spending bill in American history, the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. The natural gas exports will be litigated, Gerrard said, on the basis of whether emissions from those exports violate the National Environmental Policy Act, the same law the administration is trying to sidestep in order to expedite reviews of oil and gas drilling on public lands. Efforts to claw back Inflation Reduction Act funding have already been the subject of many legal challenges.

The text of Project 2025 encourages a future conservative president to use every executive power at their disposal, but it doesn’t recommend blatantly breaking the law. “One might imagine that the policy experts that worked on the Project 2025 plan assumed that the Trump administration would do things legally,” said David Willett, senior vice president of communications for the environmental advocacy group the League of Conservation Voters. 

The blueprint’s authors write that White House lawyers should do as much as they can to promote the president’s agenda “within the bounds of the law.” It’s one of many places where the document references legal limits established by Congress and the Supreme Court and encourages a future administration to “look to the legislative branch for decisive action.”

“Their assumption was that actors on their side would be rational,” Willett said. “That has not been the case.” 

Since taking office, Trump has ignored judicial orders, staging a constitutional showdown between the executive and judicial branches — a matchup that exceedingly few presidents in American history have sought to force. 

After a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to restore federal funding, he soon found that the administration was not fully complying with his order. This month, a federal judge ruled that the administration violated a court order in its rush to halt Federal Emergency Management Administration grant funding to states. There’s also a high-profile clash playing out between the chief judge for the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the Supreme Court, and the Trump administration over the deportation of a Maryland man to El Salvador. 

These battles, the rapid firing and, in some cases, rehiring of federal workers, and a wider agenda that appears to hinge on the ever-changing whims of the president, have the makings of what Rachel Cleetus, a senior policy director at the nonprofit science advocacy group the Union of Concerned Scientists, calls an “authoritarian regime.” 

But the Trump administration’s breakneck pace has also kicked up a haze that makes it hard for the federal government and states to govern, and could make it more difficult for Trump to accomplish his full agenda in the long term as he makes the switch from institutional policy changes to legislative policy changes, like extending his 2017 tax cuts.

“They’re just breaking things and then they’re going to have to put it back together again,” said Elaine Karmack, who served as senior policy adviser to former vice president Al Gore beginning in 1993. President Bill Clinton, who was inaugurated that year, sought to modernize the federal government in service of a government that “works better and costs less.” The Clinton administration did this legally — abiding by congressional statues and legal precedent as it sought to trim fat and balance the federal budget. In the end, Karmack helped Gore cut 426,000 federal jobs, slash 16,000 pages of federal regulation, reengineer the Internal Revenue Service and other government agencies, and otherwise accomplish a version of the kind of downsizing Project 2025 calls for. 

“Everything they’ve done is basically illegal,” Kamarck added. “There will be consequences to the chaos.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Project 2025 was extreme. Trump’s first 100 days have been even more radical. on Apr 30, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Zoya Teirstein.

Some families have waited as long as one month to receive critical aid in the aftermath of Myanmar’s earthquake, which killed over 3,700 people, victims and aid groups told Radio Free Asia.

Myanmar’s military has been accused of hampering aid efforts by preventing international and local rescue groups from entering earthquake-stricken areas and demanding that groups distribute essential items like food and temporary shelter through junta officials.

One resident in Mandalay, the country’s second-largest city and close to the epicenter of the earthquake, said he hadn’t received any aid since his house collapsed.

“Because of the aftershocks, we can’t go back. Up until today, we’ve been sleeping on the side of the road. Yesterday, there were more aftershocks and we’ve been on edge,” he said, declining to be named for fear of reprisals.

“I want to say especially that we have not gotten any type of help listed from officials at the ward, township or district level. We haven’t gotten even one bottle of water or one wafer of biscuit – that’s the honest truth.”

Recovery from the March 28 earthquake has been hampered still further by hundreds of airstrikes by Myanmar’s military, which have killed over 160 people across the country, according to data compiled by Radio Free Asia..

Residents sleeping outdoors have also been subject to monsoon rains, extreme heat and unpredictable weather, adding to the predicted public health crisis.

In crowded areas, aid groups who have been permitted entry don’t have enough food for all the victims, said the Mandalay resident.

Aid organizations from 29 countries were operating in Myanmar until April 20, providing more than 3,700 tons of relief supplies, said junta spokesperson Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun on state-owned broadcaster MRTV.

All available supplies, except for “a few shelters and raincoats” had been distributed in earthquake-affected areas of Naypyidaw, the country’s capital, as well as in Mandalay region, Sagaing region and Shan state, he said on Wednesday.

On the ground, victims have only been able to receive aid from the United Nations Development Programme, or UNDP, said one volunteer who was himself affected by the earthquake in Mandalay region’s Pyawbwe town.

“UNDP is the only one who arrived with household items, shelters, power banks, solar lights, canned fish, red beans, clothing, women’s items and medical kits,” he said, refusing to be named for security reasons.

He said the junta collected lists of the dead and those affected by the earthquake, but victims haven’t received any help. Rescue teams reported at least 300 people died in Pyawbwe town alone.

Residents in other areas of Mandalay region and Sagaing region, as well as parts of the country with a strong junta presence, like Shan state’s Inle region and the capital of Naypyidaw, also say they have faced limited aid as a result of poor systematic distribution, rescue committee volunteers said.

But the junta denied claims of mismanagement.

“For those who have faced destruction, the amount must be assessed and aid will be apportioned based on what’s decided by government organizations,” said Lay Shwe Zin Oo, director of the Disaster Management Department of the military’s Ministry of Social Welfare.

“If they haven’t gotten it yet, they should contact their general administrators and negotiate an amount of aid,” she said, adding that many victims had not registered for aid yet.

Over 5,100 people were injured in the earthquake and more than 100 are still missing, according to the latest data from Myanmar’s military. As of April 24, nearly 64,000 houses were destroyed, affecting some 629,000 people.

Translated by Kiana Duncan. Edited by Taejun Kang and Mike Firn.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Burmese.

Technologies that can power our lives and jobs while doing less harm to the global climate — wind, solar, batteries, etc. — are getting cheaper, more efficient, and more abundant. The pace of progress on price, scale, and performance has been so extraordinary that even the most optimistic forecasts about green tech in the past have turned out to be too pessimistic. Clean energy isn’t just powering our devices, tools, and luxuries — it’s growing the global economy, creating a whole suite of new jobs, and reshaping trade.

And despite what headlines may say, there’s no sign these trends will reverse. Political and economic turmoil may slow down clean energy, but the sector has built up so much momentum that it’s become nigh unstoppable.

Take a look at Texas: The largest oil- and gas-producing state in the US is also the largest in wind energy, and it’s installing more solar than any other. Texas utilities have come to realize that investing in clean energy is not just good for the environment; it’s good business. And even without subsidies and preferential treatment, the benefits of clean technologies — in clean air, scalability, distribution, and cost — have become impossible to ignore.

And there’s only more room to grow. The world is still in the early stages of this revolution as market forces become the driver rather than environmental worries. In some US markets, installing new renewable energy is cheaper than running existing coal plants. Last year, the US produced more electricity from wind and solar power than from coal for the first time.

If these energy trends persist, the US economy will see its greenhouse gas emissions diminish faster, reducing its contribution to climate change. The US needs to effectively zero out its carbon dioxide emissions by the middle of the century in order to keep the worst damages of climate change in check.

Now, just a few months into Trump’s second presidency, it’s still an open question just how fragile the country’ s progress on clean energy and climate will be. But the data is clear: There is tremendous potential for economic growth and environmental benefits if the country makes the right moves at this key inflection point.

Certainly incentives like tax credits, business loans, and research and development funding could accelerate decarbonization. On the other hand, pulling back — as the Trump administration wants to do — would slow down clean energy in the US, though it wouldn’t stop it.

But the rest of the world isn’t sitting idle, and if the US decides to slow its head start, its competitors may take the lead in a massive, rocketing industry. —Umair Irfan, Vox climate correspondent

Wind

President Donald Trump does not like wind energy — apparently, in part, because he thinks turbines are ugly.

“We’re not going to do the wind thing,” Trump said after his inauguration during a rally. “Big, ugly windmills, they ruin your neighborhood.”

He’s put some power behind those feelings. Within mere hours of stepping into office,Trump signed an executive order that hamstrung both onshore and offshore wind energy developments, even as he has claimed that the US faces an energy crisis. The order directed federal agencies to temporarily stop issuing approvals for both onshore and offshore wind projects and pause leasing for offshore projects in federal waters. 

Policies like this will harm the wind industry, analysts say, as will existing and potential future tariffs, which will likely make turbines more expensive. Those policies could also pose a serious threat to offshore developments. But the sector overall simply has too much inertia to be derailed, according to Eric Larson, a senior research engineer at Princeton University who studies clean energy.

“Because costs have been coming down so dramatically in the last decade, there is a certain momentum there that’s going to carry through,” Larson said.

Since 2010, US wind capacity has more than tripled, spurred by federal tax incentives. But even without those incentives — which Congress may eventually try to cut — onshore wind turbines are the cheapest source of new energy, according to the research firm Lazard. In 2023, the average cost of new onshore wind projects was two-thirds lower than a typical fossil fuel alternative, per a report by the International Renewable Energy Agency.

In fact, wind energy might be the best example of how politics have had little bearing on the growth of renewable energy. Texas, which overwhelmingly supported Trump in the recent election, generates more wind energy than any other state, by far. The next three top states for wind energy production — Iowa, Oklahoma, and Kansas — all swung for Trump in the last election, too. These states are particularly windy, but they’ve also adopted policies, including tax incentives, that have helped build out their wind-energy sectors.

“It’s just a way to make money,” Larson said of wind. “It has nothing to do with the political position on whether climate change is real or not. People continue to get paid to put up wind turbines, and that’s enough for them to do it.”

In Iowa, for example, wind energy has drawn at least $22 billion in capital investment and has helped lower the cost of electricity. In 2023, wind generated about 60 percent of the state’s energy — more than double any other source, like coal or natural gas.

The wind sector is not without its challenges. In the last two years the cost of wind energy has gone up, due in part to inflation and permitting delays — which raised the costs of other energy sources, too. Construction of new wind farms had begun slowing even before Trump took office. Dozens of counties across the US, in places like Ohio and Virginia, have also successfully blocked or delayed wind projects, citing a range of concerns like noise and impact on property values. Offshore wind, which is far costlier, faces even more opposition. Opponents similarly worry that they’ll affect coastal property values and harm marine life.

Yet ultimately these hurdles will only delay what is likely inevitable, analysts say: a future powered in large part by wind. —Benji Jones, Vox environmental correspondent

Solar

It’s hard to think of a natural wonder more unstoppable than the sun, and harnessing its energy has proven just as formidable. The United States last year saw a record amount of clean energy power up, with solar leading the way. Over the past decade, solar power capacity in the US has risen eightfold.

Why? Solar has just gotten way, way, way cheaper, even more than wind.

The main technology for turning sunlight into electricity, the single-junction photovoltaic panel, has drastically increased the efficiency by which it turns a ray of sunlight into a moving electron. This lets the same-size panel convert more light into electricity. Since the device itself is a printed semiconductor, it has benefited from many of the manufacturing improvements that have come with recent advances in computer chip production.

Solar has also benefited from economies of scale, particularly as China has invested heavily in its production. This has translated into cheaper solar panels around the world, including the US. And since solar panels are modular, small gains in efficiency and cost reduction quickly add up, boosting the business case.

There are some clouds on the horizon, however. The single-junction PV panel may be closing in on its practical efficiency limit. Solar energy is variable, and some power grid operators have struggled to manage the spike in solar production midday and sudden drop-off in the evening, creating the infamous “duck curve” graph of energy demand that shows how fast other generators have to ramp up.

Still, solar energy provides less than 4 percent of electricity in the US, so there is immense room to grow. Overall costs continue to decline, and new technologies are emerging that can get around the constraints imposed by conventional panels. Across the US and around the world, the sun has a long way to rise. —Umair Irfan

Our energy grid

While wind and solar energy have soared upward for more than a decade, storing electricity on the grid with batteries is just taking off.

Grid-scale battery capacity suddenly launched upward around 2020 and has about doubled every year since. That’s good news for intermittent power sources, such as wind and solar: Energy storage is the booster rocket for renewables and one of the key tools for addressing the stubborn duck curve that plagues solar power.

Batteries for the grid aren’t that far removed from those that power phones and computers, so they’ve benefited from cost and performance improvements in consumer batteries. And they still have room to get cheaper.

On the power grid, batteries do a number of jobs that help improve efficiency and cut greenhouse gas emissions. The obvious one is compensating for the capriciousness of wind and solar power: As the sun sets and the wind calms, demand rises, and grid operators can tap into their power reserves to keep the lights on. The specific combination of solar-plus-storage is still a small share of utility-scale projects, but it’s gaining ground in the residential market as these systems get cheaper.

Batteries also help grid operators cope with demand peaks: They can bank power when it’s cheap and sell those electrons when electricity is more expensive. They also maintain grid stability and provide the juice to restart power generators after outages or maintenance. That means there’s a huge demand for grid batteries beyond backing up renewables.

Right now, the main way the US saves electricity on the grid is pumped hydropower, which currently provides about 96 percent of utility-scale storage. Water is pumped uphill into a reservoir when power is cheap and then runs downhill through turbines when it’s needed. This method tends to lose a lot of energy in the process and is limited to landscapes with the ideal terrain to move water up and down.

Batteries get around these hurdles with higher efficiencies, scalability, and modularity. And since they stay parked in one place, energy density and portability don’t matter as much on the grid as they would in a car or a phone. That opens up several more options. Car batteries that have lost too much capacity to be worthwhile in a vehicle can get a second life on the power grid. Designs like flow batteries that store energy by the megawatt-hour and molten salt batteries that stash power for months could outperform the reigning lithium-ion battery. —Umair Irfan

The electric vehicle transition

Transportation is the single largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. Fossil fuels currently account for nearly 90 percent of the energy consumption in the transportation sector, which makes it an obvious target for decarbonization. And while it will take some time to figure out how to electrify planes, trains, and container ships, the growth of EVs, including passenger cars and trucks, has reached a tipping point.

The price of a new EV is nearly equivalent to a new gas-powered car, when you include state and federal subsidies. And the US charging infrastructure is getting better by the day: With over 200,000 chargers currently online, the number is growing. Even though the Trump administration has effectively waged war on the EV transition by pulling funding for charging infrastructure expansion and threatening to end subsidies for new EV purchases, at best those moves may slow a largely unstoppable EV transition in the long term. The automotive industry is all in on the electric transition. Buoyed by strong and growing EV sales trends in China and increasing EV offerings, global demand is growing.

There are signs, however, that the number of people buying EVs in the US and Europe is slowing, even as subsidies remain available. Experts say this is likely due, in part, to more consumer choice, as the number of EV offerings, including off-road trucks and minivans, continues to grow. But even here we see encouraging signs: As more EVs have come to market, more plug-in hybrid models have also appeared. And plug-in hybrids tend to be slightly cheaper and help people deal with range anxiety, the umbrella term for the fear of not being able to find a charger, while still reducing emissions.

“The early adopters who are just all in on that EV tech, they’ve adopted it,” Nicole Wakelin, editor at large of CarBuzz, told Vox in January. “So now it’s up to everybody else to dip their toes in that water.”

Around the world, cheap EVs are surging in popularity. Prices of EV batteries, the most expensive component of the vehicle, are dropping globally even as their capacity grows. That trend is leading to more and more inexpensive EV models hitting the market. China, once again, is leading the charge here. The cheapest model from Chinese front-runner BYD now costs less than $10,000, and by 2027, Volkswagen promises it will sell a cheap EV in Europe for about $20,000. Meanwhile, in the US, the average price for a used EV in mid-2024 was $33,000, compared to $27,000 for an internal combustion engine vehicle. Those Chinese EVs aren’t currently available in the US.

It remains to be seen how far Trump will go to keep America hooked on fossil fuels. It’s clear, however, that more and more people want EVs and are buying them, charging them, and quite frankly, loving them. —Adam Clark Estes, Vox senior technology correspondent

Jobs

For any of these clean energy sectors to reach their highest potential, there’s an essential requirement they all share: a robust, skilled workforce. The good news for the clean energy industry is that data show the jobs are rolling in.

The 2024 Clean Jobs America report by E2, a national group focused on climate solutions across industries, paints a positive picture for clean jobs. Renewable energy jobs increased by 14 percent from 2020 to 2023 — a surge boosted by the Inflation Reduction Act’s (IRA) climate-focused policies. Jobs in the solar sector have grown by 15 percent in that same period, with 12 percent growth for wind and 11 percent growth for geothermal. In just 2023 alone, 150,000 jobs in the clean energy industry were added. All together, clean energy outpaced economy-wide employment growth for the last five years.

And while the Trump administration has targeted the wind industry, rolled back some climate-friendly policies, and griped about solar, the administration’s policies have yet to put a dent on positive job growth in clean jobs.

“I expect [the administration] will go after some provisions, but there is quite a bit in the IRA that will be very difficult to repeal since large-scale clean energy investments have been made, and a majority of those in red states whose politicians will not want to give them up,” one former US official told Heatmap News. Republican districts have benefited far more than progressive ones from clean tech manufacturing investments to the tune of over $161 billion, Bloomberg reported. Going after clean jobs would mean stalling economic growth in communities that helped deliver Trump a second term — a move that most would call politically unwise.

The clean industry is growing beyond the United States. Globally, clean energy sectors added over 4.7 million jobs to a total of 35 million from 2019 to 2022 — exceeding the amount of fossil fuel jobs internationally.

While the data bodes well for the industry, there are concerns from workers, unions, and communities that the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy may leave many skilled employees behind. One paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that fewer than 1 percent of fossil fuel workers have transitioned to green jobs, citing a lack of translatable skills — operating an oil derrick isn’t as applicable to installing solar panels, for example. Another paper from Nature found that while some fossil fuel workers might have the right skills for clean energy jobs, the location of green jobs often aren’t where fossil fuel workers are based.

Several policy routes can be taken to create a more equitable transition for these workers, such as funding early retirement programs for fossil fuel workers who lose their jobs or heavily investing in fossil fuel communities where there is potential for creating renewable energy hubs.

Clean energy jobs are growing, and it doesn’t have to be at the cost of the 1.7 million workers in the US with fossil fuel occupations. —Sam Delgado

Geothermal

While President Trump has largely been hostile to renewable energy, there’s one clean energy source that the administration actually supports: geothermal.

Geothermal has long lived in the shadows of other renewables — especially as wind and solar have surged. But geothermal’s potential may be greater than any of those, and ironically, being in Trump’s good graces may give this sector the final boost it needs.

If you know President Trump’s motto of “drill, baby, drill,” this might not come as a surprise. Geothermal energy is tapped by drilling into the ground and extracting heat from the earth, and it uses similar technology to the oil and gas industry. US Secretary of Energy Chris Wright has long praised geothermal, and the fracking company he oversaw prior to joining the Trump administration invested in Fervo Energy, a company that specializes in geothermal technologies.

Despite the fact that the first geothermal plant was built in 1904 in Italy, the energy source is still in its infancy. In 2023, geothermal energy produced less than half a percent of total US utility-scale electricity generation, far behind other renewables like solar and wind.

Historically, developing geothermal energy has been constrained by geography and relatively few have been built. Most geothermal production happens in the western United States because of the region’s access to underground hot water that can drive turbines isn’t too far from the surface. California dominates the geothermal landscape, with 67 percent of US geothermal electricity generation coming from the state — the outcome of state policy priorities and the right geologic conditions. The regional specificity has been a big barrier to geothermal taking off more broadly.

Then there’s the issue of cost. Compared to solar and wind development and operations, building geothermal plants and drilling is much more expensive. And it currently costs more per megawatt hour than solar and wind.

But these geographic and financial barriers could be broken down. Geothermal companies have been exploring enhanced geothermal, a method that could make it possible to drill for geothermal energy everywhere. Coupling enhanced geothermal with drilling technology and techniques from the oil and gas industry can also help with efficiency and bring down costs — a parallel to how advances in fracking in the early 2000s helped supercharge the US oil and gas industry.

What geothermal lacks in current scale, it makes up for in future potential. Because it’s not intermittent and doesn’t rely on specific weather conditions (the way that solar, wind, and hydropower do) geothermal has a capacity advantage over other renewables. In 2023, geothermal had a capacity factor, or how often an energy source is running at maximum power, of 69 percent, compared to 33 percent and 23 percent for wind and solar, respectively — meaning it’s more capable of producing reliable power.

That advantage could be critical for US decarbonization goals. According to the Department of Energy (DOE), enhanced geothermal has the potential to power more than 65 million homes and businesses in the US.

Right now, stakeholders from energy policymakers to climate scientists to geothermal company executives, are determined to turn potential into reality.

In March 2024, the DOE released a lengthy report on the necessary steps to unlocking enhanced geothermal’s full potential on a commercial scale. In October of last year, the federal government approved a massive geothermal project in Utah that plans to provide power for more than 2 million homes and aims to be operational by 2026. The company behind the project and one of the leading enhanced geothermal startups, Fervo Energy, secured $255 million in funding from investors just before the year came to a close.

Geothermal also has bipartisan support (and is perhaps one of the few issues that the Biden and Trump administration would share similar views on). And because it’s borrowing technology from the gas and oil industry, it can tap into former fossil fuel workers to staff these plants.

But it’s key to note that getting to take off will be really, really expensive — the DOE projects that it will take $20 billion to $25 billion to get geothermal ready for a commercial breakout by 2030. Geothermal’s breakthrough isn’t assured, but it’s on the cusp of takeoff. If the necessary financial investments are made, and companies can show that advances in technology can be scaled up beyond the western US, it could usher in the age of a geothermal energy revolution. —Sam Delgado, former Future Perfect fellow

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline 10 charts prove that clean energy is winning — even in the Trump era on Apr 27, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Umair Irfan.

As federal agencies face crippling cuts and are forced to cut essential services, President Trump has announced he will seek a $1 trillion budget for the Pentagon, a record-setting number that would mark the highest level of U.S. defense spending since World War II. William Hartung, a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, blasts the promised budget as “completely unnecessary” and says that “almost the only beneficiaries are going to be the weapons manufacturers.” Hartung also discusses the growing political influence of Silicon Valley defense technology startups, including Alex Karp’s Palantir and Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Can’t Look Away: The Case Against Social Media is a new documentary that exposes the real-life consequences of the algorithms of big tech companies and their impact on children and teens. In 2022, social media companies made an estimated $11 billion advertising to minors in the U.S., where 95% of teenagers use social media. One in three teens uses social media almost constantly. “These products, they’re not designed to hook us, adults,” says Laura Marquez-Garrett, an attorney at the Social Media Victims Law Center in Seattle who is featured in Can’t Look Away. “They are designed to hook children.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

As more students come to school traumatized by living through fires, floods, and other extreme weather, teachers are being asked to do more than educate — they’re also acting as untrained therapists. While Thesenga’s private school has psychologists on staff, they don’t provide mental health resources dedicated to helping students work through distress related to the changing climate, whether it’s trauma from a real event or more general anxiety about an overheated future. “Sometimes you don’t need a generic [tool],” he said. “What you need is something very specific to the trauma or to the thing that is causing you stress, and that is climate change.”

Middle school teachers around the country say they feel unprepared to help their students cope with the stress of living on a warming planet, according to a new survey of 63 middle school teachers across the United States by the Climate Mental Health Network and the National Environmental Education Foundation. Nearly all of the teachers surveyed reported seeing emotional reactions from their students when the subject of climate change came up, but many of them lacked the resources to respond.

“Students are showing up in the classroom with a range of climate emotions that can be debilitating,” said Sarah Newman, the founder and executive director of the Climate Mental Health Network. “This is impacting students’ ability to learn and how they’re engaging in the classroom.” 

One of the biggest concerns Thesenga hears from his students is that climate change feels out of their control and thinking about it seems overwhelming. “They just feel powerless, and that’s probably the scariest thing for them,” he said. 

Katie Larsen, who teaches 6th and 9th grade biology at The Foote School in New Haven, Connecticut, says that her students have grown up knowing that climate change is a problem, but learning about the extent of environmental damage — like how many species go extinct every year — often surprises them. She tries to shift the conversation away from doom and gloom and toward something more hopeful, such as what people can do to save ecosystems. “I think the more positive you can make it, and action-oriented, the better,” she said.

A growing body of research shows that young people’s anxieties about climate change can affect their relationships and their ability to think and function. Last November, a study in The Lancet Planetary Health found that 16- to 25-year-olds were struggling with their worries about climate change. Of the more than 15,000 young Americans surveyed, 43 percent reported that it hurt their mental health, and 38 percent said that it made their daily life worse. 

Then there’s the matter that surviving a specific disaster can be traumatizing for people of any age. Living through a hurricane or flood can lead to an increased risk of depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, while wildfires have been connected with anxiety, substance abuse, and sleeping problems, according to a report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2022. These problems are especially acute for children and adolescents.

To address the lack of resources for dealing with distress related to climate change, the Climate Mental Health Network and the National Environmental Education Foundation developed a new toolkit that teachers can use in their middle school classrooms. One handout, called the “climate emotions wheel,” helps students identify their emotions, arranging them into four main categories — anger, sadness, fear, and positivity — and then breaking those down to more specific feelings, such as betrayal, grief, anxiety, and empowerment.

While science classrooms are a natural fit for these resources, Megan Willig, who helped create the activities with the National Environmental Education Foundation, says she hopes that teachers can use them in English, social studies, and art classes, among other subjects. They’re designed to be quick and ready to use. “Teachers shared that they’re busy, and they have a lot on their plates,” said Willig, who’s a former teacher herself.

The exercises prompt students to reflect on how other young people are processing distress over climate change and explore how to turn their anxiety into action. One activity in the toolkit introduces “negativity bias,” referring to how the brain often latches onto negative thoughts, and asks students to counter that tendency by brainstorming happier emotions related to the Earth. Another prompts students to consider their “spheres of influence” and think about what they can do to contribute to solving climate change in their inner circle, their community, and in the wider world.

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The toolkit was piloted last fall by 40 teachers who volunteered in 25 states. Afterward, all of the teachers who participated said they’d recommend it to a colleague, and a majority reported feeling more confident addressing students’ emotions — as well as their own. The tools were successful in red states like Utah, Texas, Mississippi, Florida, West Virginia, and Indiana, as well as blue ones like New York and Washington. Newman thinks it’s a sign that the need for these kinds of resources isn’t a partisan issue.

She views middle school as a crucial moment to offer mental health support. “Kids are really becoming more aware of climate change and what’s actually happening,” she said. “It’s often the first time that they’re going to be learning about it in school. They have more access to social media and online news, which is amplifying their awareness and knowledge about climate change, and they’re going through really formative times.”

Asked if he would try the exercises, Thesenga said he would give them a shot. “Absolutely, why the hell not?” he said. In his Facebook groups, he’s seen fellow teachers say they avoid the subject altogether in class. “That is not the answer — your students want to know,” Thesenga said. “You’re the frontline person. You have to buck it up, and you have to do this.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline What makes middle school even worse? Climate anxiety. on Apr 3, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Kate Yoder.

The corporation’s longstanding systematic protection of Israel, considered an ‘apartheid regime’ by major human rights organisations, has been particularly glaring since the country launched its genocidal attacks on Gaza in October 2023. We have all seen the repetition and amplification of the Israeli narrative above the Palestinian perspective, omission of ‘Israel’ from headlines about its latest war crimes committed in Gaza, and even the dismissive treatment by senior BBC management of serious concerns about bias raised by their own journalists.

The documentary focused on the experiences of several children trying to survive in Gaza under brutal attack by Israeli forces armed to the hilt with weaponry and intelligence from the US, the UK and other western nations. It transpired that the film’s narrator, 13-year-old Abdullah al-Yazuri, is the son of Ayman al-Yazuri, a deputy minister of agriculture in Gaza’s government which is administered by Hamas.

Mr al-Yazuri previously worked for the United Arab Emirates’ education ministry and studied at British universities, obtaining a PhD in chemistry from the University of Huddersfield. Middle East Eye (MEE), an independently-funded online news organisation covering stories from the Middle East and North Africa, described him as ‘a technocrat with a scientific rather than political background’, pointing out that ministers, bureaucrats and civil servants in Gaza are appointed by Hamas.

Indeed, as MEE explained:

‘Many Palestinians in Gaza have family or other connections to Hamas, which runs the government. This means that anyone working in an official capacity must also work with Hamas.’

A campaign was launched by pro-Israel voices, including Tzipi Hotovely, Israel’s ambassador to the UK, and Danny Cohen, a former director of BBC television, to pressure the BBC to drop the documentary from iPlayer, soon after it was broadcast on BBC Two on 17 February.

Despite a countercampaign by over 1,000 media and film professionals objecting to the ‘racist’ and ‘dehumanising’ targeting of the documentary by supporters of Israel, the BBC quickly caved in, apologising for ‘mistakes’ that they deemed ‘significant and damaging’. Notably, however, the BBC did not point to any errors or inaccuracies in the actual editorial content of the programme.

The broadcaster attempted to divert some of the blame onto the independent company, Hoyo Films, who had made the documentary, saying that the BBC had not been told by the filmmakers that Abdullah al-Yazuri’s father was a deputy agriculture minister in the Hamas government.

Hoyo Films told the BBC it paid the boy’s mother ‘a limited sum of money for the narration’ via his sister’s bank account. A BBC spokesperson said:

‘While Hoyo Films have assured us that no payments were made to members of Hamas or its affiliates, either directly, in kind, or as a gift, the BBC is seeking additional assurance around the budget of the programme and will undertake a full audit of expenditure.’

Addressing MPs from the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee on 3 March, Samir Shah, the BBC’s chairman, said that:

‘This is a really, really bad moment. What has been revealed is a dagger to the heart of the BBC’s claim to be impartial and to be trustworthy, which is why I and the board are determined to ask the questions.’

Tim Davie, the BBC’s director general, told the MPs that after ‘failures in transparency’ he simply ‘lost trust’ in the production of the film and personally ordered it to be withdrawn:

‘It was a very difficult decision. What I did – and it was a very tough decision – was to say, at the moment, looking people in the eye, can we trust this film in terms of how it was made, the information we’ve got? And that’s where we made the decision. It’s a simple decision in that regard.’

In short, one child’s family connection with an official in the civilian administration of Gaza is supposedly reason enough to remove a vital documentary humanising Palestinians. This is an important film which redressed, to a marginal extent, the overwhelming pro-Israel bias displayed by the BBC over the past 18 months.

Meanwhile, the broadcaster repeatedly and prominently platforms the leaders and spokespeople of a state committing genocide and apartheid. Is it any wonder the public reputation of BBC News has likely nosedived yet further since 7 October, 2023?

As Mark Seddon, director of the Centre for UN Studies at the University of Buckingham and a former speechwriter for UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, observed via X:

‘Tim Davie should perhaps get the BBC to do some sampling. He may discover that there is a significant body of public opinion that has [been], and is, losing faith in BBC news gathering which is increasingly parochial & transparently failing when it comes to Israel/Palestine.’

Although Davie insisted on the need for BBC ‘transparency’, he was not at all transparent when asked by Rupa Huq MP to name specific groups or individuals who had demanded the BBC withdraw the film. He declined to do so. One of those is, as mentioned, the Israeli ambassador to the UK who constantly repeats ludicrous propaganda such as ‘our only target is Hamas facilities’, and who has denied that there is any humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Spineless BBC

As Chris Doyle, the director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding, noted:

‘By pulling [the] Gaza film, BBC shows it cannot stand up to Israel.’

By contrast, he pointed out that in 2003, the BBC aired a documentary on Israel’s nuclear programme, titled Israel’s Secret Weapon:

‘Israeli leaders hit the roof and banned its officials from appearing on the BBC.

‘The documentary was spot on. Israel was embarrassed at having its nuclear arsenal exposed when Iraq was being invaded for a non-existent stash of weapons of mass destruction.’

Doyle added:

‘The BBC did not cave in, and Israel lifted its boycott.

‘Twenty-five years later, the BBC has lost any semblance of a spine on Israel.’

British-Israeli historian Avi Shlaim, an emeritus professor of international relations at Oxford, said that the pulling of the film was ‘only the latest example of the public broadcaster’s regular capitulation to pressure from the pro-Israel lobby’. He continued:

‘The BBC has good reporters on Israel-Palestine, but its bosses are hopelessly compromised by their pronounced and persistent bias in favour of Israel.

‘The reason for this bias is not lack of knowledge but cowardice, the fear of antagonising Israel and Israel’s friends in high places in Britain.’

Richard Sanders, an award-winning producer who has made over fifty films in history, news and current affairs, including Al-Jazeera’s ‘October 7’ documentary, said:

‘Had the situation been reversed and an Israeli boy revealed to be the child of a junior minister in Netanyahu’s government the BBC might have felt obliged to issue one of its “corrections and clarifications” but it’s highly unlikely the film would have been withdrawn and the – extremely vulnerable – production team humiliated in such a public manner.’

Sangita Myska, dropped by radio broadcaster LBC in April 2024 after robustly challenging an Israeli spokesman live on air, wrote on X:

‘I was a BBC journalist for years. However well-intentioned the Gaza doco-makers were, they did not meet editorial standards of transparency BUT does that make a material difference to the overall accuracy of the film? Given the weight of supporting evidence: Probably not.’

She added:

‘I’m reliably informed that morale amongst some brilliant, committed, journalists is in free-fall over this.’

Sanders followed up with:

‘As another old hand who has spent more hours in sweaty edit suites with lawyers and commissioning editors than I care to remember I broadly agree with @SangitaMyska’s comments.

‘But I’d stress that a media environment where the victims of genocide, ethnic cleansing and apartheid are subjected constantly to the most intense scrutiny, while their tormentors and those who support them are all too often allowed a free pass is a distorted and frankly racist one.’

He added:

‘Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone remains by far the best thing the BBC has produced on Gaza and bore no evidence at all of any Hamas involvement in its editorial content.

‘It is deeply concerning that it is now being used as a stick to beat the BBC which must not allow itself to become even more cowed.’

In October 2024, the BBC had broadcast a documentary called, ‘Surviving October 7^th: We Will Dance Again’. The BBC’s description said:

‘A harrowing glimpse into the brutal assault on partygoers at the Nova Music Festival – one of the sites in Israel attacked by Hamas on 7 October 2023.’

As one user on X pointed out last week:

‘BBC made a documentary “We Will Dance Again”

‘Was there anyone in that documentary that was IDF or related to IDF?

‘Were there any serving soldiers or illegal settlers in the documentary.

‘Were any of their children in it?

‘As a @BBC licence payer, I demand an inquiry.’

Of course, the ‘demand’ for an inquiry was intended ironically and there was no response from the BBC. But the point was clearly made.

The Truth Exists

As mentioned in several of our previous alerts on Israel and Palestine, there is tremendous pressure on journalists working at BBC News to toe the Israeli line. Notably, since 7 October, use of the word ‘genocide’ has essentially been banned. Any time an interviewee mentions the word in a live setting, the BBC presenter intervenes to shut down the discussion. As one anonymous former BBC journalist said:

‘People [at the BBC] were terrified of using the word “genocide” in coverage. They still are. You will very rarely see it in any BBC coverage. And if an interviewee says the word “genocide”, the presenter will almost always panic.’

And whenever Israeli war crimes or breaches of international law are raised by a guest on a BBC television or radio programme, the BBC journalist will promptly add words to the effect that, ‘Israel denies that’ or ‘Israeli disputes that’. Such BBC repetition of one side’s viewpoint is rarely, if ever, seen when reporting or discussing Russia’s actions in Ukraine, for example, or more generally when addressing Moscow’s role in global affairs.

Karishma Patel, a former BBC researcher, newsreader and journalist, wrote recently about her reasons for leaving the BBC. She observed ‘a shocking level of editorial inconsistency’ in how the BBC covers Gaza. Journalists were ‘actively choosing not to follow evidence’ of Israeli war crimes ‘out of fear’.

Media Lens readers may recall the late Professor Greg Philo, head of the Glasgow Media Group, relating how he was once told by senior BBC editors that they ‘wait in fear’ for a phone call from the Israeli embassy in London whenever a news item appears on Israel or Palestine.

Patel continued:

‘Impartiality has failed if its key method is to constantly balance “both sides” of a story as equally true. A news outlet that refuses to come to conclusions becomes a vehicle in informational warfare, where bad faith actors flood social media with unfounded claims, creating a post-truth “fog”. Only robust evidence-based conclusions can cut through this.’

She described her horror at seeing images for the first time of a Palestinian man crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer, adding:

‘To see such overwhelming evidence every day and then hear 50/50 debates on Israel’s conduct – this is what created the biggest rift between my commitment to truth and the role I had to play as a BBC journalist. We have passed the point at which Israel’s war crimes and crimes against humanity are debatable. There’s more than enough evidence – from Palestinians on the ground, aid organisations; legal bodies – to come to coverage-shaping conclusions around what Israel has done.’

As she rightly noted, ‘truth exists’ based on reasonable, verifiable evidence:

‘In a world where claims are constantly competing, a journalist’s job is back-breaking: it is to investigate and come to conclusions, rather than setting up constant debates – no matter who this angers and no matter how much work it takes.’

A perfect example is the fake ‘debate’ over the reality of human-induced climate change. Until very recently, the BBC created a spurious ‘balance’, where none exists, hosting exchanges between highly-credentialed climate scientists and climate ‘sceptics’ often linked to fossil fuel interests.

Patel observed:

‘In 2018, the BBC issued long overdue editorial guidance to its staff, stating: “Climate change IS happening.” There was a sigh of relief from climate scientists, after years spent warning the organisation its debates were harmful. Coverage would now be rooted in this evidence-based conclusion.’

She summed up:

‘When will the BBC conclude that Israel IS violating international law, and shape its coverage around that truth? As the old saying goes, the journalist’s job isn’t to report that it may or may not be raining. It’s to look outside and tell the public if it is. And let me tell you: there’s a storm.’

The withdrawal of the Gaza documentary has been followed by ‘torrents of online harassment and abuse targeting 13-year-old Abdullah and his family’, according to MEE. Abdullah said:

‘I’ve been working for over nine months on this documentary for it to just get wiped and deleted… it was very sad to me.’

Abdullah told MEE that the whole affair has caused him serious ‘mental pressure’ and made him fear for his safety.

A BBC spokesperson claimed:

‘The BBC takes its duty of care responsibilities very seriously, particularly when working with children, and has frameworks in place to support these obligations.’

Richard Sanders pointed out that ‘more than 200 journalists have been killed by the Israelis in Gaza’. He said that it was dangerous that:

‘the team that made this [film] are effectively being smeared as Hamas accomplices. And at the heart of the story we have a vulnerable child.’

In an interview with the Sunday National newspaper in Scotland, Patel said:

‘He [Tim Davie] was talking about distrusting the entire film on the basis of this connection that the child narrator has.

‘One of the things that occurred to me is the fact that the BBC over the past 15 or 16 months has on two different occasions willingly chosen to embed with the Israeli military and to be openly subject to its censor. That was Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza quite early on and there was a Lebanese town as well, where a BBC correspondent followed the Israeli military into the town.

‘There is a lot of concern around potential influence over this documentary but there was very little public concern over our public broadcaster embedding with the Israeli military.’

In a message he addressed to the BBC, Abdullah said:

‘I did not agree to the risk of me being targeted in any way before the documentary was broadcasted on the BBC. So [if] anything happens to me, the BBC is responsible for it.’

Artists for Palestine UK, who organised the letter mentioned earlier with over 1,000 signatories demanding reinstatement of the film, warned that:

‘Tim Davie and Samir Shah are throwing Palestinian children under the bus.

‘BBC bosses must explain how they plan to safeguard the children who participated in the film. Their lives are in danger as Israel cuts off aid and threatens to collapse the ceasefire in Gaza. How will Britain’s public broadcaster ensure it isn’t putting a target on innocent kids’ backs?’

Abdullah finished by telling MEE that he is grateful to ‘all of those in the United Kingdom who had supported me, supported the documentary and had protested for the documentary to be put back on the BBC. I thank you all from the bottom of my heart, and continue your efforts that hopefully can and will return the movie back up on BBC. I hope that Gaza sees light again, that children of Gaza have a bright future again and everybody… sees a better future and a better tomorrow.’

He concluded by saying: ‘My wish is to study journalism [in] the United Kingdom.’

If Abdullah achieves his dream, it seems unlikely he will pursue a career in journalism with the BBC.

DC

Note. At the time of writing, ‘Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone’, can be viewed here on Rumble.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Media Lens.

Within days, not just “diversity,” but also “clean energy” and “climate change” began vanishing from federal websites. Other institutions and organizations started scrubbing their websites. Scientists who receive federal funding were told to end any activities that contradicted Trump’s executive orders. Government employees — at least, the ones who hadn’t been fired — began finding ways to take their climate work underground, worried that even acknowledging the existence of global warming could put their jobs at risk.

The Trump administration’s crackdown on words tied to progressive causes reflects the rise of what’s been called the “woke right,” a reactionary movement with its own language rules in opposition to “woke” terms that have become more prevalent in recent years. Since Trump took office, federal agencies have deleted climate change information from more than 200 government websites, according to the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative, a network that tracks these changes. These shifts in language lay the groundwork for how people understand what’s real and true, widening the deepening divide between how Republicans and Democrats understand the world.

“I think that all powerful individuals and all powerful entities are in some sense trying to bend reality to favor them, to play for their own interests,” said Norma Mendoza-Denton, an anthropology professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who co-edited a book about Trump’s use of language. “So it’s not unique, but definitely the scope at which it’s happening, the way it’s happening, the speed of it right now, is unprecedented.”

Gretchen Gehrke, who monitors federal websites for the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative, says that government sites are one of the few sources the public trusts for authoritative, reliable information, which is why removing facts about climate change from them is such a problem. 

“It really does alter our ability as a collective society to be able to identify and discuss reality,” Gehrke said. “If we only are dealing with the information that we’re receiving via social media, we’re literally operating in different realities.” 

Institutions that fail to follow Trump’s executive orders have already faced consequences. After Trump rechristened the Gulf of Mexico “the Gulf of America,” for instance, the Associated Press stood by the original, centuries-old name in its coverage — and its reporters lost access to the White House as a result. The effects of these language mandates have reverberated across society, with university researchers, nonprofits, and business executives searching for MAGA-friendly phrases to stay out of the administration’s crosshairs. The solar industry is no longer talking about climate change, for instance, but “American energy dominance,” echoing Trump’s platform.

The new language rules are expected to limit what many scientists are permitted to research. “It’s going to make it really hard to do the climate justice work,” said Amanda Fencl, director of climate science at the Union of Concerned Scientists, referring to the field that studies how a warming planet affects people unequally. The National Science Foundation, which accounts for about a quarter of federal support to universities, has been flagging studies that might violate Trump’s executive orders on gender and diversity initiatives based on a search for words such as “female,” “institutional,” “biases,” “marginalized,” and “trauma.” “I do think that deleting information and repressing and silencing scientists, it just has a chilling effect,” Fencl said. “It’s really demoralizing.”

During Trump’s first term, references to climate change disappeared from federal environmental websites, with the use of the term declining by roughly 38 percent between 2016 and 2020, only to reappear under the Biden administration. Trump’s second term appears to be taking a much more aggressive stance on wiping out words used by left-leaning organizations, scientists, and the broader public, likely with more to come. Last summer, a leaked video from Project 2025 — a policy agenda organized by The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank — revealed a former Trump official declaring that political appointees would have to “eradicate climate change references from absolutely everywhere.”

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Some government employees are finding ways to continue their climate work, despite the hostile atmosphere. The Atlantic reported in February that one team of federal workers at an unnamed agency had sealed itself off in a technology-free room to conduct meetings related to climate change, with employees using encrypted Signal messages instead of email. “All I have ever wanted to do was help the American people become more resilient to climate change,” an anonymous source at the agency reportedly said. “Now I am being treated like a criminal.”

The last time Trump was in office, federal employees replaced many references to “climate change” with softer phrases like “sustainability” and “resilience.” Now, many of those vague, previously safe terms are disappearing from websites, too, leaving fewer and fewer options for raising concerns about the environment. “You really cannot address a problem that you can’t identify,” Gehrke said. A study in the journal Ecological Economics in 2022 examined euphemisms for climate change used under the previous Trump administration and argued that the avoidance of clear language could undermine efforts to raise awareness for taking action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. 

Yet using more palatable synonyms could also be viewed as a way for scientists and government employees to continue doing important work. For example, when the Federal Emergency Management Agency rebranded its “Climate Resilience” site to “Future Conditions” in January, it stripped references to climate change from its main landing page while leaving them in subpages. “To me, that reads as trying to fly under the radar,” Gehrke said.

Of course, the reality of the changing climate won’t disappear, even if the phrase itself goes into hiding. Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, who last year signed a bill deleting most mentions of climate change from Florida state law, is still dealing with the consequences of a warming planet, continuing to approve funding for coastal communities to adapt to flooding and protect themselves against hurricanes. He just calls it “strengthening and fortifying Florida” without any mention of climate change.

“You can ban a word if you want,” Mendoza-Denton said, “but the concept still needs to be talked about.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline In Trump’s new purge of climate language, even ‘resilience’ isn’t safe on Mar 11, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Kate Yoder.

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Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has gained access to a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development system containing confidential personal information about hundreds of thousands of alleged victims of housing discrimination, including victims of domestic violence.

Access to the system, called the HUD Enforcement Management System, or HEMS, is typically strictly limited because it contains medical records, financial files, documents that may list Social Security numbers and other private information. DOGE sought access, and HUD granted it last week, according to information reviewed by ProPublica and two officials familiar with the matter.

This is just the latest collection of sensitive personal information that DOGE has tried to access in recent weeks. It has also sought personal taxpayer data kept by the IRS and information on Social Security benefit recipients, and it attempted to enter the Treasury Department’s payment systems. DOGE’s stated mission is to modernize government technology and cut excessive or improper spending. The administration of President Donald Trump has argued that DOGE needs “direct access” to such systems to eliminate “waste, fraud and abuse.”

DOGE’s data-gathering moves at some agencies have sparked forceful pushback, including lawsuits over alleged privacy violations and opposition from career officials who have resigned or retired following access requests. Judges have temporarily blocked DOGE from gaining access to records at the Department of Education, the Office of Personnel Management and the Treasury Department. And, faced with resistance, DOGE agreed to view only anonymized taxpayer data at the IRS.

Few records in the HUD system are redacted or anonymized, and many contain deeply personal material about those who have alleged or been accused of housing discrimination. Domestic violence case files can list addresses to which survivors have relocated for their safety. Harassment cases can include detailed descriptions of sexual assaults. Disability cases can include detailed medical records. Lending discrimination files could feature credit reports and bank statements. The names of witnesses who offered information — in some cases anonymously — about landlords accused of discrimination are among the files as well.

HUD enforces numerous civil rights laws, including the Fair Housing Act and aspects of the Violence Against Women Act and the Americans With Disabilities Act. Such statutes collectively prohibit housing discrimination on the basis of race, sex, national origin, disability and other characteristics.

HUD officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, voiced concern that DOGE’s access to HEMS could violate the privacy rights of discrimination victims and potentially put them at risk if their information is mishandled or leaked.

The episode is one of many roiling HUD, where the Trump administration is reportedly considering a 50% cut to the nearly 10,000-person workforce. The Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity, which combats housing discrimination, may see its roughly 500-person staff cut by as much as 76%, according to an unconfirmed projection circulating widely among HUD employees and viewed by ProPublica.

Civil liberties advocates expressed alarm about DOGE’s access to the HUD data, saying it may violate the Privacy Act. “It’s difficult to see why a system dedicated to civil rights complaints would have any impact whatsoever on a department looking for inefficiencies in governmental spending,” said Cody Venzke, senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union.

Venzke suggested DOGE may use HEMS data as a basis for scaling back housing discrimination enforcement. “There is deep concern that DOGE is not there to identify government inefficiencies, but rather to shutter programs that the administration disagrees with,” he said.

John Davisson, director of litigation at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, which is suing DOGE and other federal agencies and officials over DOGE’s access, contended that the department had gained access to HEMS and systems like it “under the false pretenses of identifying fraud and abuse, when what’s really going on is DOGE is trying to gain control over these databases to direct the activities of federal agencies.”

Spokespeople for HUD, the White House and DOGE did not respond to requests for comment (including a question to DOGE about what it plans to do with HEMS).

HUD’s Fair Housing office receives tens of thousands of housing discrimination allegations or inquiries annually and investigates — or assigns to state or local agencies — around 8,000 of them each year. Those investigations can last months or years and lead to financial settlements, compliance monitoring and policy reforms by landlords, mortgage lenders, local zoning officials and homeowners associations.

Access to HEMS is usually limited to Fair Housing staffers, HUD attorneys and auditors, and state and local investigators. However, DOGE requested entry, and HUD granted read-only access last week to Michael Mirski, who has a HUD email address and whom officials at the housing agency have identified in internal discussions as being affiliated with DOGE. Mirski did not respond to a request for comment.

Doris Burke contributed research.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Jesse Coburn.

In September 2015, the U.S. set an ambitious target of reducing its food loss and waste by 50 percent. The idea was to reduce the amount of food that ends up in landfills, where it emits greenhouse gases as it decomposes, a major factor contributing to climate change.

Researchers at UC Davis looked at state policies across the country and estimated how much food waste each state was likely reducing in 2022. They found that, without more work being done at the federal level, no state is on track to achieve the national waste reduction goal. 

Researchers calculated that, even when taking reduction measures into account, the U.S. still generates about 328 lbs of food waste per person annually — which is also how much waste was being generated per person in 2016, shortly after the EPA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced the waste-cutting goal. 

These figures indicate that even our best strategies for eliminating waste aren’t enough to meet our goals, said Sarah Kakadellis, lead author of the study published in Nature this month.

In order to assess how the U.S. is doing to meet its food waste reduction goals, Kakadellis and her team used both publicly available data (from ReFED, a nonprofit that monitors food waste in the U.S.) and estimates based on the current policy landscape. 

The study’s findings were “not surprising” given the absence of federal policy governing food waste, said Lori Leonard, chair of the Department of Global Development at Cornell University. “People are trying to do what they can at state and municipal levels,” she said. “But we really need national leadership on this issue.”

Kakadellis suggests that a path forward will also necessitate shifting the way consumers think about certain waste management strategies — like composting. 

Composting turns organic material, like food scraps, into a nutrient-rich mixture that can be used to fertilize new plants and crops. It can be considered a form of “recycling” food, although its end product technically cannot be eaten. This important detail means consumers must learn to view composting, despite its potential environmental benefits, as a form of food waste, says Kakadellis. 

“It’s really thinking about the best use of food, which is to eat it,” she said. 

Although it’s been touted as a great alternative to chucking your moldy bananas in the trash, composting is indeed classified as a form of food waste by the United Nations and the European Union. In 2021, the EPA updated its definition of food waste to include composting and anaerobic digestion — both of which can take inputs like uneaten food and turn them into fertilizer or biogas, respectively.

In updating its guidance, the EPA published a food waste hierarchy — which shows the best way to reduce food waste is to prevent it. This includes things like adding accurate date-labels to food products, so consumers aren’t confused about when something they’ve purchased has gone bad or is no longer safe to eat. It’s also preferable to find another use for unsold or uneaten food — like donating it to food banks or integrating into animal feed, where it can be used to raise livestock (assuming that livestock will also eventually feed humans). 

Composting will always have a role to play in diverting food waste from landfills — because those operations can accept spoiled or rotten food, which food banks, for example, cannot. “It’s not an either/or. They have to go hand in hand,” said Kakadellis. “But we’re skipping all these other steps and we’re going straight to the recycling too often.”

Leonard agrees, pointing out the high costs associated with ensuring the nation’s sprawling, complex food system runs smoothly: from the farm where crops are harvested to the trucks and cold storage that handle packaged goods. “There’s a tremendous amount of energy that’s gone into producing that food,” she said. “We don’t do that to create compost. You know, we do that to feed people.”

Composting, of course, serves more than one purpose and has environmental benefits beyond lowering food loss and waste. For example, it replenishes soils. But Leonard notes that if more work were done on the prevention side — like, making sure farms aren’t overproducing food — then soils wouldn’t be so depleted in the first place and wouldn’t need so much remediation.

Both Leonard and Kakadellis emphasize that no one tool for avoiding sending food to landfills should be off the table. Leonard, who previously worked with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, once did research on organics bans in other states. 

“I asked them if they were encouraging businesses or households to move up the EPA hierarchy and find other, better uses for their food scraps? And they said, no, no. What we’re really trying to do is just get people to do anything on the hierarchy.” That includes composting.

Until there are more options for both pre- and post-consumer food waste, composting may be the best, most accessible option for many people. “It is the easiest thing to do,” said Leonard. “And it’s probably the safest thing to do until we have better protocols in place.” 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The US wants to cut food waste in half. We’re not even close. on Jan 22, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Frida Garza.

Wald, who is a director at a health and environment center at the University of Southern California, is among the lucky ones. Her neighborhood in central L.A. was never directly threatened. Her house is intact; her children, husband, and all they own are safe. Nevertheless, Wald, like millions of other Angelenos, can’t escape the health effects of the blazes. Experts expect those impacts to linger. 

The wind-driven fires that have leveled a broad swath of Los Angeles have killed at least 25 people, consumed approximately 12,000 homes, schools, and other structures, and burned more than 40,000 acres since January 7. In the aftermath of such disasters, the focus is rightfully on treating the injured, mourning the dead, and beginning the long process of recovery. In time, though, attention shifts to the health consequences that reverberate days, weeks, even years after the danger has passed. 

Wildfires, a natural part of many ecosystems, particularly in the West, typically occur in forests or where wildlands meet communities. It is extraordinarily rare to see them penetrate an American city, but that’s exactly what happened in the nation’s second-largest metropolis.

As state and federal agencies assess the damage, researchers say the health effects of the wildfires must be tallied just as meticulously. 

“These fires are different from previous quote unquote wildfires because there are so many structures that burned,” said Yifang Zhu, a professor of environmental health sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles. “Everything in the households got burned — households, cars, metal pipes, plastics.” 

Wildfire smoke is toxic. Burning trees and shrubs produce very fine particulate matter, known by the shorthand PM 2.5, which burrow deep into the lungs and can even infiltrate the bloodstream, causing cold and flu symptoms in the short term and heart disease, lung cancer, and other chronic issues over time. 

But the fires that raced through Los Angeles burned thousands of homes, schools, historic buildings, and even medical clinics, blanketing the city in thick smoke. For several days after the first started, the city’s air quality index, or AQI, exceeded 100, the threshold, typically seen during wildfires, at which air becomes unhealthy to breathe for children, the elderly, and those with asthma. In some parts of the city, the AQI reached 500, a number rarely seen and always hazardous for everyone. 

At the moment, air pollution experts know how much smoke fills the air. That’s shown improvement in recent days. But they don’t know what’s in it. “What are the chemical mixtures in this smoke?” asked Kai Chen, an environmental scientist at the Yale School of Public Health. “In addition to fine particulate matter, there are potentially other hazardous and carcinogenic organic compounds — gas pollutants, trace metals, and microplastics.” 

Previous research shows that the spikes in unhealthy air quality seen during such events lead to higher rates of hospitalizations for issues like asthma, and even contribute to heart attacks among those with that chronic disease. A 2024 study on the long-term effects of smoke exposure in California showed that particulate matter from wildfires in the state from 2008 to 2018 contributed to anywhere from 52,000 to 56,000 premature deaths. A health assessment of 148 firefighters who worked the Tubbs Fire, which burned more than 36,000 acres in Northern California in 2017 and destroyed an unusually high number of structures, found elevated levels of the PFAS known as forever chemicals, heavy metals, and flame retardants in their blood and urine.

The L.A. county department of public health has formally urged people to stay inside and wear masks to protect themselves from windblown toxic dust and ash. Air quality measurements don’t take these particles into account, which means the air quality index doesn’t reveal the extent of contaminants in the air. 

Zhu and her colleagues have been collecting samples of wildfire smoke in neighborhoods near the fires. It’ll be months before that data is fully analyzed, but Zhu suspects she will find a dangerous mix of chemicals, including, potentially, asbestos and lead — materials used in many buildings constructed before the 1970s. 

The risk will linger even after the smoke clears. The plumes that wafted over the landscape will deposit chemicals into drinking water supplies and contaminate soil. When rains do come, they’ll wash toxic ash into streams and across the land, said Fernando Rosario-Ortiz, an environmental engineer and interim dean of the University of Colorado Boulder environmental engineering program. “There’s a lot of manmade materials that are now being combusted. The potential is there for contamination,” he said, noting that little research on how toxic ash and other byproducts of wildfires in urban areas currently exists. “What we don’t have a lot of information on is what happens now.” 

After the Camp Fire razed Paradise, California, in 2018, water utilities found high levels of volatile organic compounds in drinking water. Similar issues have arisen in places like Boulder County, Colorado, where the Marshall fire destroyed nearly 1,000 structures in 2021, Rosario-Ortiz said, though the presence of a contaminant in a home doesn’t necessarily mean it will be present in high levels in the water. Still, several municipal water agencies in Los Angeles issued preemptive advisories urging residents not to drink tap water in neighborhoods near the Palisades and Eaton fires. It’ll be weeks before they know exactly what’s in the water. 

As wildfires grow ever more intense and encroach upon urban areas, cities and counties must be prepared to monitor the health impacts and respond to them. “This is the first time I’ve ever even witnessed or heard anything like this,” said Zhu, who raised her daughter in Los Angeles and has lived there for decades, said. “Even being in the field studying wildfires and air quality impacts, I never imagined that a whole neighborhood, a whole community in Palisades, would burn down.”

Wald is back home. She’s still got a nasty cough, but her other symptoms are starting to subside as the smoke in her neighborhood clears. The fires gave her a scare, but she’s not making long-term plans to move on just yet. “I wouldn’t say that here where I am right now, I’m that worried,” she said. “But, I mean, it’s not great.” 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Wildfire smoke is are always toxic. LA’s is even worse on Jan 17, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Zoya Teirstein.

“The Forest Service people have been super, super happy to have us,” Zampaglione said. “They’re always saying, ‘Without you guys, this would have taken months.’” 

Zampaglione, now 27 years old, had previously worked analyzing environmental data and mapping, but he was looking to do something more hands-on. Then he saw an ad on YouTube for the Forest Corps and applied through the AmeriCorps site. He didn’t realize until his first week on the job last summer that he was part of the first class of the American Climate Corps, an initiative started by President Joe Biden to get young people working in jobs that reduce carbon dioxide emissions and protect communities from weather disasters.

It also appears to be the Climate Corps’ last class, as the Biden administration has quietly been winding down the program ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration on January 20. “It’s officially over,” said Dana Fisher, a professor at American University who has been researching climate service projects for AmeriCorps. “​​The people who were responsible for coordinating it have left office or are leaving office. Before they go, they are shutting it all down.”

Think of it as a precautionary step. When Trump takes over, any federal program with “climate” in the name will likely have a target on it. Republican politicians have fiercely opposed the idea of the Climate Corps ever since Biden proposed it at the start of his term in 2021, with Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky blasting the notion of spending billions of dollars on a “made-up government work program” that would essentially provide busywork for “young liberal activists.”

But the American Climate Corps’ thousands of members across the country will keep their jobs, at least for the time being. That’s in part because the Climate Corps isn’t exactly the government jobs program people think it is. Environmental advocates hyped the corps’ creation as a “major win for the climate movement,” while news headlines declared that it would create 20,000 jobs. But the Climate Corps didn’t employ people directly — it was actually a loose network of mostly preexisting positions across a slew of nonprofits, state and local governments, and federal agencies, with many different sources of funding. Take away the “American Climate Corps,” and little changes. The jobs survive, even if the branding doesn’t.

“People say it’s the American Climate Corps, but like, what does that mean?” said Robert Godfried, the program manager for the recently launched Maryland Climate Corps, part of the larger network. “There isn’t really any meat on those bones.”

Some of the jobs roped into the American Climate Corps have funding locked down for much of Trump’s term. Zampaglione’s program, the Forest Corps, has $15 million in funding from the U.S. Forest Service that should last it five years, according to Ken Goodson, the director of AmeriCorps NCCC, which recruits young adults for public service. 

Other federal agencies, however, will likely see funding cuts that hit these climate jobs, especially as Elon Musk has promised to cut $2 trillion from the government’s budget — about one-third of existing spending — as co-lead of Trump’s proposed Department of Government Efficiency, aka DOGE. 

“The big challenge,” Fisher said, “is going to be a question having to do with funding for these federal programs, and the degree to which they’re going to be even allowed to say ‘climate.’”

The American Climate Corps was supposed to be a New Deal-era program brought back to life. In Biden’s first days as president, he called for a Civilian Climate Corps that would employ hundreds of thousands of young people across the country. The vision was inspired by President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps — which put about 3 million men to work outdoors during the Great Depression, planting trees and building trails — but reimagined for the needs of the 21st century. Young people would get paid to protect neighborhoods from fires and floods and learn trade skills for installing heat pumps, solar panels, and electric vehicle chargers, building up a workforce that could accelerate the United States toward a cleaner future.

The idea had been inserted into Biden’s platform in the run-up to the 2020 election, a result of some olive-branch efforts to reach progressive voters after Senator Bernie Sanders dropped out of the Democratic primary. The party’s task force on climate policy, including Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Varshini Prakash from the youth-led Sunrise Movement, recommended a climate corps, and it reportedly caught Biden’s attention. Young activists were enthusiastic about the possibility. In May 2021, members of the Sunrise Movement marched 266 miles across California to pressure Congress to pass funding for the program, from Paradise, a town almost completely destroyed by a wildfire in 2018, to San Francisco.

But the New Deal-inspired jobs program seemed to lose resonance as unemployment recovered from its huge spike during the 2020 lockdowns, and power in the labor market shifted toward employees in 2021, the year of the “Great Resignation.” While the Democratic-controlled House managed to pass $30 billion to start a Climate Corps in late 2021, as part of Biden’s Build Back Better bill, it didn’t make it past the divided Senate. Money for the Climate Corps got cut out of the Inflation Reduction Act, the landmark climate law that passed in 2022, during negotiations. By early 2023, with Republicans taking control of the House from Democrats, the vision of reviving the Civilian Conservation Corps looked dead.

Then, that September, the Biden administration surprise-announced that the American Climate Corps was happening after all — but scaled back. Instead of creating 300,000 jobs, the new version, authorized through an executive order, aimed to put 20,000 members to work in its first year. Some saw the move as a sort of marketing effort to rally young voters, whose support for Biden had dropped after his administration had cleared the way for the Willow oil project in Alaska, ahead of Biden’s campaign for reelection in 2024.

“I think the title American Climate Corps was really the Biden administration sort of placating, looking for younger votes,” said Jeff Parker, executive director of the Northwest Youth Corps. “During early conversations, many of us, myself included, were in conversations where we were really asking for the word ‘resiliency’ to replace the word ‘climate,’ just because it’s a hot issue. And they were like, ‘Well, of course it’s hot. That’s why we want it, because that’s who we’re trying to market this to.’” (Officials from the Biden administration did not agree to an interview for this article, despite several requests.)

After the Climate Corps’ official announcement, a pressing question loomed: How on Earth do you create 20,000 jobs without any money from Congress? “There are no new appropriated dollars for American Climate Corps,” confirmed Michael Smith, CEO of AmeriCorps, the independent federal agency tasked with becoming the hub for the American Climate Corps. The White House formed an interagency group to figure out how to bring climate programs together, because without funding, the obvious path was to take advantage of what was already out there.

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Climate service programs had been expanding independently, across agencies in the federal government and also through nonprofits and state and local governments. AmeriCorps, for example, had moved almost $160 million toward its environmental work, including trail restoration and urban forestry, before the national initiative was up and running, Smith said.

“What the American Climate Corps did was look at all programs that were currently involved in that type of land management and conservation work. And instead of everybody sort of being off in their own space, doing those efforts, helped bring them together under the American Climate Corps umbrella,” said Goodson, the director of AmeriCorps NCCC.

Even though the Climate Corps didn’t get any help from Congress, it found resources in other places. The MacArthur Foundation, which often funds climate projects, gave a $500,000 grant to AmeriCorps last year to support it. Meanwhile, corps programs within the larger network used existing funding from federal agencies and supported some of their work with money from the bipartisan infrastructure law in 2021 and the Inflation Reduction Act.

The American Climate Corps jobs site appeared last April, directing anyone interested to apply for positions on the sites of the network’s partners. Since the jobs weren’t centralized, term limits and pay were all over the place. Nonetheless, the first cohort was sworn in virtually in June 2023. In talking to organizers of programs that had been bundled into the national network, Fisher encountered confusion about their status as part of the American Climate Corps. “Some of them recounted being told last-minute about opportunities to be sworn in and told that they could get a T-shirt,” she said.

The White House claimed that it had gathered 15,000 members by last September, but the way this number got presented was somewhat misleading, because most of these jobs aren’t new jobs, or even jobs created by the federal government. The positions just came with a new label.

“I think they can claim that there are 15,000 young people doing climate-related work under this umbrella, but I think it would be disingenuous if they called those new or added jobs,” Parker said. His Northwest Youth Corps accounted for roughly 300 positions with the American Climate Corps across Washington, Oregon, and Idaho.

Even some of the jobs that were new can’t be attributed directly to the Climate Corps. The Forest Corps program that Zampaglione is participating in, for example, was set in motion about a year before Biden established the national corps. According to Goodson, the U.S. Forest Service had asked AmeriCorps to help with reforestation and managing wildfires, as well as training up a new generation of land conservation workers. Funded by the Forest Service, 80 Forest Corps members started their terms last July. “When the American Climate Corps was announced and launched, the timing was such that it really lined up with the Forest Corps program coming together,” Goodson said.

Another program that recently launched, the Maryland Climate Corps, wouldn’t have happened without that state’s governor, Wes Moore. The Democratic governor made creating a service-year option for young people a priority once he took office in 2023, said Godfried, the manager of Maryland’s climate corps. Some of the money for the 40-person program comes from the state, and the rest comes all the way across the country from the California Volunteers Fund, affiliated with California Governor Gavin Newsom’s office. That fund, in turn, is supported by AmeriCorps and philanthropic donors.

“California Volunteers Fund, in my mind, is actually one of the unsung heroes of this movement,” Godfried said. The program, along with AmeriCorps, is helping to establish state-level efforts modeled after the California Climate Action Corps, which launched in 2020 and has put tens of thousands of volunteers to work planting trees, fighting food waste, and making communities more resilient to wildfires. The effort has expanded to a dozen other states: Arizona, Colorado, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, North Carolina, Utah, Vermont, and Washington. The state level, Godfried said, “is where the action is.”

Credit for this nationwide expansion of climate service work should go to the many governors’ offices that have been working hard to create these jobs, Godfried said. Yet the American Climate Corps is what gets people’s attention. “When the White House does something, everyone wants to report on it,” he said. “When I do something, when the folks in state government do, to be frank, no one really cares that much.”

So the New Deal-style climate jobs program that Biden envisioned never really materialized — but the cobbled-together, low-budget version wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. The White House’s megaphone brought public attention to the fact that you can volunteer to help address climate change and get paid for it. Climate Corps members have replaced old fluorescent lights with energy-efficient LEDs, put solar panels on homes, and educated kids about the effects of a warming planet.

The people managing these efforts say that their participation in the national network increased their visibility, bringing in more applicants through the federal jobs site. The Forest Corps, for example, got 800 applications for just 80 positions, according to Goodson.

This kind of work won’t end under the Trump administration, though it has already put a damper on ambitions to expand it. “The American Climate Corps will evaporate as a Biden initiative, as if it never happened, because it really didn’t get the runway to take off,” Parker said. 

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The effects of Trump’s presidency could also trickle down to the state-level climate corps. Many leaders were hoping to supplement their existing funding with federal money that no longer looks like it’ll be coming, Fisher said. Governor Moore has said he’ll trim $2 billion out of Maryland’s budget and cut environmental projects that he thinks won’t get federal support from a Trump White House, though he hasn’t said anything about the Climate Corps specifically.

Parker asked for the Northwest Youth Corps to be taken off the Climate Corps site, because he was worried that the affiliation might jeopardize his funding, which has historically received bipartisan support, given Trump’s hostility to climate initiatives. A lot of organizations, he said, just want to put the American Climate Corps behind them and not attract too much attention so that their work will survive without the Biden-era branding.

After all, the idea of creating programs to fight fires, plant trees, and do conservation work modeled after the Civilian Conservation Corps doesn’t need to be a partisan issue. Polls show it has cross-party appeal: One from 2020 found that 84 percent of Republican voters, compared to just 78 percent of Democratic voters, were in favor of starting these kinds of corps at the state level. But that Republican support for the general idea dropped dramatically after Biden announced his national program that swapped “climate” for “conservation” in the name. “In our current political climate, it just has sort of been collateral damage,” Parker said.

The irony is that the work that the American Climate Corps promised is needed more than ever. “Climate shocks are going to come, and they’re going to come more and more frequently with more severity,” Fisher said. “We need communities to be prepared and capable of responding. And service corps programs are a wonderful way to do that.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The American Climate Corps is over. What even was it? on Jan 15, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Kate Yoder.

The fall of the Assad family’s 50-year regime in Syria brings with it “many more questions than answers,” says Syrian American scholar and the executive director of the Arab Studies Institute, Bassam Haddad. While the regional and global implications are “not good,” as Israel in particular is celebrating the loss of Assad’s material support for Palestinian and Lebanese armed resistance, Haddad says the immediate relief of those suffering under Assad’s totalitarian regime should not be ignored or invisibilized. Haddad also discusses the political prospects for the rebel forces led by the group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which he says will likely form a coalition with other groups as the future of Syria is determined in the coming days and weeks.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Among the flaws observers identified were a lack of transparency in the way countries count and report carbon credits and the absence of concrete consequences when agreed-upon guidelines aren’t followed. The final guidelines also failed to provide much specificity about the types of projects allowed to create carbon credits.

Carbon Market Watch, a European watchdog and research group, said in a statement that the agreements reached at the end of the conference risked “facilitating cowboy carbon markets at a time when the world needs a sheriff.” 

The carbon markets in question have to do with Article 6 of the Paris Agreement. First outlined in 2015, the article imagined three ways for countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions cooperatively. Fleshing out the details, however, has remained the subject of contention through multiple COPs, the name for the annual climate meetings held by the United Nations.

Article 6’s first cooperative approach, under Article 6.2, allows countries to bilaterally trade carbon credits known as “internationally transferred mitigation outcomes” — certificates each representing 1 metric ton of carbon emissions that are prevented or removed from the atmosphere. The second approach, described in Article 6.4, envisions a global market for carbon credits — in this case dubbed “emission reduction units” — that are purchasable by governments and companies alike. Article 6.8 highlights nonmarket approaches, the third cooperative carbon-reduction mechanism. It wasn’t discussed much at COP29, but it’s supposed to create a platform for wealthy countries to donate money or climate technology to poorer countries.

According to the International Emissions Trading Association, a pro-carbon market industry group, Articles 6.2 and 6.4 could reduce the cost of reaching countries’ emissions targets by up to $250 billion a year by 2030, since they incentivize countries to do the least expensive emissions reductions first. Simon Watts, New Zealand’s climate minister, said in a statement that the decision to greenlight Article 6 “sends a clear signal to the market to unlock investments in activities that reduce emissions and enable countries to be able to work together and support each other to meet their climate targets.”

Critics, however, say carbon trading mechanisms distract wealthy countries from the essential work of reducing their own emissions. They say Article 6 risks replicating some of the same fraud and human rights issues that have tainted existing carbon markets outside of the U.N.’s purview. 

The first big piece of news out of COP29, this year’s U.N. climate conference in Baku, Azerbaijan, was about Article 6.4, the global carbon market for countries and businesses. On November 11, the opening day of the summit, delegates approved two key documents to make the market work, and countries are now expected to begin using it as early as mid-2025.
COP29 President Mukhtar Babayev touted the market’s fast-tracked approval as a breakthrough “following years of stalemate,” an apparent attempt to set a positive tone for the rest of the two-week conference. But the announcement obscured broader disagreements over Article 6.

One reason for conflict is that COP29’s initial agreements over Article 6.4 were not reached through negotiation. Rather, they were reached through a procedural sleight of hand by the Article 6.4 Supervisory Body, the 12-person technical group charged with designing standards for the new carbon market. Instead of asking national delegates to weigh in on and approve those two key documents, the Supervisory Body unilaterally adopted them in October and asked delegates to rubber-stamp them at COP29. 

The texts that were pushed through outline the types of carbon removal projects that are allowed to generate carbon credits, and the methodologies used to determine how much a carbon credit is worth.

Isa Mulder, an expert on global carbon markets for Carbon Market Watch, said the move sets a dangerous precedent for the Supervisory Body — and potentially other technical groups — to push forward controversial texts without submitting them to delegates for discussion or negotiation. 

Similar fears were raised by a host of other observers, as well as the delegate from Tuvalu. Erika Lennon, a senior attorney from the nonprofit Center for International Environmental Law, called it in a statement a “rogue move from the Supervisory Body to prevail in the quest to start COP29 with a ‘win.’”

Critics voiced not only procedural concerns, but also substantive ones. Lennon criticized the Supervisory Body’s guidance for being too vague about the types of carbon projects allowed to generate credits — some projects, like storing carbon in rocks, are more reliable than others — and for failing to set monitoring requirements that ensure against “reversal,” the release of carbon that was supposed be locked up in perpetuity (like when a wildfire burns up a forest). 

“Governments now face the real possibility of having created a Paris-sanctioned carbon market that could be worse for people and the planet than the scandal-ridden voluntary carbon markets,” she said, referring to the unregulated marketplace that companies already use to claim they’ve offset their greenhouse gas emissions.

Injy Johnstone, a decarbonization research associate at the University of Oxford, said a lack of transparency and accountability could allow countries to exaggerate their emissions reductions achieved through offsets.

“Where there are loopholes, they will be exploited,” she said.

As negotiations closed on Sunday, those issues remained unresolved, along with others involving the transfer of credits from the Article 6.4 carbon market’s predecessor.

***

Article 6.2, the agreement allowing countries to bilaterally trade carbon credits, had already been in operation before COP29. Under what Lennon described as a “bare-bones” framework from the U.N., rich countries including Japan and Switzerland had set up agreements to exchange carbon credits with developing nations in order to claim progress toward their “nationally determined contributions” — the emissions-reduction pledges countries make under the Paris Agreement. 

The aim for COP29 was to flesh out Article 6.2 rules on transparency and accountability, including how countries should authorize carbon credits, so that more countries could participate.

That didn’t happen — at least, not to the extent that some had hoped. Environmental groups and some negotiating blocs — notably, the EU — sounded the alarm over countries “moving backwards” in terms of the mechanism’s reliability. Near the end of the conference, Mulder said the 6.2 mechanism had been watered down so significantly that it risked becoming “just a framework where it’s completely up to countries to do whatever they want.”

The exact disagreements are deeply technical. One of the main disputes concerns language in the final text that “requests” — rather than mandates — that countries pause the use of carbon credits flagged for integrity issues by a U.N. technical body. Another part of the text makes it optional for countries to share certain details about their carbon trading activities, including carbon projects’ risk of reversal.

The agreed-upon texts “put a lot of weight on the shoulders of independent observers, researchers, the media, and the countries themselves to scrutinize the actions of countries engaging in Article 6.2,” said Jonathan Crook, a policy expert at Carbon Market Watch, in a statement. Crook observed that the complexity of Article 6 will likely hinder would-be watchdogs from holding countries accountable for trading low-quality credits.

Last week, during the final days of COP29, an investigation from the Swiss nonprofit Alliance Sud highlighted the risks of nontransparency around Article 6.2’s carbon credits. It found that Switzerland’s agreement to offset its greenhouse gas emissions by selling clean-burning cookstoves to Ghana — facilitated by the pre-COP29 rules for Article 6.2 — was overestimating its climate benefits by up to 79 percent. But Alliance Sud was only able to discover this through Switzerland’s Freedom of Information Act; the project owner had initially refused to let the organization see an unredacted version of the project description, as well as the analysis used to calculate its emissions impact.

“The project is as opaque as dense fog,” Alliance Sud said. It concluded that “the possibility of public scrutiny remains crucial to ensuring that carbon mitigation projects do not endanger implementation of the Paris Agreement.”

With the Paris Agreement’s Article 6, some environmental advocates have found themselves in a tricky position. While they want to ensure the best outcome for its two market mechanisms, they also resent the fundamental idea of them.

“I get why people are there working on the minutiae of the text,” said Doreen Stabinsky, a professor of global environmental politics at the College of the Atlantic in Maine. “But for me the bigger story that needs to be told is that carbon markets don’t actually stop climate change.” 

Just this month, an article in the journal Nature Communications found that fewer than 16 percent of carbon credits from more than 2,000 projects analyzed represented “real emission reductions.” On top of these integrity issues, Stabinsky said carbon markets incentivize rich countries to offset their emissions by funding mitigation projects in the developing world, rather than undertaking the difficult but necessary work of decarbonizing their own economies.

Lennon objected to the claim, often repeated at COP29, that carbon markets are a form of so-called “climate finance” — a term for much-needed funding for climate mitigation and adaptation in the developing world. An early draft of the COP29 agreement listed carbon markets as one of several types of climate finance that rich countries could funnel to poor countries. 

“Carbon markets are not climate finance and should not be seen as climate finance,” she told Grist. 

The explicit reference to carbon markets was struck from the final version of countries’ updated pledge to deliver $1.3 trillion to developing countries by 2035 — a main outcome of COP29. But the final agreement doesn’t prohibit countries from trying to use carbon markets to claim progress toward their financial obligations. 

“The best-case outcome,” Lennon said, would be for the U.N. to eschew these markets altogether. A coalition of African environmental groups shared a similar sentiment during the final days of the COP29.

According to the groups, carbon markets “don’t actually decrease emissions; they just shift them around.” For that reason, they see them as a tool of the developed world to make it seem as if it is taking climate action, even as it appropriates more of the planet’s “carbon budget” — the amount of climate pollution that countries can collectively emit while remaining within safe planetary boundaries.

The groups “stand firmly against carbon markets, as we believe they can undermine the integrity of climate action and disproportionately impact developing nations,” they wrote.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline At COP29, new rules for carbon markets made them even more controversial on Nov 26, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Joseph Winters.

I worked as a professional DJ my entire adult life starting from when I was 21, and I had done freelance music criticism. I wasn’t particularly prolific, but it was something I was always interested in, and I consumed a lot of music criticism. When the pandemic hit, my DJ career collapsed completely. I lost all my work, and my whole career basically vaporized.

I had the thought of, “Should I start a podcast,” but who hasn’t had that thought? I would spend some time daily poking around in the New York Times Popcast’s Facebook group, and I’d had this idea of a system of tiers. It was just something I like to debate with my friends: “If there’s tiers of pop stardom, who’s in that top tier?” One day in the Facebook group, I posted that. It sparked a huge debate that went on for days, and it got hundreds of comments, and I realized there was something there that people really liked talking about.

I can’t remember exactly how I went from that to, “Let me actually turn this into a podcast,” but it just connected, and pretty soon afterward, I decided to start the show. It was a combination of stumbling into a conceit that had an angle and a construct to it and me just stumbling around, feeling really lost, looking for what the next thing would be, and knowing that music was my passion. I wanted to find something to turn my knowledge and fascination with talking about music into something creative.

I’ve always been someone who really enjoys consuming music podcasts. This is corny, but I wanted to make the podcast that I wanted to hear. What I was looking for was really high-level, smart, fun, lighthearted debates about pop stars. I felt like there were podcasts that hit on that in varying degrees, but I had a vision of what that would look like as a fan of pop music and pop podcasts. I had a concept for what the podcast would be that I would be the most interested in hearing as a fan.

What skills did you have to learn to start being able to podcast? What did you already know?

Without knowing it, for years, I had been preparing myself for this because I listened to a lot of podcasts, and I really knew what I liked, what I didn’t like, what I was looking for in terms of how professional I wanted it to sound, and how structured I wanted the interviews to be. But I had to learn a lot of technical things.

For the first year of the show and maybe even longer, I did every aspect of it completely on my own, from conceptualization to reaching out and booking guests, preparing myself, preparing them, conducting and recording the interview, and editing and releasing the show. I had to learn everything from how to speak into a microphone correctly to—editing was one of the biggest technical learning curves. I still edit numerous episodes of the show, so it’s a skill that really helped me become my own podcasting studio. I didn’t have any money to do this. I didn’t have capital to spend on anybody helping me, so it had to be a one-man show. I learned how to edit, and then, of course, the skill of interviewing people.

When I first started I was like, “I finally have this place where I can say everything I want to say.” I sometimes go back and remember those early episodes, and I’ll just cringe and want to die, because I’ll think about how much I would cut the other person off or be looking for vehicles to talk. One thing that’s really shifted in my approach is, I’m there to facilitate a conversation, let the other person express their ideas, learn from what they’re speaking about, and really let them cook.

A big skill of mine was learning how to interface with the people I’m speaking with. Sharing my ideas, but also giving guests a platform to share theirs, and to learn from them. The craft of interviewing, especially over longform, has been a long-gestating skill for me. When I’m conducting interviews, especially for our main episodes—which are very, very long, and both people come in with a lot to say and a lot of research—you want to get to everything, but you also want to keep everything moving and get it all done in a reasonable amount of time.

At what point did you have the realization, “I shouldn’t be doing this all myself. I need help from Russ [Martin, producer]”? Was Russ someone you knew or someone you found?

It happened about a year into making the show. I was feeling completely overwhelmed. The process of making Pop Pantheon is incredibly involved. It’s a high-wire act because it’s not just the podcast—it’s two people sitting down to catch up. There’s a lot of planning and research, and the episodes are very diligently edited because they’re so long. I was very concerned with making sure this is compelling content and not boring to people. I was drowning.

At the beginning, just from the skills I was learning, I was dedicated to building it, and that got me through, but I hit a wall. When I first was looking for somebody, I didn’t have any money. The show didn’t make a red cent until we launched our Patreon about a year and a half ago. I said on air that I wanted to pay someone. I had a couple hundred dollars to spend a month and I was like, “Can somebody come in for a grand total of five hours a month to just take a few little things off of my plate?” Just so that instead of fully drowning, I was slightly head above water keeping this thing on track.

I didn’t know Russ, but the first time Pop Pantheon ever got mentioned on another podcast was on a show called DUNZO!. [Russ] had heard Pop Pantheon and recommended it to [Troy McEady, DUNZO! host], who’s been on Pop Pantheon now numerous times. [Russ] emailed me like, “I mentioned you on DUNZO!. I’m a big fan.” His tenacity and thoroughness, from the beginning…he wrote me this email with all these thoughts and ideas about how the show could grow, how much he wanted to be part of that, and how passionate he was.

We clicked instantaneously. It is the easiest relationship I have ever had in any area of my life. We are yin and yang. We’re similar in all the right ways, we’re different in all the right ways. Our value systems are very similar, so we work seamlessly. I needed Russ more than I even knew, and he just appeared. Literally, I would die for him. I’m not kidding. The show would not be where it is today without him. That is a solid fact.

Are your guests for the podcast friends, or are they strangers whom it feels intimidating to reach out to? How do you get through any anxiety around that?

One of my close friends is Lindsey Weber, the host of Who? Weekly, which is a large show, and she’s very ingratiated in the world of New York media, so through her, I knew a few people. Lindsay was a great mentor in terms of starting the show. She appeared on the show in the third episode or so, and once she got on the show, that opened a lot of doors because people would see she had been on the show. Soon after, I reached out to Jia Tolentino, who I didn’t know personally, but I was in one degree of separation from [her] in a lot of circles. She was completely gracious. Maybe one episode had come out, and she agreed to be on it.

I’m good at putting myself out there. I had spent six or seven years developing a television series about my life as a DJ prior to the pandemic, and I had shot a pilot and raised all the money for it by myself. I learned a lot through that process about what it takes to make a creative project happen and how much you have to just get over it and go for it. I remember when I was raising money, my therapist said something like, “When you ask somebody to do something, you don’t have to take responsibility for their answer. They’re all grownups who can say yes or no. You’re not walking up to anybody with a gun to their head and saying, ‘You need to be on my podcast.’”

By the time I started Pop Pantheon, I was like, “I’m going to go for it.” We still take that approach, and we still get ghosted and turned down by people all the time, but you miss all the shots you don’t take. Because I didn’t shy away from it, I caught some good breaks early on. Once Lindsey, Jia, and Lindsay Zoladz had done it early on, I think other people in the media sphere, which is a very tight-knit community, saw that other credible people had done it and were also open to doing it.

How did you learn how to create a TV show?

I’m the type of person that just goes for stuff. Even when I’m terrified, and I often am, I just do it anyway. In my twenties, one project I did for a while was this semi-fictionalized short story series called Trapped In The Booth. I was pulling the curtain back on DJing and nightlife and telling stories that dissuaded people from the idea that DJing was this glamorous, rockstar lifestyle and exposing some of the embarrassing aspects of being a working-class local DJ.

I got it in my head that it should be a TV show. I was studying acting a bit at the time. I wanted to find a way to grow the project and express myself in new ways. I spent a long time developing the show, a pilot script, and a series bible, and I got it in my head that I had to do a lot on my own if I wanted to get attention as a non-celebrity trying to get a TV show together. I decided to do the most I possibly could to prove myself. That spiraled into, “I’m going to make this pilot by myself, and I’m not going to do it in a shitty way. I’m going to try to pull together something amazing.” I learned how to do it just by having the insane chutzpah to try.

Eventually, as with all creative projects, collaboration came into play. When it really got magical is when I realized the real juice is not just me and my little egotistical vision of this. It’s what can come out of the collective. It was way bigger than I could have ever imagined. It was a life lesson. What came out of that was so much grander, and it was so beyond what I could have envisioned because it ended up not being just my thing. The experience of making it was the best thing I’ve ever done and prepared me for things I didn’t know it was even preparing me for in terms of how to make creative projects.

You mentioned collaboration a decent amount. I don’t immediately see DJing, writing, or music criticism as collaborative, and I say that as somebody who was previously a music critic. I’m curious to hear about any collaboration or lack thereof in those realms and how that’s shaped your creativity.

DJing was very non-collaborative. I spent a lot of my twenties viewing myself as a lone wolf. I was very much a loner, and DJing lent itself to that. I didn’t have a day job. A lot of people around me had opposite schedules and lifestyles from me. I also didn’t get into DJing because I loved to party. I was like, “I love music, and I’ve got to find a way to use that to make money,” so that was how I got into it.

Being in the DJ booth was an interesting experience of being both among a lot of people and separate from everybody, which, at the time, I really liked. I don’t think I went out to a nightclub of my own volition more than a dozen times throughout my entire twenties, even though I worked in them four nights a week. My life was very solitary and non-collaborative, and I started to burn out on that. I started to feel super lonely and stuck in that loneliness, and that my career and creative endeavors were hindered by how walled-off my life was.

I remember hitting a phase where I wanted other people in my life, and I didn’t know how to do that. Making Trapped In The Booth, the TV show, was truly a transformative exercise in what can come when you let your guard down, let your walls out, and let other people in. Magic can happen that’s greater than every individual person when you come together. Once I had that experience, I was like, “Collaboration is kind of my shit now.” Every major project in my life right now could not be happening without everybody else that’s involved in it.

It seems like you haven’t been doing as much writing and music criticism. I was curious why that is.

Frankly, it’s that I do not have a free fucking second in my entire life. My life is incredibly busy. Making Pop Pantheon is an absolute full-time job. It requires so much work. Add on top of that DJing, traveling for DJing, which I do sometimes multiple times a month…I have such a busy schedule that my time has become incredibly precious and valuable to me, and I don’t have the time to be pitching.

I have an entire platform where I can speak about music. I don’t have anything left to say about any of it. I’m talking all the time about my opinions on music. I’m not needing writing as an outlet at the moment.

That’s everything I wanted to chat with you about today, but if you had anything else you wanted to say, I’ll give you the floor.

The number-one thing I have always needed to hear that has been really helpful to me in starting your own projects—because starting projects is really, really hard—is that what separates people who have their own creative projects and make it happen and people that don’t is literally just the act of doing it. I always try to encourage anybody who is starting something, embarking on something—it’s scary creating something out of nothing. And the impostor syndrome—I’ve experienced all those things all the time. The only thing that has gotten me through it, and the only reason I have my projects and I’ve stumbled into some that are doing well, is because I’ve done it anyway.

I really encourage people to start something. I’ve experienced this myself in terms of fear that I’m not the one, I’m not talented enough, I don’t have the right connections…Find a way to do it anyway and get over that stuff as much as you can. Nobody starts as an expert in anything. I go back and listen to early episodes of Pop Pantheon now, and I’m like, I can’t even believe it, but I’m so happy I started somewhere.

I really encourage anybody that has the idea, and they have that spark of excitement around a project and they feel the passion for it—just go for it. You can make crazy shit happen if you just keep going. That’s been a big lesson in my life. That’s been my main thing with creativity.

This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by Max Freedman.

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Former President Donald Trump’s social media company outsourced jobs to workers in Mexico even as Trump publicly railed against outsourcing on the campaign trail and threatened heavy tariffs on companies that send jobs south of the border.

The firm’s use of workers in Mexico was confirmed by a spokesperson for Trump Media, which operates the Truth Social platform. The workers were hired through another entity to code and perform other technical duties, according to a person with knowledge of Trump Media. The reliance on foreign labor was met with outrage among the company's own staff, who accused its leadership of betraying their “America First” ideals, the person said.

The outsourcing to Mexico helped prompt a recent whistleblower letter from staff to Trump Media’s board that has been roiling the company.

That complaint, reported by ProPublica last month, calls for the board to fire CEO Devin Nunes, a former Republican congressman. The letter alleges he has “severely” mismanaged the company. It also asserts the company is hiring “America Last” — with Nunes imposing a directive to hire only foreign contractors at the expense of “American workers who are deeply committed to our mission.”

“This approach not only contradicts the America First principles we stand for but also raises concerns about the quality, dedication, and alignment of our workforce with our core values,” the complaint reads.

A Trump Media spokesperson said the company uses “two individual workers” in Mexico. “Presenting the fact that [Trump Media] works with precisely two specialist contractors in Mexico as some sort of sensational scandal is just the latest in a long line of defamatory conspiracy theories invented by the serial fabricators at ProPublica,” the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson declined to answer other questions about the company’s Mexican contractors, including how much they’ve been paid, how many have been used over time and how their hiring squares with Trump’s promises to punish firms that send jobs outside of the U.S. The Trump campaign did not respond to questions.

For a company of its prominence, Trump Media has a tiny permanent staff, employing just a few dozen people as of the end of last year, only a portion of whom work on the Truth Social technology.

Trump Media’s hiring of Mexican coders also prompted frustration within the staff, the person with knowledge of the company said, because they were perceived by staff to not have the technical expertise to do the work.

On its homepage, Truth Social bills itself as “Proudly made in the United States of America. ”

Both as president and in his campaign for a second term, Trump has criticized companies that send jobs abroad, particularly to Mexico. If elected, he has pledged to “stop outsourcing” and “punish” companies that send jobs abroad.

For example, Trump recently threatened agricultural machinery giant John Deere with tariffs if it went through with plans to move some of its manufacturing to Mexico.

“I’m just notifying John Deere right now, if you do that, we’re putting a 200 percent tariff on everything you want to sell into the United States,” Trump said.

He has made a similar threat against automakers building cars in Mexico, demanding they hire American workers and manufacture domestically.

“I'm not going to let them build a factory right across the border,” Trump promised, “and sell millions of cars into the United States and destroy Detroit further."

Trump owns nearly 60% of the social media company, a stake worth around $3.5 billion at the stock’s Friday closing price — more than half of the former president’s net worth.

The results of the election are widely seen as a major factor in the future value of the company. As the Nov. 5 election draws closer, Trump Media’s stock price has fluctuated wildly even as little or nothing has changed in the company’s actual business, which generates scant revenue. The stock closed Friday down 40% from its recent peak on Tuesday. Despite that drop, it has still nearly doubled since the beginning of October.

One Trump Media board member, Eric Swider, offered a defense of relying on foreign labor in a statement to ProPublica from his lawyer.

“President Trump maintains an America First policy, which includes prioritizing American workers. Trump Media, however, is a global multi-media company. For a global multi-media company to utilize subcontractors, which in turn may utilize coders located in a foreign country, is a practice common to the industry,” the statement said. “Such global multi-media companies like Trump Media would have no right to control the employment decisions of its subcontractors, which may employ workers in a multitude of different countries in addition to the United States.”

Swider, a businessman based in Puerto Rico, serves on the board alongside better known figures such as Donald Trump Jr. and Linda McMahon, the former Trump cabinet member who is now co-chair of his transition team.

The outsourcing to Mexico is not the only instance of Trump Media relying on foreign workers. ProPublica previously reported that the company used a foreign firm to source labor in the Balkans.

Nunes, for his part, is quoted in a new book about Truth Social, “Disappearing the President,” boasting about his ability to keep costs down at Trump Media, though he didn’t mention outsourcing.

“Nobody grew as fast as we did. I don't think there's any other example even close to us out there, especially with as little money as we spent,” Nunes said. “Don't forget that. We built this for a fraction of what these other companies were built for.”

Do you have any information about Trump Media that we should know? Robert Faturechi can be reached by email at robert.faturechi@propublica.org and by Signal or WhatsApp at 213-271-7217. Justin Elliott can be reached by email at justin@propublica.org or by Signal or WhatsApp at 774-826-6240.

Mica Rosenberg contributed reporting.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Robert Faturechi, Justin Elliott and Alex Mierjeski.

“Storm surge is really a nasty, nasty thing,” said Brian McNoldy, a hurricane researcher at the University of Miami. “It’s hurricane winds essentially bulldozing the ocean onto land. It doesn’t have anywhere else to go.” 

The Gulf Coast’s storm surge problem will only get worse from here, scientists warn, because of colliding phenomena. Climate change is supercharging hurricanes as well as raising sea levels, and the coastline along Louisiana and Texas is sinking in some places, a process known as subsidence. 

With every little bit of elevation lost, sea-level rise and storm surges grow more severe, yet forecasts have long neglected subsidence because researchers lacked the data. That could mean some parts of the Gulf Coast are underestimating the potential damage. ​​Louisiana’s coastal parishes already have lost more than 2,000 square miles of land between 1932 to 2016 to sea-level rise and subsidence. The state’s wetlands act as a natural buffer against storm surges, but the ecosystems could be nearing collapse.

Warmer waters in the Gulf of Mexico have helped turn Francine into a fearsome cyclone. A hurricane is like an atmospheric engine. Its fuel is warm ocean water, which evaporates and sends energy into the sky. If the wind conditions are right, the storm will spin up and march across the sea. And if the water in its path is extra warm, the fuel is extra potent, allowing a hurricane to intensify into a monster. “They can start to grow very rapidly under very warm sea surface temperatures,” said Daniel Gilford, who studies hurricanes at Climate Central, a nonprofit research organization. “Almost like when your foot hits the accelerator and that fuel pours into your engine to ignite.” 

The Gulf Coast is naturally warm because it heated up over the summer. But according to an analysis by Climate Central, as Francine formed it was feeding on ocean temperatures made at least 200 times more likely by climate change. 

“What we’re seeing in the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico right now,” Gilford said, “is certainly an environment that is much more susceptible to stronger storms that spin faster and also carry a lot more moisture with them, which can lead to increased rainfall.” In general, a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, meaning there’s more water for a given storm to wring out of the sky. 

While that water is falling from above, the storm surge is pushing water in from the side. The stronger the winds, the bigger the storm surge. That’s happening on top of the base layer of additional sea-level rise brought by climate change. “So if the sea levels, just on average, are higher than the built environment is prepared to handle, that can increase the amount of flooding that is associated with these storms,” Gilford said. 

At the same time, communities are reckoning with subsidence, as parts of the Gulf Coast are steadily losing elevation. Subsidence happens when people extract too much groundwater, oil, or gas, causing the earth to crumple like an empty water bottle. It also happens naturally when sediments settle over time. (Beyond the consideration of sea-level rise, subsidence can destabilize roads, levees, and other critical infrastructure.)

In a paper published last week in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface, scientists used radar measurements from satellites to quantify subsidence across the Gulf Coast, from Corpus Christi to New Orleans, finding that parts are sinking by more than half an inch a year. That may not sound like much, but that’s happening year after year — just as sea levels are steadily rising. Accordingly, the researchers concluded that the subsidence will significantly increase the risk of hurricane-induced floods in the future. 

The rate of subsidence is far from uniform, though: Some places along the Gulf Coast, like Galveston county in Texas and New Orleans in Louisiana, are rapidly sinking while others are staying put. That makes subsidence a difficult problem to reckon with, since state agencies need precise data to determine the risk that a given stretch of coastline faces. They can’t get a complete picture of how much land they’ll lose to sea-level rise — and how bad storm surges will get — if they aren’t accounting for the subsidence happening at the same time.

“Once that land surface is lost,” said Ann Jingyi Chen, a geophysicist at the University of Texas at Austin and coauthor of the paper, “and the buildings, the trees, the structures will be lost, that actually loses some of the protective barriers, so the storm surge can move further inland.”

Chen’s analysis found that cities that stopped over-extracting groundwater saw their subsidence pretty much stop. And with more radar data, scientists can incorporate subsidence rates into models of storm surges, helping find problem areas and take action to reduce the sinking. Any little bit of avoided subsidence will make storm surges like Francine’s that much less severe. “For planning purposes,” Chen said, “it’s good to know, so we don’t wait until it is too late.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The Gulf Coast is sinking, making hurricanes like Francine even more dangerous  on Sep 11, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Matt Simon.

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The New York Police Department has tossed out hundreds of civilian complaints about police misconduct this year without looking at the evidence.

The cases were fully investigated and substantiated by the city’s police oversight agency, the Civilian Complaint Review Board, and sent to the NYPD for disciplinary action. They included officers wrongfully searching vehicles and homes, as well as using excessive force against New Yorkers.

In one instance, an officer punched a man in the groin, the oversight agency found. In another, an officer unjustifiably tackled a young man, and then another officer wrongly stopped and searched him, according to the CCRB.

The incident involving the young man was one of dozens of stop-and-frisk complaints the NYPD dismissed without review this year — a significant development given that the department is still under federal monitoring that a court imposed more than a decade ago over the controversial tactic.

The practice of killing cases without review began three years ago as a way to cope with escalating caseloads that were approaching a deadline for discipline. But ProPublica found it has become more frequent under Police Commissioner Edward Caban.

The commissioner may not be in his position for long. He is under pressure to resign after his phone was seized in a federal corruption investigation. He has also faced criticism for failing to hold officers accountable for misconduct.

Since he took office last July, the NYPD has ended without review more than 500 incidents, about half the cases the oversight board referred to it, according to an analysis of board data. That rate has climbed to nearly 60% this year. Under Caban’s predecessor, Keechant Sewell, the department faced roughly the same number of cases, but about 40% were tossed without review. (Neither Caban nor Sewell responded to requests for comment.)

The tactic is part of a broader pattern under Caban, who has repeatedly used the powers of his office to intervene in misconduct cases brought by the oversight agency. This summer, ProPublica and The New York Times detailed how the commissioner has used an authority known as “retention” to short-circuit some of the most serious cases, which otherwise would face public disciplinary trials.

In those instances, Caban and his staff reviewed the cases and “retained” the ones they believed the CCRB erred on, often ordering little to no discipline. Some episodes, like officers using chokeholds and beating protesters with batons, were so serious the board concluded the police had likely committed crimes.

With lower-profile matters, the board investigates and makes recommendations directly to the NYPD, which then decides what to do. The department has a policy of not reviewing most cases that arrive within three months — or 60 business days — of the statute of limitations for discipline.

“This is highly problematic and deeply troubling,” said City Council member Alexa Avilés, who has sponsored police reform legislation. “What the department is saying is that there’s not enough time, so they’re not going to do anything at all. They’re using the statute of limitations to avoid accountability.”

The NYPD does not disclose to the public or to the civilians who complained of abuse that it has terminated such cases. ProPublica obtained data on the practice from the CCRB.

In response to questions, the department issued a statement defending its policy, saying that “every case and officer is entitled to due process,” and that the CCRB had not given it enough time in these cases under the statute, which requires charges to be filed or discipline given within 18 months of an incident.

“The suggestion that the CCRB may take 486 days to review a case, but the Department may not take 60, reflects a lack of appreciation for the thorough effort, analysis, and diligent investigation these matters require,” the statement said.

When the CCRB sends a case to the NYPD, it hands over a full investigation, complete with evidence such as body-camera footage and a report summarizing its findings. NYPD lawyers then review the files.

“It’s irresponsible for the Department, and a disservice to its officers and to the people of the city of New York for the NYPD to claim it needs more than 60 days to review every case it receives from CCRB,” said the Rev. Fred Davie, who chaired the oversight board until two years ago. “Simply ignoring substantiated incidents of misconduct is truly untenable and indefensible.”

The CCRB did have a history of handling cases slowly, but that was due in large part to the NYPD withholding evidence from civilian investigators, a 2020 investigation by ProPublica found.

After police shot and killed a Bronx man in his own apartment in 2019, the department refused to share the body-camera footage with the oversight board for more than a year and a half. The delay prevented the CCRB from filing charges against the officers within the statute of limitations. (The department has since pledged to hand over body-camera footage within 90 days of a request from the board.)

This year, Caban announced that he would not impose any discipline in the killing. He approved an NYPD judge’s ruling that the oversight board had acted too late.

“The CCRB is not perfect, but its goal is clearly accountability,” said Chris Dunn, legal director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. “The NYPD clearly does not have that goal. When a problem arises, the department’s default solution is to kill the case.”

The NYPD can act on cases that have little time left until the deadline. CCRB data shows the department has done so more than 600 times over the past three years.

Advocates for reform said they were particularly troubled by the revelation that, under Caban, the NYPD has killed dozens of civilians’ complaints about stop-and-frisks without review. The NYPD was ordered in 2013 by a federal judge to end a pattern of discriminatory and illegal behavior around the practice, where officers stop, question and frisk residents without reasonable suspicion.

“This is an end run,” said Shira Scheindlin, the former federal judge who issued the ruling that led to the federal consent decree.

Scheindlin told ProPublica the NYPD’s refusal to even review many stop-and-frisk cases shows the department is policing with impunity. “Accountability was the whole point of my decision,” she said. “Now they’re saying we can still do what we want on the street. That there will be no consequences for bad decisions.”

Since Eric Adams, a former police officer, became mayor, stop-and-frisks have climbed to their highest level in nearly a decade. And a federal monitor has found a continuing pattern of unconstitutional and undocumented stops. An earlier report from the federal monitor noted that the NYPD “failed to impose meaningful discipline” after the CCRB found misconduct. The monitor said the NYPD “must provide more deference” to agency investigations.

Adams, who struck a law-and-order image as mayor, has had a tense relationship with the CCRB, and he recently forced out its chair after she criticized the department’s response to board investigations. His administration also froze hiring at the agency.

The agency has said that because of understaffing it has had to close more than 700 cases of alleged misconduct this year without investigating them.

“What I would ask of City Hall, City Council and the police commissioner is whether this is really what they want to tell people in their communities — that citizens’ complaints will be thwarted by these technical and bureaucratic measures,” Davie said.

In response to ProPublica’s reporting this year, City Council members have called for the police commissioner to be stripped of the power of retention. Advocacy groups, like Black Lives Matter Greater New York, have called for Caban’s resignation. And still others, like LatinoJustice, have filed a lawsuit challenging the department’s practices around misconduct cases. (The NYPD did not respond to requests for comment about the lawmakers’ calls or the lawsuit.)

The mayor’s office pushed back against criticism.

“Mayor Adams has spent his career fighting for both public safety and police reform, and that’s why he and Commissioner Caban have been clear that they expect a Police Department that is professional, impartial, and just,” a spokesperson said in a statement. “The police commissioner and NYPD leadership continue to work diligently to ensure New Yorkers are both safe and policed fairly.”

So far this year, the department has killed more than 430 police misconduct cases without review, far more than it did in all of last year.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Eric Umansky.

White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, on the third and final day of a visit to China, told Gen. Zhang Youxia, vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, that their countries had a responsibility to “prevent competition from veering into conflict,” the White House said.

“The two sides reaffirmed the importance of regular military-to-military communications as part of efforts to maintain high-level diplomacy and open lines of communication,” it said.

China froze top-level military talks and other dialogue with the U.S. in 2022 after then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi became the highest-ranking U.S. official in 25 years to visit Taiwan.

The island has been self-governing since it effectively separated from the mainland in 1949 after the Chinese civil war.

China, which regards Taiwan as a renegade province and has not ruled out an invasion to force reunification, was infuriated by the Pelosi visit and canceled military-to-military talks, including contacts between theater-level commanders. 

President Joe Biden persuaded his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, to resume contacts in November 2023, when they met on the sidelines of an APEC summit in Woodside, California.

In December, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff met his People’s Liberation Army counterpart and the following month, military officials from both sides resumed U.S.-China Defense Policy Coordination Talks at the Pentagon, after a break of more than two years.

Sullivan and Zhang “recognized the progress in sustained, regular military-military communications over the past 10 months and planned to hold a theater commander telephone call in the near future,” the White House said.

But, Taiwan remains a highly sensitive issue for the two sides, which Zhang stressed to Sullivan.

“China demands that the United States stop military collusion between the United States and Taiwan, stop arming Taiwan, and stop spreading false narratives involving Taiwan,” according to China’s defense ministry.

For his part, Sullivan “raised the importance of cross-Strait peace and stability.”

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Sullivan earlier met Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, securing an agreement for a phone call between Biden and Xi “in the coming weeks.”

Sullivan and Wang discussed trade disagreements, ways to stop the illegal flow of synthetic drugs such as fentanyl to the U.S., territorial disputes in the South China Sea and the two countries’ concerns about the situation in North Korea, Myanmar and the Middle East, according to the White House.

Wang told Sullivan that “the security of all countries must be common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable, and the security of one country cannot be built on the basis of the insecurity of other countries,” China’s foreign ministry said.

Edited by Mike Firn.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Staff.

Janine Jackson interviewed North Central College‘s Steve Macek about “dark money” campaign contributions  for the August 23, 2024, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

Janine Jackson: If you use the word “democracy” unsarcastically, you likely think it has something to do with, not only every person living in a society having some say in the laws and policies that govern them, but also the idea that everyone should be able to know what’s going on, besides voting, that influences that critical decision-making.

“Dark money,” as it’s called, has become, in practical terms, business as usual, but it still represents the opposite of that transparency, that ability for even the unpowerful to know what’s happening, to know what’s affecting the rules that govern our lives. A press corps concerned with defending democracy, and not merely narrating the nightmare of crisis, would be talking about that every day, in every way.

Our guest has written about the gap between what we need and what we get, in terms of media. Steve Macek is professor and chair of communication and media studies, at North Central College in Illinois, a co-coordinator of Project Censored’s campus affiliate program, and co-editor and contributor to, most recently, Censorship, Digital Media and the Global Crackdown on Freedom of Expression, out this year from Peter Lang. He joins us now by phone from Naperville, Illinois. Welcome to CounterSpin, Steve Macek.

Steve Macek: Thanks for having me, Janine. I’m a big fan of the show.

Progressive (6/24)

JJ: Well, thank you. Let’s start with some definition. Dark money doesn’t mean funding for candidates or campaigns I don’t like, or from groups I don’t like. In your June piece for the Progressive, you spell out what it is, and where it can come from, and what we can know about it. Help us, if you would, understand just the rules around dark money.

SM: Sure. So dark money, and Anna Massoglia of OpenSecrets gave me, I think, a really nice, concise definition of dark money in the interview I did with her for this article. She called it “funding from undisclosed sources that goes to influence political outcomes, such as elections.” Now, thanks to the Supreme Court case in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission in 2010, and some other cases, it is now completely legal for corporations and very wealthy individuals to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence the outcomes of elections.

Not all of that “independent expenditure” on elections is dark money. Dark money is spending that comes from organizations that do not have to disclose their donors. One sort of organization, I’m sure your listeners are really familiar with, are Super PACs, or, what they’re more technically known as, IRS Code 527 organizations. It can take unlimited contributions, and spend unlimited amounts on influencing elections, but they have to disclose the names of their donors.

There’s this other sort of organization, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit, which is sometimes known as a “social welfare nonprofit,” who can raise huge amounts of money, but they do not have to disclose the names of their donors, but they are prevented from spending the majority of their budget on political activity, which means that a lot of these 501(c)(4) organizations spend 49.999% of their budget attempting to influence the outcomes of elections, and the rest of it is spent on things like general political education, or research that might, in turn, guide the creation of political ads and so on.

JJ: When we talk about influencing the outcome of elections, it’s not that they are taking out an ad for or against a particular candidate. That doesn’t have to be involved at all.

Guardian (5/17/24)

SM: Right. So they can sometimes run issue ads. Sometimes these dark money groups, as long as they’re working within the parameters of the law, will run ads for or against a particular candidate.

But take, for example, Citizens for Sanity, the group that I talked about at the beginning of my Progressive article: This is a group that nobody knows very much about. It showed up back in 2022, and ran $40 million worth of ads in four battleground states. Many of the ads were general ads attacking the Democrats for wanting to erase the border, or over woke culture-war themes, but they’re spending $40+ million on ads, according to one estimate.

What we do know is the officials of the group are almost identical to America First Legal, which was made up by former Trump administration officials. America First Legal was founded by Stephen Miller, that xenophobic former advisor and sometimes speechwriter to Donald Trump. No one really knows exactly who is funding this organization, because it is a 501(c)(4) social welfare nonprofit, and so is not required by the IRS to disclose its donors.

It has been running this year, in Ohio and elsewhere, a whole bunch of digital ads, and putting up billboards, for example, attacking Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown for his stance on immigration policies, basically saying he wants to protect criminal illegals, and also running these general, very snarky anti-“woke” ads saying, basically, Democrats used to care about the middle class, now they only care about race and gender and DEI.

JJ: Right. Well, I think “rich people influence policy,” it’s almost like “dog bites man” at this point, right? Yeah, it’s bad, but that’s how the system works, and I think it’s important to lift up: If it didn’t matter for donors to obscure their support for this or that, well then they wouldn’t be trying to obscure it.

And the thing you’re writing about, these are down-ballot issues, where you might believe that Citizens for Sanity, in this case, or any other organization, you might think of this as like a grassroots group that’s scrambled together some money to take out ads. And so it is meaningful to know to connect these financial dots.

SM: Absolutely. It is meaningful. And since you made reference to down-ballot races, one of the things that I think is so nefarious about dark money, and these dark money organizations, is that they are spending a lot on races for things like school boards or, as I discussed in the article, state attorney generals races.

There is this organization, it was founded in 2014, called the Republican Attorneys General Association, or RAGA, which is a beautiful acronym, and they have been trying to elect extremely reactionary Republicans to the top law enforcement position in state after state. And in 2022, they spent something like $8.9 million trying to defeat Democratic state attorney generals candidates in the 2022 elections.

ProPublica (10/11/23)

Now, they are a PAC of a kind, they’re a 527, so they have the same legal status as a Super PAC, so they have to disclose their donors. But the fact is, one of the major donors is a group called the Concord Fund, which has given them $17 million.

Concord Fund is a 501(c)(4) that was founded by Leonard Leo, the judicial activist affiliated with the Federalist Society, who is basically Donald Trump’s Supreme Court whisperer, who is largely responsible for the conservative takeover of the federal courts. His organization, this fund that he controls, gave $17 million to RAGA.

And we have no idea who contributed that money to the fund. We can make some educated guesses, but nobody really knows who’s funneling that money into trying to influence the election of the top law enforcement official in state after state around this country.

That’s alarming because, of course, some of these right-wing billionaires and corporations have a vested interest in who is sitting in that position. Because if it comes to enforcement of antitrust laws, or corruption laws, if they have a more friendly state attorney general in that position, it could mean millions of dollars for their bottom line.

JJ: And I think, from the point of view of the public, filtered through the point of view of the press, if you heard there’s this one macher, or this one rich person, and they’re pulling the strings and they’ve bought this judge, and they’ve paid for this policy and these ads, that would be one thing. But to have it filtered through a number of groups that are kind of opaque and you don’t really know, a minority point of view can be presented as a sort of groundswell of grassroots support.

SM: Exactly. It can create this sort of astroturfing effect where, “Oh, there are all these ads being run. It must be that there are lots of people who are really concerned or really opposed to this particular candidate,” when, in fact, it could be a single billionaire who is routing money for a number of different shells and front groups in an effort to influence the outcome of an election.

Colorado Newsline (10/21/23)

So I think attorney generals races are one kind of down-ballot race where we’ve seen a lot of dark money spent. School board elections are another, and this is something that has been really evident in the past couple of years, where various different Super PACs and other dark money groups have spent millions of dollars, that are affiliated with advocates for charter schools, and advocates for school vouchers have been spending money trying to elect school board members that are pro-voucher and pro–charter school.

In 2023, City Fund, which is a national pro–charter school group, bankrolled in part by billionaire Reed Hastings, donated $1.75 million from its affiliated PAC to a 501(c)(4), Denver Families for Public Schools, to try to elect three “friendly” pro–charter school candidates for the city school board, and all three of the candidates won.

And I don’t know about you, but I don’t have children who went through the public system here in Naperville, I didn’t pay very close attention to who was running in those races, or who was backing those people. I just would read about it a couple days before the election. Most people don’t pay very close attention, unless they’re employees of the school district, or have children currently in school. They’re not paying that close attention to the school board elections. And so this influx of dark money could very well have tipped those races in the favor of the pro–charter school.

JJ: And name that group again, because it didn’t say “charter schools.”

SM: So the charter school group was City Fund, and it donated money to Denver Families for Public Schools….

JJ: : For “public schools….”

SM: Right, which is a 501(c)(4) nonprofit. Yes, and it’s got this Orwellian name, because it’s Denver Families for Public Schools. But what they wanted to do was, of course, create more charter schools.

JJ: It’s deep, and it’s confusing because it’s designed to be confusing, and it’s opaque because, you know….

And then, OK, so here come media. And we know that lots of people, including reporters, still imagine the US press corps as kind of like an old movie, with press cards in their hat band, or Woodward and Bernstein connecting dots, holding the powerful to account, and the chips are just falling where they may.

And you make the point in the Progressive piece that there have been excellent corporate news media exposés of the influence of dark money, connecting those dots. But you write that news media have “missed or minimized as many stories about dark money as they have covered.” What are you getting at there?

ProPublica (12/14/22)

SM: I absolutely believe that. So it is true, as I say, that there have been some excellent reports about dark money. Here in Chicago, we had this reclusive billionaire industrialist, Barre Seide, who made what most people say is the largest political contribution in American history. He donated his company to a fund, Marble Freedom Fund, run by Leonard Leo, again, a conservative judicial activist.

The Marble Freedom Fund sold the company for $1.6 billion. It’s hard for the corporate media to ignore a political contribution of $1.6 billion. That’s a $1.6 billion trust fund that Leonard Leo, who engineered the conservative takeover of the US Supreme Court, is going to be able to use—he’s a very right-wing, conservative Catholic—to put his particular ideological stamp on American elections and on American culture. And so that got reported.

And, in fact, there have been some really excellent follow-up reports by ProPublica, among others, about how various Leonard Leo–affiliated organizations have influenced judicial appointments and have influenced judicial elections. So you have to give credit where credit’s due.

But the problem is that there are so many other cases where dark money is in play. Whether or not you can say it’s determining the outcome of elections or not is another story. But where dark money is playing a role, and it is simply not being talked about.

Steve Macek: “Outside forces who, in some cases, do not have to disclose the source of their funding can spend more on a race than the candidates themselves.”

Think about the last month of this current presidential election. There hasn’t been much discussion about the influence of dark money. And yet OpenSecrets just came out with an analysis where they say that contributions from dark money groups and shell organizations are outpacing all prior elections in this year, and might surpass the $660 million in contributions from dark money sources that flooded the 2020 elections. So they’re projecting that could be as much as a billion dollars. We haven’t heard very much about this.

I don’t think necessarily dark money is going to make a huge difference one way or the other in the presidential race, but it certainly can make a difference in congressional races and attorney generals races, school board races, city council races, that’s where it can make a huge difference.

And I do know that OpenSecrets, among others, have done research, and they found that there were cases where, over a hundred different congressional races, there was more outside spending on those races than were spent by either of the candidates. Which is a scandal, that outside forces who, in some cases, do not have to disclose the source of their funding can spend more on a race than the candidates themselves.

JJ: And it’s disheartening, the idea that, while you’re swimming in it, it’s too big of an issue to even lift out.

SM: And I think that’s also part of the reason why it’s accepted, sort of like the weather. And I think that’s part of the reason why there isn’t as much reporting in the corporate media as there ought to be about legal struggles over the regulation of dark money.

JJ: That’s exactly where I was going to lead you, for a final question, just because we know that reporters will say, well, they can’t cover what isn’t happening. But it is happening, that legal and community and policy pushback on this influence is happening. And so, finally, what should we know about that?

Roll Call (5/14/24)

SM: State-level Republican lawmakers, and state legislatures across the country, are pushing legislation that would prohibit state officials and agencies from collecting or disclosing information about donors to nonprofits, including donors to those 501(c)(4) social welfare organizations that I spoke about, that spend money on politics. So they’re trying to pass laws to make dark money even darker, to make this obscure money influencing our elections even harder to track. And I will say there are Republicans in Congress who have introduced federal legislation that would do the same thing.

Now, the bills that are being pushed through state legislatures, not probably going to be a surprise to anybody who follows this, are based on a model bill that was developed by the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, which is a policy development organization that is funded by the Koch network of right-wing foundations, millionaires and billionaires. And they meet every year to develop model right-wing, libertarian legislation, that then is dutifully introduced into state legislatures around the country.

And since 2018, a number of states, including Alabama, Arizona, Iowa, Kansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Utah, Virginia and West Virginia, have all adopted some version of this ALEC legislation that criminalizes disclosing donors to nonprofits that engage in political activity.

And in Arizona, where this conservative legislation was made into law, in 2022, there was a ballot referendum by the voters on the Voter’s Right to Know Act, Proposition 211, that would basically reverse the ALEC attempt to criminalize the disclosure of the names of donors. It would require PACs spending at least $50,000 on statewide campaigns to disclose all donors who have given more than $5,000—a direct reversal of the ALEC-inspired law.

New Yorker (11/16/22)

Conservative dark money group spent a lot of money trying to defeat this, and yet they lost. And then they spent a lot of money challenging the new law, Proposition 211, in court. And it has gone to trial, I think, three times, and been defeated each time.

Now, the initial battle over Proposition 211 was covered to some degree in the corporate media, the New York Times, Jane Mayer at the New Yorker, who does excellent reporting on dark money issues, discussed it. But since then, we have gotten very little coverage of the court battles that continue to this day over this attempt to bring more transparency to campaign spending in the state of Arizona.

JJ: So, not to hammer it too hard home, but there are legal efforts, policy efforts around the country, to bring more transparency, to explode this idea of dark money, to connect the dots, and more media coverage of them would actually have an amplifying effect on that very transparency.

SM: Absolutely right. You would think that media organizations, whether they’re corporate or independent media, would have a vested interest in seeing more transparency in election spending. That would benefit their own reporting, and the reporters. And yet they really haven’t done a great job of covering it.

JJ: We’ve been speaking with Steve Macek. He’s professor and chair of communication and media studies at North Central College in Illinois, and a co-coordinator of Project Censored’s campus affiliate program. The piece we’re talking about, “Dark Money Uncovered,” can be found at TheProgressive.org. Steve Macek, thank you so much for joining us this week on CounterSpin.

SM: Oh, it was great. Thank you for having me.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Janine Jackson.

About two months later, 8.65 inches of rain fell on New York City — higher than any September day since Hurricane Donna in 1960. The city’s low-lying areas were deluged, and half of its subway lines were suspended as water inundated underground stations. 

East Coast cities are increasingly susceptible to flooding due to climate change. But changing weather patterns are only half of the problem — the other is inadequate infrastructure. In particular, these recent flood events were made worse by Boston and New York’s combined sewer systems, which carry both stormwater and sewage in the same pipes. When such a system reaches capacity during heavy rainfall or storm surge events, it backs up, sending a mixture of stormwater and raw sewage into waterways (and sometimes also into streets and homes). 

Many other cities around the country also have combined sewer systems, but as two of the oldest, densest major cities in America, Boston and New York face an uphill battle when it comes to climate-proofing their sewer systems. And the cities have chosen two very different paths: Boston has elected to separate the combined portion of its sewer system so that sewage no longer mixes with stormwater during flooding events, while New York is betting on new, detached rain management infrastructure to relieve the burden on its combined sewers when it rains. 

The success of their respective solutions isn’t just a matter of reducing flooding hazards for city residents and surrounding ecosystems — it’s also required by law. That’s because flooding-related backups that send sewage into waterways, known as combined system overflows, are a violation of the Clean Water Act. In response to combined system overflows, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has entered into consent decrees with Boston and New York City’s municipal governments — legally binding agreements under which the cities must prevent further overflows. John Sullivan, the chief engineer at the Boston Water and Sewer Commission, estimates that 90 percent of sewer systems in the country are under a consent decree.

A consent decree “outlines how many years you have to get this problem fixed,” said Sullivan, “and they give you plenty of time, but you’ve got to take actions to meet the things you weren’t meeting.”

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Boston is currently in dire need of better flood management infrastructure. Sea level rise occurs disproportionately faster on America’s East Coast, due to factors including wind patterns and a changing Gulf Stream. Meanwhile, climate change is also increasing the amount of moisture in the atmosphere, making heavy precipitation more likely. The double whammy of rising sea levels and intensifying heavy rainfall events worsens the impact of surge flooding during storms. In Boston specifically, high-tide flooding is increasing more than three times faster than the national average, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Such flooding can swallow up outfalls, the pipes that send excess sewage into waterways when the system is inundated, further reducing the rate at which water drains out of cities.

Boston has actually been working on separating its sewer system since before climate-related flooding became a major threat. In response to a 1987 court order, the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority undertook nine sewer separation projects in the Boston area between 2000 and 2015, along with dozens of other sewer improvements intended to prevent combined system overflows. Today, only about 10 percent of the Boston Water and Sewer Commission’s 1,538 miles of sewer pipes are combined.

Currently, the commission is working on two additional sewer separation projects in South and East Boston. The city is prioritizing the prevention of overflows in areas where the risk of human contact with contaminated water is deemed the highest, like at public beaches.  

These projects are costly. According to the sewer commission’s calculations, the city’s sewer separation works in 2021 cost an average of $340,000 per acre. Around 88 acres of work were done that year — translating into a price tag of more than $30 million. From 2024 to 2029, the city plans to separate sewers in 230 acres in East Boston and 400 acres in South Boston. These planned works make up about 3 percent of Boston’s sewer system, which comprises approximately 20,500 acres, including portions that have always been separate. 

Another problem is finding sufficient space for the addition of new pipes — a luxury in some areas in the city. Sullivan sent Grist a blueprint of plans for sewer separation works in South Boston. It contains a flurry of lines of varying thickness and color, some solid and others dotted, stacked atop each other. Each represents a different underground pipe. 

“You can see how messy they can be, trying to fit these pipes under the gas pipes, under the electric, under the telephone,” said Sullivan.

Sewer replacement — most of which takes place deep underground — also presents safety concerns for workers, such as low oxygen levels, the inhalation of resin fiberglass vapors, and the presence of foreign objects in sewers. The contractors overseeing the work install oxygen meters in tunnels that sound when oxygen levels dip to a dangerous low. 

According to Sullivan, the risks of sewer replacement are worth it in the face of intensifying precipitation.

Though he says that 90 percent of Boston’s storms do not exceed 1 inch of precipitation, and can be mitigated by existing flooding infrastructure, at times they can dump up to 6 inches of rainwater on the city. 

“You need the infrastructure to move that 5 inches of water out,” said Sullivan. “And that isn’t done by any green infrastructure, that is pipes.”  

New York City, however, is betting that green infrastructure will do the trick. About 60 percent of the Big Apple’s 7,400 miles of sewer lines are combined, and the city has estimated that fully modernizing the system would cost around $100 billion and take decades. The New York City Department of Environmental Protection’s alternative to separating significant portions of its combined sewers is the Cloudburst plan, developed in partnership with the city of Copenhagen, Denmark, starting in 2017. The plan utilizes newly built gray infrastructure like underground storage tanks, and green infrastructure such as rain gardens, to divert stormwater during heavy downpours. A rendering of Cloudburst infrastructure on the Department of Environmental Protection’s website illustrates how porous concrete in parking lanes could capture stormwater runoff and funnel it into underground tanks for temporary storage.

In early 2023, the city unveiled plans for $84 million worth of Cloudburst infrastructure at eight public housing developments, including sunken basketball courts that can capture stormwater in the event of heavy rain. It also announced additional, larger Cloudburst initiatives funded by $390 million in capital funds in four focus neighborhoods in the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens. These areas were chosen based on several factors: history of flooding, future inundation risk via modeled stormwater flood maps, and socio-economic vulnerability. 

Alexx Caceres is a native of East New York, one of the four focus neighborhoods, and works as the farm manager of East New York Farms. Caceres says they welcome the planned infrastructure. During the storm last September, the front of Caceres’ farm was inundated. They hope that the Cloudburst infrastructure will help to prevent subsequent sewer overflows and floods.

“They are trying to create infrastructure that holds the water in,” Caceres said, “giving the sewage system time.”

Other peripheral Cloudburst initiatives in Staten Island and the Bronx have sought to restore natural drainage corridors that have been built over by urban developments. 

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While effective in creating more pathways for stormwater to flow out of the city, these projects may be less feasible in more population-dense boroughs such as Manhattan, according to Daniel Zarrilli, the chief climate and sustainability officer at Columbia University. 

The New York City Department of Environmental Protection declined to comment on its plans to manage flooding.

Across America, other cities are facing the same choices as Boston and New York — often with less money available to them. States and localities are responsible for more than 90 percent of America’s public water infrastructure spending each year. According to Joseph Kane, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, a think tank specializing in economic and policy research, this means that cities bear most of the financial burden of addressing outdated sewer systems.

“I don’t think communities often want to reach the point of a consent decree,” said Kane, but “the systems are old, and in many cases the utilities have not had the financial capacity themselves to proactively stay ahead of these repairs.”

An EPA grant program that originated in 2018 amendments to the Clean Water Act provides small grants for cities to work on their sewer systems. The 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law brought about another infusion of federal resources, mainly in the form of the Clean Water State Revolving Fund, which funneled $11.7 billion in loans to states, which in turn distributed them to individual utilities. Kane said, however, that this legislation only slightly alleviates the economic burden for states and utilities, which ultimately have to repay these loans.

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“It’s still just a blip compared to the magnitude of the cost that states and localities themselves are having to bear,” said Kane, on existing federal resources for flood management.

The funding from the bipartisan infrastructure law is also slated to last through 2026. 

“There are already questions in Washington and across the country that when this funding lapses in another couple years, is there going to be additional support for these sorts of projects?” said Kane.

Several American cities have turned to the imposition of stormwater fees to raise funds for sewer system improvement work. The fees are paid by individual property owners, shifting the costs of flooding prevention onto the community. Stormwater charges are calculated based on the impervious surface cover of the property — those with a higher area of impenetrable surfaces, such as rooftops and parking lots, are charged a higher amount. 

In April, the Boston Water and Sewer Commission implemented a stormwater charge that applies to all properties with over 400 square feet of impervious area. New York City has yet to implement any stormwater charges.

“Stormwater fees create a connection for property owners to chip in something for their contribution to the stormwater runoff challenges,” said Kane, “but there’s a lot of debate on exactly how high these stormwater fees should be, how they’re calculated, who pays what.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Climate change is messing with city sewers — and the solutions are even messier on Aug 21, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Angelica Ang.

The fire, which officials say was started by arson, has grown in the past week as the western US eyes what could be another potent wildfire season. A combination of strong vegetation growth due to heavy precipitation over the past few years, and high temperatures this summer could mean larger wildfires in the coming months.

These conditions all contributed to the magnitude of the Park Fire, which has already damaged more than 500 structures, and put at least 8,000 people under evacuation orders. For another sense of scale, the fire has grown so large that it’s visible from space and now covers more square footage than the entire city of Los Angeles.

The Park Fire follows numerous other large fires that have devastated the US in recent years, including in Hawaii in 2023, California in 2021, and Montana in 2017. It’s the latest disaster to highlight how deeply fires can impact communities across the US and the urgent need for better policies to help navigate potential displacement.

In 2023, 2.5 million Americans had to leave their home either temporarily or permanently due to a natural disaster, according to the US Census Bureau, and the agency’s current estimates suggest at least 500,000 more have been displaced so far this year. Vulnerable groups including low-income households, people over the age of 65, and Black and Hispanic Americans, are among those more likely to be displaced as a result of these phenomena.

The effects of the Park Fire and those of a growing number of natural disasters, some of which are tied to climate change, highlight the urgent need for more federal support for recovery and how these incidents exacerbate existing housing crises.

How evacuations work

Those required to evacuate during the Park Fire, and others like it, are forced to seek shelter with friends or family, at a hotel, or at an evacuation center that’s been set up by the affected counties. Typically, evacuations are led by the affected county or city, which is responsible for notifying residents as the situation becomes more urgent.

Evacuation orders can come at any time, including in the middle of the night. Law enforcement officials are usually in charge of notifying people and alerting neighborhoods, and can use cars and sirens. They also provide updates via television, radio, and social media. Many counties have text-based emergency alert systems that residents can sign up for to get mobile updates about a disaster.

Those living in areas with high wildfire risk are often urged to have an evacuation plan ready, including a go-bag with essentials like water and a flashlight, charged devices, and fuel in their cars. Those who are able to leave on their own in their vehicles are encouraged to do so quickly in the case of an evacuation order and to get out of the areas affected by the fires as shown in maps that the counties release.

Counties may also designate assembly points for people to congregate if they’re unable to leave on their own or if roads are obstructed. Officials then coordinate emergency routes that people can use, along with transportation to shelters.

Depending on how long it will take to contain and address the fire, evacuees could be in limbo for days to weeks, unsure about the status of their homes. That’s a stressful and devastating feeling for many who are waiting to hear if their homes have survived the disaster.

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Once the imminent danger has passed and the fire has been contained, officials assess when it’s safe for people to return, says Tom Cova, a professor of geography at the University of Utah who has studied wildfire evacuation systems. That includes screening the area for toxins left by the fire and other hazards like downed power lines and propane tanks.

If it’s deemed safe, people may be cleared to return to the area and assess the potential damage, or they may only be allowed to drive back, viewing their homes from their cars, due to the health risks from residual smoke and debris.

Those whose homes are destroyed and who are permanently displaced by the disaster face a far lengthier and much more complicated journey to rebuilding or moving.

Insurance could help offset some of those costs, though some former evacuees in Maui have noted that such funds were only sufficient to cover rent temporarily.

In certain areas where there’s high wildfire risk, homeowner’s insurance may not cover wildfires because of how costly these disasters have become for these companies, which puts the onus of rebuilding on the owners. In addition to construction, families also face the expense of securing alternative housing while they wait during a process that can take months to years.

Disasters highlight gaps in aid and housing

Disasters like the Park Fire underscore the gaps that currently exist in federal aid for recovery and the housing shortages that were already a challenge.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is the central distributor of rebuilding grant assistance that people can apply for, but these programs can have stringent requirements — including specific thresholds for damage — that not everyone meets. People who are able to get insurance funds may also be precluded from receiving some of this aid. Often, the aid that’s provided isn’t sufficient to address the full cost of rebuilding. According to a 2020 report from the Government Accountability Office, the average amount of aid that individuals received from FEMA between 2010-2019 was $3,522.

States like California do fill in some of the gaps by offering benefits like debris removal services at no cost to homeowners, and agencies including the US Department of Agriculture and the US Department of Housing and Urban Development also have loan programs for rebuilding. By and large, though, the assistance that’s required is greater than what’s available and can put those who lose their homes in an economically vulnerable position.

“The help Americans receive after disasters isn’t just inadequate, it’s complicated to navigate and painfully slow to arrive,” writes Samantha Montano, an emergency management professor at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy, for the New York Times. “From the amount of time it takes to complete recovery — measured in years, not months — to the labyrinth of policies, regulations, false promises and lawsuits, the reward for surviving a disaster is being forced into a system so cruel it constitutes a second disaster.”

The solution, Montano argues, is to bolster resources for FEMA, which faced a funding shortage in 2023, and for states to develop better recovery plans that include boosts to their budgets and dedicated management. Many of these challenges are evidenced by the response to the Lahaina wildfires in Maui. Families who were displaced by those fires were still navigating provisional housing roughly six months out from that disaster.

Another issue that these disasters draw attention to is the housing challenges that people were already facing in places that are hit by them. A 2018 fire in Paradise, California, for example, decimated roughly 14,000 homes and made a housing shortage in the region even worse. In Plumas County, one of the four counties hit by the Park Fire, there’s similarly already a shortage of affordable homes for low-income households. Any additional damage from the Park Fire could well deepen those gaps.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Wildfires will put even more pressure on the country’s housing crisis on Aug 4, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Li Zhou, Vox.

On 26 July, senior United Nations (UN) officials briefed the UN Security Council about the terrible situation in Gaza. ‘More than two million people in Gaza remain trapped in an endless nightmare of death and destruction on a staggering scale’, said Deputy Commissioner-General Antonia De Meo of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). Within Gaza, the UN officials wrote, 625,000 children are trapped, ‘their futures at risk’. The World Health Organisation has recorded ‘outbreaks of hepatitis A and myriad other preventable diseases’ and warns that it is ‘just a matter of time’ before a polio outbreak spreads amongst children. In early July, a letter in The Lancet from three scientists working in Canada, Palestine, and the United Kingdom suggested that if they applied a ‘conservative estimate of four indirect deaths per one direct death to the 37,396 deaths reported, it is not implausible to estimate that up to 186,000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza’.

Two days before the UN Security Council meeting, on 24 July, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed both chambers of the US Congress. Two months before this appearance, the International Criminal Court (ICC) said it had ‘reasonable grounds to believe’ that Netanyahu bears ‘criminal responsibility for… war crimes and crimes against humanity’. This judgment was utterly set aside by elected US representatives, who welcomed Netanyahu as if he were a conquering hero. Netanyahu’s language was chilling: ‘give us the tools faster, and we’ll finish the job faster’. What is the ‘job’ that Netanyahu wants the Israeli military to finish? In January, the International Court of Justice reported a ‘plausible claim of genocidal acts’ by the Israeli army. So, is the ‘job’ that Israel wants to complete its genocide of the Palestinian people, accelerated by the increased provision of arms and funding by the US?

Shurooq Amin (Kuwait), The Moving Dollhouse, 2016.

Despite Netanyahu’s complaint that the US has not been sending sufficient weapons, in April the US government approved the sale of fifty F-15 bombers to Israel, worth $18 billion, and in early July said it would send nearly two thousand 500-pound bombs to be used in Gaza. Netanyahu wanted more then, and he wants more now. He wants to ‘finish the job’. This genocidal language is sanctified by the US government, whose representatives accompanied the call for mass murder with a standing ovation.

Outside the halls of government, tens of thousands of people protested Netanyahu’s visit to Congress. They are part of the phalanx of young people who have been involved in a cycle of protests against the Israeli genocide of Palestinians and against the US government’s total support of the violence. Netanyahu called the protestors ‘Iran’s useful idiots’, a strange statement made by a foreign guest of the citizens who were exercising their democratic rights in their own country. The police used pepper spray and other forms of violence to contain the protests, which were peaceful and righteous.

While Washington welcomed the accused war criminal, Beijing hosted representatives of fourteen Palestinian factions who came to discuss their differences and find a way to build political unity against the Israeli genocide and colonisation. Just before Netanyahu entered the Congressional chamber, the fourteen representatives posed for a photograph at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing. Their agreement, the Beijing Declaration, advanced their commitment to work together against the genocide and the occupation and recognised that their disunity has only helped Israel.

Charles Khoury (Lebanon), Untitled, 2020.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, a range of national liberation movements, such as those in South Africa and Palestine, were enfeebled and forced to make significant concessions in order to end conflicts with their colonisers. After several false starts, the apartheid regime in South Africa joined the Multi-Party Negotiating Forum in April 1993, which was the site of concessions made by the liberation forces (undermined by the assassination of communist leader Chris Hani that same month and by attacks from the neo-Nazi Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging). The negotiated transfer of power through the interim constitution of November 1993 did not dismantle structures of white power in South Africa. Meanwhile, in 1993 and 1995, the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) agreed to the Oslo Accords, in which the PLO recognised the state of Israel and agreed to build a state of Palestine in East Jerusalem, Gaza, and the West Bank. Edward Said called the Oslo Accords a ‘Palestinian Versailles’, a judgment that seemed harsh at the time but which, in retrospect, is accurate.

Zaina El Said (Jordan), Ersin, 2017.

Israel used the Oslo Accords to press its advantage, mainly by building illegal settlements across Palestinian land and by denying Palestinians the right to free passage through the three non-contiguous territories. In 1994, leading groups in the PLO created the Palestinian National Authority to bring the factions together in the new state project, but the groups that had rejected the Oslo Accords did not want to manage the occupation on Israel’s behalf. In January 2006, Hamas won the largest bloc in the Palestinian legislative elections, with 74 out of the 132 seats, and by June 2007 Fatah and Hamas broke relations and ended the attempt to build a new, post-Oslo Palestinian national project.

In May 2006, from within Israel’s harsh prisons, five Palestinians who represented the five main factions drafted the Prisoners’ Document: Abdel Khaleq al-Natsh (Hamas), Abdel Raheem Malluh (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine), Bassam al-Saadi (Islamic Jihad), Marwan Barghouti (Fatah), and Mustafa Badarneh (Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine). These five factions include two left formations, two Islamist formations, and the main national liberation platform. The eighteen-point document called upon various groups (including Hamas and Islamic Jihad) to reactivate the PLO as their joint platform, accept the Palestinian Authority as the ‘nucleus of the future state’, and retain the right to resist the occupation. In June, all parties signed a second draft of the document. Despite attempts to create unity, including during the Israeli assault on Gaza known as Operation Summer Rains (June to November 2006), no such convergence was possible. The animosity between the Palestinian factions remained.

Zhang Xiaogang (China), Blindfolded Dancer, 2016.

This disunity has provided ample space for the Israeli occupation to deepen and for Palestinians to flounder without a central political project. Several attempts to bring Palestinian political groups into a serious dialogue have failed to provide any forward motion, including in Cairo in May 2011 and October 2017 and in Algiers in October 2022. Since last year, the Chinese government has worked with various regional states to invite the fourteen main Palestinian factions to Beijing for reconciliation talks. These factions are:

1. Arab Liberation Front
2. As-Sa’iqa
3. Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine
4. Fatah
5. Hamas
6. Islamic Jihad Movement
7. Palestinian Arab Front
8. Palestinian Democratic Union
9. Palestinian Liberation Front
10. Palestinian National Initiative
11. Palestinian People’s Party
12. Palestinian Popular Struggle Front
13. Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
14. Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (General Command)

The Beijing Declaration, repeating the formulations in the Prisoners’ Document, called for a Palestinian state to be established, for Palestinians’ right to resist the occupation to be respected, for Palestinian political groups to form an ‘interim national consensus government’, and for the PLO and its institutions to be strengthened in order to advance their role in the struggle against Israel. Though the declaration, of course, called for an immediate ceasefire and an end to settlement construction in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, its main focus was on political unity.

Whether this Chinese-brokered process will yield results when Palestinians sit down with Israelis is to be seen. Yet it nonetheless marks an advance in this direction and a possible turning point in the collapse of a unified Palestinian project that began in the wake of the 1995 Oslo II agreement. The Beijing Declaration is diametrically opposed to the vehemence of Netanyahu’s speech in the US Congress: the latter genocidal and dangerous, the former seeks peace in a complex world.

Halima Aziz (Palestine), Praying Palestinian Women, 2023.

Fadwa Tuqan (1917–2003), one of Palestine’s most wondrous poets, wrote ‘The Deluge and the Tree’. The fall of the tree, beaten down by the deluge, was not its end but a new beginning.

When the Tree rises up, the branches
shall flourish green and fresh in the sun,
the laughter of the Tree shall blossom
beneath the sun
and birds shall return.
Undoubtedly, the birds shall return.
The birds shall return.

The assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh (1962–2024) in Tehran (Iran) has made the situation deeply difficult, and will make it difficult for the birds to sing.

Warmly,

Vijay

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Vijay Prashad.

SPECIAL REPORT: By Netani Rika in Majuro

On a hastily-erected wall in the Marshall Islands International Conference Centre hang the names of dead women, victims of gender-based violence (GBV).

At least 300 Pacific women were killed in 2021, many at the hands of intimate partners or male relatives, yet there are but 14 names on the board after four days of a Triennial Conference.

So where are the remaining names?

• READ MORE: Other articles in the Pacific Women series

Have these women died in obscurity, their deaths confined to the dust heap somewhere in the region’s collective memory?

Does the memory of their deaths invoke such pain or, perhaps, guilt, that it is impossible for delegates to pick up a pen and put names to paper?

Have these women become mere statistics, their names forgotten as civil society spreadsheets and crime reports log the death of yet another woman.

Or have the deaths of women due to gender-based violence become so common that in the minds of delegates it is normal for a woman to die at the hands of a husband, boyfriend, father or brother?

Falling victim to violence
It has been a conference attended largely by women — ministers, administrators, civil society representatives and local grassroots representatives. Each day there have been more than 200 women at the event.

The 15th Triennial Conference of Pacific Women addressed at its core the need to improve the health of women and children. That includes the need for better access to services and treatment of women who fall victim to violence.

Gender-based violence is also a key focus of the talks. It is that violence — past, present and future – which results in death.

Yet three times a day for three days, on their way to grab a quick coffee or indulge in lunch, friendly conversations or bilateral dialogue, delegates have walked past the wall paying scant attention to the names of their dead Pacific sisters.

No names have been added to the wall since the initial appeal on Day One for attendees to remember the dead, to memorialise women whose lives were cut short in actions which were largely avoidable.

In Fiji, 60 percent of women and girls endure violence in their lifetime. Two of every three experience physical or sexual abuse from intimate partners and one in five have been sexually harassed in the workplace.

The trend is common throughout the region with Kiribati, Papua New Guinea, Fiji and the Solomon Islands recording the highest incidence of crimes against women.

Not one asked for silence
Delegates know these figures. The statistics are, sadly, nothing new.

On the third day, delegates quibbled over the nuances of language and the appropriate terms with which to populate a report on their deliberations. Yet not one asked for a moment of silence to remember the people whose names hung accusingly on a wall outside the meeting chamber.

When delegates left the convention centre on Friday afternoon, it is unlikely they would have remembered even one of the names on the wall.

Those names and the memories of all the women who have suffered violent deaths will await a team of cleaners, strangers, who will bury the Pacific’s collective shame in the sand of Majuro Atoll.

Netani Rika is an award-winning Fiji journalist with 30 years of experience in Pacific regional writing. The joint owner of Islands Business magazine he is communications manager of the Pacific Conference of Churches and is in Majuro, Marshall Islands, covering the 15th Triennial Conference of Pacific Women.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

I love baking and I wanted to document my journey with it. So the blog itself was just meant to be kind of a diary of just things that I made.

It wasn’t really until the pandemic hit that I was like, “Oh, I feel nostalgic for all the flavors I grew up with.” Then I started riffing off of existing recipes but turning them more into a fusion concept.

I didn’t intend for it to get bigger than it was. I just kept posting on social media, on Twitter, Instagram, and Twitter was where my literary agent, Emmy, found me and was like, “Hey, are you thinking of writing a cookbook? You should do it.” I really wasn’t thinking about that as a goal but having someone think that you can do it just really emboldens you to do it. I only had two blog posts under my name, which was kind of wild.

I worked on my proposal in January and then sent it out May 2021. It’s months of just talking to editors, trying to see if anyone’s going to bite when you’re putting out your proposal. I ended up signing with Harvest, which is Harper Collins’ imprint.

So I was working from January until May 2022 to get all the recipes done, the writing done, and then rounds of revisions. And the book came out February of 2023.

So much has happened, but that’s the nitty-gritty of the book. But I’ve been baking since I was 13 for fun, just learning by myself online. That’s my journey in a nutshell.

I’m sure it feels like such a whirlwind for you as well. When you’re living something like that, it feels like you’re just on autopilot probably, right?

Yeah, I feel like for my own mental health, my editor would only tell me things coming up. Now that I’ve gone through the process from beginning to end, I’m like: “Would I have done this if I had known how much work this is going to be?” And honestly, yes. No regrets, obviously. I think it’s just like you’re building the ship as you’re sailing it.

It was really nice to have something that was very much my vision from the beginning, and I think it came out better than I thought it could. So yeah, I’m very proud of the book that happened out of it.

That’s amazing. Yeah, it seems like the recognition you’ve been getting for it too has been incredible. How did you react to getting the James Beard nom?

Oh my God, I was so shook. In January, my editor reached out to me and was like, “Hey, we’re thinking of nominating your book, putting in your written name in the ringer.” So you write a little blurb of why you think you deserve a James Beard nomination and then you don’t find out if you’re actually nominated until April 30th.

My first text was from my friend Bettina, who’s an amazing writer at Eater, and she’s like, “Congrats.” And I was like, “For what?” So I checked the James Beard website and they had the nominations online. I cried. I called my best friend, she cried.

I called my mom, who is an immigrant from the Philippines. She was like, “What’s that?” And I was so excited to tell her.

She was like, “Oh, I’m so proud of you. That’s so exciting!” I think everyone has different relationships with their parents, especially when you’re first generation. My mom has always been: “As long as you’re happy, but also you should maybe be an accountant or maybe work at LinkedIn to get money.”

My parents are proud of me but in some ways I don’t think they realize the gravity of certain things that I do or because it’s such a new thing for them in creative fields.

There’s a certain invalidation or deescalation of a creative field or position as a legitimate role so much of the time because they’re so used to corporate structures where there’s a ladder and a clear hierarchy. But when you’re in a world of artistry and creativity, there’s no sense of hierarchy in that way. You can win an Oscar—the James Beard as the Oscar of the food world—and it’ll still be like, “Your cousin went to Harvard and got an MBA.”

It’s an uphill battle for sure. And it’s tough because at certain points when you’re aware that you don’t need this because there’s validation you get from your partner or your friends and people that know you, you beat yourself up more. You’re like, “Wait, I shouldn’t feel sad about this. I know they mean well.” But everyone who’s Asian American and creative I’ve talked to has also felt some levels of this. Sometimes it’s just really difficult.

Would you say that you’ve always considered yourself an artist?

Yeah, I was an overachiever and really wanted to do well. The things that I naturally shined at were writing and soft skills. I always thought my path was going to be a business woman. When you’re a kid, you think you’re going to get a briefcase and you’re going to go on business trips, and you’re going to have clients.

I stuck with that for so long, well into college, but when I realized I wasn’t good at finance and I wasn’t good at accounting, I was like, “Well, I guess it’s going to be marketing.” I always liked the storytelling aspect of marketing. This is a way to be creative, but in a corporate structure.

But creatively I just have so much more fun writing for myself. I blogged for the school newspaper and I did a music blog that is now defunct, but it was basically me interviewing independent artists, usually artists of color, and talking about their journey and I was just really excited hearing how other people accomplish their goals and their dreams creatively. So yes, I would say I was always a creative person, but for a long time I didn’t know how to implement that in my career.

How did you make the pivot to food?

I love Filipino flavor but I learned how to make cupcakes or cookies first. A lot of Western types of desserts are my forte so let me just try to implement that into this mold. I am from California, I live in New York; my worldview is very diverse around the people that I grew up with. So there’s many influences that are global, which is at the heart of being American.

How does your personal style impact your creations and your creative living?

I love clothes. I love jewelry. I love playing dress up. And I think that it has translated itself in my food. I gravitate towards a lot of color and a lot of my clothing is now food related. It’s cakes and fruits and strawberries. If I’m wearing a black parka in the dead of winter, I feel so sad.

When I’m not investing in myself the ways that I know I can, it really motivates me. This is another way for me to express who I am without having to say anything.

Being in New York is another blessing where no one will really bat an eye as much if you’re wearing something a little more out there. You can dress however you want and hopefully no one will judge you. It helps me practice, “Oh, I can literally do whatever I want.” And if people don’t like it, then people don’t like it. But if people do, then that’s great.

Do you find yourself stuck on the people who don’t like it, or do you have a pretty healthy relationship with that?

It’s so difficult because I’m a people pleaser and I really want people to like me. I’ve had the nicest interactions on social media and had the meanest, most horrible things that I’ve ever seen. Some people would just comment on my appearance like, “This troll doll doesn’t know what she’s talking about.” I was like, “Troll doll, a compliment!” The haters really do fuel me.

There’s a point where you just have to laugh. I am salty on the inside and taking the high road is hard for me but I do it because it’s worse to actually just go in the weeds and trenches and fight trolls for no reason.

I feel like the hardest comments are from Filipinos across the diaspora, but also in the Philippines. Those are the more hurtful comments that are actually tough on me. I’m trying really hard to just do my version of Filipino food and recognize that that is just one version of it. And people just think that in totality, this is Filipino food, but not necessarily.

I think that’s a lot of pressure for folks because as a Filipino American creator, there are not that many people like you in this field. Then the pressure of being the sole representative is unrealistic, right? Of course you’re not going to represent every experience because you are your own experience; that’s why your art and your food is so colorful and it’s so American and it’s very Filipino because that’s who you are. So what fuels you beyond the haters?

I feel rejuvenated by meeting other creatives, not even just in food. It’s an infectious kind of passion that I really gravitate towards. I always thought of myself as an introvert before but getting older, I do think I get my energy from other people. The reason why New York just makes sense for me is I feel like I can be in proximity with so many creative people.

You get to see the best versions of people and that kind of makes you want to be the best version of you.

It sounds like you’re pursuing your passions and following it and seeing where it takes you. I’m sure with meeting so many people throughout the process, it’s been like “Oh, that’s possible? I didn’t even know that was possible!”

Exactly. I feel like it’s weird too when you’re just in your head about a lot of things like, “Oh, I couldn’t possibly do that with this budget.” I’ve seen so many people DIY, but also have friends who are really good and talented. Being in community with other people, whether it’s online or in person, is so important.

A lot of artists, especially during the last four years, have seen a lot of existential crises around the frivolity of art, like does it even matter? For you working in food, specifically with desserts, it is literally sustenance but also just brings so much joy. You don’t need it but it is so vital to your existence.

It’s the duality of those experiences where I know crazy things are happening in the world and if I can do something to help, I will. The nature of capitalism is to produce, produce, produce and keep making things. But when you just want to do things for yourself or for your community, you have to sometimes take a step back and be like, “I can’t do this right now and I need to recharge and do better for next time.” You have to do what you can do to survive and to hopefully thrive later on.

Describe your personal flavor profile.

Loud. There’s ways to have a lot of flavor in something, but still be able to taste every single taste. Loud encapsulates everything about my personality and a love for being all parts of yourself, even though someone might think it’s too much to handle. But I think people are able to withstand it, so that’s great.

You’re not going to be everyone’s cup of tea because if you were, you’d be water.

Exactly. When people actually have an opinion about something, whether it’s good or it’s bad, then that’s great. Then it’s worth having a conversation over.

This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by Jun Chou.

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Soon after longtime New Orleans attorney Wendy Vitter became a federal judge in the Eastern District of Louisiana, she heard a lawsuit against the local government in Plaquemines Parish, a peninsular province encompassing the final 70 miles of the Mississippi River, between New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico.

A group of paramedics had sued the parish, seeking compensation for unpaid overtime. Vitter oversaw a pair of jury trials in 2019 and 2021, both resulting in wins for the parish. But an appeals court later ruled Vitter had erred in judgment and overturned her final order. That paved the way for the paramedics to be awarded more than $500,000 in compensation, plus hundreds of thousands more for their attorneys.

Throughout those proceedings, Plaquemines Parish leaders had a paid ally on their side: the judge’s husband, U.S. Sen.-turned-lobbyist David Vitter.

But there was no way for the parties in the case to easily know this. Wendy Vitter never told the EMTs’ attorneys. And they couldn't have looked it up in any court records. While the law requires federal judges to report their spouses’ income on annual financial disclosures, Vitter listed her husband as a “self employed attorney” with the name of the payroll company, TriNet HR III, that cut his checks. In fact, he is a partner and lobbyist for powerhouse Washington firm Mercury Public Affairs.

ProPublica didn’t uncover evidence that David Vitter’s business relationships played a role in his wife’s rulings. But the American Bar Association recommends judges disclose such relationships to let the parties decide for themselves if they are significant enough to contest. Since it’s not required by federal code, however, judges seldom do it, ethics experts say.

In the Plaquemines case, Wendy Vitter should have voluntarily told paramedics’ attorneys about the potential conflict, five legal ethics experts told ProPublica. That would have allowed them to consider making motions for disqualification if she did not recuse herself.

Vitter wrote in a statement to ProPublica that she relied on guidance from the Judicial Conference Committee on Codes of Conduct that says recusal may not be necessary if a spouse’s client is not a direct party to the case.

Vitter said her husband was not working for the parish at the time of the trials. Public records show his contract with the parish expired in late 2018. But federal disclosures show he continued to work into 2024 for the Plaquemines Port, a political agency that is controlled by the parish’s nine council members and has identical borders to Plaquemines Parish.

David Vitter did not respond to ProPublica’s requests for comment but told news partners at ABC News he had “absolutely nothing to do with the lawsuit” before his wife and that the Plaquemines Port “is a different entity with a different governance structure than Plaquemines Parish.”

Wendy Vitter told ProPublica her husband’s income was “properly disclosed” on her financial reports, but she will start including details of his lobbying work in her disclosures moving forward.

Concerns that judges on the nation’s highest courts have not properly disclosed personal conflicts — and have failed to recuse when such issues arose — have been at the center of a recent national debate. Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito have faced calls to recuse themselves from cases due to their wives’ political activities. Chief Justice John Roberts’ wife has a high-powered job as a headhunter for law firms with Supreme Court practices.

Last year, ProPublica exposed how Thomas and Alito took trips funded by billionaires but failed to properly disclose them. In 2021, The Wall Street Journal found at least 131 judges broke the law by hearing cases in which they had a financial interest. And in 2020, Reuters identified thousands of judges who broke the law but remained on the bench.

A ProPublica analysis found a lack of transparency regarding conflicts plagues federal and state courts where loose rules, inconsistent enforcement and creative interpretations of guidelines routinely allow judges to withhold potential conflicts from the parties before them.

In an examination of more than 1,200 federal judges and state supreme court justices, ProPublica, in partnership with student journalists at Boston University, found dozens of judges, including both Republican and Democratic appointees, who chose not to recuse when facing potential appearances of impropriety involving familial financial connections. Ethics experts say that the judges’ interpretation of the rules may often lie within the letter of the law, but at the expense of its spirit.

In Florida, a state Supreme Court justice presided over a gambling case in which a Native American tribe sought to protect billions in betting revenue. During the proceedings, the tribe made an unusually large campaign contribution to the justice’s wife, a state legislator. The judge later helped form a court majority that struck down the constitutional challenge, protecting the tribe’s business.

In Minnesota, a federal judge heard an antitrust case against a corporation that was a major client of the public relations firm owned by his wife. He went on to dismiss the case, in the corporation’s favor.

And in both Ohio and North Carolina, state supreme court justices rejected calls from ethics watchdogs to recuse themselves from multiple cases involving a parent who is a powerful state politician.

Amid cratering confidence in the impartiality of both the federal and state judicial systems, experts worry that such failures to police conflicts of interest only further erode public confidence.

“We ignore it at our own peril,” said Robert Westley, professor of legal ethics and professional responsibility at Tulane University. “I really believe the entire system is at stake if we don’t get this right.”

Federal law requires judges to recuse themselves from any case in which a close relative has an interest in the result, or when the judge’s “impartiality might reasonably be questioned.”

While some judges go to great lengths to disclose potential conflicts and recuse scrupulously from those cases, the guidelines are ambiguous and the adherence is haphazard, according to experts.

In most cases, judges oversee their own decisions to recuse, raising concerns about the lack of checks and balances on judges’ judgment. The challenges posed by familial conflicts could be mitigated with more judicial transparency, experts say.

The American Bar Association guides judges to disclose any information potentially relevant to attorneys who might consider a motion for disqualification. But the guidance has not been codified by all states — or the federal judiciary. Without it, judges are under no obligation to inform a party appearing before them when a judge’s family member may be working on behalf of the party’s opposition.

Federal laws do require judges to report their spouses’ assets and income each year, but they generally don’t require judges to disclose their spouses’ clients. Calls from watchdogs in 2022 to close the client loophole failed to get traction in Congress.Making matters worse, U.S. courts have failed to comply with federal law in promptly posting disclosures online.

More than a dozen states don’t require judges to post any details at all about their family members’ income, and a majority of states don’t make disclosures easily available online, according to Fix the Court, a nonprofit advocating for more transparency and accountability in U.S. courts.

“People are as honest as their circumstances permit,” Westley said. “When circumstances allow them to be dishonest without being discovered, many people will choose to do that.

“The system is not working. But I think it can work when there is oversight.”

Familial conflict-of-interest decisions get more complicated when the spouse of a judge is a high-ranking state official, as is the case with Florida Supreme Court Justice Charles Canady and his wife, Republican state Rep. Jennifer Canady. Charles Canady was appointed to the state’s top court in 2008 by former Republican Gov. Charlie Crist; Jennifer Canady won her first legislative race in 2022.

In December, Charles Canady’s court received a legal brief from the Seminole Tribe of Florida, asking the seven-member body to reject a constitutional challenge to its exclusive sports betting deal with the state, worth billions. The tribe was not a party to the case but stood to benefit.

Five days later, the tribe then cut a $10,000 campaign check to Jennifer Canady’s political action committee. Of the more than 100 donations the Seminoles made to Florida legislators in 2023, a handful matched the size of but none were larger than Canady’s.

Charles Canady did not publicly disclose his wife’s connection to the tribe, and in early 2024, he voted to uphold the Seminoles’ deal.

“It’s a huge concern,” said Bob Jarvis, professor of law at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale. “It’s the same social circles, particularly if you’re talking about a town like Tallahassee. It’s a very small town — everyone knows everyone else.”

Florida’s Supreme Court — unlike the federal judiciary — has adopted the ABA’s guidance regarding possible conflicts, requiring justices to disclose information that “the parties or their lawyers might consider relevant to the question of disqualification, even if the judge believes there is no real basis for disqualification.”

While the Seminole connection went unreported, Charles Canady faced a barrage of public calls for recusal last winter when another case closely connected to his wife reached Florida’s Supreme Court: a constitutional challenge to the state’s new law banning abortions after six weeks.

His wife was one of two co-sponsors of the controversial bill.

Charles Canady elected to stay on the case, making no public comments about his wife’s connection to it, and then helped the court form a majority in April that ruled his wife’s legislation constitutional. The law went into effect May 1.

“Justice Canady owes it to the public to be more transparent and more deferential to perception of bias,” Jarvis said.

Anthony Alfieri, professor of law and director of the University of Miami Center for Ethics and Public Service, said the justice “should err on the side of disqualification, whether or not there is a real basis for disqualification.”

ProPublica found no evidence the Seminole donation played a role in Charles Canady’s ruling. The justice declined multiple requests for comment. Representatives for Jennifer Canady did not respond to requests for comment, either, but the lawmaker — prior to winning office — told the News Service of Florida in 2021 that “around the dinner table, if something comes up about a pending or impending case, we don’t discuss it ever.”

A spokesperson for the Florida Supreme Court said “considerations of recusal are complex and nuanced — each justice gives careful deliberation to their responsibilities” in accordance with Florida Supreme Court rules and the Code of Judicial Conduct.

When asked for a list of cases Charles Canady has recused on, the spokesperson said no such list was available.

In a written statement, the Seminole Tribe of Florida said it “supports numerous candidates with diverse perspectives. It is also involved in multiple legal cases at various levels. Any connection here is purely coincidental.”

Experts caution the perception of bias is likely to be a recurring problem in Florida, with Jennifer Canady now in line to become House speaker in 2028. That would provide her a large role in crafting every major piece of legislation passing through the Florida House from now through the end of the decade — including controversial laws that will ultimately end up in her husband’s court.

She’s also expected to solicit sizable campaign contributions from the state’s largest corporations, some of which might have cases before the highest court in the state.

Charles Canady was among the dozens of federal and state supreme court judges ProPublica identified who were married to politicians, creating new challenges the country’s generations-old ethics rules haven’t yet caught up with.

“Decades ago, it wasn’t a problem because women didn’t work,” Jarvis said.

He added that “it comes down to the good faith of the couple” to “be aware, disclose and possibly recuse from cases.” The politicians could reject or return campaign checks from companies with business before the court.

Senior Judge John Tunheim, serving the federal district of Minnesota, did not disclose when one of his wife’s biggest clients appeared on his docket in 2019.

Kathy Tunheim is the co-founder and CEO of a large Twin Cities public relations firm, Tunheim, which performed public relations work for the Cargill corporation for several years. During this time, a group of cattle ranchers brought a federal antitrust case against Cargill and other meat producers, alleging a scheme to fix beef prices.

The case was assigned to John Tunheim, who did not recuse.

His annual financial disclosures, obtained through the Free Law Project archive, also did not disclose his wife’s role as CEO of the Tunheim firm, instead describing her since 2006 as a “self-employed public relations consultant.” It’s a distinction the judge said was prescribed by the U.S. Courts’ Committee on Financial Disclosure, which says “self employed” is sufficient if the spouse’s income is from “a partnership of which the spouse is a member.” Experts say Tunheim’s interpretation of disclosure rules makes identifying possible conflicts challenging.

The judge threw out the cattle ranchers’ claims several times over the course of the litigation, which has continued into 2024. One former attorney on the case said a disclosure from Tunheim about his wife’s Cargill connection might not have resulted in a request for recusal, but it would have been welcomed, since attorneys cannot weigh those decisions without the information.

Tunheim also heard two Cargill cases in 2018.

Appointed to the federal bench by then-President Bill Clinton in 1995, Tunheim told ProPublica he considered recusing in Cargill cases but concluded it was not necessary based on the same 2009 advisory opinion cited by Wendy Vitter.

“I did a thorough evaluation of all the facts and applied the guidance from the Committee on Codes of Conduct in the advisory opinion concerning the business relationships of a judge’s spouse,” Tunheim said in an email statement.

The advisory opinion guides judges to consider factors such as the closeness of the spouse-client relationship and how involved the spouse is in the client work.

The Tunheim agency publicly touted its Cargill relationship for years and boasts online about Kathy Tunheim’s “active role in many of the agency’s client relationships.”

Kathy Tunheim declined to comment, but her firm scrubbed most references to Cargill from its website soon after ProPropublica reached out.

The advisory opinion Vitter and Tunheim cited instructs judges to recuse themselves from any case in which an objective observer might reasonably question their impartiality. But in almost every example examined, the objective observer test was performed by that same judge.

Charles Gardner Geyh, distinguished professor of law at Indiana University, said federal law grants judges a “presumption of impartiality.” But even with case law suggesting judges should err “in favor of recusal,” some still cite conflicting case law to justify a decision to stay on a case.

Experts explain that some judges don’t care for the stigma that comes from a recusal. Judges can also fail to perceive either that they are biased or that they appear biased.

For as little oversight as there is regarding potential conflicts of interest on the federal bench, there’s even less for state supreme courts. Since they are the court of last resort at the state level, there’s no opportunity to review the recusal decisions of most states’ justices, short of the U.S. Supreme Court. But it almost never hears those cases.

Geyh said the lack of oversight compounds the “self-policing” problem since lawyers are typically wary of antagonizing judges by challenging their potential biases. When they do, he said appellate courts often defer back to the judges’ decision anyway.

Without the threat of discipline, Geyh said the “buck stops with the judge.”

“If you put those people in the position of grading their own homework — ruling on their own biases — then you have a problem.”

It’s not just spousal conflicts. In at least two states, the sons of powerful state politicians sit on the supreme court. In both cases, they’ve refused to recuse on consequential cases involving their parents.

In North Carolina, Supreme Court Justice Phil Berger Jr. has repeatedly heard cases in which his father, Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger Sr., not only publicly lobbied for a specific result but also was a named party in the case.

The justice repeatedly sided with his father’s interests, including cases in which Phil Berger Sr. was a named defendant: a challenge to the constitutionality of a partisan redistricting plan and a challenge to a voter ID law spearheaded by Phil Berger Sr.

The justice had recused himself from the voter ID case while serving on the Court of Appeals but said he did not need to as Supreme Court justice because his father was a defendant only in his “official capacity.”

Watchdogs also criticized Ohio Supreme Court Justice Pat DeWine for what they say were hypocritical promises in 2018 to recuse from cases in which his father, Mike DeWine — then the state’s attorney general and now its governor — was “personally involved.”

But the younger DeWine chose to hear several high-profile cases in which his father was active in the litigation, including a series of impactful redistricting cases in which Pat DeWine helped cast a swing vote in a 4-3 decision that dismissed challenges to the controversial maps drawn by a Republican-led committee. Mike DeWine sat on that committee and publicly advocated for the constitutionality of its work.

Geyh, who filed an amicus brief in one of the Berger cases, said ethics laws are “pretty bloody explicit” when it comes to recusing from a case in which a parent is a named party.

Neither justice returned requests for comment.

Amid calls to bring conflict-of-interest laws into the 21st century, a bevy of Band-Aids have been proposed, but no comprehensive solutions.

Experts hesitate at the suggestion of tougher recusal rules, fearing mass disqualification could shut down the judiciary. Most also reject the idea of limiting judicial spouses’ careers or speech.

“As soon as you reform the system, you’re penalizing one spouse,” Jarvis said.

The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law proposed a series of reforms in 2016, including independent review of all motions for disqualification — at both the U.S. and state supreme courts — so judges don’t effectively serve as the final arbiters of their own biases. Brennan also advocated ending the common practice of judges keeping their reasons for recusal — or non-recusal — secret, which can stymie the appeals process and create a void in case law.

Critics have argued the reforms could slow the wheels of justice and allow political actors to weaponize recusal. Many advocates for reform see transparency measures as an achievable next step.

“The fix is really hard,” said Amanda Frost, professor of law at the University of Virginia. But “transparency would improve the process for everyone.”

To produce this story, ProPublica partnered with the Justice Media Computational Journalism co-Lab, a collaboration between Boston University’s College of Communication and the Faculty of Computing & Data Sciences’ BU Spark! program. Contributing students included Emilia Wisniewski, Serena Ata, Amisha Kumar and Amanda Bang.

Do you have any information regarding a state supreme court justice or federal judge failing to disclose a familial conflict of interest? Contact Noah Pransky confidentially via Signal at NoahPransky.55 or on any social media platform at @NoahPransky.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Noah Pransky, Brooke Williams and Andrew Botolino for ProPublica.

But even though the general risks of living in the region have been clear for decades, the exact dangers are still coming into focus — and the latest data show that the EPA’s modeling has dramatically underestimated the levels of ethylene oxide in southeastern Louisiana. On average, according to a new study published on Tuesday, ethylene oxide levels in the heart of Cancer Alley are more than double the threshold above which the EPA considers cancer risk to be unacceptable.

To gather the new data, researchers from Johns Hopkins University drove highly sensitive air monitors along a planned route where a concentration of industrial facilities known to emit ethylene oxide are situated. The monitors detected levels that were as many as 10 times higher than EPA thresholds, and the researchers were able to detect plumes of the toxin spewing from the facilities from as many as seven miles away. The resulting measurements were significantly higher than the EPA and state environmental agency’s modeled emissions values for the area. 

“From over two decades of doing these measurements, we’ve always found that the measured concentrations of pretty much every pollutant is higher than what we expect,” said Peter DeCarlo, an associate professor at Johns Hopkins University and an author of the study. “In the case of ethylene oxide, this is particularly important because of the health risks associated with it at such low levels.”

There is no safe level of ethylene oxide exposure. The EPA calculates exposure thresholds for various chemicals by assessing the level at which it causes an increased incidence of cancer. For ethylene oxide, the EPA has determined that breathing in nearly 11 parts per trillion of the chemical for a lifetime can result in one additional case of cancer per 10,000 people. The higher the concentration, the higher the risk of cancer. 

DeCarlo and his team found that, in three quarters of the regions where they collected data, ethylene oxide levels were above the 11 parts per trillion threshold. On average, the level was roughly 31 parts per trillion. In some extreme cases, they observed area averages above 109 parts per trillion. The findings were published in the peer-reviewed academic journal Environmental Science & Technology. The study was funded in part by Bloomberg Philanthropies, which launched a campaign in 2022 to block the construction and expansion of new petrochemical facilities.

“We definitely saw parts per billion levels at the fenceline of some of these facilities, which means people inside the fenceline — workers, for example — are getting exposed to much, much higher concentrations over the course of their day,” DeCarlo said. 

Ethylene oxide is emitted from petrochemical manufacturing and plants that sterilize medical equipment. Earlier this year, the EPA finalized rules for ethylene oxide emissions from both types of facilities. The rule that applies to the manufacturing facilities in Louisiana requires companies to install monitors and report data to the EPA and state environmental agency. If the monitors record concentrations above a certain “action level,” companies will be required to make repairs. The rule is expected to reduce emissions of ethylene oxide and chloroprene, another toxic chemical, by 80 percent. Companies have two years to comply. 

Heather McTeer Toney, who heads the campaign against petrochemical facilities at Bloomberg Philanthropies, told Grist in an email that the new measurements provide a baseline understanding as the EPA’s new regulations take effect. “The EPA’s new rule was necessary but should only be the start of how we begin to make things right here,” she said. “I’m hopeful to see levels go down, but the data suggest we have a long way to go.” 

Tracey Woodruff, a professor studying the impact of chemicals on health at the University of California in San Francisco, said that the study “affirms that EPA is doing the right thing to regulate” ethylene oxide and that the agency “needs to improve their modeling data.” The levels identified by the researchers are 9 times higher than those estimated by the EPA’s models.

For residents in the area, the study’s findings confirm their lived experience. Sharon Lavigne, the founder of Rise St. James, a community organization battling the expansion of the petrochemical industry in St. James Parish, told Grist that the study “is a step in the right direction” and helps the community get a deeper understanding of what they’re being exposed to. But ultimately, without accountability and follow-through, monitoring data will do little to help her family and neighbors. 

“These monitors are good, but in the meantime, people are dying,” she said.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Real-time data show the air in Louisiana’s ‘Cancer Alley’ is even worse than expected on Jun 11, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Naveena Sadasivam.

“Today, we celebrate the end of that project,” Kemp told the crowd of state officials and utility executives. “And now, let’s start planning for Vogtle Five.”

That could be a tough sell to Georgians who have seen their bills go up multiple times to pay for the new reactors and for shareholders of the power plant’s largest owner, who had to absorb some of the costs. Originally billed as the dawn of a new nuclear era and priced at $14 billion, the Plant Vogtle project was plagued by repeated delays and ultimately cost an estimated total of more than $31 billion. 

When lead contractor Westinghouse filed for bankruptcy in 2017, prompting South Carolina to abandon its own nuclear project, Vogtle became the only new nuclear construction in the country. It still is. 

“If building more nuclear were a good idea, other states would be jumping on the bandwagon now,” said Liz Coyle, executive director of the consumer advocacy group Georgia Watch. “The fact that they’re not, I think, speaks volumes.”

Coyle said her group is preparing to fight any proposal for another reactor. 

For their part, the elected officials and utility executives at Wednesday’s event spoke of Plant Vogtle as a success story.

“Vogtle 3 and 4 don’t just represent an incredible economic development asset for our state and … a milestone for our entire country,” Kemp said. “They also stand as physical examples of something that I remind myself of every day: Tough times don’t last. Tough people do.”

Triumphal arrangements of the national anthem, “God Bless America,” and “Georgia On My Mind” backed by a gospel choir bookended the celebratory speeches. Attendees could snack on a sheet cake model of the power plant rendered in fondant.

Speakers touted Plant Vogtle as a win for clean energy, since it can produce enough electricity to power a million homes and businesses without the greenhouse gas emissions produced by coal or gas, according to Georgia Power, which owns the largest stake in the new reactors. That carbon-free energy is key to attracting new businesses to the state, Kemp and others said.

All five members of the Georgia Public Service Commission, or PSC — which oversees Georgia Power’s planning and rates, including the Vogtle project — addressed the crowd. 

“I just hope that we keep it up. We really should,” said commissioner Tricia Pridemore. “If we want to continue clean energy for our nation, it’s gonna take more than four.”  

In December, the PSC approved a deal that hikes Georgia Power customers’ rates now that Vogtle Unit 4 is online.

After the Wednesday event, commissioner Tim Echols said he supports more nuclear power in Georgia, but said a further Vogtle expansion would need to come with protections against runaway costs and other problems that plagued the last project.

“I really need some protection against a bankruptcy,” he said. “I just can’t do it on the same basis again.”

Echols suggested a federal “backstop” and a mechanism to ensure large customers like factories and data centers would pay for the bulk of nuclear construction.

Under current Georgia law, a further expansion of Plant Vogtle would need to be financed differently than the project that just wrapped up, Coyle said. In 2018, state lawmakers approved a sunset provision for the state law that had allowed Georgia Power to pass Vogtle’s financing costs on to customers during construction. Barring another change, that would mean Southern Company and its shareholders would shoulder those costs. 

Coyle said she’ll be urging lawmakers to keep it that way.

“Georgians are struggling, really, really struggling already to pay their power bills,” she said. “I hope we don’t have to go down this path again.”

On Friday,  U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm and national climate advisor Ali Zaidi are visiting Vogtle for another event at the power plant. According to the Department of Energy, they plan to meet with local officials, as well as industry and labor leaders. 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Georgia governor calls for even more nuclear power despite budget woes on May 31, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Emily Jones.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.

Nearly three years have passed since the 2021 murder of Chicago police officer Ella French, and police and prosecutors have revealed much about her killing: the grim details of her final moments, the type of gun used to shoot her during a traffic stop and how that .22-caliber Glock made its way into the hands of the man who pulled the trigger.

But absent from the public discussion was the name of the retail shop where the gun used to kill French was purchased. Its disclosure has been hindered by a long-standing push by the gun industry to protect the identities of retailers that have sold guns used in crimes.

The law enforcement agencies that investigated her murder and prosecuted her killer could not or would not say. Those that tracked and prosecuted the man who bought the gun used to kill her have been just as silent.

ProPublica, however, has learned the name of the retailer. It’s Deb’s Gun Shop, an Indiana retailer just over the Illinois state border that has drawn attention from federal regulators because of the large number of its guns that have turned up in crime investigations. James Vanzant, an attorney for the man convicted on federal charges for buying that gun, revealed that detail in an interview.

Speaking through his attorney, Deb’s Gun Shop owner Ed Estack called French’s death a horrible tragedy but declined further comment.

Two decades ago, federal and local law enforcement routinely identified the source of guns used in crimes to members of the media or anyone else who inquired.

That changed in 2003 when Congress, bowing to pressure from the gun industry, approved legislation known as the Tiahrt amendment, named after a former Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Kan., a gun rights champion. The amendment bars police and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives from disclosing any information they uncover during gun-tracing investigations, including the names of retailers.

The move hobbled efforts by cities to study gun-trafficking patterns and ended what the gun industry has called a pattern of “name and shame,” in which retailers were thrust into the spotlight for selling guns later linked to crimes.

Gun safety advocates and researchers argue that Tiarht created a knowledge gap on a pressing public safety issue and allowed retailers to escape scrutiny. Such information, they say, can help the public determine whether the transactions that put guns in the hands of criminals are a rarity or part of a larger pattern.

The story of the gun used to kill French began in earnest in March 2021 at Deb’s, a small storefront off one of the main drags in Hammond, Indiana. Inside, Jamel Danzy picked out the Glock to purchase, then waited to pass his background check. On March 25, he returned and picked up the gun, prepared to deliver it to a friend.

He later admitted to ATF investigators that he’d bought the gun for Eric Morgan in violation of federal law. Danzy acknowledged that he knew Morgan was barred by federal law from buying a gun for himself due to a prior felony conviction. Morgan drove from Chicago to Danzy’s home in Hammond to pick it up.

Four months later, French, 29, was on night patrol in the West Englewood neighborhood when she joined other officers in conducting a traffic stop on a Honda SUV traveling with an expired registration. The officers inspected the car and found Morgan and his brother, Emonte Morgan, inside with a bottle of liquor.

The encounter escalated as officers ordered the brothers to exit the car, according to Chicago police. Eric Morgan jumped out and fled on foot. His brother stayed, refusing to put down his cup. A scuffle ensued. As French ran to help the other officers at the scene, Emonte Morgan pulled out the Glock and began to fire, police said.

French was struck and killed. Another officer, Carlos Yanez Jr., was severely wounded.

Cook County prosecutors charged both Morgan brothers in French’s killing. Eric Morgan pleaded guilty to aggravated battery and unlawful use of a deadly weapon. In March, a Cook County court convicted Emonte Morgan of French’s murder. He has since petitioned for a new trial.

Danzy already was serving time by then. In 2022, he pleaded guilty to charges that he conspired with Morgan to buy the gun and lied by claiming on a required form that he was purchasing it for himself. A judge sentenced him to 30 months in federal prison.

The ATF, which investigated the purchase of the gun used to kill French, would not reveal the name of the Hammond retailer when contacted by ProPublica. Neither would federal prosecutors. In filings for the case against Danzy, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois did not reveal the name of the store where he purchased the Glock.

Tiahrt’s restrictions prevent investigators from disclosing the names of gun retailers, but federal prosecutors who try gun traffickers have more leeway. In fact, such disclosures in federal filings occur often.

ProPublica has viewed federal filings in both the Northern District of Illinois and the Northern District of Indiana where retailers were named in conjunction with cases against individuals who lied to make gun purchases or later resold the guns illegally in so-called straw sales.

One such gun was bought from an Indiana retailer and days later used in a shooting that left two Wisconsin police officers severely injured, ProPublica reported in March. The retailer involved was never charged yet still was named in court records.

Nonetheless, Joseph Fitzpatrick, a spokesperson for the US Attorney’s Office in Chicago, said it’s “our policy to not identify uncharged individuals or entities.”

As part of an ongoing lawsuit against the firearms industry, the city of Gary, Indiana, is seeking sales records from Deb’s and other retailers in the area. The suit aims to hold responsible local gun retailers and iconic gun manufacturers, such as Smith & Wesson and Glock, associated with illegal purchases like the one that led to French’s murder. The suit has survived court challenges for nearly a quarter of a century, but the Indiana General Assembly recently passed a law designed to get it dismissed. Deb’s is not a defendant in the suit.

ATF records show that Deb’s has operated under enhanced monitoring from the agency since at least 2021. The gun shop is included in a program known as Demand 2 for retailers who sell a high volume of guns later recovered in police investigations, according to records obtained by the Brady Center, a gun violence prevention group, and provided to ProPublica.

Gun dealers can be placed in Demand 2 when ATF finds they are the source of at least 25 gun-trace requests from police in a given year; the retail sale of those guns must have been three or fewer years prior to that.

Besides the gun bought by Danzy, records show that at least one other firearm purchased illegally at Deb’s in recent years was central to a killing.

In 2021, Mark J. Halliburton shot and killed Monica J. Mills outside a school in East Chicago, Indiana, over a gun illegally purchased at Deb’s Gun Range. A prior criminal conviction prevented Halliburton from purchasing a gun legally, so he’d paid Mills $100 to buy the gun for him, according to court records. The two then argued over the deal one night inside a car in the parking lot of a school, leading to the shooting. The gun that fired the fatal shot was the same one purchased at Deb’s, according to police records. Halliburton later pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and was sentenced to 17 years in prison.

David Sigale, an attorney for Deb’s Gun Range owner Estack, declined to comment on Deb’s compliance record or associations with guns traced to crimes. “Deb’s continues to cooperate with all requests from law enforcement,” he said.

The ATF points out that involvement in the Demand 2 program does not mean a retailer has done anything wrong. Retailers’ location and the sheer volume of sales they process can make businesses susceptible to trafficking schemes, the agency told ProPublica in written answers. The program helps “raise awareness” among those retailers, ATF said.

Advocates for the gun industry say retailers in Demand 2 are operating within the law. “The illegal straw purchase of a firearm is a crime committed by the individual lying on the form. That is not a crime for which the firearm retailer is liable,” said Mark Oliva, spokesperson for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a lobbying group for gun retailers and manufacturers.

Oliva also reiterated the group’s continued support of the basic tenets behind the Tiahrt amendment. “Access to gun-trace data should only be available to law enforcement taking part in a bona fide investigation, and law enforcement already has the access it needs for this purpose,” he said.

Kristina Mastropasqua, an ATF spokesperson, said Tiahrt helps protect the integrity of ongoing agency investigations and “does not negatively affect ATF’s ability to investigate and hold accountable illegal gun purchases or traffickers.”

But the debate over Tiahrt continues even as efforts to revisit it in Congress stall.

Dr. Garen Wintemute, director of the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California-Davis, said that Tiahrt’s restrictions have inhibited the study of illicit gun markets. He and others who study gun violence say they need the data to understand gun trafficking and, in turn, assess the regulatory efforts to prevent it.

“Firearms are associated with a number of adverse health effects,” he said. “Wouldn’t we like to know where that hazard is coming from?”

When researchers do obtain tracing data compiled by federal authorities, it’s usually under an agreement to keep the sources of the guns confidential. But there have been workarounds and exceptions. The city of Chicago and its police department facilitated University of Chicago studies that identified several Midwest retailers as the sources of thousands of guns trafficked into the city and then later submitted to the ATF for tracing.

The studies — published in 2014 and 2017 — link Westforth Sports, a now-closed Gary, Indiana, retailer, to 850 such guns recovered by police. There was no mention of Deb’s Gun Range in either of those reports. Shop owner Earl Westforth did not respond to a request for comment.

Other cities are continuing to look for ways to navigate around the Tiahrt amendment. The city of Baltimore, for instance, is suing the ATF over its denial of trace data.

That drew the ire of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, which moved to intervene in the case. “This is a transparent attempt by gun control advocates at the City of Baltimore … to gain access to the data to use it to smear licensed firearm retailers and manufacturers by suggesting they are responsible for crimes committed by others misusing lawfully sold firearms,” foundation Senior Vice President Lawrence G. Keane said in a statement.

In arguing for the gun-trace information to stay under wraps, foundation attorneys cited federal law — specifically the Tiahrt amendment.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Vernal Coleman.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

When I registered to attend last month’s United Nations conference in Canada, organizers insisted it would be a “plastic free meeting.” I wouldn’t even get a see-through sleeve for my name tag, they warned; I’d have to reuse an old lanyard.

After all, representatives from roughly 170 countries were gathering to tackle a crisis: The world churns out 400 million metric tons of plastic a year. It clogs landfills and oceans; its chemical trail seeps into our bodies. Delegates have been meeting since 2022 as part of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Plastic Pollution in hopes of ending this year with a treaty that addresses “the full life cycle of plastic, including its production, design and disposal.”

The challenge before delegates seemed daunting: How do you get hundreds of negotiators to agree on anything via live, group editing? Especially when representatives from fossil fuel and chemical companies would be vigorously working to shift the conversation away from what scientists say is the only solution to the crisis: curbing plastic production.

But when I got to the meeting, I discovered those industry reps were not the sideshow; they were welcomed into the main event.

They could watch closed-door sessions off limits to reporters. Some got high-level badges indistinguishable from those worn by country representatives negotiating the treaty. These badges allowed them access to exclusive discussions not open to some of the world’s leading health scientists.

In a setting that was supposed to level the inequalities among those present, I watched how country delegates and conference organizers did little to minimize them, making what was already going to be a challenging process needlessly opaque and avoidably contentious.

With such high stakes, I asked the INC Secretariat — the staff at the UN Environment Programme who facilitated the negotiations process — why they hadn’t set rules on conflict of interest or transparency. They told me that wasn’t their job, that it was up to countries to take the lead. But in some cases, countries pointed me right back to the UN.

Over five days, I would come to understand just how hard it will be to get meaningful action on plastics.

From the moment I landed in Ottawa, the counter-argument of the plastics industry was inescapable, from wall-sized ads at the airport to billboards on trucks that cruised around the downtown convention center.

Their message: Curtailing plastic production would spell literal doom. (I could almost see the marketing pitch: Think of the children!)

These plastics deliver water, read one, depicting a girl drinking from a bottle in what was implied to be a disaster zone.

I headed to the media registration desk and got my green-striped badge, which placed me at the lowest rung of the pecking order.

At the top were people on official delegations. Their red-striped badges opened the door to every meeting, from the large “plenaries” where rows of country representatives spoke into microphones, to smaller working groups where negotiators hashed out specifics like whether to ban certain chemicals used in plastic.

The majority of the attendees wore orange badges. This hodgepodge of so-called observers included scientists, environmentalists, Indigenous peoples and some industry reps, though the color code made no distinction among them.

Observers were allowed into certain working groups at the discretion of government delegates.

Reporters could attend only plenaries.

These huge, open sessions were like the UN equivalent of Senate floor speeches: declarations and repetition to get ideas into the public record.

Veteran observers tracked the real action in the margins, standing in the back of the ballroom to watch who was talking to whom. It was an art, they said: You want to stroll close enough to read the small print on name tags, but you have to be chill about it.

I was not chill about the lack of access, which prevented sources from talking about what happened behind closed-door proceedings. They were governed by rules that prohibited those present from recording the meetings or revealing who had said what.

Reporters trying to inform the public and hold governments accountable were completely shut out. Yet somehow the rules allowed the industry whose survival depends on more plastic production to dispatch reps to watch negotiators at work.

The rules follow the “norms when it comes to fundamentals of negotiating, multilateralism, and diplomacy amongst UN Member States,” said a statement from the INC Secretariat. These meetings are managed by the countries negotiating the treaty, the statement said; the countries set the rules.

But when I asked the U.S. State Department, which led the U.S. delegation in Ottawa, whether journalists should have more access, a spokesperson directed me back to the UN.

I heard about an exhibit at the nearby Westin hosted by the Alliance to End Plastic Waste. It sounded like an environmental group, but an online search showed it was founded by corporations including Dow and ExxonMobil. Dow didn’t respond to a request for comment. ExxonMobil said it attended the conference “to be a resource, bring solutions to the table and listen to a broad range of views by all stakeholders.”

As I wandered through the ballroom stocked with refreshments, shiny videos and diagrams promoted the potential of “circularity,” a marketing term that’s often focused on recycling. Independent research shows pollution will skyrocket if companies don’t curb production, but the industry has, for decades, shifted attention from that with false promises about waste management.

“The work we do is not the whole solution,” the alliance later told me in an email.

But I could easily see someone leaving the exhibit with that impression.

The finer points of plastic science, from its toxic manufacturing process to the limits of recycling, are highly technical and complex.

While countries like the United States could afford to fly in multiple experts to inform government delegates, other countries could not.

Later that day, I met Bethanie Carney Almroth, an ecotoxicologist from Sweden’s University of Gothenburg, who was among 60 independent, volunteer researchers who had traveled to Canada in hopes of bridging that gap in access to expertise.

As part of the Scientists’ Coalition for an Effective Plastics Treaty, they shared fact sheets and peer-reviewed studies and made themselves available for questions. Carney Almroth said ensuring the integrity of the group was vital. Members must have a proven track record of researching plastic pollution and follow a conflict-of-interest policy to prevent bias.

“The human right to science,” she said, “includes the right to transparency.”

For the first two of these conferences, the INC Secretariat didn’t include the participants’ affiliations when they released the list of people who had registered for the event, making it hard to tell who worked for the industry. That has since changed, making it easier for advocacy groups to scour lists for fossil fuel and chemical company affiliations.

After the UN released the roster of the 4,000 people who had registered for Ottawa this year, the Center for International Environmental Law released its analysis of industry attendees. It found about 200 people with observer-level badges.

What’s more, the group said, 16 industry representatives had received the red badges usually reserved for government delegates. They were invited onto official delegations by China, the Dominican Republic, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Malaysia, Thailand, Turkey and Uganda. I later learned an Indonesian delegate was listed as part of its Ministry of Industry; LinkedIn revealed him to be a director at a petrochemical firm.

I reached out to officials from all 10 countries. Most did not respond.

(The United States wasn’t on the list. “As a matter of policy, the United States does not include any industry or civil society representatives in our official delegation,” said a spokesperson from the State Department.)

There is “no such thing as conflict of interest in International negotiations,” the executive director of the Uganda National Environment Management Authority, Barirega Akankwasah, told me in a WhatsApp message. It’s “a matter of country positions and not individual positions,” he said, adding that the conference was “open and transparent” and stakeholders were “all welcome to participate.”

An official from the Dominican Republic, Claudia Taboada, told me that environmental groups and academic scientists had been consulted before the Ottawa conference and that the two industry reps on the country’s eight-member delegation had restricted privileges. They were barred from internal meetings where observers weren’t allowed, she said, and they couldn’t negotiate on behalf of the government.

Those industry reps weren’t trying to influence the government’s position, added Taboada, who is director for science, technology and environment at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

I found that hard to believe. Who would sit through days of bureaucratic meetings just to observe?

A red-striped badge provides tangible benefits, multiple attendees told me, like access to email lists and WhatsApp chats that are closed to observers. A university scientist who’s part of Fiji’s official delegation, Rufino Varea, said it’s easier to talk to official delegates from other countries when you have that badge. It shows only a person’s name and country, making it impossible to tell at a glance whether someone works for the government or for private interests.

A press release issued that day showed a counter-analysis of the entire list of attendees from the International Council of Chemical Associations, which said that industry observers were vastly outnumbered by more than 2,000 members from nongovernmental organizations like environmental advocacy groups.

Many of these groups are “incredibly well funded” and supported by billionaires, said a subsequent email from the American Chemistry Council, the country’s largest plastics lobby. It noted that at least eight countries had NGO representatives on their official delegations.

For every NGO with millions in the bank, there were others whose members couldn’t afford the trip to Ottawa. Many had to compete for limited travel funds from sources like the UN or larger advocacy groups.

I sat down with John Chweya, a friendly man in a leather jacket who makes a living as a waste picker in Kenya. A single salad at the conference cost more than a day’s pay.

As president of the Waste Pickers Association of Kenya, he wanted delegates to understand how plastic impacts the millions around the world who collect garbage and sort the recyclables they can sell in places without formal waste disposal. Toxic fumes from plastic burning in landfills make his fellow workers sick, he told me. They wake up with swollen necks, joints that don’t work and mysterious tumors. Chweya wants the world to make less plastic; he came to Ottawa to fight for protective gear and health care.

The specificity of his story brought home how the experiences of front-line communities could inform the understanding of the plastics crisis.

Others like Chweya tried to give voice to huge portions of the world’s populations that are suffering from every step in the plastic life cycle: residents of Indigenous communities and Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley” breathing dangerous plant emissions; Pacific Islanders seeing their coral reefs entangled in abandoned fishing nets; activists from lower-income countries that are swimming in Americans’ discarded plastic.

I watched them trying to grab the attention of government officials with handwritten posters, events in cramped rooms and limited speaking slots during the plenary.

None of it matched the flash of the billboards I could not seem to avoid, which heralded their own impending health emergency.

These plastics save lives, one decreed, featuring a girl in a hospital bed, wearing an oxygen mask.

Negotiators couldn’t even agree on setting voluntary reductions for plastic production, I thought. Nobody was proposing to eliminate enough plastic to cause hospital shortages.

Chweya called the prevalent ads “traitorous.”

UN officials had warned against the inequities playing out in Ottawa.

In November 2022, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights issued a statement during the first conference to negotiate the treaty, held in Uruguay.

Even though they weren’t hosting it, human rights officials had advice on how to proceed. “The plastic industry has disproportionate power and influence over policy relative to the general public,” they wrote. “Clear boundaries on conflict of interest should be established … drawing from existing good practices under international law.”

They recommended policies similar to those adopted by the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, a separate UN treaty. Government representatives meet every two years to evaluate results. Recognizing that the tobacco industry’s presence was fundamentally incompatible with protecting public health, the countries agreed to virtually ban Big Tobacco from those meetings.

“It is irresponsible and inaccurate to liken plastics to tobacco,” the American Chemistry Council said in a statement in response to my questions about this comparison. “Unlike the tobacco industry, the plastics industry is playing a vital role in helping meet the UN’s sustainability goals by contributing to food safety, healthcare, renewable energy, telecommunications, clean drinking water, and much more. …

“Keeping plastic producers out means a less informed treaty,” the council said. “We are essential and constructive stakeholders in the global effort to prevent plastic pollution.”

Short of barring the plastics industry, many have wondered why the UN can’t start with smaller steps, like giving industry observers a different kind of badge.

The fossil fuel companies “that are manufacturing plastics” are “not coming to these negotiations with solutions,” Baskut Tuncak, a former UN special rapporteur for human rights and toxics, told me. They’re here “to throw a wrench in the process, or two, or three.”

When I asked if it intended to introduce conflict-of-interest controls, the INC Secretariat said it couldn’t impose rules unilaterally. Governments would have to decide for themselves.

Some U.S. and European politicians have requested such reforms. Negotiators should consider measures “to protect against undue influence of corporate actors with proven vested interests that contradict the goals of the global plastics treaty,” said a letter last month sent to President Joe Biden and the secretary-general of the United Nations.

It was signed by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., who’s often criticized the fossil fuel industry’s influence on public policy, along with 11 other members of Congress and a member of the European Parliament. Industry reps should be required to disclose lobbying records and campaign contributions, the letter suggested.

The UN isn’t powerless, said Tuncak and Ana Paula Souza, a UN human rights officer I met on my last day in Ottawa. There’s more the institution could do to raise the profile of the issue, they said. Souza said the UN could also increase funding to allow more of those most affected by plastic pollution to attend these meetings.

The Ottawa conference ended with limited progress. Negotiators have a long way to go to reach a final draft at the last scheduled conference this November in Busan, South Korea. Smaller groups of delegates will meet before then; it’s unclear how many observers will be able to attend.

It’s tempting to feel pessimistic. This could easily end up like the UN climate treaty — anemic, voluntary and dragging on forever.

And it’s not like a conflict-of-interest policy would magically solve everything. Countries with powerful plastics lobbies, including the United States, can still advocate for corporate interests.

But it’s worth stepping back to recognize the magnitude of what’s happening.

Nearly every government on Earth signed up for days of painstaking sessions on plastic as a global threat — even places confronting existential crises, like Haiti, Palestine, Sudan and Ukraine. The world recognizes the importance of figuring this out. And despite all the industry influence, capping plastic production remains a possibility.

Do You Have Experience in or With the Plastics Industry? Tell Us About It.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Lisa Song.

In a historic ruling, Arizona’s conservative Supreme Court has upheld an 1864 law banning almost all abortions in the state. The court sent out this warning: “Physicians are now on notice that all abortions, except those necessary to save a woman’s life, are illegal.” The 160-year-old law predates Arizona becoming a state and was passed decades before women could even vote. Although Arizona’s Attorney General Kris Mayes said she will not enforce the “draconian law,” the ruling sent shockwaves across the nation. “The central strategy of the anti-abortion movement is to roll back the clock to the Victorian era, because they know that they cannot win through the democratic process,” says Amy Littlefield, abortion access correspondent at The Nation, who says conservatives supporting these unpopular restrictions face an uphill battle this fall. “Democrats are banking on this being a huge way to lift their boats in the next election.” Activists are preparing a November ballot measure to enshrine abortion rights in the Arizona Constitution, and reproductive rights will be a key issue in the state’s closely watched Senate race.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Amazon generated 208 million pounds of plastic packaging trash in the United States in 2022, about 10 percent more than the previous year, according to a new report from the nonprofit Oceana. This packaging includes Amazon’s ubiquitous blue-and-white mailers, as well as other pouches, bags, and plastic cushioning. If all of it were converted into plastic air pillows and laid end to end, Oceana estimates it would circle the Earth more than 200 times.

“The crisis is so significant that we need change now,” said Dana Miller, Oceana’s director of strategic initiatives and an author of the report.

Miller and her co-authors are calling on Amazon to stop using plastic packaging in the U.S., citing phaseouts in some of the company’s biggest overseas markets as evidence that such a transition is possible. Amazon has done “some pretty impressive things in Europe and India, but in the U.S. they are not making the same sort of commitments,” Miller added. “The company has made great progress, but it’s just not enough.”

To calculate Amazon’s U.S. plastics footprint, Oceana used market research on the amount of plastic consumed in 2022 by the American e-commerce industry — more than 800 million pounds — and multiplied that by Amazon’s share of the market, 30.5 percent. Oceana then made some downward revisions to account for Amazon’s publicly disclosed efforts to reduce plastic packaging. For instance, in 2022, Amazon said it replaced 99 percent of its mixed-material mailers with paper ones and delivered 12 percent of its U.S. shipments in 2022 without adding any of its own packaging.

The resulting estimate, 208 million pounds, is about 11 times the weight of Seattle’s most iconic landmark, the Space Needle.

This is worrisome because the type of plastic typically used in Amazon packaging — known as “film” — is almost never recycled. Most of it is sent to landfills or incinerators, or is discarded into the environment. According to one 2020 study, plastic film is among the most common forms of marine plastic litter near ocean shores, where it kills more large marine animals than any other type of plastic. Oceana estimates that 22 million pounds of Amazon’s global plastic packaging waste generated in 2022 will end up in aquatic environments.

Plastic production causes additional concerns. The extraction of fossil fuels used to make plastic, plus the conversion of those fossil fuels into plastic products, releases carbon and air, water, and soil pollution that disproportionately affects low-income communities and communities of color.

Miller said she’d like Amazon to reduce plastics “because of a moral responsibility … to reduce their impact on the environment.” But the company has been slow to respond to moral appeals from customers and shareholders, including three shareholder resolutions since 2021 invoking plastics’ damages to marine ecosystems and human health. The resolutions, which each received more than 30 percent of shareholder votes, asked Amazon to cut plastics use globally by one-third by 2030. When announcing that it had cut plastics use globally by 11.6 percent, Amazon did not make a quantitative or time-bound commitment to further reductions.

Instead, Amazon seems to have taken its biggest steps to reduce plastic packaging in response to stringent plastic regulations, or the threat of them. “Amazon is a clever company,” Miller said. “They see things in the pipeline and they want to move early.”

In 2019, for example, Amazon India pledged to phase out plastic packaging after Prime Minister Narendra Modi called on constituents to “make India free of single-use plastic,” hinting that he would announce major restrictions on the material later that year. Within months, Amazon India said it had eliminated plastic packaging from the country’s fulfillment centers, replacing it largely with paper.

In the European Union, a directive on single-use plastics has made it unlawful since 2021 to sell several types of single-use plastic, including bags, and after a long drafting process, the bloc last month agreed to “historic” targets to reduce packaging waste by 15 percent by 2040. Amazon said in 2022 that it had eliminated single-use plastic delivery bags at its fulfillment centers across the continent.

Despite efforts from progressive lawmakers, the U.S. still lacks a federal plan to phase down plastic packaging, which could help explain why Amazon hasn’t acted more aggressively on the issue stateside. A spokesperson for the company told Grist last month that Amazon has started a “multiyear effort” to transition U.S. fulfillment centers from plastic to paper packaging, but the company has not announced a timeline for that transition.

Then again, Amazon’s American presence is also much larger than its operations overseas; the fact that U.S. orders make up nearly 70 percent of Amazon’s total sales may make it more complicated to change packaging materials here. 

“It would be a bigger deal for them to eliminate plastics in the United States,” said Jenn Engstrom, director of the California chapter of the nonprofit U.S. Public Interest Research Group, who was not involved in the Oceana report. “But they’re also one of the most innovative and biggest companies in the world; just because it’s hard to do doesn’t mean they shouldn’t do it.” 

Amazon, the largest e-commerce company in the world, sold more than half a trillion dollars’ worth of goods last year. Its main American competitor, Walmart, said last month that it had eliminated single-use plastic from its mailing envelopes globally. In China, the retailer JD.com is replacing disposable packaging altogether with reusable alternatives. 

Engstrom pointed to some some state-level policies that could affect Amazon’s plastics use — most notably in California, where a law enacted in 2022 requires that companies reduce their overall packaging distributed in the state by 25 percent by 2032. Washington state tried to pass a similar law last year, but the proposal died in committee. Five other states have passed less specific bills on “extended producer responsibility,” or EPR, that attempt to make plastic producers financially responsible for the waste they generate — often by having them fund improvements in recycling infrastructure.

Although Amazon is funding several efforts to improve plastics recycling, Oceana says that this is “not the solution the company should be relying on.” Plastic film cannot reliably be recycled due to technical and economic constraints; virtually no curbside recycling program accepts it. In a best-case scenario, plastic film can be downcycled into plastic decking material or benches, but recent investigations suggest that store drop-off programs meant to facilitate this process often end up dumping Amazon packaging in landfills or burning it in incinerators.

When American consumers mistakenly put Amazon’s plastic packages in their curbside recycling bins — as many do — a 2022 Bloomberg investigation found that they may end up at illegal dump sites and industrial furnaces in Muzaffarnagar, India, with potentially dire consequences for nearby residents’ health.

Pat Lindner, Amazon’s vice president of mechatronics and sustainable packaging, called Oceana’s study a “misleading report with exaggerated and inaccurate information,” and told Grist that Amazon is committed to reducing its plastic footprint at U.S. fulfillment centers. A spokesperson said  the company is proud of reducing its plastic footprint in Europe and India and that it would continue to share updates on its progress in the U.S. The spokesperson also said Amazon is committed to good-faith engagement with shareholders on plastic-related resolutions. 

Oceana said the company declined the nonprofit’s requests for country-level data on its plastics use. The company also declined to share data on plastic packaging used in third-party shipments; Amazon’s disclosures for plastic packaging used in 2021 and 2022 only account for packages shipped from Amazon fulfillment centers. 

“We are hoping that Amazon will provide more detailed data … and illuminate some of these questions,” Miller said.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline As Amazon eliminates plastic packaging abroad, it’s using even more in the US on Apr 4, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Joseph Winters.

Janine Jackson interviewed Media Matters’ Evlondo Cooper about climate coverage for the March 22, 2024, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

Media Matters (3/14/24)

Janine Jackson: Climate disruption is, of course, one of the most disastrous phenomena of today’s life, affecting every corner of the globe. It’s also one of the most addressable. We know what causes it, we know what meaningful intervention would entail. So it’s a human-made tragedy unfolding in real time before our eyes.

To understate wildly, we need to be talking about it, learning about it, hearing about it urgently, which is why the results of our next guest’s research are so alarming. I’ll just spoil it: Broadcast news coverage of the climate crisis is going down.

Evlondo Cooper is a senior writer with the Climate and Energy Program at Media Matters for America. He joins us now by phone from Washington state. Welcome to CounterSpin, Evlondo Cooper.

Evlondo Cooper: Thank you for having me. I’m excited about our conversation today.

JJ: We’re talking about the latest of Media Matters’ annual studies of climate crisis coverage. First of all, just tell us briefly what media you are looking at in these studies.

EC: So we’re looking at corporate broadcast network coverage. That’s ABC, CBS and NBC. And for the Sunday morning shows, we also include Fox Broadcasting—Fox News Sunday.

JJ: All right. And then, for context, this decline in coverage that you found in the most recent study, that’s down from very little to even less.

Media Matters (3/14/24)

EC: Yeah, so a little context: 2021 and 2022 were both record years for climate coverage, and that coverage was a little bit more than 1%. This year, we saw a 25% decrease from 2022, which brought coverage to a little bit less than 1%. We want to encourage more coverage, but even in the years where they were doing phenomenal, it was only about 1% of total coverage. And so this retrenchment by approximately 25% in 2023 is not a welcome sign, especially in a year where we saw record catastrophic extreme weather events, and scientists are predicting that 2024 might be even worse than ’23.

JJ: Let’s break out some of the things that you found. We’re talking about such small numbers—when you say 1%, that’s 1% of all of the broadcast coverage; of their stories, 1% were devoted to the climate crisis. But we’ve seen, there’s little things within it. For example, we are hearing more from actual climate scientists?

EC: That was a very encouraging sign, where this year we saw 41 climate scientists appeared, which was 10% of the featured guests in 2023, and that’s up from 4% in 2022. So in terms of quality of coverage, I think we’re seeing improvements. We’re seeing a lot of the work being done by dedicated climate correspondents, and meteorologists who are including climate coverage as part of their weather reports and their own correspondents’ segments, a bigger part of their reporting.

So there are some encouraging signs. I think what concerns us is that these improvements, while important and necessary and appreciated, are not keeping up with the escalating scale of climate change.

Media Matters (3/14/24)

JJ: It’s just not appropriate to the seriousness of the topic. And then another thing is, you could say the dominance of white men in the conversation, which I know is another finding, that’s just kind of par for the elite media course; when folks are talked to, they are overwhelmingly white men. But it might bear some relation to what you’re seeing as an underrepresentation of climate-impacted populations, looking at folks at the sharp end of climate disruption. That’s something you also consider.

EC: Yeah, we look at coverage of, broadly, climate justice. I think a lot of people believe it’s representation for representation’s sake, but I think when people most impacted by climate change—and we’re talking about communities of color, we’re talking about low-income communities, we’re talking about low-wealth rural communities—when these folks are left out of the conversation, you’re missing important context about how climate change is impacting them, in many cases, first and worse. And you’re missing important context about the solutions that these communities are trying to employ to deal with it. And I think you’re missing an opportunity to humanize and broaden support for climate solutions at the public policy level.

So these aren’t communities where these random acts of God are occurring; these are policy decisions, or indecisions, that have created an environment where these communities are being most harmed, but least talked about, and they’re receiving the least redress to their challenges. And so those voices are necessary to tell those stories to a broad audience on the corporate broadcast networks.

JJ: Yes, absolutely.

CBS (7/17/23)

Another finding that I thought was very interesting was that extreme weather seemed to be the biggest driver of climate coverage, and that, to me, suggests that the way corporate broadcast media are coming at climate disruption is reactive: “Look at what happened.”

EC: Totally.

JJ:  And even when they say, “Look at what’s happening,” and you know what, folks pretty much agree that this is due to climate disruption, these houses sliding into the river, it’s still not saying, “While you look at this disaster, know that this is preventable, and here is who is keeping us from acting on it and why.”

EC: Yeah, that is so insightful, because that’s a core critique of even the best coverage we see, that there is no accountability for the fossil fuel industry and other industries that are driving the crisis. And then there’s no real—solutions are mentioned in about 20% of climate segments this year. But the solutions are siloed, like there are solution “segments.”

But to your point, when we’re talking about extreme weather, when you have the most eyeballs hearing about climate change, to me, it would be very impactful to connect what’s happening in that moment—these wildfires, these droughts, these heat waves, these hurricanes and storms and flooding—to connect that to a key driver, fossil fuel industry, and talk about some potential solutions to mitigate these impacts while people are actually paying the most attention.

CNN (3/3/23)

JJ: And then take it to your next story about Congress, or your next story about funding, and connect those dots.

EC: Exactly. I mean, climate is too often siloed. So you could see a really great segment, for instance, on the Willow Project, at the top of the hour—and this is on cable, but the example remains—and then later in the hour, you saw a story about an extreme weather event. But those things aren’t connected, they’re siloed.

And so a key to improving coverage in an immediate way would be to understand that the climate crisis is the background for a range of issues, socioeconomic, political. Begin incorporating climate coverage in a much broader swath of stories that, whether you know it or not, indirectly or directly, are being impacted by global warming.

JJ: It’s almost as though corporate media have decided that another horrible disaster due to climate change, while it’s a story, it’s basically now like a dog-bites-man story. And if they aren’t going to explore these other angles, well, then there really isn’t anything to report until the next drought or the next mudslide. And that’s just a world away from what appropriate, fearless, future-believing journalism would be doing right now.

Evlondo Cooper: “It doesn’t have to be about just showing the destruction and carnage. There are ways that you can empower people to take action.”

EC: It’s out of step, right? Pull up the poll showing bipartisan support for government climate action, because, whether people know it or not, as far as the science, —and there’s some deniers out there, but anecdotally, people know something is happening, something is changing in their lives. We’re seeing record-breaking things that no one’s ever experienced, and they want the government to do something about it.

And so it’s important to cover extreme weather and to cover these catastrophes. And I know there’s a range of thought out there that says if you’re just focusing on devastating impacts, it could dampen public action. But to me, to your point, report on it and connect it to solutions, empower people to call their congressperson, their representative, their senator, to vote in ways that have local impacts to deal with the local climate impacts.

It doesn’t have to be about just showing the destruction and carnage. There are ways that you can empower people to take action in their own lives, and to galvanize public support.

And the public wants it. The public is asking for this. So I think just being responsive to what these polls are showing would be a way to immediately improve the way that they cover climate change right now.

JJ: All right, then. We’ve been speaking with Evlondo Cooper of Media Matters for America. You can find this work and much else at MediaMatters.org. Evlondo Cooper, thank you so much for joining us this week on CounterSpin.

EC: Thank you for having me.

The post ‘In Even the Best Coverage There Is No Accountability for the Fossil Fuel Industry’<br></em><span class='not-on-index' style='color:#000000; font-size: 23px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 25px; font-family: 'Open Sans','sans-serif'; padding-bottom: -10px;'>CounterSpin interview with Evlondo Cooper on climate coverage appeared first on FAIR.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Janine Jackson.

Janine Jackson interviewed Media Matters’ Evlondo Cooper about climate coverage for the March 22, 2024, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

Media Matters (3/14/24)

Janine Jackson: Climate disruption is, of course, one of the most disastrous phenomena of today’s life, affecting every corner of the globe. It’s also one of the most addressable. We know what causes it, we know what meaningful intervention would entail. So it’s a human-made tragedy unfolding in real time before our eyes.

To understate wildly, we need to be talking about it, learning about it, hearing about it urgently, which is why the results of our next guest’s research are so alarming. I’ll just spoil it: Broadcast news coverage of the climate crisis is going down.

Evlondo Cooper is a senior writer with the Climate and Energy Program at Media Matters for America. He joins us now by phone from Washington state. Welcome to CounterSpin, Evlondo Cooper.

Evlondo Cooper: Thank you for having me. I’m excited about our conversation today.

JJ: We’re talking about the latest of Media Matters’ annual studies of climate crisis coverage. First of all, just tell us briefly what media you are looking at in these studies.

EC: So we’re looking at corporate broadcast network coverage. That’s ABC, CBS and NBC. And for the Sunday morning shows, we also include Fox Broadcasting—Fox News Sunday.

JJ: All right. And then, for context, this decline in coverage that you found in the most recent study, that’s down from very little to even less.

Media Matters (3/14/24)

EC: Yeah, so a little context: 2021 and 2022 were both record years for climate coverage, and that coverage was a little bit more than 1%. This year, we saw a 25% decrease from 2022, which brought coverage to a little bit less than 1%. We want to encourage more coverage, but even in the years where they were doing phenomenal, it was only about 1% of total coverage. And so this retrenchment by approximately 25% in 2023 is not a welcome sign, especially in a year where we saw record catastrophic extreme weather events, and scientists are predicting that 2024 might be even worse than ’23.

JJ: Let’s break out some of the things that you found. We’re talking about such small numbers—when you say 1%, that’s 1% of all of the broadcast coverage; of their stories, 1% were devoted to the climate crisis. But we’ve seen, there’s little things within it. For example, we are hearing more from actual climate scientists?

EC: That was a very encouraging sign, where this year we saw 41 climate scientists appeared, which was 10% of the featured guests in 2023, and that’s up from 4% in 2022. So in terms of quality of coverage, I think we’re seeing improvements. We’re seeing a lot of the work being done by dedicated climate correspondents, and meteorologists who are including climate coverage as part of their weather reports and their own correspondents’ segments, a bigger part of their reporting.

So there are some encouraging signs. I think what concerns us is that these improvements, while important and necessary and appreciated, are not keeping up with the escalating scale of climate change.

Media Matters (3/14/24)

JJ: It’s just not appropriate to the seriousness of the topic. And then another thing is, you could say the dominance of white men in the conversation, which I know is another finding, that’s just kind of par for the elite media course; when folks are talked to, they are overwhelmingly white men. But it might bear some relation to what you’re seeing as an underrepresentation of climate-impacted populations, looking at folks at the sharp end of climate disruption. That’s something you also consider.

EC: Yeah, we look at coverage of, broadly, climate justice. I think a lot of people believe it’s representation for representation’s sake, but I think when people most impacted by climate change—and we’re talking about communities of color, we’re talking about low-income communities, we’re talking about low-wealth rural communities—when these folks are left out of the conversation, you’re missing important context about how climate change is impacting them, in many cases, first and worse. And you’re missing important context about the solutions that these communities are trying to employ to deal with it. And I think you’re missing an opportunity to humanize and broaden support for climate solutions at the public policy level.

So these aren’t communities where these random acts of God are occurring; these are policy decisions, or indecisions, that have created an environment where these communities are being most harmed, but least talked about, and they’re receiving the least redress to their challenges. And so those voices are necessary to tell those stories to a broad audience on the corporate broadcast networks.

JJ: Yes, absolutely.

CBS (7/17/23)

Another finding that I thought was very interesting was that extreme weather seemed to be the biggest driver of climate coverage, and that, to me, suggests that the way corporate broadcast media are coming at climate disruption is reactive: “Look at what happened.”

EC: Totally.

JJ:  And even when they say, “Look at what’s happening,” and you know what, folks pretty much agree that this is due to climate disruption, these houses sliding into the river, it’s still not saying, “While you look at this disaster, know that this is preventable, and here is who is keeping us from acting on it and why.”

EC: Yeah, that is so insightful, because that’s a core critique of even the best coverage we see, that there is no accountability for the fossil fuel industry and other industries that are driving the crisis. And then there’s no real—solutions are mentioned in about 20% of climate segments this year. But the solutions are siloed, like there are solution “segments.”

But to your point, when we’re talking about extreme weather, when you have the most eyeballs hearing about climate change, to me, it would be very impactful to connect what’s happening in that moment—these wildfires, these droughts, these heat waves, these hurricanes and storms and flooding—to connect that to a key driver, fossil fuel industry, and talk about some potential solutions to mitigate these impacts while people are actually paying the most attention.

CNN (3/3/23)

JJ: And then take it to your next story about Congress, or your next story about funding, and connect those dots.

EC: Exactly. I mean, climate is too often siloed. So you could see a really great segment, for instance, on the Willow Project, at the top of the hour—and this is on cable, but the example remains—and then later in the hour, you saw a story about an extreme weather event. But those things aren’t connected, they’re siloed.

And so a key to improving coverage in an immediate way would be to understand that the climate crisis is the background for a range of issues, socioeconomic, political. Begin incorporating climate coverage in a much broader swath of stories that, whether you know it or not, indirectly or directly, are being impacted by global warming.

JJ: It’s almost as though corporate media have decided that another horrible disaster due to climate change, while it’s a story, it’s basically now like a dog-bites-man story. And if they aren’t going to explore these other angles, well, then there really isn’t anything to report until the next drought or the next mudslide. And that’s just a world away from what appropriate, fearless, future-believing journalism would be doing right now.

Evlondo Cooper: “It doesn’t have to be about just showing the destruction and carnage. There are ways that you can empower people to take action.”

EC: It’s out of step, right? Pull up the poll showing bipartisan support for government climate action, because, whether people know it or not, as far as the science, —and there’s some deniers out there, but anecdotally, people know something is happening, something is changing in their lives. We’re seeing record-breaking things that no one’s ever experienced, and they want the government to do something about it.

And so it’s important to cover extreme weather and to cover these catastrophes. And I know there’s a range of thought out there that says if you’re just focusing on devastating impacts, it could dampen public action. But to me, to your point, report on it and connect it to solutions, empower people to call their congressperson, their representative, their senator, to vote in ways that have local impacts to deal with the local climate impacts.

It doesn’t have to be about just showing the destruction and carnage. There are ways that you can empower people to take action in their own lives, and to galvanize public support.

And the public wants it. The public is asking for this. So I think just being responsive to what these polls are showing would be a way to immediately improve the way that they cover climate change right now.

JJ: All right, then. We’ve been speaking with Evlondo Cooper of Media Matters for America. You can find this work and much else at MediaMatters.org. Evlondo Cooper, thank you so much for joining us this week on CounterSpin.

EC: Thank you for having me.

The post ‘In Even the Best Coverage There Is No Accountability for the Fossil Fuel Industry’<br></em><span class='not-on-index' style='color:#000000; font-size: 23px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 25px; font-family: 'Open Sans','sans-serif'; padding-bottom: -10px;'>CounterSpin interview with Evlondo Cooper on climate coverage appeared first on FAIR.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Janine Jackson.

The backlash against even the mildest-mannered protests for Gaza at the Oscars was predictable. Artists, musicians, and actors who wore a pin symbolizing a call for a ceasefire in Israel–Palestine are being called antisemitic.

“The Zone of Interest” director Jonathan Glazer, however, went further in his Oscars acceptance speech: He actually said something. After winning the Academy Award for best international film, Glazer objected that his own Jewishness and the memory of the Holocaust were “being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people. Whether the victims of October — whether the victims of October the 7th in Israel or the ongoing attack on Gaza.”

The largest offense here, if the backlash is to be believed, was that Glazer dared speak of context — of the Israeli occupation. He was so bold as to suggest that history did not begin on October 7.

As a letter signed by more than 900 people, described as Hollywood “creatives and professionals,” and published Monday made clear: The very word “occupation” was off limits.

“The use of words like ‘occupation’ to describe an indigenous Jewish people defending a homeland that dates back thousands of years and has been recognized as a state by the United Nations, distorts history,” the letter said, never mind that the military occupation of the Palestinian Territories of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem, as well as the Syrian Golan Heights, has been recognized as such by the United Nations since 1967.

But the letter went on to say that “occupation” did more than just distort history, it invoked history’s worst antisemitic tropes: “It gives credence to the modern blood libel that fuels growing anti-Jewish hatred around the world, in the United States, and in Hollywood.”

The indisputable fact of Israeli occupation on Palestinian land is now apparently a “blood libel”: a millennia-old antisemitic canard, which rose to prominence in the Middle Ages, that Jews murder Christians to use their blood for cultish rituals.

To be against virtually any policy that Israel can claim to justify as self-defense would be antisemitic.

By the letter’s logic, it would therefore be “blood libel” to oppose virtually any Israeli policy, from permanent control of all Palestinians “from the river to the sea” — which is what Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he wants — to what human rights groups have recognized as an apartheid system. To be against virtually any policy that Israel can claim to justify as self-defense would be antisemitic.

If that were not enough, the letter is extraordinary in the sheer extent of its denialism. “Israel is not targeting civilians. It is targeting Hamas,” the authors wrote. Unmentioned, however, is that Israeli forces have killed over 31,000 people, including 13,000 children, decimated every form of civilian infrastructure, brought Gaza to the brink of mass starvation, and displaced over 1.7 million people — to say nothing of the credible reports of journalists and academics being individually targeted.

Of course, these people are Palestinians: a word that the Hollywood letter doesn’t explicitly bar, but that nonetheless goes unmentioned.

The most well-known among the “creatives” are horror film director Eli Roth and actors Debra Messing and Michael Rapaport, who have been outspoken in their support of Israel’s war on Gaza.

More notable are the list of executives and producers who have added their names — unknown to most of us industry outsiders. They included Spyglass Media Group head and former MGM CEO Gary Barber, former Paramount Pictures CEO Sherry Lansing, producer and major television executive Gail Berman, as well as former president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Producers Guild of America Hawk Koch.

Many on the list are screenwriters and showrunners. The agents, producers, and executives denouncing Glazer, however, are engaging in no less than a bullying campaign, leveraging their Jewishness specifically against his, in their numbers, to make baseless and extreme claims.

The Jewish writer Sarah Schulman, commenting on the letter signatories, said that the backlash betrays a “strange childishness — an inability to imagine that they could be part of anything wrong. A total inability to be self-critical.” 

It is the Zionist equivalent of what the late Jamaican-British philosopher Charles Mills called “white ignorance” — by which he did not mean things people with white skin do not know. Rather, it is “​​a cognitive tendency” that functions as an epistemic block, resistant to facts that challenge white supremacy and expose its violence. It leaves the person “aprioristically intent on denying what is before them” — no matter how unassailable the thing is. Mills stressed that “what makes such denial possible, of course, is the management of memory.”

Glazer’s film — about how the family of SS officer and Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss built a domestic idyll at the gates of the concentration camp — depicted this sort of entrenched, ideological, and willful ignorance. The knee-jerk backlash to Glazer’s speech exposes it once again.

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Natasha Lennard.

You might consider heat pumps to be a tantalizing climate solution (they are) and one you could adopt yourself (plenty have). But perhaps you’ve held off on getting one, wondering how much of a difference they really make if a dirty grid is supplying the electricity you’re using to power them — that is, a grid whose electricity is generated at least in part by fossil gas, coal, or oil.

That’s certainly the case for most U.S. households: While the grid mix is improving, it’s still far from clean. In 2023, renewable energy sources provided just 21 percent of U.S. electricity generation, with carbon-free nuclear energy coming in at 19 percent. The other 60 percent of power came from burning fossil fuels.

So do electric heat pumps really lower emissions if they run on dirty grid power?

The answer is an emphatic yes. Even on a carbon-heavy diet, heat pumps eliminate tons of emissions annually compared to other heating systems.

The latest study to hammer this point home was published in Joule last month by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. The team modeled the entire U.S. housing stock and found that, over the appliance’s expected lifetime of 16 years, switching to a heat-pump heater/​AC slashes emissions in every one of the contiguous 48 states.

In fact, heat pumps reduce carbon pollution even if the process of cleaning up the U.S. grid moves slower than experts expect. The NREL team used six different future scenarios for the grid, from aggressive decarbonization (95 percent carbon-free electricity by 2035) to sluggish (only 50 percent carbon-free electricity by 2035, in the event that renewables wind up costing more than their current trajectories forecast). They found that depending on the scenario and level of efficiency, heat pumps lower household annual energy emissions on average by 36 percent to 64 percent — or 2.5 to 4.4 metric tons of CO₂ equivalent per year per housing unit.

That’s a staggering amount of emissions. For context, preventing 2.5 metric tons of CO₂ emissions is equivalent to not burning 2,800 pounds of coal. Or not driving for half a year. Or switching to a vegan diet for 14 months. And at the high end of the study’s range, 4.4 metric tons of CO₂ is almost equivalent to the emissions from a roundtrip flight from New York City to Tokyo (4.6 metric tons).

Eric Wilson, senior research engineer at NREL and lead author of the study, told me, ​“I often hear people saying, ​‘Oh, you should wait to put in a heat pump because the grid is still dirty.’” But that’s faulty logic. ​“It’s better to switch now rather than later — and not lock in another 20 years of a gas furnace or boiler.”

Emissions savings tend to be higher in states with colder winters and heaters that run on fuel oil, such as Maine, according to the study. (Maine seems to be one step ahead of the researchers: Heat pumps have proven so popular there that the state already blew past its heat-pump adoption goal two years ahead of schedule.)

A dirty grid, then, doesn’t cancel out a heat pump’s climate benefits. But heat pumps can generate emissions in the same way standard ACs do: by leaking refrigerant, the chemicals that enable these appliances to move around heat. Though it’s being phased down, the HVAC standard refrigerant R-410A is 2,088 times more potent a greenhouse gas than CO₂, so even small leaks have an outsize impact.

Added emissions from heat-pump refrigerant leaks barely make a dent, however, given the emissions heat pumps avoid, the NREL team found. Typical leakage rates of R-410A increase emissions on average by only 0.07 metric tons of CO₂ equivalent per year, shaving the overall savings of 2.5 metric tons by just 3 percent, Wilson said.

A 2023 analysis from climate think tank RMI further backs up heat pumps’ climate bona fides. Across the 48 continental states, RMI found that replacing a gas furnace with an efficient heat pump saves emissions not only cumulatively across the appliance’s lifetime, but also in the very first year it’s installed. RMI estimated that emissions prevented in that first year were 13 percent to 72 percent relative to gas-furnace emissions, depending on the state. (Canary Media is an independent affiliate of RMI.)

Both the RMI and NREL studies focused on air-source heat pumps, which, in cold weather, pull heat from the outdoor air and can be three to four times as efficient as gas furnaces. But ground-source heat pumps can be more than five times as efficient compared to gas furnaces — and thus unlock even greater greenhouse-gas reductions, according to RMI.

How much could switching to a heat pump lower your home’s carbon emissions? For a high-level estimate, NREL put out an interactive dashboard. In the ​“states” tab, you can filter down to your state, building type and heating fuel. For instance, based on a scenario of moderate grid decarbonization in my state of Colorado, a single-family home that swaps out a gas furnace for a heat pump could slash emissions by a whopping 6 metric tons of CO₂.

You can also get an estimate from Rewiring America’s personal electrification planner, which uses more specific info about your home, or ask an energy auditor or whole-home decarbonization company if they can calculate emissions savings as part of a home energy audit.

One final takeaway Wilson shared: If every American home with gas, oil, or inefficient electric-resistance heating were to swap it right now for heat-pump heating, the emissions of the entire U.S. economy would shrink by 5 percent to 9 percent. That’s how powerful a decarbonizing tool heat pumps are.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Heat pumps slash emissions even if powered by a dirty grid on Mar 17, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Alison F. Takemura, Canary Media.

It is nearly impossible to think of joy while Israel continues its genocidal violence against Palestinians and while the terrible war escalates in the eastern flank of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Tens of thousands of people have been killed and injured and millions displaced in Gaza and near Goma (DRC). In both these places, the immediate demand must be to end the violence, but rising alongside it is the need to end the root of this violence (such as ending the occupation of Palestine). When there are conflicts of this kind, we get trapped in the present, unable to think about the future. Increasingly, the deterioration of everyday life, with famine stalking large parts of the planet, has made it impossible to dream of another world. The demands from Gaza, Goma, and tens of thousands of places across the word are the same: one less bomb, one more piece of bread.

Even in the bleakest times, however, humans seek joy and promise, looking for a horizon that is not merely framed by the immediate indignities of life. Nearly a decade ago, I spent an afternoon at the Jalazone camp, north of Ramallah (Palestine), where I attended a session at a United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) school. Outside the UNRWA school, in the West Bank, the quotidian tension of the occupation was sharpened by a series of killings of Palestinians by Israeli soldiers at checkpoints.

In an art class at the UNRWA school, I watched young Palestinian children draw a story depicting a recent dream they had. The teacher allowed me to walk around the classroom and interact with the children. Many of them drew what children often draw: a house, the sun, a river beside the house, children playing on a swing or a slide. There were no signs of apartheid walls, no checkpoints, and no Israeli soldiers. Instead, there was merely the simplicity that they wanted to experience. This is how they portrayed happiness.

A Red Books Day event at The People’s Forum in New York City (United States), 2024.

Now, when I ask my friends in Gaza about their children, they say that the sound of the war, the dust of the bombed landscape, and the fear of death envelops them. Saleem, in Rafah, says that his two young daughters often sit on the floor of their uncle’s apartment, drawing on any scrap of paper they can find. ‘Next year’, he says, ‘we will do Red Books Day in Gaza City, inshallah’. ‘What book will you read’? I ask him. ‘For you’, he said, ‘we would read Darwish, the great Palestinian poet’. And then, he recites these lines, from the poem ‘Memory for Forgetfulness’:

What are you writing in this war, Poet?
I’m writing my silence.
Do you mean that now the guns should speak?
Yes. Their sound is louder than my voice.
What are you doing then?
I’m calling for steadfastness.
And will you win the war?
No. The important thing is to hold on. Holding on is a victory in itself.
And what after that?
A new age will start.
And will you go back to writing poetry?
When the guns quiet down a little. When I explode my silence, which is full of these voices. When I find the appropriate language.

Israeli jets had begun to bomb the edges of Rafah, and yet Saleem took time to talk about Red Books Day. For him, as for his children, the present is not sufficient. They want to imagine what lies beyond the horizon, what lies beyond the unfolding genocide.

A Red Books Day event at the Simón Bolívar Institute in Caracas (Venezuela), 2024.

This year, from Indonesia to Chile, a million and a half people participated in Red Books Day, which is becoming a fixture on the calendar of the international left. In 2019, the Indian Society of Left Publishers began to look into holding a celebration on 21 February, the publication date of The Communist Manifesto in 1848. This book, one of the most widely read in the world, has inspired billions of people over the past century and a half to build a process of socialism that will transcend the stalled problems created by capitalism (such as hunger, illiteracy, poverty, genocide, and war). The book continues to inspire millions in our time, its words more relevant than ever to solving the struggles of the present.

Since this date is also shared by International Mother Languages Day, the idea was for writers, publishers, bookshops, and readers to go into public places and read the manifesto in their own languages. Despite the challenges posed by the pandemic, 30,000 people from Venezuela to South Korea participated in the first Red Books Day in 2020, with its epicentre in India. Soon, it became clear that the point was not to read the manifesto alone, but any ‘red book’ on that day. Engaging more deeply with left ideals, many decided to hold festivals of different sizes to rescue collective life and promote the cultures of the left.

Chemm Parvathy dances to ‘The Internationale’ in Thiruvananthapuram (India) in preparation for Red Books Day.

This year, the International Union of Left Publishers (IULP) initiated Red Books Day festivities in early February with the release of a powerful dance video by the young artist and communist cadre Chemm Parvathy. She performed to the French version of ‘The Internationale’, dancing through the markets and workshops of the workers of Thiruvananthapuram. The song culminated with Parvathy at the beach, holding a communist flag as the red sun sunk into the horizon behind her. The video went viral and set the tone for Red Books Day. This year’s events were accompanied by a series of original commemorative posters designed by artists from around the world to encourage more and more people to organise readings and performances in their regions.

It was clear that the scope of events held in 2024 would eclipse our previous attempts given the width and depth of participation. Public events were organised by socialist forces in Indonesia and East Timor while the Havana Book Fair in Cuba set aside 21 February for a special day of events. Readings of red books were held by the Socialist Movement of Ghana and the Landless Workers’ Movement of Brazil (MST), as well as by Red Ant in Australia and the Workers’ Party in Bangladesh. Communists in small villages in Nepal convened meetings in the high mountains to discuss the importance of study and struggle. In New York City, The People’s Forum held a celebration on the life and writings of the communist Claudia Jones, while in Chile speeches of Salvador Allende were read at La Cafebrería and in South Africa a discussion was held at The Commune about how the imperialist powers use the concept of human rights. The Communist Party of Ireland organised readings and a workshop in the cultural centre Aonach Mhacha, and the UK Young Communist League and a group from the Students’ Federation of India organised a film screening of The Young Karl Marx at the University of Southampton.

A Red Books Day event organised by the Socialist Movement in Accra (Ghana), 2024.

Red Books Day is now rooted in the cultural landscape of India’s left. This year, Red Books Day also became a forum to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the birth of V. I. Lenin, leader of the 1917 Russian Revolution. In Kerala, half a million people met to read and discuss EMS Namboodiripad’s Leninism and the Approach to the Indian Revolution in 40,000 places. The largest of these events was in Thiruvananthapuram, where Communist Party of India-Marxist, or CPI(M), Kerala State Secretary MV Govindan inaugurated the festival. The Purogamana Kala Sahithya Sangham (PuKaSa or the Progressive Arts and Literary Organisation) held seminars across Kerala on the contemporary relevance of the manifesto, and VKS Singers Group of the Pukasa Nattika Mekhala committee prepared a music video on The Communist Manifesto. In Karnataka, CPI(M) Politburo member MA Baby delivered a lecture on ‘Lenin and Culture’ while in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, workers, peasants, and youth discussed Lenin’s life and writings (including through a webinar organised by Mana Manchi Pustakam).

In Maharashtra, a webinar was held on Godavari Parulekar’s Jevha Manus Jaga Hoto (‘The Awakening of a Man’). In many parts of India, such as Assam, the Students Federation of India organised readings of The Communist Manifesto. In both West Bengal and Tamil Nadu, people read the Bangla and Tamil editions of The Political Marx, written by Aijaz Ahmad and me. In the same state, G. Ramakrishnan of the CPI(M) inaugurated a reading session in central Chennai, and crowds read and discussed the short booklet Lenin: The Polestar of Revolution.

Students at Hyderabad Central University and The English and Foreign Languages University ran with the idea of turning the day into a broader cultural spectacle and organised a poster exhibition and a book festival. At New Delhi’s May Day Bookstore, there were songs and dances as well as a street play by Jana Natya Manch, readings of the manifesto in various Indian languages, and a poetry recital in solidarity with Palestine.

A Red Books Day event organised by the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST) in Brasília (Brazil), 2024.

Building toward Red Books Day 2025, the IULP will release a poster on their social media channels every month that will culminate in a Red Books Day calendar at the end of the year. The idea is that Red Books Day will not only be about the day alone but will also be defined by activities through the year that build toward the main events on 21 February.

Red Books Day is part of the broad cultural struggle to defend the right to write, publish, and read red books and to fight against obscurantist ideas that stand in for reason these days (such as India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s claim that ancient India excelled in plastic surgery because the Hindu Lord Shiva, who replaced the head of his son Ganesh with an elephant’s head, as we wrote in our latest dossier). Though Red Books Day is anchored by the IULP, which includes over forty publishers from around the world, it is not solely organised by the union. The general hope is that this day will go beyond the IULP and become a key part of the calendar of the left. It was remarkable to see Red Books Day spread beyond our left networks. This is precisely the objective of Red Books Day: for it to become an integral part of public culture and to struggle to establish rational and socialist ideas as the foundational ideas of society. By the end of the decade, we estimate that over ten million people will participate in Red Books Day. Next year, in Gaza.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Vijay Prashad.

To understand the state of American politics today when it comes to Gaza, Israel, and Palestine, just look at the very different ways in which the House of Representatives handled the cases of Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a Michigan Democrat, and Rep. Brian Mast, a Florida Republican.

Tlaib was punished for her views on Israel and the war in Gaza. Mast was not.

It’s not hard to figure out why.

Tlaib, the only Palestinian American in Congress, was censured by the Republican-controlled House in November after she posted a video of protesters in Michigan chanting “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” Israel’s supporters claim the chant is code for a desire to wipe the Jewish state off the map, but Tlaib responded that it was just “an aspirational call for freedom, human rights and peaceful coexistence, not death, destruction or hate.”

“I can’t believe I have to say this,” she added, “but Palestinian people are not disposable.” 

Tlaib’s censure was a symbolic act that has no substantive impact on her ability to function in Congress, but that wasn’t the point. House Republicans just wanted to embarrass her and politically marginalize any congressional support for the Palestinian people. House Democrats briefly sought to censure Mast for comparing Palestinians to the hundreds of thousands of German civilians carpet bombed into oblivion by the Allies in Nazi Germany during World War II. His implication was that Palestinians deserve to be obliterated for the crimes of Hamas, just as German civilians were annihilated for the crimes of Hitler and the Third Reich. “I would encourage the other side to not so lightly throw around the idea of innocent Palestinian civilians,” he said. “I don’t think we would so lightly throw around the term ‘innocent Nazi civilians’ during World War II.”

The motion to censure Mast was introduced in the House last November, at the same time the Republicans were going after Tlaib. But while the censure motion against Tlaib succeeded, the motion against Mast was quietly withdrawn.

Ever since, Mast has doubled down on his anti-Palestinian rhetoric without facing any consequences. He even wore an Israeli military uniform to a Republican conference meeting on Capitol Hill. When questioned about it by reporters, he said that since Tlaib displays a Palestinian flag outside her office, he thought he should wear his old Israel Defense Forces uniform. A U.S. Army veteran who lost both of his legs in Afghanistan in 2010, Mast briefly volunteered with the IDF in January 2015, performing support functions like packing medical kits. Virtually every other Republican in Congress shares Mast’s views and would gladly don an IDF uniform if they had one.

Earlier this year, Mast expanded on his comments about Palestinian civilians, saying that even Palestinian babies are not innocent and are thus legitimate targets. “It would be better if you kill all the terrorists and kill everyone who are supporters,” he told Code Pink protesters. When asked about images of Palestinian infants being killed in Israeli attacks, he said “these are not innocent Palestinian civilians.” 

The contrasting outcomes of the Tlaib and Mast cases highlight an undeniable fact: The American political establishment still strongly favors Israel over the Palestinians. But if Donald Trump gets back into the Oval Office, he and his MAGA Republicans like Brian Mast will be even worse.

Trump is a big fan of war crimes, especially against Muslims. During his first term, he intervened on behalf of Special Operations Chief Eddie Gallagher, a Navy SEAL platoon leader convicted of posing for a photo with the body of dead Iraqi; another SEAL team member told investigators that Gallagher was “freaking evil,” but Trump said at a political rally that he was one of “our great fighters.” Trump also pardoned Blackwater contractors convicted of killing Iraqi civilians in a wild shooting spree in Baghdad’s Nisour Square. There is no chance that he would try to stop Israel from indiscriminately killing Palestinians.

After the October 7 Hamas attack, Trump was briefly critical of Netanyahu and blurted out that Hezbollah was “very smart.” Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed group designated a terrorist organization by the United States, has battled Israel on its northern border with Lebanon. Trump was immediately and roundly attacked by other Republicans for his comments, and he quickly renewed his long-standing pledge to align the United States fully with Israel. If he’s reelected, he will give Israel unalloyed support for all-out war, and he will do so with the wholehearted backing of the Republican Party.

Republicans’ support for Israel is matched or exceeded by their hatred for Palestinians. Rep. Ryan Zinke, a Montana Republican who was secretary of the interior in the Trump administration, has proposed legislation that would prevent Palestinians from entering the United States and trigger the mass deportation of those already here. It would ban those holding passports issued by the Palestinian Authority from obtaining U.S. visas, while mandating the removal of Palestinian passport holders already living here. 

Many Republicans express their unwavering support for Israel in biblical and apocalyptic terms. Rep. Mike Johnson, a Christian evangelical, made his first public appearance after being elected House speaker last October at a conference of the Republican Jewish Coalition, where he said that “God is not done with Israel.”

It is dangerous to get between evangelicals and their theology. Trump recognizes their importance to his political success, and his support for Israel is a way to satisfy his evangelical Christian base. “No president has done more for Israel than I have,” Trump claimed in 2022. “Our wonderful Evangelicals are far more appreciative of this than the people of the Jewish faith, especially those living in the U.S.”

At the 2016 Republican convention, Trump pushed through a provision in the party platform ending GOP support for a two-state solution and a Palestinian state. Now, Trump and Republicans agree with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he says that Israel can no longer agree to a two-state solution. “In any future arrangement … Israel needs security control over all territory west of the Jordan,” Netanyahu said in January. “This collides with the idea of sovereignty. What can you do? This truth I tell to our American friends, and I put the brakes on the attempt to coerce us to a reality that would endanger the state of Israel.”

That’s fine with Trump and Republicans like Brian Mast.

Although the Biden administration has bent over backward to support Israel, the president has said repeatedly in recent weeks that an independent Palestinian state is still possible. What’s more, political unrest within the Democratic Party is starting to have an impact on Biden, forcing changes in the White House’s approach to Israel. Over the weekend, Vice President Kamala Harris called for an immediate ceasefire; such new pressure from the Biden administration appears to be working, as Israel and Hamas now seem closer to an agreement.

Trump would never face such pro-Palestinian pressure from within the Republican Party. He and his MAGA cult of Christian nationalists would never force Israel to accept a ceasefire — or a Palestinian state. Mast has harshly attacked Biden for continuing to support a two-state solution, dismissing the idea by saying that “a Palestinian state would be run by terrorists.”

There are limits to Biden’s support for Netanyahu. Trump and the Republican Party have none.

Correction: March 4, 2024 8:26 p.m. ET
An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified the organization that Trump called “very smart.” It was Hezbollah, not Hamas.

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by James Risen.

The post As GQ Absorbs Pitchfork, Music Media Becomes Even More Male-Centric appeared first on Project Censored.

This content originally appeared on Project Censored and was authored by Shealeigh.

"Japan is determined to support Ukraine so that peace can return to Ukraine," Japanese Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa said during a surprise visit to Kyiv, becoming the first official foreign visitor for 2024.

"I can feel how tense the situation in Ukraine is now," she told a news conference -- held in a shelter due to an air-raid alert in the capital at the time -- alongside her Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba.

"I once again strongly condemn Russia's missile and drone attacks, particularly on New Year's Day," she added, while also saying Japan would provide an additional $37 million to a NATO trust fund to help purchase drone-detection systems.

The Japanese diplomat also visited Bucha, the Kyiv suburb where Russian forces are blamed for a civilian massacre in 2022, stating she was "shocked" by what occurred there.

In a Telegram post, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal thanked "Japan for its comprehensive support, as well as significant humanitarian and financial assistance."

In particular, he cited Tokyo's "decision to allocate $1 billion for humanitarian projects and reconstruction with its readiness to increase this amount to $4.5 billion through the mechanisms of international institutions."

Live Briefing: Russia's Invasion Of Ukraine

RFE/RL's Live Briefing gives you all of the latest developments on Russia's full-scale invasion, Kyiv's counteroffensive, Western military aid, global reaction, and the plight of civilians. For all of RFE/RL's coverage of the war in Ukraine, click here.

Meanwhile, Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom told a Stockholm defense conference that the main goal of the country’s foreign policy efforts in the coming years will be to support Kyiv.

“Sweden’s military, political, and economic support for Ukraine remains the Swedish government’s main foreign policy task in the coming years,” he posted on social media during the event.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, speaking via video link, told the conference that the battlefield in his country was currently stable but that he remained confident Russia could be defeated.

"Even Russia can be brought back within the framework of international law. Its aggression can be defeated," he said.

Ukraine’s much-anticipated counteroffensive last summer largely failed to shift the front line, giving confidence to the Kremlin’s forces, especially as further Western aid is in question.

Ukraine has pleaded with its Western allies to keep supplying it with air defense weapons, along with other weapons necessary to defeat the invasion that began in February 2022.

U.S. President Joe Biden has proposed a national-security spending bill that includes $61 billion in aid for Ukraine, but it has been blocked by Republican lawmakers who insist Biden and his fellow Democrats in Congress address border security.

Zelenskiy also urged fellow European nations to join Ukraine in developing joint weapons-production capabilities so that the continent is able to "preserve itself" in the face of any future crises.

"Two years of this war have proven that Europe needs its own sufficient arsenal for the defense of freedom, its own capabilities to ensure defense," he said.

Overnight, Ukrainian officials said Russia launched 28 drones and three cruise missiles, and 12 people were wounded by a drone attack in the central city of Dnipro.

Though smaller in scale than other recent assaults, the January 7 aerial attack was the latest indication that Russia has no intention of stopping its targeting of Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure, often far from the front lines.

In a post to Telegram, Ukraine’s air force claimed that air defenses destroyed 21 of the 28 drones, which mainly targeted locations in the south and east of Ukraine.

"The enemy is shifting the focus of attack to the frontline territories: the Kherson and Dnipropetrovsk regions were attacked by drones," air force spokesperson Yuriy Ihnat told Ukrainian TV.

Russia made no immediate comment on the attack.

In the southern city of Kherson, meanwhile, Russian shelling from across the Dnieper River left at least two people dead, officials said.

In the past few months, Ukrainian forces have moved across the Dnieper, setting up a small bridgehead in villages on the river's eastern banks, upriver from Kherson. The effort to establish a larger foothold there, however, has faltered, with Russian troops pinning the Ukrainians down, and keeping them from moving heavier equipment over.

Over the past two weeks, Russia has fired nearly 300 missiles and more than 200 drones at targets in Ukraine, as part of an effort to terrorize the civilian population and undermine morale. On December 29, more than 120 Russian missiles were launched at cities across Ukraine, killing at least 44 people, including 30 in Kyiv alone.

Ukraine’s air defenses have improved markedly since the months following Russia’s mass invasion in February 2022. At least five Western-supplied Patriot missile batteries, along with smaller systems like German-made Gepard and the French-manufactured SAMP/T, have also improved Ukraine’s ability to repel Russian drones and missiles.

Last week, U.S. officials said that Russia had begun using North Korean-supplied ballistic missiles as part of its aerial attacks on Ukrainian sites.

Inside Russia, authorities in Belgorod said dozens of residents have been evacuated to areas farther from the Ukrainian border.

“On behalf of regional Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov, we met the first Belgorod residents who decided to move to a safer place. More than 100 people were placed in our temporary accommodation centers,” Andrei Chesnokov, head of the Stary Oskol district, about 115 kilometers from Belgorod, wrote in Telegram post.

With reporting by RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service, Reuters, and AP

This content originally appeared on News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

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For nearly a year, Melanie Call struggled to balance working from home full time with caring for her new baby.

Her job as a project manager for a Salt Lake City health care staffing agency required spending hours in video meetings. If her son was awake, she would turn off her camera. When he woke from a nap while she was already occupied in a meeting, she would feel her guilt grow as she heard him cry through a baby monitor.

Call, who is married to an architectural designer, had an older daughter in elementary school and a younger daughter already in day care, and wasn’t sure she could afford to send another child.

Having two children in day care would have consumed nearly 20% of her family’s take-home pay, despite her and her husband making six figures combined. Eventually, she put her son on three waiting lists for day care, but before she could find an opening she reached a breaking point and quit her job. A week later, a day care slot opened up.

“I wanted to work but I just didn’t have enough support,” Call said, describing a “layer cake” of challenges: unaffordable and scarce day care and a workplace that was unwilling to accommodate her circumstances as the mother of three young children.

Utah, with the nation’s highest percentage of children, has faced a decadeslong day care crisis. A larger proportion of Utahans live in areas with few or no licensed child care facilities than in any other state, according to a 2018 analysis of census and licensing data by the left-leaning Center for American Progress, the most recent available. A 2020 report by the state’s Office of Child Care found that Utah’s child care capacity was meeting only 35% of its needs.

Federal pandemic relief funding eased the shortage by helping day care owners cover basic expenses like rent and supplies. After Utah received nearly $574 million in aid during 2020 and 2021, the number of licensed child care slots rose by about 30% from March 2020 to August 2023, according to a report by Voices for Utah Children, an advocacy group. The funding also provided child care subsidies to more lower-income families.

But on September 30 most of that federal funding expired, and Utah legislators have rejected proposals to replace it with state dollars — continuing decades of local opposition to expanding and improving outside-of-home care for young children.

The result, according to working parents and child care providers who spoke to ProPublica, is that a state billing itself as the most “family-friendly” in the nation does too little to ensure that care for children of working parents is accessible and affordable.

The child care providers who spoke to ProPublica said the federal funding kept them in business. Now, with the loss of that money, most said they are being forced to raise their rates or let employees go and care for fewer kids while working longer hours for less pay. Some said they are considering closing their doors and changing careers.

An estimate by the Century Foundation, another left-leaning think tank, projected that Utah is one of six states where nearly half of licensed programs could close.

“I see teachers burned out. I see parents leaving the workforce,” said Brigette Weier, an organizer with Utah Care for Kids who works with Voices for Utah Children. “I see parents sobbing when they find child care. I see parents sobbing when they can’t find child care.”

Legislatures in other conservative states have provided their own taxpayer money to help compensate for the loss of federal funding. The Utah Legislature, which convenes this month, has a long track record of opposing such assistance.

ProPublica spoke to three dozen people involved in child care in Utah, including parents, child care providers, policymakers and advocates, about the impact of the funding loss. They attributed lawmakers’ resistance to subsidizing child care, in part, to the makeup of the Legislature — 74% of lawmakers were male as of 2023, and an even bigger share are Republicans. Some older lawmakers haven’t dealt with the current economic and caregiving realities confronting young parents, they said, or view child care as a personal, not societal, problem that shouldn’t require government intervention.

Johnny Anderson, a Republican state legislator from 2009 to 2016 and president of Utah’s largest private child care provider, ABC Great Beginnings, said among lawmakers there’s still that sense that child care “is a choice rather than a necessity.” And conservative legislators view providing state funding “as a way to manipulate the free market,” he said. “But we all know that child care is a failed market: Child care is not able to charge enough tuition to cover the costs” of providing quality care.

In addition, those who spoke to ProPublica noted that most Utah state lawmakers are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which emphasizes women’s role as the primary caregivers for their children and has historically discouraged mothers from working outside the home. This religious and cultural influence, while typically going unspoken in public debates, creates added resistance to state child care assistance, some advocates told ProPublica.

Call, who is a member of the church, said she was taught that it is her divine duty to care for her children. That adds to the pressure for her to stay home with them. But she doesn’t believe it prevents her from being ambitious in pursuit of a career. She said she would like to see state and church leaders acknowledge that.

“Why do we have to choose between having our careers and raising children?” she asked. “Why can’t we have both?”

Parents placing their kids in day care can choose in-home care, which typically involves smaller groups of children at a provider’s residence; or center-based care, larger group settings where classrooms sometimes separate children by age. Regulations dictate the number of staff per child based on the age group. Because of the demands of caring for infants and younger children, the ratio of caregivers to children is lower for those ages.

Utah child care operators and workers, who are overwhelmingly women, have for years been pinched by uncertain enrollment and low pay, causing perpetual staffing shortages. People who work in child care in Utah are about four times more likely to report having multiple jobs than those in the overall workforce, according to a 2022 survey of 10,000 child care workers by the state’s Department of Workforce Services. Benefits such as health insurance and paid sick leave are not available to most child care workers in the state.

Labor costs make up a majority of a day care’s expenses. But it’s impossible for providers in the U.S. to charge enough tuition to pay significantly higher wages while keeping child care affordable without government aid, according to a 2017 U.S. Department of the Treasury report on the economics of child care.

Federal policymakers have attempted to address this with subsidies for lower-income families. In Utah, a family of three qualifies for a subsidy if their annual household income is less than $71,940.

Last year, the state child care office raised the income limits to receive a subsidy. If a family receives a state subsidy, their co-payment is capped at 7% of their household income. If the family is slightly above the income requirements and doesn’t receive a subsidy, they could spend as much as 38% of their income on child care, according to a 2020 Utah Office of Child Care report.

In 2022, the average pay for child care workers in the state was $13.10 an hour, compared to the national average of $14.22, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. To receive the federal pandemic grants, providers were required to pay a majority of their employees at least $15 an hour.

Annette Wasden, an in-home care provider in Clinton, north of Salt Lake City, said she used the grants to hire two additional employees, who she can no longer afford. She plans to close her day care and leave the state. Wasden, a second-generation child care provider, said the work is her passion but she doesn’t feel respected.

“They don’t fight for us, our Legislature. They don’t have my back,” she said. “We do not have a voice in this line of business, or even in Utah.”

In September, Anderson, the ABC Great Beginnings president and former legislator, sent two letters to his customers. One detailed why the company needed to raise its rates by an average of about 5% after the relief funding ended. The other urged parents to contact their state representatives and “tell them that the Legislature needs to provide additional and adequate funding for child care” to avoid program closures and tuition increases.

ABC Great Beginnings’ payroll costs rose by about 50% after receiving the stabilization grants, according to the letter. Recently, Anderson has also seen vacancies in his classrooms, which could be due to the state’s expansion of all-day kindergarten. Anderson also wonders if raising rates has led families to turn to child care that is unpaid or unregulated, which is difficult to track. Enrollment at his 15 Salt Lake City area centers has declined 6% compared to last year.

“It’s a gut punch for child care,” he said of the funding loss. But any state response would require families and teachers to engage in “a humongous campaign to make legislators more aware of it.”

As director of the Utah Women & Leadership Project at Utah State University, Susan Madsen has traveled around Utah over the past two years asking hundreds of women and girls about their biggest concerns. Child care is “an issue in every single county,” she said, but “rural counties are really struggling.”

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services considers child care to be affordable if it consumes no more than 7% of a family’s income. An October report by Voices for Utah Children found some counties where families spend more than 17% of their income on child care — all but one of them rural. And licensed child care is scarce in rural areas of the state, with capacity for only 36% of the children under six whose parents work.

Aleatha Child runs a home-based day care in northern Utah’s Box Elder County, which has one of the worst shortages of licensed child care spots in the state, according to the Voices for Utah Children analysis. The bright blue walls of her basement classroom are full of art by the children she cares for, along with notes bearing inspirational messages: “We are all different! But together we are strong and look beautiful” and “You are enough just as you are.”

She said the federal grants paid for an additional staffer, as well as supplies and toys and replacing aging carpet in the classroom.

As the funding ended, Child considered closing her day care and working at her son’s elementary school, either in the cafeteria or as a teacher’s assistant. She’d still be around children, she reasoned. But for now she is keeping her day care open, raising her rates and cutting expenses where she can. She said she’s begun selling blood plasma to make ends meet.

“It hurts me thinking about” closing, she said. “I have so much joy with these children that I have in my program. I have such a strong bond and connection with their families, with them.”

Sharon Miller, the only day care provider in the central Utah town of Helper, has reduced her hours and enrollment since the grants ended. The money had allowed Miller to hire help, but she recently returned to working alone.

“Every penny I make is just to survive,” said Miller, who in 2019 was named a Provider of the Year by the Professional Family Childcare Association of Utah. Miller, who has provided day care since 1999, said most years she doesn’t make a profit, even when she has gone without a salary. In 2019, before the stabilization grants arrived, she reported a $17,000 loss from her business, according to tax returns she shared with ProPublica.

Miller fractured her lower spine in a fall from a ladder in July and wears a back brace during her 10-hour-plus workdays. On a recent afternoon, she watched children as they rode tricycles around her backyard, which she has transformed into a colorful playground with a sandbox, garden, stage for performances and space for creating art projects. The children dropped toys at her feet, but she avoided bending down for them because of the lingering pain in her back.

Miller said she wishes state lawmakers could see firsthand what it takes to provide good child care. Legislators say they support small businesses, she said, but don’t seem to consider that her day care is a small business. House and Senate leadership did not respond to requests for comment.

“We’ve always just taken whatever we can get and just keep going,” she said. “And I think people are to the point where they’re done doing that. It’s really not fair to ask us to keep doing that just because most of us would qualify for food stamps on our incomes.”

Some conservative states have stepped in to help child care operators as federal funding dwindles. Alaska set aside an additional $7.5 million for day care owners. Louisiana made its largest investment in more than a decade to its child care subsidy program for lower-income families. North Dakota added $66 million in new funding to its budget for child care.

In Utah, state Rep. Andrew Stoddard, a Democrat, last January requested $216 million to pay for a one-year extension of the stabilization grants. He told the Legislature’s Social Services Appropriations Subcommittee that this would “prevent the collapse of the system” and cited figures from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation estimating the child care shortage costs Utah’s economy $1.36 billion a year. “That amount that we’re losing in tax revenue is more than this ask,” he told the committee.

The committee’s chair at the time, Sen. Jacob L. Anderegg, a Republican, said, “If I’m a betting man I’d give you almost next to no odds of getting $216 million.” Anderegg instead recommended a “more balanced” approach — a $5 million request — that went nowhere.

Indeed, even modest child care measures have consistently faced resistance.

In 2020, Rep. Suzanne Harrison, a Democrat, proposed a tax credit for businesses that subsidized or provided licensed child care for employees. She argued the bill would help businesses attract workers and increase access to care.

During a hearing, Rep. Mark Strong, a Republican, questioned whether it was the government’s role to provide such assistance. “I struggle with taxing people, all people, some to cover these for everyone.” Strong, who is a sales representative, acknowledged his wife had been able to stay home and care for their six children.

“It was really disappointing that a modest tax credit to support working families was not more favorably considered,” Harrison, now a member of the Salt Lake County Council, told ProPublica. She didn’t propose any child care legislation during the remainder of her term, which ended in 2022.

Last summer, child care advocates presented to the Legislature’s Economic Development and Workforce Services Interim Committee a report on the economic impact of the state’s lack of affordable child care, the same report Stoddard cited in his funding request.

Strong, a member of the committee, said in response that no one can “provide parenthood like a parent” and that the Legislature shouldn’t incentivize “farming” out children. “What is the ongoing economic impact of a child that is raised in a stable safe home by parents, not being farmed out?” he asked. Strong did not respond to a list of questions from ProPublica.

Advocates said Strong reflects the attitudes of some in the Legislature who view bolstering child care as contributing to the erosion of families.

Rep. Susan Pulsipher, a Republican, sponsored and helped pass legislation in 2022 to increase the number of children an unlicensed provider is allowed to care for. The change was criticized by some child care providers as unsafe.

Pulsipher also sponsored another successful piece of legislation that established a tax credit of $1,000 for families with a child between the ages of one to three. Pulsipher, a homemaker with 20 grandchildren, said the credit allows families to pay for the kind of child care they want, whether at home, at a center or at an in-home provider. But because the tax credit is nonrefundable, meaning it can only be used if a family owes taxes, and limited to lower-income families, only an estimated 1.4% of state taxpayers would benefit from it, according to an analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

“I don’t think it’s enough,” Pulsipher acknowledged. “But it’s a start. And we need to start and we need to keep going.

Some child care operators and policy advocates say the teachings of Mormon church leaders contribute to lawmakers’ reluctance to support child care. Forty-two percent of Utah adults consider themselves members of the faith, according to a recent study.

Colleen McDannell, a professor of religious studies at the University of Utah, said church leaders have long encouraged women to pursue an education but have not dealt with the notion that women in the church are transitioning from having part-time jobs to having careers.

While Utah ranks last in the nation for the share of children under six with both parents in the labor force, the percentage of mothers who are working has in the past five years increased to 64%.

“One of the ways that the LDS church deals with difficult things is just to not talk about it — it just disappears from the public conversation,” McDannell said. “So if you add that, along with the notion of a red, Republican individuality — that if you want to work, that’s fine, you should just go and figure out how to do it yourself — that means you’re going to have a difficult time with child care.”

Spencer W. Kimball, the church president from 1973 to 1985, preached that husbands should support the family and “only in an emergency” should wives work. “Her place is in the home, to build the home into a heaven of delight,” said Kimball. He attributed the rise in divorce rates to women increasingly working outside of the home.

His successor as church president, Ezra Taft Benson, gave a 1987 address in which he said that “among the greatest concerns in our society are the millions of latchkey children who come home daily to empty houses unsupervised by working parents.” Benson also encouraged young couples to not delay having children and reiterated that a “mother’s calling is in the home, not in the marketplace.”

In 1995, as the church became an increasingly global organization, its leadership issued “The Family: A Proclamation to the World,” which summarized teachings on gender roles, among other things. It called for egalitarian relationships in the home but designated women as “primarily responsible for the nurture of their children.”

Today, there’s a “gentle recognition” among church leadership that many women must work, said Patrick Mason, a Utah State University professor specializing in Mormon history: “It’s not really a retreat from the ideal; it’s just kind of an acknowledgement of economic realities.” Yet, he added, “the church has never repudiated those former views — you won’t find statements like that. So it’s marked mostly from an argument from silence.”

The result, Mason said, is that older lawmakers may hold on to earlier teachings and “create policies that incentivize the ability of mothers or possibly fathers, but primarily mothers to stay home with the kids.” The church declined to comment for this story.

Rep. Ashlee Matthews, a Democrat who campaigned on improving child care, is a mother of two young boys and an office manager. She said she has had “hard” conversations with legislative colleagues, explaining that the economic realities have changed since older lawmakers raised their kids. Most households need two incomes, she tells them, and child care isn’t a “mom” issue, it’s a parent issue.

Advocates have succeeded with local approaches in places like Park City, where the City Council recently voted to add $1 million to its budget for early childhood education and child care, including scholarships for lower-income families. Park City launched the assistance program this year. It might be the only city in Utah to provide such funding, said Kristen Schulz, the director of the Early Childhood Alliance at the Park City Community Foundation.

In arguing for the proposal, Schulz said, she framed it as an investment in children rather than a city expenditure: The money would help the economy and community and increase equality. “Depending on what people are really concerned about, I feel like there’s a lot of good arguments,” she said.

During its 2024 session, the Utah Legislature will consider a variety of proposals to boost public investment in child care. One would extend the expiring stabilization grants for two years at 50% of the federal level, at a cost of $120 million annually. Another would expand Pulsipher’s child tax credit. And yet another, backed by Sen. Luz Escamilla, the Democratic minority leader, would create a pilot program to retrofit vacant state buildings into child care facilities.

Gov. Spencer Cox’s proposed budget supports Escamilla’s plan and expansion of the tax credit.

Escamilla said that for many years ”child care wasn’t even part of the conversation in the Legislature” but the issue has gained some traction as more female lawmakers have been elected.

Call, who left the workforce because of her inability to find affordable child care, said the year since then has been “healing.” She’s looking to start a business and has been involved with organizations advocating for increased support of Utah’s working mothers, including subsidies to lower the cost of child care. She has contacted lawmakers and become more outspoken at church about women’s dual roles as caregivers and professionals.

Last October, Call, with her toddler son and then-12-year-old daughter, traveled to the state Capitol for a “stroller rally” in support of child care. From a podium in the Hall of Governors, she shared her story about leaving the workforce.

“Life is about choices,” she said. “So we must ask ourselves: What choices are we providing to Utah’s women, parents and caregivers?”

Mollie Simon contributed research.

Sarahbeth Maney is ProPublica’s first Diamonstein-Spielvogel Visual Journalism Fellow.

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Nicole Santa Cruz.

From October until earlier this month, 12 oil tankers registered to Liberia, Panama, Vietnam, Malaysia or Indonesia made transports to Myanmar, according to a statement from the National Unity Consultative Council, or NUCC, that cited shipping records. 

Most of the ships had stopped in Singapore before going on to Myanmar, NUCC spokesman Maung Maung said.

The U.S. and British governments can tighten existing measures by imposing sanctions on companies involved in selling fuel to the junta, including any banks involved in the financial transactions, the NUCC said in the Dec. 16 statement released.

“We also have to go after companies in Singapore,” Maung Maung said. “That is why we are informing the United States and the United Kingdom.”

He said the NUCC has sent to U.S. and U.K. officials the names of the ships, the registration numbers and names of the last port from which the vessels were loaded.

The NUCC is an advisory group of political parties, ethnic armed organizations and civil society organizations opposed to the junta. It includes representatives of the National Unity Government, or NUG, which is the parallel civilian government of Myanmar made up of opponents to the junta.

Due to an increasing number of civilian casualties from junta airstrikes, the U.S. Treasury Department expanded sanctions in August so that any “foreign individual or entity” linked to procuring jet fuel for the military government could be targeted.

More than 3,900 civilians have been killed by the regime since it seized power in February 2021, the Treasury Department said in its announcement, with the junta increasingly reliant on “violent airstrikes” against civilians, including “women and schoolchildren,” to maintain its hold on power.

‘Sanctions don’t work well’

The Singapore Embassy in Yangon responded to RFA’s request for comment on the shipments by referring to remarks made by Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan to Singapore’s Parliament on July 3.

“Singapore would not impose a general trade embargo on Myanmar because it would affect Myanmar civilians,” he said. 

“However, the government remains committed to implementing our policy to prevent the transfer of arms and dual-use items which have been assessed to have potential military application to Myanmar, where there is serious risk that they may be used to inflict violence against unarmed civilians,” he said. 

“We will not hesitate to take action against any individual or entity which contravenes this.” 

People living in Myanmar will continue to suffer the consequences of more targeted sanctions on the junta, said Thein Tun Oo, executive director of the pro-military Thayninga Institute of Strategic Studies, which is made up of former military officers.

“Superpowers’ sanctions don’t work well. Now, we can witness it,” he told RFA, referring to the effects of August’s U.S. sanctions.

Sanctions targeting the junta’s three basic needs – funding, arms and legitimacy – are the best way to help the Myanmar people, according to Tom Andrews, the U.N.’s Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar. He made the remarks to the U.N. General Assembly on Oct. 22.

RFA emailed the U.S. and British embassies in Yangon about the NUCC’s claims, but they didn’t immediately respond on Thursday. Attempts to contact junta spokesman Major Gen. Zaw Min Tun in the issue were unsuccessful.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Burmese.

Public debt reached US$18.7 billion at the end of 2022 and could rise to 125 percent of GDP soon, the World Bank said in a Dec. 13 report.

Just over half of that is owed to China, which helped Laos build the US$6 billion Lao-China High Speed Railway as part of its Belt and Road Initiative. Other major Chinese investments in roads and hydropower dams have contributed to the debt.

The Lao government is negotiating to restructure its debt to China and recently postponed a debt payment of $1.2 billion, according to the ADB official.

“That’s a lot of money. The country couldn’t keep up with the payment of both capital and interest,” the official said. “Financial management is ineffective. The country is receiving big blows and suffering from it.”

Service payments on its debt – the regular payments required by loan issuers that include interest and principal – could rise to 39 percent of GDP, the World Bank said.

Besides attracting more investment, Laos needs to boost tourism numbers and find a way to raise the production of domestic goods for export, the World Bank report said. 

“The Lao economy is facing many challenges,” said a Vientiane-based World Bank official who requested anonymity for safety reasons. 

Negotiations with Thai banks and others 

Tourism isn’t recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic and small- and medium-sized businesses are suffering, he told Radio Free Asia on Wednesday.

The government has been trying to improve tax collection, has started to crack down on corruption and has reduced spending in some areas, according to the ADB official.

The Ministry of Finance has also begun renegotiations with the World Bank, ADB and some Thai financial institutions – all of whom could be inclined to give Laos new favorable terms because of their own interest in developing Laos’ economy, the ADB official said.

Prime Minister Sonexay Siphandone told lawmakers in June that the government “is determined to control and solve the debt problem,” partly through debt restructuring.

Debt payments started to become a worrisome issue for the government in 2019, a ministry official told RFA. 

“We have a lot of debt that has been accumulating for many years,” he said. “But our government has been taking action to control it.” 

Some 8 percent of Laos’ debt is owed to ADB, 7 percent to the World Bank and 6 percent to Thai institutions, according to the World Bank.

A Laotian who lives in Vientiane said the government has failed to monitor and inspect the roads and dams that were supposed to move the country’s economy forward.

“Many projects aren’t up to standards,” he said. “For example, many newly built roads are broken a year later.”

Translated by Max Avary. Edited by Matt Reed and Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Lao.

No one is perfect; and, as I’ve explained elsewhere (such as here) I believe that Putin’s track-record during his now nearly 23 years of being the leader of Russia is vastly superior to that of any leader of any U.S.-and-allied country during any portion of that 23-year period. However, I shall explain here why I believe that Putin’s public-relations errors regarding his handling of Ukraine constitute a major flaw in his leadership-record and produced Finland’s becoming a NATO member — and potentially the most dangerous one to Russia in all of Europe.

The most crucial thing to understand is why did Russia actually need to invade Ukraine? The answer is very simple (far simpler than Putin’s many and confusing statements about that). Putin’s many explanations never made clear the core reason: The U.S. Government has been planning to win a WW III by blitz-nuking The Kremlin so fast that Russia’s central command wouldn’t have enough time to press the button to launch its retaliatory missiles and bombers; and therefore immediately after that blitz-nuclear first-strike decapitation of Russia, the U.S. regime would be able entirely on its own schedule to then knock out virtually all of Russia’s retaliatory weaponry and so to win WW III with perhaps only a few million dead on its side and thus, finally, at long last, possessing (at a small enough cost in American lives so as to be attractive to the few individuals who actually control the U.S. Government) full control over Russia, which is the world’s most-natural-resources-rich country — which is why the U.S. regime was so set, for so long a time, on winning Ukraine as a NATO member. And this is also the reason why Obama finally grabbed Ukraine in 2014.

The ideal place from which to launch that blitz attack against Russia would be Ukraine, because it has the nearest border to Russia’s central command in The Kremlin, which is only 317 miles (511 km) away from Ukraine — a mere five minutes of missile-flying time away — from Shostka in Ukraine, to Moscow in Russia. A mere five minutes away from decapitating Russia’s central command. That is the real answer to the crucial question of why did Russia actually need to invade Ukraine? Putin never clearly stated it, and never focused on it; and, so, in both Finland and Sweden (and throughout Europe), Russia’s essential defensive invasion of Ukraine was instead widely viewed as being aggressive not defensive: aggression against Ukraine, instead of defensive against America (which has controlled Ukraine ever since America’s February 2014 coup there). Thus, both Finland and Sweden (on the basis of that false impression) joined NATO, and American troops and weapons will be pouring into Finland even closer to The Kremlin than had previously been the case — almost as close as-if Ukraine DID join NATO. Maybe Ukraine will be kept out of NATO, but Finland, which is around 500 miles from The Kremlin, joined NATO largely because of Putin’s PR failure regarding his invasion of Ukraine.

Just like in chess, the way to win the game is to capture the king, in war-strategy the way to win is to decapitate the opposite side’s leadership by capturing or disabling its Commander-in-Chief. The U.S. regime had started by no later than 2006 to plan for winning a WW III instead of to use its nuclear weapons only in order to work alongside Russia to PREVENT there being any WW III. During the George W. Bush Administration, neoconservatism became — and has remained since — bipartisan in both of America’s two political Parties. The only way that this “Nuclear Primacy” strategy can even conceivably be achieved would be via a blitz-nuclear attack beheading ’the enemy’.

Russia has in place a “dead-hand” system to release, automatically-and-instantaneously after being beheaded, its entire arsenal against the U.S. and its colonies (‘allies’), but the system can’t be tested before it’s used; and, so, whether it would function (which would require all parts of the system to function as planned) can only be a huge question-mark. Moreover: even if it would work, Russia’s central command would already have been eliminated; and, so, the dead-hand system is a dooms-day system in any case: it wouldn’t protect Russia. At best, it will result in M.A.D.: Mutually Assured Destruction. And if it fails, then Russia would lose WW III.

America’s capturing Ukraine, which it did in 2014 by Obama’s brilliantly successful coup that he hid behind anti-corruption demonstrations on Kiev’s Maidan Square, was intended to make it possible for America to checkmate Russia by positioning a missile in or near Shostka. This was why Putin had established as being a red line that America must not cross, Ukraine’s possibly becoming a NATO member.

On 17 December 2021, Putin buried in two proposed treaties — one delivered to Biden and the other to NATO — his demand for America and its colonies never to allow Ukraine into NATO, and he did this as quietly as possible and failed to explain to the public why Russia could never tolerate a possibility that Ukraine would join NATO. His proposed two treaties buried the entire matter of Ukraine, and mentioned “Ukraine” only once, in the propsal to NATO, by saying, “All member States of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization commit themselves to refrain from any further enlargement of NATO, including the accession of Ukraine as well as other States.” He gave no hint of why Ukraine was the only nation that was singled-out to be named. Both of the proposed treaties were intended to be understood only by the recipients, not by any nation’s public. They weren’t written so as to make clear to the public what the motivation behind them was — though both of them could have been. Neither Biden nor NATO were willing to negotiate about anything in those two documents. There was just silence for three weeks, and neither of the two documents was published or discussed in the ‘news’-media. The Kremlin did nothing to facilitate access to the documents even to the press. Putin himself wanted it that way; he handled this as strictly a matter of private diplomacy, not at all of public relations, much less of helping the public to understand the Russian Government’s motivation behind the documents.

Then, suddenly, and little reported or commented upon, on 7 January 2022, the AP headlined “US, NATO rule out halt to expansion, reject Russian demands” — every one of his demands. Putin now had no other option than to invade Ukraine to take it militarily so as to prevent any U.S. nuclear missile possibly becoming placed there — to do it BEFORE Ukraine would be already seriously on the road to NATO membership, because if he were to wait any longer, then it might already be too late — and there would then be zero chance once Ukraine would already be a NATO member.

He invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022.

He had done no public relations in order to help the publics in The West to understand WHY he invaded. His explanations seemed to have been intended to resonate ONLY to his fellow-Russians, NOT to any international audience.

This was tragic because not only was Ukraine the MOST dangerous nation to be admitted into NATO, but the second-most dangerous nation to become a NATO member is Finland, which at Kotka is only 507 miles or 815 km. away from blitz-nuking Moscow (and that would be a 7-minute missile-flight-time away); and whereas Putin had done nothing in order to explain to their public that Ukraine was a unique and special case and that Russia at that time actually had no national-security worries about Finland, Finland’s public couldn’t see why he wouldn’t want to take their country too, now that Russia had invaded ‘democratic Ukraine’.

As is normal for the U.S. regime and its agents, they had long been working upon the Finnish public in order to stir them to fear Russia; and polling is always one of the tools that it uses in order to manipulate public opinion in such a target-country. On 28 January 2022, Helsinki’s MTV News headlined (as autotranslated) “MTV Uutisten survey: Support for NATO membership has risen to 30 percent, opposition has clearly decreased – ‘It would be safer with the West’,” and reported:

Opposition to NATO membership has decreased, while the position of more and more people is uncertain, according to a recent survey by MTV Uutisten. If Finland’s top management supported joining NATO, half of the Finns would already be on the side of NATO membership.

Based on a survey conducted by MTV Uutisten, 30 percent of Finns support Finland’s application for NATO membership. 43 percent of those who responded to the survey oppose applying for membership, and 27 percent are unsure of their position. …

The National Defense Information Planning Board (MTS) analyzed the support for NATO membership at the end of 2021. At that time, 24 percent of respondents supported applying for membership. More than half, or 51 percent, opposed applying for NATO membership.

Since then, Russia has presented a list of demands to the West, which included, among other things, NATO’s commitment not to expand to the east. The concern for Europe’s security has been increased by the heavy military equipment that Russia has moved near the Ukrainian border.

According to everyone, Russia’s actions are not yet so burdensome that they should apply to NATO. …

In recent years, in NATO polls, support has typically been close to 20 percent and opposition over 50 percent.

Based on the survey conducted now, the opposition is no longer as strong as before. In addition to the supporters of NATO membership, the number of undecideds has also increased. The difficulty of forming an accurate opinion is also evident in the comments. …

In addition to the current NATO position, the respondents were asked whether Finland should apply for NATO membership if the top government was in favor of it.

In this case, support for NATO membership rose from 30 percent to as much as  [NO — TO EXACTLY] 50 percent [saying that on this question they’d trust that the Government’s leaders would make the best decision on this matter]. 33 percent of the respondents chose not to answer, and 18 percent could not form their opinion.

The majority of respondents would follow the government if it decided to join NATO.

That was before Russia invaded Ukraine — a country that Finnish ‘news’-media had already long presented favorably against Russia and as being a victim of Russia’s opposing Ukraine’s ‘democratic revolution’ at the Maidan Square in February 2014. No Finnish news-medium existed that indicated this ‘democratic revolution’ to have been actually a U.S. coup. Finnish ‘news’-media had censored-out all of that actual history. When Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022, Finns were therefore terrified, and the Finnish Government — right along with Sweden’s, which had similarly been worked on for decades by U.S. and its NATO agents — promptly requested NATO membership. On 16 September 2022, Gallup’s polling reported that 81% of Finns and 74% of Swedes approved of their country’s joining the NATO anti-Russian military alliance. Prior to the invasion of Ukraine, the figures had been almost the exact reverse.

Presidential elections are expected to be held in Finland on Sunday, 28 January 2024, with a possible second round on Sunday, 11 February 2024. The leading candidate now is Alexander Stubb, who is one of Finland’s top CIA assets. In a 28 October 2023 campaign speech he said, “If I am elected president of the republic, I promise that Finland will support Ukraine as long as necessary. Ukraine is fighting for the whole civilized and free world – against oppression and tyranny. And that war it will win, has already won. Slava Ukraine! … Fortunately, Finland has now chosen its place. We are part of the alliance of Western democracies. The next president of the republic will literally be the international NATO president. … Our NATO path began to open with the Russian war of aggression. … I consider Russia’s attack on Ukraine to be the time of a new turning point in world politics.” (Actually, Obama’s 2014 coup in Ukraine was that.)

But already, on 18 December 2023, Finland and the U.S. signed a Defense Cooperation Agreement (DCA) enabling Washington to send troops there and store weapons and ammunition, up to and including nuclear weapons, at 15 locations in Finland. Drago Bosnik at South Front headlined “FINLAND’S NEW ‘DEFENSE’ DEAL WITH US EERILY REMINDS OF SIMILAR ONE WITH NAZI GERMANY”, and he wrote: “For Russia, this is particularly concerning, as Finland and Estonia, now both NATO members, are in close proximity to St. Petersburg, its second most important city.” However, St. Petersburgh isn’t actually a concern here any more than Miami was a concern when America in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis wouldn’t allow Soviet missiles to be posted in Cuba — Washington DC was the concern, and it was nearly a thousand miles farther away from Cuba than Moscow is from Ukraine. Similarly to JFK then, Russia’s worry now is how close Finland is to Moscow — not to St. Petersberg. And whereas Cuba was 1,131 miles away from DC, Finland is only 507 miles from Moscow. Putin never made clear that his concern regarding American nukes in Ukraine was the same as JFK’s was regarding Soviet nukes in Cuba — but twice as much so. If Putin had made that point clearly and often, then demagogues such as Stubb wouldn’t have been able to get the impact they did from phrases such as “Our NATO path began to open with the Russian war of aggression. … I consider Russia’s attack on Ukraine to be the time of a new turning point in world politics.” America has been the aggressor here — against Russia; Russia was by then forced, by America and by its NATO, to respond militarily, since all diplomatic efforts by Russia had been ignored by the aggressors. Just like JFK was not the aggressor in 1962, Putin was not the aggressor in 2022. Putin could easily have made that point, but he never did — he buried it in with a mess that in Western countries seemed like merely a blur. He handed the Russia-the-aggressor argument to America’s agents in Finland, and they ran with it and thereby easily succeeded to present Russia as the bogeyman, against which NATO represented safety. This was a major blunder by Putin — not just in Finland, but throughout The West.

One might blame the Finnish (and Swedish) people for having fallen for what was actually the U.S. empire’s narrative on the Ukraine situation; but to do so would confuse the liars with their victims — the deceived public. For example: I personally submitted to all of Finland’s major ‘news’-media right after Finland’s Government expressed the intention to seek admission into NATO, arguing that to enter NATO would increase — NOT decrease — the danger to Finland’s national security, by causing Finland to thereby become targeted by Russia’s missiles (which had previously NOT been aimed at them); and all of those media refused even to reply — no questions or editorial suggestions, but simply refused to respond to or contemplate presenting a counter-argument. The Finnish public were never presented such an argument. Is that a ‘democracy’?

Moreover: the same situation, of a widely deceived public falling into the grip of the U.S. empire and believing its lies, is widespread, not only within this or that nation. For example, on December 19th, the Danish peace-researcher and professor at Sweden’s Lund University, Jan Oberg, headlined at Dissident Voice, “How Much Longer Can Danes Snore While Their Security and Democracy are Being Stripped away and Danish Politics Increase the Risk of World War III?,” and he reported the very same trap being fallen-into by the Danes that Finns are falling into. Blaming this phenomenon on the victims, the public, instead of on the billionaires who have engineered and provided the trap (and who enormously profit from it), is simply more of the standard blame-the-victim morality.

By this time, Putin ought to be well aware that it was a huge blunder. As I noted with concern on 28 October 2022, “NATO Wants To Place Nuclear Missiles On Finland’s Russian Border — Finland Says Yes”. His blunder was blatantly clear by that time. And I already had outlined, on 13 May 2022, “Russia’s Weak Response to Finland’s Joining NATO” and presented there a strategy to replace that weak response with a much stronger and entirely diplomatic strategy for Russia to terminate the NATO alliance. I am surprised that Putin still, even to the present day, has failed to initiate some such policy. His passivity in that regard is stunning.

However, on 5 April 2023, since that proposed strategy wasn’t being even mentioned in the press by anyone but myself, I concluded that the time had come to lay out an alternative strategy, “Russia’s only safe response to Finland in NATO is to move Russia’s capital to Novosibirsk.” Whereas Finland (Kotka) is only 507 miles or 816 kilometers from Moscow, it is 2,032 miles or 3,271 kilometers from Novosibirsk.

Furthermore: Novosibirsk is 2,716 miles or 4,372 kilometers from Japan (Hokkaido). And it is 2,371 miles or 3,815 kilometers from South Korea (Seoul). Placing Russia’s central command in Novosibirsk would eliminate the danger from the U.S. regime and its colonies.

Obviously, if Russia’s capital city becomes relocated to Novosibirsk, then the Cold War (the danger that the U.S. empire poses to Russia) will effectively be ended. But Putin has initiated no new approach to addressing the problem that his own continuing blunder has largely assisted to cause to Russia’s national security.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Eric Zuesse.

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Ryan Grim.

• The Israeli Cabinet voted to approve a four-day cease-fire with Hamas. The Israeli government said that under the deal, Hamas is to free 50 of the roughly 240 hostages it is holding in the Gaza Strip over a four-day period. However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel will continue its war against Hamas, even if a temporary cease-fire is reached with the Islamic militant group.
• The White House says it is considering redesignating Yemen’s Houthi rebels as a “terrorist” group after they claimed the seizure of a commercial ship in the Red Sea that they say is affiliated with Israel.
• North Korea claims its 3rd attempt to put a spy satellite into orbit has been successful.
• The U.S. government dealt a massive blow to Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, which agreed to pay a roughly $4 billion settlement today as its founder and CEO, Changpeng Zhao, pleaded guilty to a felony related to his failure to prevent money laundering on the platform.
• Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee, the judge overseeing the election subversion case against former President Donald Trump and others, declined to revoke the bond of Harrison Floyd, one of former President Trump’s co-defendants in his 2020 election subversion case today, allowing him to remain free on bond ahead of a future trial. However, McAfee said he plans to modify the bond conditions for Floyd after prosecutors complained about his social media posts that mentioned witnesses and co-defendants.

The post Israeli Cabinet approves hostage deal cease-fire with Hamas, though Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel will continue its war against Hamas, even if a temporary cease-fire is reached – Tuesday, November 21, 2023 appeared first on KPFA.

This content originally appeared on KPFA - The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.

In a statement in which he repeatedly condemned Hamas and failed to explicitly call for a ceasefire, Trudeau told the press “we’re hearing the testimonies of doctors, family members, survivors, kids who’ve lost their parents. The world is witnessing this — the killing of women and children, of babies. This has to stop.”

In response to the prime minister’s comment former Liberal MP and current CEO of Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center Michael Levitt posted to X, “The scathing remarks also landed here at home, where Jews like me, reeling from weeks of surging antisemitism, got the message loud and clear, and will worry that they have the potential to further fan the flames of Jew-hatred that we are facing.” In an interview with CBC Levitt reiterated the point, claiming the prime minister’s comments “further fuel antisemitism and lashing out at Jews in Canada.”

In an article headlined “Trudeau’s Israel tirade hands Canada’s anti-Semites a propaganda victory” Toronto Sun columnist Laurie Goldstein echoed this line of reasoning. He argued that “Trudeau handed anti-Semites in Canada a new club to beat Jews over the head with by blaming Israel alone for the conduct of the war in Gaza — with theatrical pauses for effect — before he even mentioned Hamas.”

Former Conservative senator, United Jewish Appeal (UJA) Toronto Board Chair and now head of UJA’s Committee to combat Antisemitism, Linda Frum blamed Trudeau for a purported bomb threat at a private Jewish school (which holds “IDF days”). Above a statement noting “Toronto’s largest Jewish school TanenbaumCHAT was evacuated today due to threats made against the school”, Frum posted, “A few days ago PM Trudeau falsely accused Israel of deliberately killing babies. You can draw a straight line from there to here ….”

(In the real world, Trudeau has enabled Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Alongside dispatching Canadian special forces there and flying 30 Israeli reservists to the country, Trudeau’s government has called for “eliminating” Hamas, supported Israel’s “right to defend itself” and visited to encourage Israeli violence. At the same time Ottawa has refused to halt arms exports, prevent illegal recruitment for the IDF or stop Canadian charities from unlawfully assisting Israel’s military, as detailed in a recent notice of intention to prosecute the PM for aiding and abetting Israel’s war crimes.)

The argument that criticizing Israel for killing babies equates to attacking Canadian Jews is enabled by Zionist groups linking Canadian Jewry to Israel. Claiming to represent Montreal’s 90,000 Jews, Federation CJA recently launched a campaign to send cards to “our” Israeli soldiers. “Make cards for our brave IDF soldiers”, explains a section on their site that includes a financial appeal for Israel. Card writers are told to drop their messages of support for the IDF off at Beth Tikvah Synagogue and Federation CJA’s office. The Jewish federations in Toronto, Vancouver and elsewhere are also fundraising for Israel and promoting the IDF.

If told Israeli soldiers are “ours” then criticism of the IDF can easily appear like an attack on Montréal Jews. But the Israeli military is slaughtering children.

The advocacy agent of Canada’s Jewish Federations, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA), was set up partly to further conflate Jews with Israel. A decade ago, the Tanenbaums, Schwartz/Reisman and other wealthy hard-line apartheid promoters created CIJA to replace the Canadian Jewish Congress and Canada Israel Committee. They removed Canada from the name but left Israel in it partly to further blur the distinction between Canadian Jewry and Israel.

If your principal concern is promoting Israel, perhaps it is politically sensible to minimize the distinction between Israel and Judaism. By doing so you increase the pressure on Canadian Jews to back Israel. Simultaneously, it frames opposition to Israeli violence and apartheid as anti-Jewish.

But destroying the meaning of “antisemitism” cannot possibly be good for the average Canadian Jew. When a former Canadian ambassador openly calls the prime minister an “antisemite” for opposing the killing of babies the pro-Israel-no-matter-what crowd really have lost their minds.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Yves Engler.

U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason denied a challenge last week to the $7.5 billion project — a large expansion of ConocoPhillips’ sprawling network of oil rigs, roads, and pipelines — which the Biden administration controversially approved in March. The federal government estimates burning all the oil that Conoco hopes to extract from Willow would emit about 240 million metric tons of carbon dioxide.

The judge’s ruling paves the way for Conoco to drill through permafrost and slurp up 600 million barrels of oil in the northeastern corner of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, an Indiana-sized swath of mostly undeveloped tundra in the western Arctic. But that’s not all. As the company moves ahead with construction of the new oil field, it’s looking to gain access to millions, perhaps billions, more barrels farther west and southwest in the reserve beneath the wild tussocks, sloughs, and lakes where caribou and migratory birds abound.

“It’s not only itself a huge project,” said Erik Grafe, an attorney at Earthjustice, which represents the environmental groups that sued to stop the project. “It’s designed to be a hub for future development and that’s itself an even bigger problem.” 

Conoco told investors two years ago that Willow could be “the next great Alaska hub” for Arctic oil. The company leases a total of 1.1 million acres in the federal petroleum reserve, sitting on an estimated 3 billion barrels of oil. Other companies lease another 1.4 million acres combined. Many of those leases lie outside of the roughly 13 million acres where the Biden administration plans to restrict drilling.

Just last month Conoco proposed seismic surveys on about 272,000 acres of frozen earth, including an area west of the Willow site, deeper into the national oil reserve. The company initially said the surveys were intended to “determine the most efficient development” at Willow and “to identify potential future development areas” on Conoco’s leases. But the company later amended the proposal, reducing the survey area to some 160,000 acres and cutting the mention of its intention to identify future development areas. (Conoco has said the surveys are intended “exclusively” to support Willow.)

Conoco has also drilled two exploratory wells a dozen miles west of Willow – in an area named “West Willow.” The several miles of new roads and pipelines that the company plans to build at Willow could significantly lower the cost of tapping into the estimated 75 million barrels of crude beneath West Willow. 

That oil “seems like the obvious next target,” Grafe said. “Willow puts in processing facilities, central operating facilities, pipelines, roads. Once that’s in place, it’s a lot cheaper for Conoco and maybe others to develop their leases and tie into that infrastructure.” Earthjustice plans to appeal Gleason’s ruling.

The strategy of piggybacking off one oil field to lower the cost of building more isn’t new. Conoco and other companies have long been at it in Alaska. Willow itself will be part of a web of drill rigs, roads, and pipelines that have cropped up over the past few decades on the horizon of the Alaska Native village of Nuiqsut, nearly encircling the community where people rely on caribou and fish for food. (Willow is west of Nuiqsut; there are already oil fields north and east of the village.)

“This is a process that I call spiderweb sprawl,” said Philip Wight, a historian who studies Alaska’s energy sector at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. “Infrastructure begets infrastructure, basically.” Wight noted that such sprawl isn’t inevitable but that the economics of oil in recent decades have made it more likely. 

Those economics may soon change, though. Development in the Arctic is getting more expensive as permafrost melts, causing the ground to buckle and damaging roads and pipelines. (Conoco has proposed using artificial chillers to keep the earth frozen and its infrastructure from collapsing.) And, even though we’re consuming more oil than ever before, analysts expect global demand for fossil fuels to peak within the decade as renewable energy takes off. 

Conoco is placing a big bet on oil prices staying high for decades, Wight said. The first drops of oil from Willow aren’t expected to flow until 2029. And were Conoco to develop West Willow — or any other leases in the reserve — it likely wouldn’t come online until after that. 

“Their thesis is that the growth of renewable energy will be slower than many people expect,” Wight said. “And their thesis is also that the world will not have unified cooperation around the Paris Climate Agreement, in that this oil and gas will not stay in the ground — it will be extracted and burned.” 

Editor’s note: Earthjustice is an advertiser with Grist. Advertisers have no role in Grist’s editorial decisions.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The Willow effect: Are even more Arctic oil projects on the way? on Nov 15, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Max Graham.

• Supporters of Israel have rallied by the tens of thousands on Washington’s National Mall, voicing solidarity in the fight against Hamas and crying “never again.” The “March for Israel” offered a resounding and bipartisan endorsement of one of America’s closest allies as criticism has intensified over Israel’s offensive in Gaza.
• The Israeli military says its forces are raiding Gaza’s largest hospital, the site of a lengthy standoff with the Hamas militant group.
• The House has voted overwhelmingly to prevent a government shutdown. New Republican Speaker Mike Johnson was forced to reach across the aisle to Democrats when hard-right conservatives revolted against his plan. Johnson’s proposal to temporarily fund the government into the new year passed on a bipartisan 336-95 tally, with 93 Republicans voting against it.
• Palestinians and a coalition of human rights organizations sued the Biden administration, alleging its complicity in Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, citing U.S. funding and unconditional support of Israel.
• A Michigan judge has ruled that former President Donald Trump will remain on the state’s primary ballot. Court of Claims Judge James Robert Redford said in an order released Tuesday that Trump has followed state procedure to qualify for the ballot and that a clause in the Constitution can’t be used to disqualify him.
• A Senate committee hearing on labor and unions escalated into a near brawl today when a Republican senator challenged one of the labor witnesses to a fight.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, of La., with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of N.Y., speaks during a March for Israel rally on the National Mall in Washington, Tuesday, Nov. 14, 2023. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

The post Supporters of Israel have rallied by the tens of thousands on Washington’s National Mall, voicing solidarity in the fight against Hamas even as criticism has intensified over Israel’s offensive in Gaza – Tuesday, November 14, 2023 appeared first on KPFA.

This content originally appeared on KPFA - The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.

Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

For decades, the most widely touted solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict has been based on the idea of two independent states — one Israeli and one Palestinian — encompassing separate parts of the historic land of Palestine. Known as the “two-state solution,” it has long been the agreed-upon framework by the United Nations (UN), most of the world’s countries, and regional organizations such as the European Union (EU). The UN General Assembly frequently votes on resolutions calling for a settlement to the conflict based on two states. These resolutions usually receive the support of all the world’s nations except for Israel, the United States, and a handful of others (often tiny US-dependent Pacific island nations).

Support for the two-state solution has also enjoyed support from across the establishment political spectrum in the West. In 2002, then-US President George W. Bush (a Republican) became the first president to publicly endorse it. On the other end of the truncated spectrum that represents establishment political thought, independent Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders (a self-described democratic socialist) has also pledged his support for the two-state framework. Even some “radical professors” in the academic world have said they think it’s the most realistic option. This includes the linguist and political dissident Noam Chomsky and political scientist Norman Finkelstein.

Now, however, a high-ranking UN human rights official has issued a damning condemnation of both the viability and morality of the two-state solution. In a letter resigning from his post as director of the New York office of the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, Craig Mokhiber slammed the two-state solution as no longer possible nor desirable. And he’s far from being the first high-profile person to do this volte face. Numerous high-profile supporters of the two-state solution have in recent years openly repudiated it and come out in favor of the rival “one-state solution.”

Previously considered a fringe proposal within Western countries, a settlement based on a single democratic, non-sectarian state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea is now looking more and more mainstream. Receiving support from a former senior UN official surely represents a seminal chapter in the long struggle one-state supporters have been waging to bring this solution to greater public attention.

“An Open Joke in the Corridors of the UN”

Mokhiber’s letter states: “The mantra of the “two-state solution” has become an open joke in the corridors of the UN, both for its utter impossibility in fact, and for its total failure to account for the inalienable human rights of the Palestinian people.” During an interview with Al-Jazeera English, Mokhiber elaborated: “When people are not talking from official talking points, you hear increasingly about a one-state solution. And what that means is beginning to advocate for the principle of equality, of human rights instead of these old political taglines. That would mean a state in which you have equal rights for Christians, Muslims and Jews based upon human rights and based upon the rule of law.”

The idea of a single democratic state with equal rights for all people who live in historic Palestine is far from a new idea. In fact, it was the official goal of all the major Palestinian nationalist parties until comparatively recently. It was only in 1993 that Fatah, the largest party within the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), agreed to settle for a Palestinian state in a partitioned part of historic Palestine, which it did in exchange for Israel recognizing the PLO as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.

More left-leaning factions such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) retained support for the one-state solution and have suffered marginalization from Fatah as a consequence. Hamas, meanwhile, has historically been committed in principle to an Islamic republic encompassing all of historic Palestine, but in 2017 revised its charter by indicating pragmatic support for two states.

Two-state Solution “Destroyed By Israel”

Fatah officials have largely held to the two-state line since 1993. But recently even some of its senior figures have come out against it and instead pledged their support for a one-state solution. Hanan Ashrawi, for example, was elected to the Palestinian Legislative Council and appointed as Minister of Higher Education for the Palestinian Authority (PA) in 1996. In 2009 she became the first woman to be elected to the Executive Committee of the PLO. In 2017 during a television segment on Al-Jazeera English, Ashrawi saidthat the two-state solution is “a solution that the Palestinians had agreed to as a result of a long, painful discussion, internal debate, and a painstaking debate to agree to the principle of partition and to accepting two states on the historical land of Palestine.” She added: “We made this compromise in order to prepare the ground for a new relationship, for peace and stability within the region.”

However, in May 2021 — during Israel’s most recent periodic massacre in Gaza before the current one — Ashrawi said during an interview with RT: “I think the two-state solution is dead. That agenda has been destroyed by Israel — by Israeli actions — because Israel did not comply with any of its obligations.” She added: “I don’t think a one-state solution has become an agenda, but it is the outcome.” Ashrawi also pointed to the effect that the two-state discourse has had on Israel’s actions and the international community’s inaction in holding it to account. She said: “Israel felt that it can just say, ‘we are in the middle of talks’, or ‘we are negotiating’, or whatever, and at the same time continue to steal more land, more resources, build more settlements… and [it] continues to kill and demolish and carry out a comprehensive ethnic cleansing plan.”

“A Transparent Sleight of Hand”

This idea that the two-state solution has provided a smokescreen to embolden Israel’s actions and allowed it to endlessly delay any kind of resolution has become a common criticism amongst one-state supporters. As Palestinian-American activist Yousef Munayyer puts it: “You have this constant conversation around the two-state solution being a goal and that keeps open this idea of negotiations. And these negotiations, as we have seen, have only resulted in an opportunity for Israel to say to the world, ‘look, this is a temporary condition.’” He added: “And at the same time, [Israel is] creating realities on the ground that make that impossible.”

Mokhiber alludes to exactly this phenomenon in his resignation letter, stating: “The (US-scripted) deference to ‘agreements between the parties themselves’ (in place of international law) was always a transparent slight-of-hand, designed to reinforce the power of Israel over the rights of the occupied and dispossessed Palestinians.” He pointed in particular to the role of the so-called “Quartet” (the group of self-appointed mediators to the conflict made up of the UN, the United States, the EU and Russia), which he argues “has become nothing more than a fig leaf for inaction and for subservience to a brutal status quo.”

“Embrace the Goal of Jewish–Palestinian Equality”

In addition to Ashrawi, other prominent former supporters of the two-state solution have changed tack in favor of one state. This includes the former editor of the arch-Zionist magazine The New Republic, Peter Beinart. In an essay published at Jewish Currents in July 2020, he stated:

“The painful truth is that the project to which liberal Zionists like myself have devoted ourselves for decades — a state for Palestinians separated from a state for Jews — has failed. The traditional two-state solution no longer offers a compelling alternative to Israel’s current path. It risks becoming, instead, a way of camouflaging and enabling that path. It is time for liberal Zionists to abandon the goal of Jewish–Palestinian separation and embrace the goal of Jewish–Palestinian equality.”

In a similar vein, former Jordanian foreign minister Marwan Muasher, saidduring a forum hosted by the Carnegie Council for International Peace: “We are already in a one-state reality. The question is becoming increasingly: Is this reality going to turn into an apartheid state or a democratic state?” Others who are casting doubt on the viability of the two-state solution include none other than the aforementioned George W. Bush. He stated in May 2021 that the two-state solution would be “very difficult at this stage.”

Shifting the Focus From 1967 to 1948

Clearly, the two-state solution is increasingly looking like a dinosaur that not only fails to offer a viable framework for resolving the conflict but also provides a smokescreen for Israel’s endless stalling and undermining of peace. But there is a more fundamental problem with the two-state solution. Because it calls for the dividing line between Israel and a Palestinian state to be based on Israel’s border before the June 1967 war. During this war, Israel invaded the West Bank and Gaza Strip and has occupied them ever since. (It withdrew from Gaza in 2005 though still maintains a siege via control of its border, coast, and airspace.) The two-state solution entails returning these areas to the Palestinians in order for them to establish a state on these lands.

The problem with this, however, is that these lands constitute only 22% of historic Palestine. A fairer division of the land in a two-state scenario would be something like 50–50. But this aside, the major crime that was committed against the Palestinian people was not the 1967 invasion and occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Rather, the major crime was the ethnic cleansing that occurred in 1947 and 1948, which has come to be known as “al-Nakba.” During this time, at least half of Palestine’s non-Jewish population was forced out of its home and pushed as refugees into the West Bank and Gaza or into neighboring Arab countries.

Given this history, Palestinians have a right to return to their country, which encompasses all of historic Palestine. And therefore, Palestinians have never been under any obligation whatsoever to accept partition. Indeed, though a central tenet of Zionist propaganda is the notion that Palestinians deserve their fate for having rejected the November 1947 partition plan set out in UN Resolution 181, the reality is that the UN had no right to partition the country in the first place. Indeed, doing so was in violation of the UN’s own charter. In any case, the Palestinians were not even under any legal obligation, let alone moral obligation, to accept it given that Resolution 181 was a non-binding resolution and the UN Security Council didn’t ever officially adopt it.

Finally to consider is comparison with the political solutions that have been proposed, and in some cases implemented, in other countries around the world. And this seems to point overwhelmingly to the single democratic, nonsectarian state vision based on equal rights proffered by supporters of the one-state solution. The UN never proposed, for example, the formation of separate states in South Africa for each of its ethnic groups as a way of resolving the conflict in that country. As Mokhiber puts it: “It is what we call for in every other circumstance around the world. And the question is, ‘why is the United Nations not calling for that in Israel-Palestine as well?’”

The post The Two-State Solution for Palestine Has Long Been a “Joke” Even In United Nations Circles appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Peter Bolton.

That’s the conclusion of a major United Nations report that analyzes the production plans of 20 major fossil fuel-producing countries ahead of the COP28 climate conference in Abu Dhabi. The report finds that these countries plan to extract more than twice the amount of coal, oil, and gas by 2030 than what is needed to limit warming to less than 1.5 degrees Celsius, and around 70 percent more than would limit warming to 2 degrees C. These are the two key warming targets laid out in the Paris Agreement, beyond which climate impacts will hit catastrophic levels.

António Guterres, the secretary general of the United Nations, described the report’s findings as “a startling indictment of runaway climate carelessness.”

The report, which shows almost no movement away from oil and gas, is likely to strengthen calls for an agreement to “phase out” fossil fuels at COP28. Major fossil fuel-producing countries have rejected such language before, but negotiators from the European Union have said they plan to make another push for stronger language this year at Abu Dhabi.

“Despite governments around the world signing up to ambitious net-zero targets, global coal, oil, and gas production are all still increasing, while planned reductions are nowhere near enough to avoid the worst effects of climate change,” Angela Picciariello, a researcher at the International Institute for Sustainable Development, a leading climate research organization, said in a statement. “This widening gulf between governments’ rhetoric and their actions is not only undermining their authority but increasing the risk to us all.”

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Almost all the countries profiled in the report have announced plans to slash or even zero out carbon emissions by the middle of the century, and several have spent billions of dollars to encourage a domestic energy transition to renewables, but almost all of them are still planning to maintain or even increase extraction activities on their own turf over the same period. If they follow through on those plans the world will cross the 1.5 degrees C warming threshold laid out in the Paris Agreement. The authors of the report refer to this discrepancy as the “production gap.”

There are two main trends behind the gap. First, the report projects that the United States, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Russia will all continue to produce around the same amount of oil in 2050 as they do today, and developing countries such as Guyana and the Democratic Republic of the Congo will likely start producing more oil at the same time, leading to a rise in the production of both fuels over the next few decades. These projections are based on estimates of future production from each country’s national government.

The second trend is that a smaller number of countries are still planning to produce massive amounts of coal, the most carbon-intensive fossil fuel and one that has been on the wane in the United States and Europe. Large emitters like China, India, and Indonesia, all of which are using coal to meet rapidly rising energy demand, have said they intend to give up the fuel slowly rather than all at once. This is in stark contrast to the “near total phaseout of global coal production and use by 2040” that the report says is necessary.

Both these trends have dire implications for the climate. In order to keep global temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees over pre-industrial levels, the world has to adhere to what experts call a “carbon budget,” limiting the amount of coal, oil, and gas that we burn over the coming decades. If the 20 countries profiled in the report end up producing all the fossil fuels they say they will, the world will blow through that budget.  

The gap may be even bigger than it seems at first. Most models for how the world can limit warming to 1.5 degrees C rely on big assumptions about carbon capture and sequestration technology to help ease the transition away from fossil fuels. In theory, direct-air capture machines and carbon sinks such as forests and peatlands can suck greenhouse gasses out of the air, which allows for a little wiggle room as countries try to give up gas-fired power plants and gasoline vehicles. But many of these carbon capture technologies are untested, and the report cautions against relying on them.

The potential failure of these measures to become sufficiently viable at scale, the non-climatic near-term harms of fossil fuels, and other lines of evidence, call for an even more rapid global phaseout of all fossil fuels,” the authors write.

The most concerning part of the report is that it’s not even clear who would buy all these fossil fuels. According to the International Energy Agency, global demand for oil and gas is likely to plateau or decline before the end of the decade, and solar energy is already cheaper than coal and even natural gas in many places. Yet big producers’ plans for fossil fuel extraction have not changed to accommodate the growing speed of the energy transition.

“Despite these encouraging signs, the overall size of the production gap … has not discernibly changed,” the authors write.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The world is doubling down on fossil fuels even as global demand peaks on Nov 8, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Jake Bittle.

Image by Joshua Sukoff.

Here’s some advice you probably never got about parenting: Write your child’s name on his or her leg or stomach, so that if — when — your building is bombed, the child can be identified when she’s pulled from the rubble.

Apparently, mothers in southern Gaza are doing this now, as the bombing intensifies. So far at least 2,000 children have been killed — oh my God, such numbers are almost unbearable — and another 5,000 injured. And, perhaps most soul-ripping of all, some 800 children are . . . missing.

This is all part of what I call war’s basic insanity. Nothing about it makes the least bit of sense when you look closely — death by death, nightmare by nightmare — at what it is, at what it does. Or, for that matter, at what it accomplishes. War begets war and only that. Haven’t we, by which I mean the nations of Planet Earth, figured this out yet? And war always comes home, even for the “victors.” What are mass murderers but loners playing war — acting the way their leaders do?

War begets hatred. War begets fear. War begets insanity. A recent example of this occurred not far from Chicago, where I live — when a 71-year-old man in Plainfield, Ill., stabbed two of his tenants because they were Palestinians, killing 6-year-old Wadea Al-Fayoume, who was stabbed 26 times. The boy’s mother, Hanaan Shahin, was stabbed about a dozen times but survived — indeed, remained hospitalized during her son’s funeral, so had to mourn him alone in her room.

Apparently the landlord, who had previously been friends with the boy, became stirred with anxiety about his tenants’ ethnicity after the Hamas attack on Israel and feared for his own life. You know, war begets fear. He came to the tenants’ apartment, told Wadea’s mom that he was angry at them, to which she responded: “Let’s pray for peace.” But that wasn’t what he had in mind. He started stabbing her.

She got away from him and was able to call the police, but she was unable to save her son’s life.

When a war rages, and we participate in it or at least look on as spectators, its seeming necessity grows. War feeds itself. Look what the bad guys are doing! They’re just terrorists. We have no choice but to fight back. Anything other than that — trying to negotiate or, what, loving thy enemy? — seems absurd and, yeah, almost criminally unpatriotic. Thus, while war begets nothing but hell and definitely does not lay the foundations of peace, that’s all something to worry about in the future. For the moment, winning is what’s necessary, whatever it takes. What we do is necessary. What they do simply feeds that necessity. Is humanity simply trapped in its basic insanity?

I don’t believe that to be the case, if only because, without empathy and connectedness to one another, to the planet itself, we couldn’t have made it this far. What we’re trapped in is a paradox. We quietly — sometimes exasperatingly — acknowledge our need for connection, but we officially glorify war. History is taught from one war to the next. Winning, losing: This is so much easier to understand, to organize around, than, for instance, words such as these from the Dalai Lama:

“We can help ourselves only if we help the Other. It is the cultivation of love and compassion, our ability to enter into and to share another’s suffering, that are the preconditions for the continued survival of our species. . . . The feeling of community with all living creatures can be attained only if we recognize that we are all basically united and dependent on one another.”

I don’t believe the Dalai Lama is speaking with moral outrage or righteousness, but rather simply with realism: Like it or not, this is how things are. The tribal South African term “ubuntu” — which I’ve heard translated as “I am because you are” — comes to mind. Desmund Tutu once wrote: “Ubuntu is not easy to describe because it has no equivalent in any of the Western languages. . . . The solitary individual is in our understanding a contradiction in terms. You are a person through other persons.”

This is, you might say, humanity’s basic sanity. Why can’t it be at the core of our planet’s governing principles? Is that even possible?

Maybe so, even though, alas, human connectedness usually doesn’t create attention-grabbing headlines. And far too many political leaders are in power thanks primarily to their ability to herd enough of the public into fear of a particular enemy. Nevertheless, sanity lives! Even in war-ravaged Israel and Gaza. I was particularly inspired recently by the words of Rob Okun, who wrote about no less than eight organizations there in which Palestinians and Israelis are united and working with one another to create peace. He writes: “More than a cease fire, may their work . . . ignite a peace fire.”

One of these organizations is called Combatants for Peace, which describes itself as a group of Palestinians and Israelis who were once engaged in combat against each other, but came to understand the futility — and insanity — of this. They raised their weapons and saw each other not just as targets but as full human beings.

According to the group’s website:

“The first meetings between the Palestinians and Israelis that eventually led to the establishment of the Combatants for Peace, were mostly devoted to telling the participants’ personal stories. . . . We all have a story worth listening to, a story that reflects something of the horrors of this conflict, but also the potential of breaking out of it. Our personal stories, Palestinians and Israelis, are the stories of life here, of the violence to which we were partners or witnesses but also, the story of choosing a path of nonviolence and partnership, a path to a different future.”

Their mission is transforming, collectively healing, building the social infrastructure of peace. And as I say, Rob Okun mentioned eight different organizations in which Israelis and Palestinians — often who have lost loved ones to the conflict — are working to make their world different. For instance one group, called Hand in Hand, has so far established six integrated Jewish-Arab schools, where “all students learn Hebrew and Arabic.”

This is not simple! Such efforts require deep commitment and, no doubt, plenty of courage. But this is how the future is born, even as war rages.

The post Igniting a Peace Fire, Even as War Rages appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Robert Koehler.

Many of the dishes on offer – crispy squid, oyster omelet, braised pork and papaya milkshakes – are quintessentially Taiwanese street foods whose recipes have been handed down through families for several generations.

"I didn't want to take it over at first," stallholder Lin Chiu-yun said of the 70-year-old savory pancake business that was handed down by her father. "It turns day into night, and other people can go away on vacation on public holidays, but we can't."

"Then my father suddenly got sick, and I started running into regular customers around the night market, because we live nearby," she said. "They were asking me when I was going to come out and start running things."

"So I bit the bullet," she said, adding that the stall could even get handed down to her daughter Minhsuan, who currently helps out.

Around 60% of the market's custom comes from local residents, with the rest from overseas tourists, including plenty of visitors from Hong Kong.

It's big business, as well as a generations-old purveyor of the island’s street culture, according to its democratically elected president. 

Market association president Lin Ting-kuo told RFA Cantonese that the market's popularity among local people is a key reason for its healthy rebound after the lifting of COVID-19 restrictions.

"When something happens internationally, or there's a pandemic, it's the local tourists who help you to survive," he said.

A top tourist attraction

A recent survey by Taiwan's Tourism Bureau found that the island's night markets have long been the top attraction for tourists, with 80% of inbound tourists visiting a night market during their trip before 2019.

A Spanish tourist who gave only the name Gertruda said she was enjoying herself on a recent trip to Ningxia Night Market.

"You can get delicious food, and great drinks, so it's a great place," she said.

But the locals love them too. And the Ningxia Night Market has been a fixture of the city's Datong district since the now-democratic island was under Japanese colonial rule in the first half of the 20th century.

"It's pretty good value for money and there are very diverse foods," said a Taiwanese customer at Ningxia in a recent interview. 

Lin Ting-kuo puts that down to the fact that vendors are constantly experimenting with new recipes, to cater to changing tastes.

"There are a lot of innovative products there alongside the traditional ones," he said. "For example, one nightclub has a stall set up in the night market to offer [cocktails]."

"The owner of this stall is very old, and is a third generation stallholder, who used to sell braised pork with rice," he said.

There are also online discount coupons, mobile phone payments and games to promote the market, in addition to the online banquet-booking service, he said.

One of the most popular options is the Chitose Banquet, which offers a taster selection of vendor snacks and offerings all in one place.

There is clearly a huge amount of political investment in making it work, at the local level, according to the YesAsia tourism website.

"In addition to mouth-watering snacks and delicacies, the night market also has a strong human touch, and many local stories and cultural spirits are included," reads the Ningxia Night Market listing.

Promoting 'neighborhood harmony'

True to the country's democratic way of life, vendors elect their own president to represent them, and a finance committee keeps the books in order, as well as making the market's dealings transparent.

The market association also works with local government officials "to promote neighborhood harmony," the listing says.

"When the night market is closely integrated with the emotions of local culture, the image and taste of each stall become fun and interesting cultural stories that are constantly being told," it says.

The Ningxia Night Market started out as a ring of shabby vendor stalls in the middle of an intersection, which the displaced Kuomintang-ruled Republic of China government started regulating in around 1954.

By 1973, the Taipei city government had relocated the vendors' stalls to their current location, where the Ningxia Night Market began to flourish.

By 2000, it had transitioned into an environmentally friendly operation.

"The Ningxia Night Market once failed to do a good job of protecting the environment, which was unacceptable to the residents of the community," Lin Ting-kuo said. "We came up with a ... renovation project in which we banned disposable tableware to reduce garbage."

"The next stage was even more drastic – we banned melamine tableware," he said. "Then, we filtered waste oil and gray water from the stalls before discharging clean water into the city's sewer system."

"We hire a professional grease removal company every week, too," Lin said.

Diners can book “banquets” online to sample a large array of the different dishes and snacks offered by vendors at a single table, including a "Thousand Years Banquet", "State Banquet at the Presidential Palace," while environmentally friendly and calorie-labeled banquets are also on offer, the site said.

There are several common seating and stand-and-eat areas, with power and water supplied to vendors, leaving the site clean and filled with the aromas of cooking, rather than less desirable smells.

"In the past, we had to get a big tub of water and push it over here in a cart," Lin Chiu-yun said. "That was an inconvenient way to wash [the dishes]."

"Nowadays, it's super-convenient – you just turn on the water."

Translated by Luisetta Mudie.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Jojo Man and Raymond Cheng for RFA Cantonese.

Michael Sfard, an Israeli human rights lawyer and expert on international human rights, calls for Israel to act within international law in response to Hamas’s attack on civilians Saturday. “My government is waging an attack that seems to be using war crimes to retaliate on war crimes,” says Sfard. “They want revenge, as if a revenge would bring back the dear ones that are gone.” Sfard says Israel should end its bombing and lift the blockade on Gaza because civilians do not deserve punishment for militant attacks. “Modern international law prohibits, with no exception, collective punishment.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) supporters are livid Labour is refusing to recognise the state of Palestine a full 104 years after the first Palestinian calls for an independent state.

It’s a disgraceful decision, both unprincipled and cowardly.

Deputy Prime Minister Grant Robertson confirmed this decision when answering questions here:

• READ MORE: Other Palestine reports

Q – ??? about the Palestinian Representative in Australia to present his credentials here. That was announced formally.

Grant Robertson – There is a formal Foreign Policy part of the manifesto. We’re sticking with the long standing bi-partisan approach to a two-state solution in the Middle East and what we are doing is working with the Palestinian representative on closer discussions but that doesn’t make a change to a formal recognition. It just means that we open that dialogue up.

Q – So no formal recognition?

GR – Not until there is a state to recognise. But we have long stood for a two-state solution and what we have said is that we want to have more open and regular dialogue with Palestinian Representatives.

Labour implied in their manifesto release this week that they would recognise the state of Palestine although the wording was unclear and ambiguous. What is clear now is that the slippery wording was deliberately meant to mean all things to all people.

The disingenuous wording in the Labour manifesto says:

Labour is committed to an enduring and just two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, based on the right of Israel to live in peace within secure borders internationally recognised and agreed by the parties, and reflecting the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people to also live in peace and security within their own state.

A re-elected Labour government will:

Invite the Head of the General Delegation of Palestine to present their credentials as an Ambassador to New Zealand.

One hundred and thirty eight other countries have recognised Palestine as a state and haven’t had the “problem” of recognition that Grant Robertson has manufactured for Labour.

It seems Labour has once more buckled to pressure from a tiny pro-Israel lobby group within the party. They are allowing these anti-Palestinian racists to veto any meaningful steps to support the Palestinian struggle for human rights.

It’s an indelible stain on Labour’s integrity.

Background to the 104 years
After 1918, when the Ottoman Empire collapsed at the end of the First World War, each of the countries of that empire gained independence — except Palestine. The first Palestine National Congress was held in 1919 and called for independence from Britain which held the League of Nations mandate for Palestine.

Britain, however, refused independence and in the 104 years since, Western countries, including New Zealand, have colluded with Britain, then Israel and the US, to deny a Palestinian state or even equal rights for Palestinians who are citizens of Israel.

Western countries turned a blind eye to Israel’s ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in 1947–49 and look the other way today as Palestinians continue to be driven out of their homes and off their land by Israeli settlers, backed up by the Israeli military.

John Minto is national chair of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA). Republished from The Daily Blog with permission.

If re-elected, Labour would invite Palestinian ambassador to Canberra to present credentials here. pic.twitter.com/UvzyOTd96T

— Thomas Coughlan (@coughlthom) October 1, 2023

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

"We need an all-out mobilization of our government and society to stop [the climate crisis] right now," said the group.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul called the rainstorm that caused the flash flooding a "life-threatening rainfall event" and noted that there have been reports of some school buildings flooding, prompting administrators to move children to higher floors or close the buildings.

"No children are in danger as far as we know," said Hochul, adding that many New York City children use public transportation to get home from school. "We want to make sure we get the subways, the trains, our communication system, our transportation system working."

According to Richard Davis, president of Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union, some bus passengers on Friday were forced to stand on their seats as drivers navigated through high flood waters that seeped into buses.

Maintenance workers were using pumps to remove water from subway stations, and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority announced "extremely limited subway service," with many lines suspended or rerouted.

New York City Councilmember Chi Ossé criticized Mayor Eric Adams for failing to address the public until the crisis was well underway and said the flooding shows the city is "severely underprepared for the climate crisis."

Earlier this month Adams announced a new initiative aimed at mobilizing business owners to comply with Local Law 97, which will take effect in 2024 and would reduce carbon emissions from buildings.

According toGothamist, "environmental experts say the new plan will weaken the law's enforcement powers by giving qualified building owners an extra three years to meet carbon reduction deadlines."

Jean Su, energy justice director at the Center for Biological Diversity, took aim at the offshore drilling plan proposed by President Joe Biden on Friday over the objections of scientists and climate advocates. The five-year plan includes three new offshore gas leases in the Gulf of Mexico despite Biden's campaign promise to end offshore gas and oil drilling.

"We are in the climate emergency," said Su. "Yet the president is continuing to drill for oil and gas. He has to stop to give us a chance at a livable planet."

Earlier this month, noted Su, some of the same streets that were inundated with rainwater on Friday had been filled with tens of thousands of people demanding that Biden declare a climate emergency and take decisive action to speed the transition toward renewable energy.

"A week ago, we were hitting the streets of New York for Climate Week NYC," said grassroots group Rising Tide North America. "We shut down Citibank's headquarters and blockaded the New York Federal Reserve."

"[The New York Police Department] arrested lots of our friends," the group added. "Maybe they should have been arresting those bankers and bureaucrats who are responsible for this disaster."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

As billionaire Rupert Murdoch announces he will resign as head of his media empire, we speak with Angelo Carusone, president and CEO of the watchdog group Media Matters for America, about the right-wing mogul’s influence on journalism and politics over the last seven decades. The 92-year-old Murdoch will step down as chair of Fox Corporation and News Corporation in November, with his son Lachlan to head both companies that control Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, New York Post and more. Carusone says as the elder Murdoch steps back, it’s important to “make sure that his legacy doesn’t get sugarcoated, that we are really cognizant of the scale of damage that he’s created,” which includes climate denialism and the growing influence of the far right in politics. Carusone also warns that Lachlan Murdoch is more conservative than his father, with a “nihilist” worldview that could make Fox News and other properties even more extreme.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

“It looks like West Texas,” Strain told Grist, the surprise evident in his voice. 

These dry conditions have helped to ignite a spate of wildfires across the state. In an average year, wildfires burn roughly 8,000 acres in Louisiana; fires in August alone have set alight more than 60,000. The worst of them, the Tiger Island Fire, currently burning near the southwest border with Texas, has taken out 30,000 acres so far, and is being called the largest wildfire that Louisiana has seen in 80 years. Two towns near that fire have been evacuated, and Strain announced a state-wide burn ban as his agency and the state Fire Marshal’s office have struggled to respond to a kind of natural disaster uncommon in the swampy state, one of the country’s wettest. 

The fires follow a summer of record breaking heat and dryness across Louisiana. Shreveport in northwest Louisiana had its second warmest summer on record, New Orleans had its second driest. According to Danielle Manning, a lead meteorologist at the National Weather Service New Orleans/Baton Rouge forecast office, the city of Alexandria in Central Louisiana had its warmest summer on record by a large margin — by nearly two full degrees — and a nearby fire led the police to close roads over the weekend. 

Manning traced the unusually hot and dry conditions to late May, when a system of high pressure air parked over the state and stuck around since. Some places haven’t seen rain since the spring. 

“It’s not unusual to be underneath high pressure [air] at times during the summer but for it to be as persistent as it was this summer is extremely unusual,” Manning said, adding that the frequency of extreme conditions like these are expected to increase in a warming climate. 

The drought, in combination with record breaking heat, has sucked many of Louisiana’s characteristic bayous dry. Stock ponds that farmers have relied on for generations to water their cattle are empty. The detritus left from  hurricanes in recent years have made these conditions even riper for wildfires — fallen timber from Hurricane Laura, Delta, and Ida lay across approximately one million acres of the state, according to Strain. In such conditions, wildfires start easily, Manning said. A single lighting strike or trailer chains dragging along a highway could set one off. 

Officials that Grist spoke to said that they plan to request help from the state to fight future wildfires, in case this summer’s conditions turn out not to be an anomaly. Strain hopes to expand his fire fighting force by 50 personnel and to obtain additional fire-fighting equipment like bulldozers and air tankers. Ashley Rodrigue, a spokesperson in the state Fire Marshal’s office, said that while her agency has never dealt with wildfires of this magnitude before, the experience of working in a disaster prone state has helped to mobilize quickly. 

“You can think of it like football — the game is the same,” Rodrigue said. “But the play calling based on where you’re at in the game is what changes, and in this instance, the play is for wildfires.”

Nonetheless, there have been some challenges.: When a fire department is depleted of energy or equipment, the Fire Marshal’s office is supposed to step in and support them by finding additional resources. One of the things that they’re finding, Roderigue said, is that some fire departments don’t always know what to ask for, because they haven’t dealt with anything of this scale before. 

The National Climate Prediction Center has forecasted a 50 to 60 percent chance that conditions across Louisiana return to normal by mid-September. The Tiger Island Fire doubled in size over the weekend, but in a visit to the town of DeRidder on Tuesday, Governor John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, said that recent rain has slowed the blaze. That fire was 50 percent contained as of Tuesday. 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Even the bayous of Louisiana are now threatened by wildfires on Aug 31, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Lylla Younes.

We feature highlights on climate change, foreign policy and Trump from the first Republican presidential debate of the 2023 race and speak with John Nichols, The Nation's national affairs correspondent. We also look at how former president and front-runner Donald Trump refused to attend the debate ahead of turning himself in at the Fulton County Jail in Atlanta, Georgia, to face racketeering charges for running a criminal enterprise with 18 co-defendants to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia. The debate felt like “an argument at the kids' table on Thanksgiving rather than a classic political debate,” says Nichols, who says candidates were attempting to become Trump’s vice president or project themselves as leaders in a post-Trump Republican Party.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Zhang Junjie, who hails from the eastern province of Jiangsu, recently arrived in New Zealand after fleeing China. 

He told Radio Free Asia in a recent interview that he was subjected to medical abuse at the hands of the authorities, who forced him into a psychiatric hospital claiming he had schizophrenia, a fate that is often meted out to those who publicly criticize the Chinese government or its leaders.

"On Nov. 27, some friends from Tsinghua University and Peking University sent me video clips of protests happening on their campuses," Zhang said. "I felt that I should contribute to the cause of freedom and democracy in China, that I should do something."

"I went out and held up a sign twice, the first time outside of the main classroom building on the evening of Nov. 27, but nobody paid me any attention because it was in the night. I held it up for about half an hour, then went back to the dorm," he said.

Photos of the printed A4 sheets shared with Radio Free Asia read: "End single-party dictatorship – constitutional government now!" and a group of slogans echoing the "Bridge Man" protest by Peng Lifa in October.

"I went back to the same place to hold up the sign at 8.00 a.m. on Nov. 28, and some teachers saw me after about five minutes," Zhang said.

The teachers dragged Zhang into a nearby administrative building, where he was held while school leaders contacted his family to come and get him.

Locked up

Zhang's father arrived the following day and took him back to the family home in Jiangsu's Nantong city, confiscating his computer and mobile phone.

On Dec. 1, his family cooperated with police to take him unawares to the Nantong No. 4 Hospital, a psychiatric facility, where he was locked up for six days, and forcibly injected with medication, including sedatives.

"Two more plainclothes [state security police officers] came on Dec. 1 and drove me to the No. 4 People's Hospital in Nantong city," Zhang said. "They must have said something to the doctor, because he suddenly restrained me and said I was mentally ill."

"I told him I wasn't, but the plainclothes officer said 'If you don't support the Chinese Communist Party, you're sick.'"

Zhang's father and grandfather beat him several times because he tried to resist being given the medication, he said.

"Three nurses tied me to the bed, and they told me 'This is what happens when you don't love your country and the party'," he said.

"Whether you have a disease or not is not for you to decide, but for the government and the party," the state security police told him.

'You just need to cooperate'

Zhang was also subjected to further abuse from his family members after his brief bout of activism got his father fired.

"You just need to cooperate with treatment, support the party and general secretary [Xi Jinping] and we'll let you go immediately," the police told him.

"Then they dragged me through the admissions procedures and took me to the seventh floor, which was hell on earth," he said. "The doctor, whose name was Zhang Peiyun, told me that I would be released if I changed my attitude."

Zhang, who also took part in the "Fireworks Revolution," a brief flurry of nationwide protests defying a ban on fireworks at the beginning of this year, said he had been inspired to protest by "Bridge Man" protester Peng Lifa, who hung a banner calling for Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping's resignation from Beijing's Sitong Bridge traffic flyover on the eve of the 20th party congress.

A #Chinese police car was overturned by a crowd protesting the New Year's Eve fireworks ban in China. pic.twitter.com/jdXltJqsOV

— Daily Turkic (@DailyTurkic) January 3, 2023

At the time, Zhang had added his name to a global open letter calling for the "removal and trial" of Xi Jinping at the 20th party congress in October 2022.

Zhang was eventually released from the hospital, whereupon he made immediate plans to leave China, applying to study at the University of Otago in New Zealand.

He eventually managed to get a New Zealand visa in Hong Kong, and tweeted that he had "escaped to freedom."

Not long afterwards, the police appeared at his family home in Nantong and threatened his family, in a bid to get him to delete the tweet, according to an audio clip of the raid shared with Radio Free Asia by Zhang.

Zhang said he had been at loggerheads with his family since he started finding out about the 1989 student-led democracy movement, and the bloody crackdown that left hundreds, possibly thousands, dead when the People's Liberation Army cleared Beijing of protesters with machine guns and tanks.

'I had to do something'

Zhang also followed the fate of late jailed 2010 Nobel Peace Laureate Liu Xiaobo and news about the crackdown on human rights lawyers that launched in July 2015.

"I lived in that ugly place for 18 years," Zhang said. "I had to do something, even if it didn't change anything."

"I was persecuted for taking part in those activities, and I felt unhappy because most people didn't understand me," he said. "[But] I don't have any regrets or complaints."

France-based current affairs commentator and former 1989 student protester Wang Longmeng said other "white paper" movement protesters had also been labeled "mentally ill" by the authorities for "reviving the spirit of the June 4 protest movement."

"In China, you can be labeled mentally ill if you dare to resist the government's power," Wang said. "The whole of China seems to have turned into a psychiatric institution with no humanity."

"I'm very glad Zhang Junjie was able to flee the psychiatric hospital and escape to the free world," he said. "The Chinese Communist Party doesn't deserve such amazing young people."

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Yitong Wu and Chingman for RFA Cantonese.